Before Bath
After Bath
Loki is next!
Browsing Posts in Erin's Projects
We’ve still been pretty busy. Ken has felt better the last couple days and finally left the house today. We took the dogs for a ride to get out of the house and went to Best Buy to get Ken a Nintendo DS Lite. He has been happily playing Mario Bros all day. Then we went out to dinner with his parents. In between I made Sammy a bed and fixed Loki’s (it was fleece tied, but I cut off the fringe and just sewed it up so I could pack more stuffing in there. Attention Apple: Get your act together and release iLife ‘09 so I don’t have to spend 20 minutes on a huge blog post and instead just uploading all of these fun pictures to Flickr with 2 clicks. The vague “Ship date: January” is not working for me!!!!!!
“Take me with you!” Sammy does not like to be left at home!
Minions with coats on waiting for Ken to get ready. They like having a comfy chair and ottoman in the office. They sneak in there to go visit Ken and nap on his chair. Then they bark at the garbage man/plane/mailman/neighbor and get kicked out.
Car Ride! I don’t know if anyone believes me, but when they get in the car they sit and face each other and make little noises. It’s like they discuss where we might be going. They also put their chins on the edges of their seats and look into the other seat in case the other one got some extra treat or blanket or something. They just like to make sure everything is fair. (No, I was not driving when I took this.)
Sammy wanted to sleep in her bed, not model it. It needs some more stuffing but she didn’t care. In fact, both of them watched me intently while I made their beds. Loki was very upset that I was messing with his and kept nudging me like “Are you done yet? Are you done yet????” I’ll get a better picture tomorrow.
Oh yeah, and they got haircuts so they are super cute right now. They always love to see Miss Jan. Sammy looks about the same because SHE WIGGLES TOO MUCH to do much to her. She’s like a ninja, still as can be until the last second and then she kicks your hand away (the hand WITH the scissors, of course.) But Loki looks awesome, especially his face. Although I think his face in wet in half of these pics. Whatever. We love him! Please note their heads are not going to twist off. In order to get two dogs to look at the camera I have to stand there and say “Apple. Grandma. Do you want to go for a car ride? Do you like bananas? Is grandma coming to see you? Do you want chicken? Treat? TRREEEAAAATTTT???? Whosacutepuppydog…” etc. etc. etc. and more and more pathetic. But hey, they look at the camera. Well, actually most of those antics are for Sam. Loki knows what “watch me” means. Typically I get Loki in place and have him stay and then take 35 pictures and hope that Sammy is looking at the camera in one of them.
OK so that was today.
Thursday I finished mom’s purse and another accessory for Sarah. Sarah is either going to think I am crazy or obsessed, but really I’m just practicing new patterns. If you don’t like all the extras just pass them out to your friends. I had extra fabric and it was fun. And I learned stuff. I’ll make stuff for myself now. Maybe 
Of course this one is a keykalou pattern!
And this is the purse I made for Mom. It was supposed to be for Christmas. OK so it was only a month late. I really like this size – I sized the Camille’s bag down a few inches to make it purse sized rather than tote bag sized. And I added a zipper and some extra pockets. It takes a long time to quilt it and make the darts and fuse the fleece and you have to measure everything exactly right (I usually just wing it! that does not work here… see Sarah’s first bag 
) but the shape is unique and work the extra effort.
Size comparison:
I haven’t had much time to work on my projects since Ken has been sick. But yesterday I set him up with like 4 bottles of juice and a few episodes of West Wing and finally had time to finish Sarah’s bag! It’s so cool and HUGE!!! I hope it fits all of her books!
The outside had to be quilted and I don’t have one of those cool quilting guides so I had to improvise with scotch tape. It worked pretty well actually!!!
Loki “helping”
Finished!
Inside – I added 1 small pocket, 1 big pocket, 3 pencil pockets and 2 key rings.
Detailed darts and quilting
Sammy: “Oh, it’s warm in here!” She better be careful or Sarah will keep her!
Sorry, I know I’ve been slacking on the blog. You would think that since I’m not working right now I would have tons of free time but it hasn’t worked out that way. I neglected cleaning the house for a month or so while I sewed Christmas gifts so I am working on catching up with that. The upstairs and bathrooms and cleaned and I’ve moved on to the downstairs. We re-arranged some furniture to give me a sewing corner, but it’s not very organized so I have some re-arranging to do. I completely moved the Barkaholics stuff out of Ken’s office because I was totally bugging him going in there even if I was quiet. His office seems huge now! We also filled about 10 plastic storage bins with “extra” stuff when we put the house on the market, but since we haven’t had a showing in a while and we are going to stick it out until the market improves, I decided it was time to stop living in a museum so I have 10 boxes in my dining room to sort through before I can even think of cleaning the floor and dusting. I also ran into Year-End so I spent 4 days dealing with Quickbooks and Inventory. I’m not done, but I’m at a point where I can stop and clean the house. Finally when I finish all of that I have a HUGE list of bookmarked patterns and tutorials and a list of sewing projects to tackle. On top of all of this, Sammy hurt her back (doing a flying leap that turned into a spin and a back flip) so she is on restricted activity. I spent 3 days cuddling her while she was in pain (luckily that corresponded to my data entry in QB so I didn’t lose a lot of time) but now that she is feeling better it’s even harder to keep her quiet. It’s too cold to go on walks and the dogs are extremely bored. I just dumped the camera pictures from Dec 24-today so here is what we got!
First some of my last few sewing projects!
Business Card Wallets I sent to AZ (Keyka Lou Pattern)
Bag I made for Danielle (Camille’s Bag Pattern):
Erickson Christmas
Ken and I made mom a Minion 2009 Calendar
Chris got Sammy & Loki a bag full of “fishies” and some frogs and chicks too (they bubble, ribbit and chirp!) “Fishy” is Sammy’s favorite toy. She sleeps with it and if it ever falls behind the bed she goes into panic mode. When it starts to fall apart we have to replace it in the middle of the night when she is sleeping.
Mom tied a rope to fishy so Sam could play tug:
What’s that? Can I have the paper???
Are we done yet? This is exhausting!
Loki was trying so hard to just take a nap
Sammy really liked Sarah
Cutie! Sammy’s shirt says “Dear Santa… I can explain!”
Ken and Loki
Wiesner Christmas
Ken’s little cousin with the crayon roll I made
Someone gave Ken’s sister Laura a box of disposable containers. She is the queen of leftovers. Too funny!
I made Ken’s mom an apron. It turned out just OK so I bought her one at Williams Sonoma too.
Ken’s Aunt Marcia and Uncle Wally
Random
Sam & Loki taking turns on the princess blanket
Their new bed at Grandma’s. Yes it’s more than big enough for the two of them but they still fight over it.
Sam not feeling so great but still being super cute!
And finally, my new slippers! I ordered these like 2 weeks ago from LL Bean and Fed Ex lost them! They finally turned up in Arizona and then sent them back here. They finally came yesterday. Thank goodness they fit!
OK, does that get me off the hook for not updating for 2 weeks? Also, Ken and I are using Facebook a lot more now so if you don’t have Facebook, sign up, and if you do, friend us! I never thought I would use it but it’s a neat way to share pictures and stuff. The new iWork/iLife from Apple is going to have a direct link from iPhoto to Facebook so I have no excuse not to upload pictures. I also will have no excuse to put off organizing my photos… I tend to take 50 pictures just to get ONE good one of Sammy looking at the camera. I probably have 3GB of Sammy not looking at the camera. That can be my next project! Also, I realize there are like no pictures of me but that’s because I usually have the camera. I also need to lose like 30 pounds. Loki and I are going to be workout buddies!
That’s it for today!!!
I made this one without a pattern after struggling with the handles on the other style I made for the AZ kids. I’m not sure why I couldn’t get it right, but I came up with this and it’s just as cute!
