sew: the runway shortie {free pattern download!}

*This post originally appeared at the Ribbon Retreat blog*

I love the look of jumpers/rompers/shorties that I keep seeing on the runway, but there is no way I could ever pull one off, even if I wanted to. You know who can? My baby girl. She can pull off just about anything, so I decided to create a Runway Shortie just for her. It has the cuteness of a dress with the versatility of shorts, so she can run and play to her heart's content.

Do you like it? If you do - get ready to make one for your own little girl! I'll show you how to make your own pattern below, but I'm also offering a FREE pattern download. It's sized at 12-18 months, and fits my little girl (who is a small/average 16 month old) perfectly, so it would probably be best for a baby right around a year old. If your little girl is a different size, just use the instructions below to make your own pattern!

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cook: oreo madness

I'm generally not a big fan of restaurant desserts. They always sound so good, but then I spend seven dollars on a piece of cake that turns out kind of dry, and I spend the next hour thinking about how I could have made a WHOLE CAKE for seven dollars and it would have tasted SO MUCH BETTER. So I usually just skip dessert when we are eating out (unless we're headed to Cold Stone on the way home). But back in the day, my husband (then boyfriend) and I used to eat at TGI Friday's pretty regularly, and we'd always (ALWAYS!) get the Oreo Madness for dessert.

Smooth vanilla ice cream was sandwiched between two super thick, cookie shaped pieces of Oreo crust, and the entire thing was drizzled in copius amounts of fudge and caramel. It looked like a great big Oreo, but was way better. It was the one restaurant dessert I knew would never disappoint.

And then it went away. To be replaced by yet another hot cookie walnut brownie hybrid or some such nonsense. So I started making ice cream pie with Oreo crust at home in my attempts to fill the Oreo Madness void. But it just wasn't cutting it. Without two layers of thick Oreo crust it wasn't Oreo Madness, it was just ice cream pie (which frankly isn't so bad - it's just not Oreo Madness). 

So I finally took matters into my own hands and created my very own Oreo Madness.

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Quick kitchen update

If you've been following along for a while, you may have seen my posts showing photos before and after I painted my kitchen cabinets black and got a new countertop and subway tile backsplash installed. Since then, I've painted the kitchen and living room, and we've installed *most* of the new floor. I hope to be posting final pictures in a few weeks, once we have everything put back together. I'll also post a review of IKEA's tundra laminate flooring, which we are using. But until then, here's a fun time-lapse video of us putting in our new floor (five hours of work condensed to a minute and a half!). It's what we spent all day yesterday doing - did you do something more fun than installing floor for the Fourth? Oh - and when we disappear from the video it's because we've gone out to cut the pieces. Don't worry, we'll be back in a milisecond or two.

Ok - we did do one thing more fun than installing floor. Anyone remember Oreo Madness? The best restaurant dessert ever that TGIFriday's has for some reason removed from their menu? Well, the kids and I recreated it yesterday, and it was fabulous. Recipe and photos coming tomorrow!

creating a photo collage in PSE {Part 1: Clipping Masks}

Photoshop Elements is a pretty nifty application that allows you to do a tremendous amount of editing and playing around with your photos. In fact, it can do so much stuff that many people buy Elements (it's pretty reasonably priced), open it up once, get overwhelmed, and never open it again. If you really want to learn Photoshop Elements, I recommend taking an online class (I loved the classes I took from Jessica Sprague). But if you're not up for a class, check back here regularly because I'm going to start sharing screencasts and tutorials for Photoshop Elements.

This is the first of a two part (maybe three part?) series that will teach you how to make a photo collage, such as the ones on my gallery photo wall. 

Most people who are unfamiliar with PSE (Photoshop Elements) approach making a photo collage the same way they'd do it with real, printed photos: they crop each photo into the size they think they want, then drop all those cropped photos onto a new blank file in PSE, then move them around until they look ok. But I'm here to tell you there's a much better way: clipping masks. Clipping masks let you constrain your photos down to a smaller size without actually cropping or cutting off any parts of the photo. That means you can create a photo collage, but change the sizes of each photo as well as what portions of each photo you can see as you go along. This is lots easier to understand when you see it in action, so let's bring on the screencast!

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a little laugh for your weekend

My kids have an old iphone their grandpa gave them when he upgraded. It doesn't have any phone service, but it does have Angry Birds and some other fun games, so they enjoy taking turns playing on it during long car rides, etc. They brought it to my husband the other day in some distress because it looked like this:

iPhone is disabled, it says. Try again in six million minutes! We all had a good laugh wondering why in the world the iPhone thought it needed six million minutes before it could become active again. My favorite part is what it says at the bottom: "this may take some time." Um, ya. Just over twelve years worth of time. When my husband and I calculated that out he said to our son, "It's ok. It will be ready for you to use again right after your 21st birthday," and then we laughed uncontrollably. Until we noticed our son was now crying in disappointment (yes, laughing at my bawling son was one of those fine parenting moments that I'll always be proud of).

My husband quickly figured out how to reboot the iPhone, and all is well now. But I think next time my kids ask me a million times in a row if they can have a cookie/invite friends over/play the computer I'll just tell them to try asking me again in six million minutes. Cuz this may take some time.

sew: peter pan bow-tie blouse {from a long sleeve tee}

I've been trying to branch out from tee shirts in my summer wardrobe a bit. I've made a few blouses, and while I really like some of them, nothing beats the comfort of a stretchy tee, especially when you'll be wrestling kids back into the shopping cart or pushing a stroller around the block. So I decided to get the best of both worlds with this peter pan bow-tie blouse, made from a thrifted long sleeve tee.

For three dollars, I'm pretty happy with my new shirt. I chopped off the sleeves and used them to make both a peter pan collar and a cute bow, then added ruching using elastic thread to pick up the newly shortened sleeves. Keep reading for a more detailed explanation of the process. 

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photograph: take great photos of your newborn baby {pt 5: get this shot}

I hope you've been following along with this five part newborn photography series geared toward teaching you how to take great photos of your newborn. In case you're just joining us now, here's my photography disclaimer and links to each blog post in the series:

I don't claim to be a pro, and following the steps I'm outlining here isn't going to make you a pro either. There's a lot more to photography than props and poses. If you want amazing portraits of your newborn, your best bet is to invest in professional photos.

However, if you don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on a newborn photo session, there are things YOU can do to get great photos of your newborn, and that's the point of this blog series. Here's what you can look forward to in the next few weeks:

Part 1: the basics | Part 2: posing | Part 3: posing baby with family members | Part 4: editing | Part 5: how to get this shot (setup to post processing)

How to get this shot

Do you ever see a photograph and wish you knew exactly how to get that shot?

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scrapbook: winner of the July/August issue of Creating Keepsakes

Patricia is the winner of the July/August CK giveaway! Patricia, you should have received an email telling you what to do to claim your prize. Thanks to all who entered. Check back tomorrow for the fifth installment in the how to take great photos of your newborn series!