happy stuff.

so when i first found out that the birthmother who’d chosen us was going to have a boy, i experienced one ridiculous twinge of regret–”boy clothes are so much harder to sew than girl’s clothes!” and while i’ll still admit that there’s not much that’s easier to sew than an elastic waist skirt or a simple little sundress, these pants are pretty darn easy too.  i found the pattern while poking around online and was inspired to make another trip to the dig-n-save.  i’ll preface this entire project by admitting that making baby pants (even from repurposed, $1/lb clothing) is likely not the most cost-effective way to build my child’s wardrobe, but look at how stinkin’ cute those pants are!!  and (once the “fabric” and the elastic (new!) has been purchased and the fabric laundered and the decision made about whether or not i can really justify “ruining perfectly good shirts” to make baby pants) they only take about 10 minutes to make, start to finish.  okay, maybe 15 minutes, i didn’t actually time myself.  but super, super fast and easy.  the link to the pattern above has a pretty nice tutorial (with a great idea about adding a lined cuff to extend the wear time of the pants!) but i took some photos of my process so you can see a few extra little tricks i added.

step 1.  choose a shirt.

this is a child-size turtleneck that i almost couldn’t cut into (it’s still a good shirt!  someone might wear it!  what if the pants turn out ugly?  i’ll have wasted and ruined a perfectly good shirt!) but then i reminded myself about how much i hate turtlenecks and that made the decision easier.  plus, it was $1 a pound which makes it slightly less tragic (at least to my wallet) if the pants are a failure.

step 2.  fold the shirt in half down the middle and pin your pattern along the fold you just made, lining the bottom of the pattern up with the hem of the shirt (this will be very useful later!):

look how well the pattern fits this shirt!  almost no wasted fabric!  (the sleeves can be made into babylegs, i think….)

step 3.  take a deep breath and cut the fabric!  then, turn each piece inside out and pin as shown:

note:  if you’re using a striped fabric, it’s a good idea to try to match up the stripes as you pin, like this:

step 4.  sew the part you just pinned.  then turn one leg right-side out:

step 5.  tuck the right-side out leg inside the inside-out leg:

step 6.  start pinning where the sewn seams meet and work your way up each side from there.  again, it’s a good idea to match stripes as much as possible!  then sew the seam you just pinned.

step 7.  when you turn the whole thing right-side out, they’ll look like this:

you’ll notice that since you lined up the bottom of the pattern with the hem of the shirt, your pants are already hemmed–hooray!

step 8.  cut a piece of elastic to the size you want it to be (i’ll admit–this is total guesswork for me at this point!  i’m erring towards too big because it’s always easier to make it smaller.  plus, who likes tight pants?) and stitch it into a circle:

step 9.  fold the top edge of the pants over the elastic band.

this part would probably be easier if i would just go iron down the top edge to the desired height, but i’m too lazy for that, so instead, i’m picking a stripe in the pattern as my guide.

step 10.  put your zipper foot on your machine and snug the edge of the elastic right up next to the foot and stitch all the way around, pulling the elastic to gather the fabric as you go, until all the elastic is encased in the waistband.

then you’re done!  here are three stripey pairs:

and one polka dot pair i made out of the sleeves of a large jersey knit cardigan:

who knows if i’ll have time to make pants after there’s a baby in the house, but for now?  i’m just a wee bit addicted.  i did make one sample pair of these pants and try them on an actual baby (thanks to a friend who had their baby at the library for a program) because i wasn’t sure how the whole no-specific-front-or-back thing would work, but guess what?  diaper butts are just as big in the front as they are in the back!  the only thing i altered after trying these on the real live baby were the the pattern had the waistband pretty low.  i raised it for these.  we’ll see if that works or not once i’ve got someone to wear them.  it’s an easy fix if i need to alter them.  hmmm…. maybe boy clothes aren’t so difficult after all….

p.s. i just double-checked the site where i got this pattern and found this page.  oh my.  screen printing onto the pants?  i sense another flurry of creativity!

baby’s first hand-knit gift–a toadstool rattle!  a friend of mind from work knit this up for us and i totally l.o.v.e. it!  mr. happy stuff thought it looked like something from mario bros.  i think that means he likes it too.

thank you for your wonderful responses to the quilt and our big announcement! let’s begin this string of baby posts with an easy, not-too-babyish project i took on a few months ago–the changing table.

i love the “modern” aesthetic, but i’m too cheap to pay for the really good stuff, so i’m always looking around for good bargains. while shopping for nursery furniture, i decided that i wanted to get a changing table that was also a dresser to increase the likelihood of it being used for a long time. i drooled over many of the beautiful modern pieces out on the market today and tried to figure out if i could justify the cost, but, in the end, i decided to start with a trip to the trusty ol’ dig-n-save. you know, the thrift store outlet? where items that aren’t good enough to be sold at the regular thrift stores are sold at rock bottom prices? i zipped through it once and didn’t really see anything perfect, plus, i wasn’t quite sure what size to get. how tall should it be? how deep is a changing table pad? i continued my search at other stores, did some measurement research and went back to the dig and save for one more look. and i found this:

it wasn’t much to look at.  there were chunks of veneer missing, water stains on the top and boring knobs, but the basic lines were nice and clean and at $10 the price was right for a gamble.  Plus, in looking online for inspiration, i’d found  this awesome furniture makeover, this “changer” by amy coe, and also loved the color combo of this crib which we ended up purchasing later.  put those all together with a few cans of paint we had leftover from other projects, two afternoons of work and you get….
then, a few weeks later when my dad came to visit, he helped me build a box on top to hold the changing pad (with a little extra room on the side for diapers, etc. and space underneath for a diaper pail) and he also installed runners on the drawers so that they work more smoothly.  i also enlarged the finger holes a bit and now it looks like this:

i’m pretty happy with it and i love that i was able to transform something that looked so sad into something so much happier!

so the short story behind this quilt is that after 4+ years of trying various methods to start our family, we are thrilled to be anticipating a domestic open newborn adoption possibly sometime in the next 5 weeks or so.  there’s a whole lot of weighty words in that sentence, so feel free to read through it a few times.

during those years, this blog, where i can come to focus on happy things, has sustained me and reminded me to come back out of some very dark holes and remember that there are still good things in life.

the friendships gained and new crafts learned online have proven to be fantastic distractions and have brought me so much joy.  thank you all for being there.

and now, although there may will probably be more bumps in our road to familyhood, i’m feeling confident that we are on the right path to bringing a new human into our family (as rebekah put it) and so i’ve created this quilt.  there’s an old legend that says that a red thread connects the hearts of people who are meant to be together in life.  in this quilt, the red thread connects our hearts to our baby’s, but also to his birthmother because she  is an integral part of this story and she will become a member of our family too.  sort of like when you marry and gain a whole new family of in-laws.  sort of.

i don’t plan on turning happy stuff into a mushy gushy baby blog, but i may have to post a few baby-related projects over the next few days.  i’ve been keeping them a secret for so long and now i want to show them all to you!  and so, my apologies to anyone who’s not at a place in their lives where baby chat is interesting.  i won’t be offended if you skip past the next few posts, but please come back later!  i’ll do my best to get back to the regularly scheduled program soon!

but until then, here are answers to some questions you’ll be likely to ask:

1.  yes, it’s a boy.

2.  the birthmother lives in texas.  (where i spent 5 of my childhood years)

3.  yes, she could still change her mind and choose to parent.  in texas, birthmothers must wait at least 48 hours after birth before they can choose to sign adoption papers.  no binding agreement of any sort can be made before that.  if she were to choose to parent, we’d go back into a pool of prospective adoptive parents and wait to be chosen again.

4.  we began our adoption process last may, finished our homestudy in september and were matched (meaning a birthmother chose us by reading a “profile” (a 6-page scrapbook of us) we’d created for that purpose) in november. yes, it’s been a blessedly speedy process for us and yes, we absolutely know how lucky we’ve been.

5.  we went to texas to meet her in person last month and i think all of us enjoyed the opportunity to get to talk in person.  she’s funny, talkative and refreshingly honest.  she told us that she picked us because we looked like regular, normal people, but a little big goofy.  yup.  that’s us.

6.  no, we still haven’t decided on a name.

7.  yes, i pieced all of those circles, front and back, using dale fleming’s 6-minute circle technique.  it really is quite easy.

anything else?

while i’m impatiently waiting to receive all of your guesses on the last post (i’ll give you a little more time.  i know not everyone reads my blog every day.) i thought i’d tell you about my new favorite breakfast drink:  green smoothies!

so during a recent session of blog surfing, i ran across this post on happy foody that totally inspired me.  okay, really i just loved the awesome straw and the bright lovely green color of the finished smoothie, but for whatever reasons, i decided to try making one.  i mixed up apple cider, frozen bananas, frozen grapes, pineapple, a splash of apricot compote and a giant handful of spinach and this is the beauty that poured out of the blender.  i already had the cute straws (from target awhile back), but never had a good excuse to use them.  they are very thick plastic–rigid and dishwasher safe and they’re wide to accommodate a thick smoothie better.  plus… so cute!  but back to the smoothie itself–i worked for a summer during high school in a fresh juice shop.  it wasn’t one of those big chains like jamba or julius with their freaky pre-packaged powders and ice and sugar, no this was a small, local business that was about a block from my house in texas that made all of their smoothies only with fruit and occasionally maybe some yogurt or wheat germ.  every morning (early!) i’d hop over our back fence and walk to work where we spent about an hour juicing before we opened.  i made so many smoothies there that i’ve got a pretty good idea of what mix of frozen solids + liquids are needed and what you have to do to them in a blender to make them reach that sweet point where the liquids spin and a vortex opens down the middle of the blender–perfect.  still, we’d never put spinach in a smoothie at the shop and i wasn’t sure what to expect.  with all of that fruit, i knew it would be a little bit sweet, but wouldn’t the greenness of the spinach come through and overshadow the flavor a little?  just like all things that are “good for you” when snuck into things that actually taste good?  i was very pleasantly surprised to discover that i couldn’t taste the spinach at all.  and there was enough in there for a good-sized spinach salad.  and all i had to do was drink it with a cute straw?  don’t get me wrong.  i love a good spinach salad, but i usually have to add some sort of dressing.  this is just spinach and fruit!  although i will warn you that the addition of raspberries turns the green into more of a brown, swamp sludge look.  great for eight-year-old boys!

i also liked happy foody’s suggestion to drink it out of a glass jar.  this one used to hold spaghetti sauce.  i paid too much for the sauce just because i loved the jar.  i am such a sucker for packaging.  but hey, it’s getting re-used, so that’s a good thing, right?

maybe tomorrow i’ll tell you about my other new favorite breakfast food.  but then again, maybe i shouldn’t.  these are extremely dangerous to have in your house.  where you might eat them.  and mistakenly think they’re healthy because they’re called a “trail mix bar.”  oh wait.  are you supposed to eat this on a hike?  maybe that’s the secret….

p.s.  even if you don’t feel like guessing about the quilt (or if you’re exempted because you already know the story), you can still feel free to leave complimentary comments about the quilt itself on the blog–you don’t have to e-mail me!  :)

ding, ding, ding!  rebekah’s right!  the quilt is for a third human member of our family!

but there’s a little more to the story than you might assume.  look at the previous hints for close-ups of the embroidery (here’s a better picture of the stitched circle in the third row):

can you read our story in this quilt?  send interpretations to carissaabc[at]gmail[dot]com.   i promise i won’t tease you much longer.  correct interpretations will win a small reward!

i made this for someone who might be coming to live with us in mid-march.

i’ve been waiting to show you my next quilt for a very long time, but i wanted to wait until it was finished.  here’s a sneak peek.  can you guess what kind of quilt it is?  (people who’ve already seen it in real life or who’ve heard me talk about it are exempt from guessing!)

it may not look like much, but this rattle is the first item i’ve ever crocheted with no pattern whatsoever.  i decided on the way home from our kentucky christmas, that i wanted to play around with crochet stitches to better understand how they build upon each other.  i’d learned (from my lovely sister-in-law who is an accomplished crochet-er) how to crochet in the round a few years ago, but never did much with it.  when i started creating this, i wanted to see what would happen if i didn’t do any increases, but just kept crocheting in the round from the original ring of stitches.  voila, a handle began to grow out of string!  then i started increasing to see what would happen and it sort of turned into a wineglass shape.  then, i did a few more rounds at that size without increasing and the cup grew larger.  at that point,  i decided it would make a better rattle than a wineglass cozy, so i stopped until i could get home and find something rattly to include and some stuffing.  i ended up purchasing a small round plastic cat toy that rattles and i tucked that in, along with some stuffing, and stitched some more (experimenting with decreasing.  i’m still not sure i’ve got that process quite right.) and … there you have it!  i was using basically kitchen string as my medium, which was a little shreddy, but i sort of like the simple organic look of it.  maybe the next one could have some colored stripes–another technique to experiment with!  i like how when you’re crocheting (unlike knitting) if you feel like stopping, you just pull your working loop out big and you can leave it like that and use the hook for another project and come back to it later.  i enjoyed this process so much that i began looking for simple, single-crochet patterns to see if i could find one that i might actually be able to do.  i also figured out double and triple crochet on the trip, but i think i like the look of single crochet best.  anyone have a favorite crochet pattern to share?  there are some cute patterns on etsy….