Birthday gifts

Hello everyone.  Its been a busy couple of weeks doing a little of this and a little of that.  Holidays spent with family and time spent with my own little family.  And well not much time for creating :(  O well.  As much as I enjoy sewing I enjoy my family so much more. 

Anyways the latest project was a birthday gift for my daughter who is turning 3 on wednesday!  I can't believe it.  I'm going to have to post some birth pics wednesday.  For some people pictures like that don't mean much.  But that was a defining moment in my life.  The moment when EVERYTHING changed.  lol.  And I mean everything.  Ok ok I've gotten off subject.  Maybe I will allow myself to gush and perhaps even tell the birth story another day. 

Back to the birthday present.  You will have to ignore a few things:
 
1. Maggie picked the princess fabric and the polka dots and I was left trying to figure out how to pull it together.  Honestly that didn't work out too well.  I don't think my 3 yr old will care that it clashes though.

2. It is already dirty.  I don't have a seperate room or even a seperate area to sew.  Soooo my projects don't really have a safe place and so it has been played with when mommy wasn't paying attention.  Spackle on the ribbon(story for another day) and a mistery blue stain on the princess fabric.

3.Well you will have to forgive a lot of other little things.  My first of things is often pretty bad but then the second and third time are usually pretty great.  So I am very glad that I have a great family that loves me and my projects as flawed as they often are.

This is the open view with nothing in it :)  See the strange and out of place pale pink with brown dots.  O well.

And here it is with the paper pad in it.  The left side has a flat pocket that I will use for stickers and stuff like that.   The right side is another pocket that I will use for crayons or pens or those plastic scissors with no metal blade(you would be suprised what they will cut when you put a determined 2 yr old behind them) and maybe a glue stick if I know I will be able to watch her VERY CLOSELY.

And this is the outside once it is folded up.  I've left the ribbon really long because I can't decide how short I want it.  lol.  Silly right?  Also in retrospect I have no idea what made me decide to put that particular word on the outside.  hmm.  I mean I guess I do really want her to enjoy this but why didn't I put her name on it or something.  Well she can't read yet and she probably won't even ask me what it says. 

So now Maggie will have a place to keep some paper and crayons and stickers when we go bye byes.  :)  Hopefully it will be as usefull as I think it should be...

And here is my almost 3 yr old looking like a moody teenager.  Why am I posting this picture?  Well I just couldn't help myself. :)  I have many others that I want to post but I'll save them for another day.