Cute office storage!

Scrapbook paper + old baby formula and peanut cans = Cute office storage!

Play Silks!

I dyed up some super fun play silks for the kiddos. Silk scarves from Dharma Trading Co., dyed with food coloring and vinegar...mucho fun! 

Dino Action!

Yay for Green Beans!

I picked our first green beans today! There are a million little tiny ones on the plants. In a week or two it will be green bean city.

In other garden news, we have tomatoes! (and zucchini, and squash.)

Make better Fitted Diapers with your NykiBaby One Size Diaper Pattern!

Here are a few little goodies to help you make better fitted diapers with my pattern:

*Single row of snaps. Fewer snaps to set is a good thing!

Snap placement for a single row of snaps

*My pattern directs you to not trim off any fabric in the leg elastic areas. I've started trimming of 1/2", just like I do through the rest of the diaper. I am liking this way better.

* New contour templates. These fit the diaper so much better. You can trim off up to 1/4" on these when you serge, if you like. I just barely skim them.

New and improved contour soaker templates

Performance Fleece You Won't Find at Old Navy.....

Old Navy might make a mean fleece vest, but they've never done THIS! To all the Kiki Pad fans out there, this is for you...

How to Make Fleece Kiki Pads

Click the picture for a larger image.

Garden Update!

Our lovely little patio garden.

Our yellow squash plant is large and in charge.

This zucchini plant has been named "The Boss." He is accompanied by his trusty sidekick, Rogue Butter Lettuce. The wind killed off all the other lettuce. This little guy is a survivor. Soon he will be a salad.

Gettin' figgy with it, is our dwarf fig tree. In our little herb garden, I've got rosemary, itty-bitty parsley and basil, and The Pho/ Tacos container with green onions and cilantro.

Early girl and Brandywine tomatoes. Don's ask me which is which. 

My poor, poor little eggplants. They refuse to grow. I went to Lowe's today to get more eggplants, but they didn't have any Japanese or Chinese eggplants.  :( Boo!

Another 'mater. He is huge compared to his peers. I've also got some green beans and wax beans in there with him.

My tiniest tomato plant. He was homeless up until last week when I picked all of our spinach, and tossed it into a delicious Tuscan chicken soup. He also has some beanie buddies.

"The Replacement." The pepper I started from seed was not growing, so I bought this guy. 

I actually got to sew something!

After MANY, MANY interruptions, I finally finished a diaper bag for my shop!

Living Room Update.

It's still looking pretty bare, but I've added a few things...

What's new: 

• AMAZING sheepskin rug!!!
• Embroidery hoop wall swatches over the dining table
• Table runner  
• Fabric panel over TV stand glass (Yay! No more ugly DVDs!)
• Bookcase for kids' books and puzzles

What's Next:

• A big plant to go between the TV and table
• POUFS!
• A stack of vintage suitcases as an end table
• Some big, fluffy fabric pom poms to hang in the corner near the bookcase
• The "Mum" throw pillow, since you know, I really need more pillows on my couch.
• A couple of bright Moroccan lanterns for the top of the bookcase. I may convert them to actual lamps, depending on how motivated I get.
• I need to put something on that wall by the door, I just don't know what yet.
• I may put a few more hoops on the wall. 

Yay for Clean, Chromatically Organized Closets!

It's things like this that put a smile on my order-lovin' face. Yes, my hubby owns an excessive number of polo shirts. Yes, that is a Viking helmet...

A big thank you to my honey for hauling a metric ton of stuff to Goodwill this morning, in the rain!

Fat (Quarter) Skirts.

If you're like me, you ate WAY too much Easter candy. (I found Cadbury Cream Eggs that we forgot to give to the kids...OMG!) Time to make some Fat (Quarter) Skirts! 

Elastic waist? CHECK! Unlimited ass expansion room? CHECK! This skirt is about knee length on me (I'm SUPER short, barely 5'. In case you don't know me in RL...lol) and fits about a size 6 (Pre-Easter) to about a size 10 (Post Easter). Just gather the elastic tighter if you ate like a rabbit, or looser if you went savage on a case of Peeps. 

Click the image above for a larger picture.

Lovely!

One of my testers made this lovely bag from my new pattern. She did such an awesome job! I am waiting on photo permissions from some of the other mamas, so I can show off their gorgeous bags too.

Go Mama!

It's done!! My new pattern is done! It's available in my Hyena Cart Shop, and my Etsy Shop. You know you want to sew one up! 

Warning: Extreme Cuteness Ahead!

I just stocked some major squish-a-licious-ness in my shop.

Super Exciting Stuff!

My fourth pattern is finished! The "Go Mama!" diaper bag pattern went out to testers today. Hopefully, if they don't discover some huge, glaring mistake; the pattern will come out in the next couple of weeks. This is my first pattern that's more about design and not just function, so I am nervously awaiting feedback. I can't wait to post pictures of the testers!

Hmmm...Now that this pattern is done...What should I do next?

Building a Better Desk

I want this desk...like now. There are even PDF instructions for it! I totally need another project to do right now...

nOm NOm NoM!

You may have heard of the awesomeness that is Hungry Girl's Chocolate Cake...If you haven't, listen up! It has two ingredients, and it will change your life. I modified the original recipe by using chocolate fudge cake mix (in place of Devil's Food), and adjusting the cooking temperature and time for cupcakes. I promise, you can not taste the pumpkin. These suckers taste just like the cake in Ho Ho's! They are dense, moist and uber chocolicious! Hubby and Jayson both ate two as soon as they came out of the oven. Minor tongue burns may have been sustained.

Bonus: They contain no raw eggs, so you can lick the beater without getting Salmonella! Yay for not getting Salmonella!

Easiest Semi Healthy Chocolate Cupcakes Ever

Ingredients:

1 box Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix

1-15 oz. can 100% Pure Pumpkin

Directions:

Pre heat oven to 375 F. Mix together cake mix and pumpkin until well combined. This mixture will be super thick. It's OK! Spoon into cupcake cups, filling about 3/4 full. The batter will keep it's shape, so you may want to smooth out the tops. Bake for 20-23 minutes. Enjoy. 

129 Calories

1.5g Fat

2g Protein

2g Fiber

per cupcake 

Spring is Springing!

If you live in Canada, New England, the Midwest or anywhere in Northern Europe, you are going to hate me for this! It's the middle of February, and in the lovely San Fransisco Bay Area, Spring is upon us. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming , and my flip-flops are out of hibernation! My container garden is also off to a good start.

My zucchini plant is soaking up the sunshine. Yellow squash and green onions are planted as well. 

Early Girls, Brandy Wines, Japanese Eggplant, Bell Pepper, Cilantro, Italian Parsley, and Basil are still in their seed starting trays, but they are outside during the day. 

Butter Lettuce, Green Beans, and Wax Beans will be started outside, once I finish my planter boxes.

Our Calamansi tree is loaded with blossoms and itty bitty fruit.

A humming bird built her nest in our tree! It's sooo tiny and cute!

Did I mention the flowers were blooming?

Woooork it!

I just finished up a custom order of 10 diapers. Busy Busy Busy.

Elefun!

A Little Something for my Fellow Diaper Sewing Divas

*UPDATE* New and improved soaker templates can be found here.

I finished the pattern for the one-size contour soaker!! This is designed to fit perfectly on all size settings of the NykiBaby One Size Diaper. You can use it to make All-in-2's, Fitteds with snap in soakers and inserts for pockets.

* You will need to download the PDF file from Scribd (Below) and make sure the page scaling is set to "none" when you go to print it.

*this soaker is very full coverage and meant to completely fill out the diaper. you can trim off 1/4" to 1/2" while serging, for a trimmer fit.

*I FOUND A LITTLE MISTAKE IN THE PATTERN....When making a diaper with a snap-in soaker, the sockets should be centered along the pocket opening line.

ENJOY!
NBOS_Soaker

Meet Big n' Fluffy

I was digging around in the boys' closet yesterday, and I found an extra big, extra fluffy pillow. Big and fluffy is a good thing for pillows. It's not a good thing when it's taking up tons of space in an already packed closet! Big n' Fluffy has been in hiding because it had no cover. I figured I could clear out a little bit of fabric and closet space by making a pillow cover and putting that mass of squishy, feathery goodness onto my couch. This is what I did:

Disclaimer: The tree with scrappy leaves design is not mine. I've seen it somewhere before, but I cant find it at the moment. 

I cut out the leaf and trunk shapes from various fabrics in my stash. (The trunk used to be part of my viking Halloween costume!) I then used a washable kid's glue stick to stick everything in place.

I used some micro fleece as a backing, then stitched around each piece about 1/8" from the edge. I threw it in the washer and dryer to fray the edges. I finished off the cover by using two overlapping pieces of the main fabric to make a quick sham back

Here's Big n' Fluffy chillaxin' with his new buddies.

Lazy Girl Pandesal

This morning, I made pandesal! With my bread machine! These yummy little rolls baked up soft and tasty, which lead to me eating way too many of them... I used this recipe, but used the dough cycle on my bread machine to make the dough. Super easy. It turned out well, but I found that it needed to be baked quite a bit longer than the the recipe specifies. It also seems like the amount of sugar in the recipe could also be reduced a little bit. I will try that next time.

How to Make a One-Size-Fits-All AIO Diaper!

Large

Medium    

Small

This super cool soaker design grows with the diaper, that grows with your baby!

First things first: What is an AIO? AIO stands for "All in One" Diaper. These diapers combine absorbent materials with a waterproof outer cover for ultimate cloth diapering convenience. This tutorial will show you how to adapt your NykiBaby One Size Diaper pattern to make an AIO. You can also use these instructions to make fitted diapers with sewn in soakers.

Materials:

NykiBaby One Size Diaper pattern.

Diaper Body
1- cut of PUL, plus more to reinforce snaps
1- cut of your inner fabric (you can use a "stay-dry" fabric like microfleece or suede cloth, or a natural fabric like bamboo or cotton. I have used cotton velour with no wicking, but natural fabrics are more likely to wick.)
Snaps and elastic as called for in the pattern.

Soakers
10 1/2" x 4 1/2" pieces of your absorbent fabric. The number of layers needed will depend  on the absorbency of your fabric. You will be making two soakers, so consider their combined thickness when choosing the number of layers to use.
You can top your soakers with the same fabric as the diaper inner.
2- 2" x 6" scraps of fabric to reinforce the areas where the soakers are sewn.

Directions:

Make the soakers. Stack up each set of soaker fabrics in the correct order. Pin. Serge around, rounding the corners.

*Use your pattern to mark the two, top, center snap placements and the center of the pocket opening. These will help guide you in placing the soakers.

Attach the soakers to the inner fabric piece.  Line the top edge of the front soaker up with the dots marked on the front of the diaper in the previous step. Pin. Place your reinforcement fabric on the opposite side of the fabric. Stitch across, one inch from the top of the soaker. Pivot and stitch close to the edge around the top of the soaker.

Repeat for the back soaker on the opposite end of the diaper.

Place the outer layer snaps as usual.


Stitch the inner and outer together, right sides together. Leave a 3" opening in the center front for turning.

Apply elastic as usual.

Turn and Topstich. Closing up the front opening.

Apply wing snaps.


Done!

*For pictures of the outside of this diaper, check out the previous post.