Sewing, sewing and more sewing

Sewing, we've had a love hate relationship. Like most things in life, you will be successful if you have the right tools. Over the last 10 years I have slowly accumulated the proper tools one by one, each time improving my abilities. This week I finally purchased a cutting mat and rotary cutter which is rocking my sewing world.

We also just significantly downsized our dining room table. My beautiful, gigantic farmhouse table was just too damned big for the new house. It took me a few months of bumping around it with my growing belly to admit the obvious, it just wasn't working. I thought the arrival of our new, tiny table would signal a death blow to my sewing. No longer would I be able to stretch everything out and have a gigantic cutting surface. To my delight it was exactly the opposite. Working on a few projects with the new set up everything seemed to 'click'.  All the tools I needed were lined up within reach and the project just flowed.

I set to work sewing a dress for Cora. Here is the pattern which inspired me with its overall cuteness.

And here is the finished product. I am so proud of this sweet little getup, mostly because it is the first fully functioning article of clothing I have ever created. I mastered button holes people! There are of course a few rookie errors in the dress but I don't care, I just love watching Cora in it and am hoping to make many more.

This is Cora's awesome play kitchen which I discovered awhile ago on this inspiring Missoula mama's blog and coveted it for almost a year. Now that we have it I am so happy, it's the perfect size and Cora adores it. The first thing she did upon discovering it was shove her baby doll in the microwave. I take that as a sign of approval. Scott and I both agreed to buy the red kitchen since it is the same color as the quirky kitchen in our old apartment, the kitchen I was standing in when my water broke with Cora. Not only was this a gift to Cora but a sweet sentimental reminder to us of where we have been and where we are going.

Here is our dining room/the lovely paired down sewing center with new, smaller table and open cabinets waiting to be installed along the wall. If you squint you can see my beloved vintage sewing machine I bought in Montana, I wrote about it here. The table cloth is actually 1.5 yards of oilcloth from the fabric store and thrown down without any additional trimming. Super fantastic score.

Along with the clothing sewing projects I stumbled upon this sweet little fabric at the store. These are reproductions of 1930's fabric dolls. I bought Cora a sewn and completed one off of Etsy for Christmas and she sleeps with it and uses it as her favorite night time teething toy. Now we will complete her collection. I can't wait to see these gals lined up on Cora's new bed.

Lately Cora is becoming more and more enamored with books. She will sit for 10-30 minutes at a time looking through her books until she finds one that she wants me to read and then she will bring it over to me and sit in my lap while we explore the book. We just bought her a big girl bed and a few times a day she lays on it while thumbing through her books. I am so happy to know there is another book lover in the house, I foresee many afternoons spent in used book stores.