Missy Xiu's bathing suit

This is how Missy Xiu's bathing suit ended up. By no means is it perfect, but it is cute and wearable, and best of all it was cheap! I added a little yo yo flower to it to make it more fun. We tested it out by running through the sprinklers.

I want it!

Missy Xiu's bathing suit is done and I will have pics up a little later. In the meantime, I want this pattern! This blouse has all the right attitude and sass! Where can I get it? It is a vintage pattern, so not so easy to find. I might try to draft the pattern myself, when I have time and I am not doing one of my 50,000 other projects or studying for my test, and there is that mountain of laundry sitting around needing to be folded. I'm trying to pretend it's not there, I throw a flat sheet over it and call it a couch. It's not fooling my husband though, so it's got to get done some time. Maybe after I find this pattern I will be in a good enough mood to attempt to fold the clothes, but then again, there is nothing in the world that could put me into a good enough mood to actually WANT to fold clothes! Untill later, besos!

Quickie Sewing

I am making a swimsuit for Missy Xiu. It is out of left over fabric from my swimsuit, and a pink remnant that I had. I had no pattern so I am winging it. I basically took her measurements of her chest, hips, and torso length. I drew up a rough, and I mean rough paper pattern and cut out the fabric. I made a front and back with the crotch piece as part of the front piece. I pinned it to Missy's shirt and shorts on her body and just started cutting it while on her. I do not recommend this method of sewing, it comes with a lot of risk. I felt that I had nothing to loose with my scrap fabric so I just went with it. I lined it with the pink fabric and it will have accents in the pink fabric on the outside of the suit. This portion pictured is the body portion to which I will attach triangles for the chest portion. I sewed the lining and outer shell as if they were one layer. I serged all my seams inside and serged the legs and top together for ease of sewing the 2 layers as one. So that's it for my quickie sewing update. Have a great weekend everybody!!!!!!!

Other Subject- Healthy Eating

I know this post is a bit out of left field but.... not really. Another thing that I would like to focus on in this blog is healthy eating, exercise and especially postpartum weight loss. This subject for most new mothers is in fact an enigma. I, in another phase in my life worked at a gym and briefly studied nutrtion. It is yet another passion of mine. Don't get me wrong, I eat unhealthy foods often. I am by no means a health nut or do I have OCD over what I eat. I simply have decoded eating and made it enjoyable while maintaining a healthy weight. I have gained a good amount of my weight with all 5 of my pregnancies, 35lbs and up. So I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the topic. With my first and third babies I gained 35 lbs. With my 3 others I gained 50, 40, and 55 lbs respectively. No laughing matter. With my last pregnancy, I had already packed on an additional 20 lbs before I even got pregnant! I had spent about 8 months just eating my feelings and laying sullenly in my room and it showed. Then I got pregnant with baby number 5 and since I had not resolved my depression that I was going through, the pounds kept on piling on! During the last portion of my pregnancy I was able to get a grip on myself and start working through my issues. After baby boy was born, I breast fed, which is like natures liposuction! I lost the 55 lbs gained during pregnancy within the first 6 months. I did so by cutting back on my calories and good old fashioned exercise. I must admit though that I am a lazy exerciser. My cardio usually ends without me even breaking a sweat. I much prefer toning exercises. I still had those pesky 20 depression lbs to lose though. These for some reason were much harder to get off. It took me another year to finally shed them. I went through a lot of sweat and tears before I got to my goal and in the end the thing that got those lbs to come off was not really my body, but my mind. It is all in our head. I had to change my attitude about the weight loss. I had lost all those pesky pregnancy pounds before but this case was different. Maybe because I was older, or maybe my head was all jumbled up about it. I changed the way I ate. I started to eat foods That would nourish me. I though to myself, fiber, my body could use some of that. I made protein a priority and started eating and drinking dairy. I'm nuts about nuts! But most importantly I cut way back on sugar! I also have adult acne that nothing will get rid of! Cutting back on sugar though has cleared up my face almost completely! Whenever I go on a sugar binge, I break out.
Well the reason why this post came up is because of this interesting piece I saw on GMA, it was pretty good, please take a look and enjoy.
I plan on posting much more on this topic, fun useful stuff, not nagging preachy stuff.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/healthy-weight-study-diet-lifestyle-lead-success/story?id=13893779

Natasha Bedingfield - Strip Me

So I saw the movie Morning Glory last night. The movie was cute but the song at the end was life changing. I have had a very hard week. I have been doing a training at my day job for a possible promotion that would bring more stress to my life. I'm not so sure about money, but stress, yes. For this possible promotion I have to learn a lot of vocabulary that most people go to school for years to learn and I have to learn it in 3 weeks. The problem at the end of the day is not with the intense training or the long vocabulary lists that I will have to cram into my brain on my much cherished free time, but my own issues with self confidence and a resistance to change. I suffer from a lot of self doubt like many people. I am constantly looking to others for validation. This is an issue that I need to remedy with a swift kick in the ass. I need to gather up every self help tid bit that I have ever read as a status update on facebook and apply them in full force to my life. This song, strip me by Natasha Bedingfield is a tour de force. I love Natasha Bedingfield, her songs are very empowering. So when I heard this song last night at the end of the aforementioned cute movie, it was an aha moment. Apart from my job, I have also been sulking over unreceived validation for one of my sewing projects that I felt I deserved. Instead of brushing it off easily I have come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories about why I don't receive the praise that I feel I deserve. I realize that the problem is not external but internal. Everybody needs some measure of recognition for the works they do, that is how we measure success in our society. I however have always been a little Jack Kerouac about these kinds of things, but now in my adult years I started to bend a little to society's ever growing need for public validation. It is why we share everything on social networking sites, we put up our sewing projects on Burdastyle, and of course, we blog. In my aha moment, it hit me. I am successful by my own standards. I have a voice and something to say and that by saying those things, I continue to grow as a person, as a mother. I give my children the best example I can by being true to myself and believing in myself in the face of a challenge. I got all this from a song at the end of a movie. Ha, go figure! Listen to the song and get your daily dose of empowerment, I did.

Sheets and Shower Curtains.

Happy Thursday! Things have been crazy here this week! I am going through a training at work and it is intense. It has robbed me of all of my inner peace at the moment. Cuban coffee is my rocket fuel right now. Don't you love my Cuban coffee cups? It is very hard to find a balance between work and kids and then you throw sewing in the mix and total chaos ensues! I have been a mother for 10 and a half years now and have yet to figure out how to make the most of my time. Usually the house keeping falls to the wayside, because it is what I like to do the least. Love a clean house, hate the actual cleaning of it. I finished the shorts that I was making for baby boy. They were easy and quick to sew up. They came out cute right?

The inside is lined with T-shirt fabric.

I am working on shorts for the other boys. I drafted the pattern for baby boys shorts myself, but decided to bust out this pattern that I bought on sale for $1 years ago. The pattern is for pants but that is easily turned into shorts. I bought the pattern in 2 sizes so that I would be able to make them these styles for years to come. I traced out the xs and s sizes and I have to say that they are huge! The style is supposed to fit baggy but the pattern is beyond baggy. The small will fit my 10 year old. I will use the xs for my 4 and 5 year old and just try them on a lot during sewing to make fit adjustments. These shorts will have in seam pockets and cargo pockets. I bought a gray flat sheet to make them. I recently discovered how great sheets are as fabric, but more on that in a minute.

I also made this week, a bib for my niece. I used scrap fabric, a piece of a space saver bag and shower curtain liner! The bib is wipe-able and so pink I could die! I love pink... sigh. So glad that I have my niece lil' boo, here so I can spoil her rotten with homemade pinkness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I whipped this up in 1 hour total.

So this morning before work I was working on another project, a wipe-able tablecloth for my huge table. I bought 2 flat twin sheets for $5 a piece. One was for the tablecloth and one for the boys shorts. My table is huge! It sits 8 and we have 10 people living in our humble home. Most people could do with one sheet for a table but I had to borrow some length from the boys gray sheet to make it long enough. This actually worked out well color wise because gray is one of the colors that I use in my kitchen. I will cover the whole thing with 2 pieced together clear PEVA shower curtain liners! This will make the tablecloth water resistant and stain resistant and cleanable. It will also protect my table from further damage from my wild children. I will upload pics when it is all done. It is super easy to do and in the end cost me about $10 total to make! I love being thrifty!

Monday, eh.

How was your weekend? Mine was semi relaxing. We did not go on any great adventures this weekend. I think we are all still worn out from last weeks trip to the mountains! I did make an adventurous trip to best buy to purchase a new laptop, YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I needed it for my day job. You see last week I was notified that I got choosen to participate in the training for a promotion! I would need a working computer to participate in the web portion however and my old laptop was not gonna cut it. I had had her since 2008 and she served me well but computers become outdated so quickly and simply can not keep up with all of the technology on the internet and what not. My husband was not at all too happy that we had to buy yet another computer. He thinks that it is a conspiracy from the computer companies. Like seriously, why can't they make a computer that will last you atleast 10 years? Maybe they do and it is just out of my price range.

In other news, I finished and documented a couple of my sewing projects. I finished my Burdastyle Alison bathing suit! I posted it to my studio on Burda which you can find here http://www.burdastyle.com/profiles/mamadiosa/my_studio. I got alot of comments on it whch I love sooo much. Everybody likes a little validation here and there. I make sure to thank each person who comments, cause I have manners like that-hehe! The pattern was free and you can find a link to it next to my creation. Maybe if I make it again I will do a tutorial. I also posted my new summer top, a shirred back bustier top that I used mcalls m6325 to make. I changed that pattern as well. I have a tendancy to adapt patterns to make them different than originally intended. Not because they aren't already fabulous, but because I have a certain vision and I can not compromise it. Anyways, I love the way the top came out. It is the perfect top for me. It has a retro flair with it's peplum and bustier style bodice. I plan on making like 5 more! I want one in black, leopard, and cherry print. Maybe polka dots and a pretty eylet fabric. I am eyeing a nice gingham, it's red with tiny red daisies. I also made my little Rocky's shorts. I am planning on buying some fabric and making my boys a few pairs each for the summer. Trust me, they need them. I will also make some house shorts for my hubby for fathers day. That is alot of sewing for someone with a hectic schedule! I am an optimist though, what can I say. So today is the beginning of the week, let's see how it goes.

First Friday

Avatar!

Tent.

So, I woke up to my toddler playing with the batteries that I had charging on the wall, I desperately need to get the play pen tent that I saw on walmarts website! I do feel like it is a little jail like, but hey, cribs have bars for a reason right? I then went down stairs and let the dogs out, only for them to yet again, rip up the fresh sod we laid down last week. to round out my fabulous friday morning, the puppy pooped ON the kids bed! Yay me! Just another relaxing friday morning before work! On the upside, they replayed the Avatar book one finale episode on nicktoons this morning. One of my favorite episodes! love me some Avatar! I did get some pattern drafting done. Making swim trunks for the boys, I got Rocky's cut out this morning. The fabric is beyond cute! It is the same one that I used to cover his car seat. I bought it at Hawthorne threads, love that site. I am lining it with t-shirt fabric, cut out from a 4x t-shirt bought from foot action. Can't wait to sew it up.