One flat sheet = one window dressing

Remember the John Deere bedding set we bought for my son? And remember that I said we don't use flat sheets on our beds? Well, I had two flat sheets with no usefulness to our family. So I decided to make curtains for my son's window.



Since my son has an entire town of Matchbox, Hot Wheels and Ertl vehicles that curtains dare not interfere with, I couldn't make them the standard length (to the baseboards). So I was able to do both panels and the valance with one flat sheet ... And it was easy!
If you can measure, iron and sew a straight line, you can do it, too. Please don't buy any "patterns" because all that's in the package is an instruction booklet with measurement guidelines. There are no patterns. You still have to do all the work. Let me help!
My son's window is a standard 36" wide. That makes it perfect to use the width of the sheet, so all I have to mess with is the rod pockets and hemming (except for one tiny detail on the panels - see below).
Unless your window is significantly larger than 40", or unless you want a very full curtain, a twin-size sheet should work fine as panels for your window. (If you want a valance, too, you might need another sheet since my panels were shorter than normal.) Otherwise, look into larger size sheets since the width is mostly what changes as you go up to a Full, Queen or King.
Before you start, you need to seam rip any stitching on the sheets where they have hemmed it.
The Valance
I wanted a valance with an 8-1/2" drop (strange measurement, I know, but I was trying to make one sheet last for the whole window).
To figure out how much length you need to cut, you take 1/2" for ironing under (so you don't see the cut edge and it doesn't unravel), 7" for the casing and 1" for the bottom hem.
8-1/2" (drop) + 1/2" + 7" + 1" = 17" cutting length
So I cut 17" off the length of the sheet.
Then I hemmed the bottom by ironing under 1/2", turning it under 1/2" again and sewing it.
Next, I ironed the top under 1/2", then another 3-1/2". I sewed the bottom of the casing as close as I could to the edge. Then I sewed 1" from the very top of the valance to make the header.
Voila! A valance in almost no time. That was easy, wasn't it?
The Panels
I sewed the panels in much the same way (using the remainder of the sheet's length) except I cut it down the middle lengthwise before doing anything else. This gave me two equal panels. Of course, I had to "hem" the cut edge, and I chose to do the minimum 1/4" hem (iron under 1/4", another 1/4" again, and sew).
The Tiebacks
I had the tiebacks from the previous curtains I had sewn for his room. They are simply ruffle trim from the yardage section of Wal-Mart. I think it was around $0.40 a yard, so it's hardly worth making your own unless you want it the exact same fabric as your curtains. I sewed the top down and made buttonholes in either end of each tieback. Easy!
And now I still have one flat sheet in case we ever move his bedroom and need to outfit another window.
Have you sewn your own curtains from sheets? Have you sewn anything else with sheets? (I've heard they're great for tablecloths!) If so, please post to your blog and leave a link here. I love to see what other people have done!

Baby hands and feet pictures

are some of my favorite, and they're not all that hard to do. Here, again, is my sister's last baby:

Don't you just love little baby fingers and toes? And isn't it so easy to forget how little they were?

That's one of the reasons I included the mother's hand in both pictures - to maintain proportions. Years from now, she can open her hand and remember just how tiny those little baby hands and feet were.

Want to try something similar? Great! Here are my tips:

• Use black as the background (see previous tips).
• Have the parent hold the baby's hand(s) or feet to maintain proportions.
• Drape a black cloth around baby's and parent's arm(s) or legs just a few inches from the hand(s) or feet. This draws the attention completely to your focal point.
• Zoom in!
• Try the Soft Focus feature in Picasa. I recommend adjusting the Soft Focus from the preset mode - often it blurs too much of the photo.

Have you tried it? I'd love to see what you come up with!

Why I know this John Deere bed set was for us ...

Take a look at the picture of my son's new bedding. It came in the mail today, and I can't tell you how blessed I was when I opened the package to discover two shams, two pillowcases and two flat sheets, in addition to the fitted sheet and comforter.

You see, I was under the impression that I was only getting enough for one bed set. All this lacked to make two complete sheet sets was a fitted sheet for the top bunk. And, thanks to a friend, I already had a perfectly-matched green checked fitted sheet.

As a general rule, we don't use flat sheets in our house because they're such a pain to keep tucked. So we have those two John Deere print flat sheets that I'm thinking about making into priscilla curtains for the window. (Just add a casing and hem a little ... nothing that couldn't easily be undone if the need arose.)

Once the quilt is done, it will go on the bottom bunk and this comforter will go on the top.

Now we are doubly convinced that this set was for us! Isn't God good?

Book Spotlight: Simply Fun for Families

I've been reading Dave Ramsey and Debi Pearl this week, but I'm sure no one needs another rave review about The Total Money Makeover (which I do highly recommend), and I'm not ready to review Created to Be His Help Meet just yet. So I decided to pull a favorite book from my bookshelf to share today.

It's Simply Fun for Families by Gwen Ellis. I got my copy at Ollie's for $3.99 and it was worth every penny! (You can get it quite inexpensively at Half or Amazon, too!)

Fun family idea books abound, but this one is a keeper! My favorite features of this book include:

• how to find time for family fun (tips in every chapter)
• how to find money for family fun (tips in every chapter)
• how to compile a file of personalized family fun activities
• a whole chapter on family fun ideas from your own home
• fun ideas for every holiday, both major and minor (organized by month)
• an excellent chapter on the family vacation
• an entire chapter devoted to camping (Now, if I could just convince my husband!)
• an appendix of 50 ideas for free family fun

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars - it's that good!

A John Deere quilt for my little guy

This is the craft-related project I'm working on this week. My 4-year-old is madly in love with all things John Deere. For Christmas we got him a John Deere clock, calendar and an 11x14" collage of pictures I had taken of the local farmer's wife (with their John Deere tractor) in our backyard. We're decorating his bedroom!


Sometime last summer, I had the opportunity to purchase this John Deere fabric for 50% off when a local Wal-Mart got rid of their fabric section. So I got all I needed and pieced the quilt. It didn't take as long as I expected, even if it was my first quilt ... And I'm notorious for "losing steam" on big projects!

So I now have to quilt it. Of course, I go on quilting spurts - mostly when it's cold outside and I don't mind being smothered in all that quilt batting. But I only have two more rows to quilt and then it's ready to be bound, so I'm working hard to see how soon I can finish it. Of course, a lot of that depends on what kind of mood the kids are in each day, but today was a fairly good quilting day and I got a row almost completed.

Of course, we just ran across a complete John Deere bedding set on Craigslist (comforter, sheets, pillowcases) for $10!! Since my son has bunkbeds, we decided to get that set as well and put it on the top bunk. The really cool thing about this is that the backing fabric for the quilt is the same as the comforter fabric!

So what labors of love have you done for your kids that you thought you'd never attempt?

The portrait I'm proudest of to date ...

is this one of my sister and her very last newborn. I'm so glad she gave me permission to share this because I'd enlarge this one as big as I could - if I had a studio! It's part of a collage poster I designed for the baby's bedroom, though, so I'll have to content myself with that for now.

When my sister asked me to take birth announcement pictures, I jumped at the chance. I just love to photograph children, and I couldn't wait to try my hand at those endearing newborn shots. So I looked at a lot of infant photography to see what I wanted to try. This was, by far, the one shot I wanted to get. (Maybe next week I'll show you the hands and feet pictures that I love, too!)

This was taken in her sunroom with lots of natural light. The window was to my sister's left. I draped a matte black blanket over a chair, my sister wore a black turtleneck and we stripped the baby to just her diaper. Then my sister sat on the floor with her back to me, the baby over her shoulder. Then I asked her to give the baby a kiss, and I starting shooting pictures. I have about ten "dud" pictures of this pose, but that's how it is when you're dealing with little ones. The point is that I took enough pictures to get the picture.

So here are my tips for this picture:

• Try a neutral background with a matching neutral clothing color when you want to showcase a "feeling." Black is fabulous, but try white, too. It creates a totally different effect.
• Browse through other photographers' collections to find posing ideas you might not have thought of. It helps to look for the kind of photography you're going to do (babies vs. senior pictures).

The New Art of Baking Bread

Today I made our weekly supply of bread.

As always, it got me to thinking about my maternal grandmother. You see, I bake bread in one of the pans she used to bake bread in.

I don't have much in the way of family heirlooms, but I treasure this simple bread pan. I intend to pass it along to my little girl (my grandmother's namesake) when she grows up, even if it's no longer usable and can only be displayed.

So much has changed since my grandmother was baking her own bread over 60 years ago. I only have to bake four loaves to her 16+ loaves of bread each week (she had 16 children). She did it all by hand while I have the luxury of a bread machine to do the kneading.

Yet some things have stayed the same. Like me, she baked her own bread because it was the cost-effective thing to do. And like my children, her children enjoyed the sights and smells of the bread-making process. And I'm sure she did it, as I do, with all the love in her heart for her family.

My mother has often told me about watching her mother kneading bread dough. For each loaf she made, she would say it was one of the children. If that particular child had been difficult that day, she would knead it with extra vigor.

And of course there was the wonderful moment when the hot, fresh bread came out of the oven to be slathered with butter. And when it was cool enough, Grandma would cut it and spread it with peanut butter that would melt from the warmth of the bread.

Are you hungry yet?

I didn't get to post a recipe yesterday, so today I'll share the recipe I use for homemade bread. You can find it here.

I have slightly modified the recipe for our family. I reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup (as some of the commenters suggested) and I substitute one cup of finely-ground whole wheat flour for one of the six cups of all-purpose flour. As we get used to it, I hope to increase it to at least two cups (out of six) of whole wheat flour.

Also, as I mentioned, I do mine in the bread machine on the "Dough" setting. I just add the ingredients in the order recommended by my manufacturer and let it go. Once the "Dough" setting is done, I punch it down, put it into the greased bread pans and let it raise for about 30 minutes and continue with the recipe as usual.

I haven't yet eaten bread from the store that we prefer to this!