Christmas Day 1: the Beginning of Advent

Today marks the first day of Advent. The countdown to Christmas, the birth of our King, officially begins! This holiday season is my favorite, but it has nothing to do with receiving gifts, or the tree and decorations, or even the catchy songs and lovey dovey movies that started long before Thanksgiving had even arrived. No, it has to do with the people. Family--Friends--Acquaintances--Strangers. The holiday season brings out the cheeriness, the thankfulness, the love.

Of course, with the way we've commercialized Christmas, as well as all of the violence and hatred going on in our country and around the world, it can be hard at times to remember what Christmas was meant to be about. Christmas is a celebration of joy and love, of people and giving, of Jesus and God and the miracles of life.

So this Christmas season I'm gong to try my hardest to keep Christ and the joy and people front and center, and I challenge you to do the same. I thought maybe a good way to keep this focus was a daily reflection. And what better place to reflect than right here?

The best place to start, I suppose, would be the Bible and the original story of Christmas. Matthew and Luke both give an account of the story. This particular version comes from Luke 2:4-20. (The wording varies a little based on which Bible you use, but the following is from our family Bible.)

And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazereth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear. The angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."

When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had be told them about this child. All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them. 

 Jesus. Jesus is the "reason for the season" as people like to say. This sweet little baby, who would one day grow to be the man who gave his own life to save us from our sins.

When we celebrate a child's birthday we generally throw a party. We let them choose how we celebrate: a specially decorated cake, gifts they ask for, maybe a special activity like swimming or skating. Christmas celebrates Jesus's birth, so how would he want us to celebrate?

I think I'll leave this post here. A question for us all to ponder. A great question to consider as Advent begins and we move into the Christmas season. How would Jesus want us to celebrate?

Sew It Sunday: Belle Dress

This year for Lissy's first Halloween I decided that she was going to be Belle. This stemmed from a combination of my love of the movie Beauty & the Beast and a picture that I saw on Pinterest. For more pictures and a recap of Halloween you can see my post here.

My inspiration for making this dress was a little dress that we got for her right after she was born where the top of the dress was a little onsie that they had sewn a sack to the bottom of to make a little dress.




Supplies

Here are my supplies:0-3 month onsie-I got this on clearance at JCPenney & loved that it had the little ruffles at the top.
Yellow Satin-My mom got this for me with a coupon at JoAnn's. I didn't end up using anywhere near the whole yard, but I kind of played my measurements by ear so I couldn't tell you for sure how much I ended up using.
Flower & Headbands-The flower was on clearance for $.50 at WalMart. The headbands are the child's size from the craft sections at WalMart. I only ended up using one of the headbands. They came in a three pack and I included them both in the photo because my original plan was to use tulle (which I bought in two different tones of yellow/gold) to make a tutu to go over the dress. I ended up deciding that I liked the simpler look without it.



Pinned ruffles: top view

To cut my satin I tripled the width across my onsie at the point where I wanted it to sit. I ended up deciding to put it at about her belly button so that I had the option to put leggings under it if it was chilly. (It did end up being chilly, but we didn't end up going out, so we never had to use leggings.) By tripling the width I allowed for the skirt to fit all of the way around plus have some ruffle to it.

This was my practice pinning before I was actually ready to cut or sew. This was how I know that tripling would be enough. (Originally I was going to do four times the width but that was just too much ruffle.) You can see from the next picture (below) how exactly I folded it to get my ruffles. I tried to mock the soft ruffles of Belle's dress from the movie, which is why I folded it rather than gathering it.

In order to make sure that the skirt fit onto the onsie correctly I first sewed the edges of the satin together to make a tube. I then slid it over the onsie. To make this work I put the onsie right side out and the satin wrong side out. Then I slid the tube over the top of the onsie so that the snaps at the crotch were sewing. 

 

Before pinning the ruffles to the onsie I placed three other pins: one to hold the seam in the satin to the center of the onsie and one in each side seam of the onsie to make sure that I had the skirt centered around the onsie.

Once the ruffles were all pinned I sewed around the onsie using a 1/2" seam. I rolled the bottom hem and sewed that as well. And that was it! Easy peasy!!!

Pinning the sides and center

Pinned ruffles: end view



My beautiful princess in her dress!

The book pictures were inspired by some pictures I saw on Pinterest.



Happy sewing!!!

Halloween Recap 2014

I've finally made it back to the blog! I've had so many things I've wanted to blog about and projects I've wanted to share, but I have yet to make it back here to post any of them. We'll see if I can remedy that, but seriously, if you had this little one to snuggle, you'd have trouble getting anything else done too!

Our first official holiday has come and gone! We didn't get out to actually see anyone for Halloween, but I still couldn't pass up making sure she had an outfit and taking a few fun pictures!

Mommy's Beauty

Her dress was super easy to make! (Tutorial to follow shortly. I'll link it when I get it done.)

She kept lifting the rose up. We weren't sure if she was trying to smell it or eat it. Silly girl!

 

Happy Halloween!

I almost caught this smile!

I also couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a few pictures of her in my first Halloween costume. This little ghost outfit was made by my mom back in 1990!

She likes to chew...on her hand...on her clothes...on my clothes...whatever she can get a hold of!

 

 My happy baby telling her stories!

Back to work! I should probably get some laundry done before naptime is over!