upcycling daddy's old jeans

My boyfriend quite frequently needs new jeans because he totally wears his jeans out. I always find it a shame to throw out these jeans because other than some holes here and there, the fabric is fine. I decided to see what I'd be able to make from one of his old pair of jeans.

Turns out, I can totally make a pair of skinny jeans for my 2,5 years old, and then I'm still left with enough fabric to make a dress for my 1 year old. Yay! Ofcourse they won't be there tiny selves forever so in the future I'll be able to get less from one pair, but so far, I'm quite pleased! No wasting of perfectly fine fabric, and, as a bonus, nice jeans for my girls ;)



Eventually I lef out the application, I'm still undecided as to whether or not I should add grey fabric on the bottom as well...




Men... I should really work on my photography skills... Lost my cardreader so most pictures are taken by phone... sorry ;)

Recykleren // Upcycling

Aaah yes... a few months ago I was planning on taking part in the upcycling project by Oon and others. I loved the idea and I certainly worked on it. But it turned out I was so crazy busy that it wasn't doable for me to really follow the project.

However I did upcycle some things, some are transformed into new items, some have been changed but remain basically the same. I hope to finish all the projects that I had in mind. Should be doable, so as long as I don't set myself a timelimit. ;)

This is what I started out with:


A pile of fabrics and stuff. Most of them were handed down but were not to our taste or they had minor things like tiny holes in them. I decided to use them for this project.

First of, the shoes. The print wasn't entirely my taste. So I grab some nail-polish remover and it came right off!

Before



After





After, I washed the inside fabric. The girl is thrilled with her pink shoes, I'm happy to have another pair of croc-ish shoes that are easy to clean when playing outside. No good shoes wasted because of a print! Yay!

Then there was a pair of long pants that was also not to my taste (I'm sorry, I'm very specific with what I like...)
I decided to turn these into board-shorts, giving them a biais and shortening them. They are now very cool for summer, I can see my girl wearing them when's she's tan and with a white t-shirt or whatever above. Surf-chique!


This is what I started out with...


And this is how it turned out. I'm quite pleased with the result and how the biais works nicely to establish that surfy look.





More coming up soon!

Japanese shirt

I love those Japanese pattern books. I got one as a present for Christmas in 2010, and finally, last month I found the courage to make a shirt from it ;) It was fine for me to work with but hey, I studied Chinese, though Japanese and Chinese are hugely different, It makes all the difference in the world if you can make up the characters for back/front left/right up/down etcetera. This made it easier for me to work with these patterns.

I really like the simplicity of those clothes in the books, though I often find that there cut is quite "Asian" or "Japanese". With that I mean, wide, or square, or however you want to describe it. Some of you will probably know what I mean.

Anyways, for Christmas I also received some fabric, buttons and ribbons so I decided to use them for this project. The colour of the fabric is not something I'd have picked myself, but it looks fine on my 2-years-old.




Initially I wanted to make the shirt using Elephant-buttons, since the eldest adores elephants.


But along the way I decided that these buttons look a lot better with the flowery ribbon. These are buttons that come of from a pair of H&M pants. My friend bought a pair of pants for her son and replaced the girly buttons, she handed them to me. Yay!


I decided to sew in a small ribbon in the neckline, I think it gives it a more polished look.


ofcourse it needed a robot... everyting needs a robot <3




tadaam... I'm not quite the neat seemstress that I'd like to be, but I'm learning ;) (neither am I a great photographer or good with photography software... should train myself in that a little more.)


And here you can probably see best what I mean with the square boxy look. Though the girl loves it and didn't want to take it off.

Home improvement -- part two

A while ago (a long while :') ) I've blogged about home improvement and how I wanted to change some things in my house. Ideally I would like 2 huge pretty bookcases, but hey, since they don't come for free, I've tried to move furniture around to create more space in our living room.

Before our table was in our living room, we've now moved it to the kitchen, the good thing is, not only do the girls have a play corner now, I also have a desk! Yay! No more putting away my sewing machine every time, no more sitting on the coach studying. I love it! The new lay-out feels better, though it needs tweaking and it needs some more posters or something on the wall.

Don't mind the Christmas-tree in these pictures, the pictures were taken last month, our tree is long gone by now ;)







As you can see our living room is not that big, but it's comfortable and homey and I like the beams. It has a nice feel to it.

Another birthday

Oh my... less then two weeks left before my baby is turning one. One! a whole year has passed but it seems to have been only a few months or so. Time flies.

She will be handing these out to her "friends" at our babysitter, I'm not in a mood for making these myself at the moment (need to have a major operation, my head is exploding with stuff to think about...), look at how cute they are!



in there tummies they hold a small box of m&m like candies. For my hyper-allergic one year old there will be a small box of strawberry pieces (Hema <3 )
Along with it some stickers and play-books for some good fun. I hope they'll enjoy.

I'll be celebrating my own birthday as well in 10 days, I'm hoping my boyfriend will get me something from this website PSikhouvanje (meaning: PS: I love you), look at what a great things they sell! <3











and sooo much more that makes me want to spend every dime I have haha. As you can see I'm a real sucker for stationary and paperworks. I just love how having a cute notepad to write down your scribbles can make you smile.

Food Waste Friday...

Okay, so I opened my fridge this morning, in order to see what I wasted this week, to discover a disgusting smell... alright... It's definately not going to be nothing that needs to be thrown out.

Turns out I totally wasted these things that once were fine, but due to my lack of knowing what's in my fridge, they've gone bad.

* a small piece of smoked chicken (could've been perfect in a salad or on a sandwich or something, why why? )
* a chicken breast. Again, why... why?? Would've been perfectly okay to use in quick a Thai-style curry, could've served 2 + 2 children...
* 3 small leeks.

So, I've wasted a lot. ARGH!
Where's the learning curve? I'm picking it up again, since we are quite tight on a budget, these things shouldn't be happening, why do they still happen? I guess I should plan my grocery-shopping a little more. Thoroughly think about what needs to be bought and what are luxuries that aren't necessary.

Well... New week, new chances, this week I'll also try to not spend as much as I did last week on grocery shopping (and nothing on take-away for that matter. Sigh.)

Midwifery training.

I took some tests today, and all went well, very well actually. So I'm quite happy with that. This trimester we've been studying everything around birth, going into labour, catching a baby, doing a neonatal research and everything. Extremely interessting, very cool to see the stuff you learn in school during your training period in a midwifery-practice.

As I'm updating this concept-message, my results came back. I'm doing really good so far, so yay me!

Anyways, wanted to show you some pictures to give you a feel of what we're doing in training here in the Netherlands.






This one makes me laugh :)


studying anatomy


This is what I'd bring with me if I'm called for labour. An obstetrics set, an oxygen set, and of course my visits bag.



A sneak-peek of the contents of both the oxygen set and obstetrics set.

Midwifery is a 4 year training program (in my case) at Rotterdam University. In those 4 years you'll be spending a great deal of time in different local midwifery practices to become experienced and to train on the job.
In order to graduate, you must've caught at least 60 babies (meaning you guided them out of the birth canal), you must've performed at least 300 follow-up appointments and a whole range of different things like examining the neonate and actively take part in a breech birth. Quite thorough!

Doll's bed and Girl's rooms

So I've been up to loads of things in the meantime, first off, our beloved Dolls have a bed to sleep in! Yay dolls! <3

I made it from an Ikea nightstand; Just drew a nice shape on one side and decided on how high it should be on the other side, then used my electric saw to cut and there you have it...



very little effort, very nice look. I'm still undecided on whether or not I should give it a colour or a stain, but I quite like the wood-look as it is also.

I made a matras to go on top of it so baby could sleep nicely. Next on the to-do list is to make some proper bedding. Preferably in the same style as my girl's bedsheets.



Talking about bedsheets... don't you just love how bedding can make all the difference in the world to a room? It can brighten up a room, or make it more romantic and girly, just by changing the style of the sheets. I love it!
I made my girl these sheets, they were made from an old double sized undersheet from our bed. Used thoroughly (and washed properly ofcourse), but the usage makes the sheets really really soft and comfy.
The fabric used comes from http://www.vanmarieke.nl and was a gift by my boyfriend. I finished it by using pink fabric on the sides to give it a little bit extra.



Fabric detail:



And on her bed. It looks so cute and it's her favourite :D which makes me smile ofcourse everytime she asks for it.


I've been searching for a certain 'style' in both my babygirls' rooms and at the moment, I'm quite happy with the results. Let me show you their rooms!











That's my big girl's room. The flowers by her bedhead are now in blue and pink, she also has a cute nightlamp since last week. I'm happy with her room, it feels cosy.

I'll show you my other's girls room what it was like when it was a nursery, but it has changed already haha so I'll snap some new pictures soon!





















I don't think I'll ever get tired of decorating <3