Settling In

What an insane weekend! Portland is lovely so far. Ask me again in February though.

Our apartment is cute and in a neat part of town called South Waterfront. There are a bunch of shops and restaurants on street level. There's also a nice park with a splash pad. We've been going out for dinner almost every night. My favorite so far was a Vietnamese place called Bambuza. Liam got a kick out of me feeding him with chop sticks. 

We wasted no time finding the Portland Temple our first day here. They have tours of the grounds during the summers so we're planning to go on Sunday for a proper exploration and photos instead of just a drive by.

Our realtor drove us around the areas in which we think we want to buy a home. The kids have spent a lot of time in the car lately. They are great most of the time, especially when sleeping!

I'll have a 6 month update on Rosie as soon as I upload the pictures from my camera. I'm also doing a real house hunting trip tomorrow morning. Wish me luck! 

Crib Skirt

This week I finally got around to sewing the skirt for Liam's crib. I'm not a great seamstress, but this project was fairly simple and straight forward.

1. Wash and dry fabric. Iron out the wrinkles. I bought some really cute Amy Butler fabric for the panels that show and some plain, cream colored cotton for the panel that goes under the mattress. Washing and drying will shrink the fabric so that you finished product will fit no matter how many times you have to wash it in the future.

2. Measure your crib for the dimensions of the skirt. The crib that I have is a little oddly shaped. The slat in the front is a few inches higher than the slats on the sides. I didn't bother to add a panel to the back of the crib.

3. Cut fabric. Make sure that you leave room for the seam. Being a sewing newbie, I left 1/2 on each side to give myself plenty of room.

4. Hem edges. The sides and bottom of the patterned fabric and the back of the plain fabric need hems since they do not attach to other pieces. I measured 1/2 inch and pinned the hem down. Then I ironed the hem to make sewing it down easier. Then I sewed it.

5. Attach panels. I pinned the fabrics together with the "right" sides facing each other and the "wrong" side of the patterned fabric up. I used a pen to mark 1/2 inch intervals along the edges. Using a fabric with a small pattern made it easy to keep the seem straight and even.

Finished! That was easy, right? The only difficulty is finding the time with a baby around. I wish I would have had the crib set up before he was born so I could make the skirt then. Oh well.