I hand-sewed these ties for Hayden and Jake. It is really really really hard to find ties for little boys in stores, so I made some from a pattern from the Purl Bee website. It is a really easy pattern.  No sewing machine involved either…just fabric and an iron.  The white shirts are from a thrift store…about $2 ea. We are going to a wedding in May and the bride’s colors are turquoise. It is also a beach wedding. I thought bright blue ties and bright green hawaiian shorts would be cute.  We tested/modeled the clothes in the backyard…only for a little while though so they didn’t get dirty.  Now we just need to get some haircuts before the wedding!

Happy Easter 2009!  We had a very nice Easter weekend this year which started off by receiving this lovely card below in the mail on Saturday morning from Laura…

Next on Saturday morning, Tim was playing golf, so I decided to load the boys in the car after they woke up and drive up to IKEA (we had mcdonalds in the car for breakfast…bad mom).  We LOVE IKEA!  I love the swedish modern design and Hayden loves to play in the play area with the swimming pool of balls.

Below are some pics of the IKEA adventure.  We played with toys, had swedish meatballs and macaroni & cheese for lunch, and got to sit on the Easter Bunny’s lap!!  We also got some free IKEA balloons and some face painting in.

On the way home, we stopped in Lockhart, TX (in between Austin and San Antonio) and purchased some retro 1950′s Burke/Tulip chairs that I saw advertised on Craigslist ($25!).  I was excited to find them.  It took us longer to get home than usual, because we took a wrong turn on I-10 and started going toward Houston!  It was still worth it though.  I am going to clean up/fix up the chairs (going to paint the orange chair white also) and make new cushions for them with Amy Butler fabric one of these days.

On Sunday morning we all woke up, discovered Easter baskets and had a little indoor easter egg hunt (since the grass outside was still wet from rain the night before).

Later that morning on Sunday we went to church with our friends Steve, Cheryl & their 2 kids and then went over to their house after church for a texas style brisket and corn-on-the-cob barbeque.  The boys had fun in the backyard doing more easter egg hunting.

My three favorite pics from the weekend:

I love fabric!…especially bright colors and retro looking mod prints (like Amy Butler).  My newest addition to my fabric stash are the 2 quilt fat quarters in the upper left-hand corner (found at walmart for under $2).    I’ve been spending a lot of time in my sewing room lately.  My wonderful husband was so generous to let me convert one whole room in the house into a sewing/yoga room.  I hardly ever do yoga in there (I have to have people around to work out; so I work out at the gym), but I do sew a good amount in there.  Lately I have been working on this pattern (little boy’s tie) from PurlBee for my 2 boys to wear at a beach wedding in May in Florida (which I get to photograph….I’m so excited!).  The bottom 2 pics are of my little devil just for fun…no I do not let him in the sewing room.