Weekend

this weekend we were busy little bees around this house.

i spent my time doing more ornaments and plushies which will soon be in the two peas in a space pod Etsy shop!

woot woot!

if you've been wanting a certain themed ornament or plushie for a long time but just haven't been able to find the right one you should email me and i'll make it for you! 

we're mostly beyond nerdy at the moment. 

here's a sneak peek!

coming soon are ninja turtles, dr. who, mario, more star wars (of course), calvin and hobbes, yo gabba gabba, dinosaurs and more!

if you can ignore the fact that i'm dressed up in the best early christmas present ever ever ever, A PENGUIN ONESIE, then you can see the little ornaments all hanging on the tree including angry birds ornaments!

honestly, the best part of my weekend was getting that onesie!

thank you Amy and Chase!!

i am now the proud owner of 3 onesies but this one is by far the best!

i will be sleeping in style all winter long!

Matt was busy this weekend too being the best hubsy ever and fixing up my blog!

 did you notice my blog got a makeover??

i love it!

a thousand thank yous to Matt! you're the best!

birthday pillows

lately we have been celebrating birthdays like crazy!

every weekend for the past couple months we've had a party to attend. it's insane!

i just wanted to show off the gifts i made for my niece and nephew.

Carissa turned 5 and is loving Hello Kitty right now so her gift was a Hello Kitty pillow.

and McKay turned 9 and is super into Captain America so here's his pillow.

both of them were a big hit!

Carissa told me she slept with her pillow and McKay was such a sweetheart and thanked me a million times for his.

i seriously have the cutest nieces and nephews ever!

and just for your viewing pleasure, Matt and i being nerdy.

Matt is 27

Matt's birthday yesterday went a little different than planned.

we both had taken the day off so we could do fun birthday things together but then Matt said he was going to have to spend a couple hours at work in the morning.

then it became a couple hours in the morning plus lunch.

then a couple hours in the morning plus lunch plus an hour or two after lunch.

and finally he ended up coming home only an hour earlier than he would have normally come home on any other day.

so basically i took Matt's birthday off to watch a lot of Bones and make this guy.

isn't he a cute little Boba Fett?

can i call Boba Fett cute?

he probably wouldn't like that.

and at least Matt and i had a good birthday breakfast and dinner together.

he requested chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and my hubsy gets what he wants on his bday!

and he had to open his presents before he left for work.

(ignore the Christmas wrapping paper. it's the only wrapping paper we had in the house. ha!)

first he got Avatar.

he has asked for this movie for the longest time and i kept putting it off because he didn't just want the movie, he wanted the 3 disc extended blu-ray collector's edition.

he said he had absolutely no idea he was going to get that which made me so happy because i love to surprise him!

the next present wasn't really a surprise because he asked for it a couple months ago but it's way cooler than Avatar.

he asked for this print from Jame Hance's website.

how freaking incredible is that??

i love it more than words can say!

it'll make an excellent addition to our soon-to-be frame wall.

then for dinner we went to Chili's because it's a Matt and Nikki favorite.

(chips and salsa mmmmmm!)

and came home to watch Avatar because Matt just couldn't wait.

dork.

his birthday cake was the best part of the night in my opinion.

or actually i should say red velvet whoopie pies in a cake pan were the best part of the evening.

i couldn't eat them but they looked so cute and yummy!

and of course the Darth Vader candle is just perfect!

this boy loooooves red velvet!

so even though the day didn't go as planned we celebrated the crap out of breakfast and dinner!

happy 27th birthday Matt!

i wuv you!

Happy Birthday To Me

geez this year is going by fast!

last thing i knew it was Christmas time and now all of a sudden it's June and i'm turning the big 2-3.

we were lucky enough to be able to take off a couple days from work so we could spend some time together.

i love taking little mini vacations when you're too poor to take real ones!

so this morning i woke up and found that Matt had already snuck out of bed.

i walked out of our bedroom and found a note on the floor saying "stay in bed" but since i'm not very good at following directions i asked Matt if i could come downstairs and he gave in.

i walked down to find blueberry pancakes being made (mmmm blueberry pancakessssss) and presents waiting for me on the table!

Matt is the best gift giver ever.

he absolutely cannot give anybody a normal gift, it has to be a joke or have hidden meaning or something behind it.

he did make one exception this time and got me 127 Hours because i told him to.

no secret meaning but he knows how much i heart this movie so it didn't need it.

everyone knows how crazy i am about ocean stuff including sharks right?

i mean, if my shark week party doesn't tell you how obsessed i am i don't know what will.

oh wait, yes i do, the new socks Matt got me will definitely tell you how obsessed i am!

that's right! this year for shark week i will now have a shark week shirt, shark jammie pants and shark-eating-my-legs socks!

if there was a contest for best dressed shark week fan, i would TOTALLY win!

i can't even begin to tell you how much i wish it wasn't 5,000 degrees outside so i could be wearing these constantly!

Matt also got me an aquarium book with a note inside telling me to flip to a certain page.

on that page was the picture of the tiny little sharks we wanted to get for our aquarium and a note saying that he was finally going to set up our aquarium today so we could get them!

and the best part is, he stuck to his word!

i sat down to relax and watch James Franco cut his arm off and Matt took everything we got when we bought the aquarium on Craigslist and figured out how everything worked and cleaned it and put it together and got it running!

and it looks glorious!

i know you can't tell from the pictures because they were taken with my phone but the tank looks amazing even without sharks swimming in it!

i can't wait to get plants and our fishies and spend my time watching them swim around!

Matt also took me to a couple thrift stores,to Hobby Lobby and out to lunch.

i think he was getting frustrated with me because he said i got to choose everything we did today but i'm too dang low maintenance to think of anything better than thrift stores and Hobby Lobby.

we'll see if he can do any better in a week on his birthday.

oh and my parents stopped by and gave me this bad boy!

i've had my eye on this Scentsy forever so when my parents asked what i wanted for my bday i immediately told them about it.

and it looks even better in person and makes my house smell like summer time thanks to the bricks they gave me with it!

i'm such a spoiled and lucky girl!

hopefully this year will be full of great things for me.

my main goals for year 23 are...

1) get started on school again and find out what i have left to do to transfer, how to transfer, where to transfer, when to transfer, etc.

2) get healthy. go to the doctor or try new supplements or whatever i have to do to fix me so i can be healthy and happy instead of feeling sick and icky all the time.

that's it.

i don't want to plan too many goals and let myself down so i've decided those are my two and i'm sticking to them and if i accomplish them by this time next year i'll be a very happy Nikki!

dragons and unicorns

last week i worked my little bum off to make cute gifts for the kids in our sunbeam class because all of their birthdays were last week.

since the beginning of the year these kids have talked a lot about dragons and unicorns.

for every question it seems like the little boy will answer dragons and the twin girlies will answer unicorns.

what's your favorite animal?

what do you want to draw?

what kind of pet do you wish you had?

what kind of animals were put on earth?

what do you want to make with your playdough?

what animal do you want to pretend to be?

the answer is always the same: dragons and unicorns.

i thought i'd use that for their gifts since it's obviously very important to them.

i used this donkey tutorial as a starting point when i made the unicorns and then adjusted things from there.

aside from that tutorial being a little frustrating and confusing i think it got me on the right track to making these cute unicorns.

i didn't put the ears on my unicorns and obviously added the horn but everything else is basically from the donkey tutorial.

the eyes, the mane and the tail were the parts i had the most trouble with.

i'm not very experienced when it comes to working with embroidery floss.

we gave the girls their presents during church since they were the only kids we had in class that day and i was so happy because they LOVED the unicorns!

they got them out and immediately started running around the room making them eat things and run on the chairs and make funny noises.

it was so cute!

the dragon themed gift i went with was the dragon slippers i learned to make a few months ago.

when i made them before i modified them to be dino slippers though.

remember?

but this time i did full on dragon slippers.

we had traced the kids' feet a couple weeks before as part of our lesson so i kept the little boy's tracing and used it when i made the slippers for him.

i'm so tricky!

we took his present to his house and i think it's safe to say he liked them because he put them on almost immediately after opening them.

i made them a little big, like the tutorial suggests, so he can keep wearing them for a while.

we recently found out he's moving away to a place that stays cold longer than one month out of the year so hopefully those little dragons will keep his feet warm.

we're really gonna miss that little guy.

and now after all the sewing and present making i'm in the crafting mood.

what should i make next?

Matt's favorite bday present

everyone knows that Matt is a star wars neeeeeerd, right?

well he's been asking me to make him a star wars stuffed animal for a long time and then he got the idea that i should make him a bantha stuffed animal.

what's a bantha?

this is a bantha...

some type of mammoth looking freak animal that little men in cloaks ride around on and shoot people.

he got the idea when he saw this picture...

and i actually thought the little stuffed animal looked much cuter than the real thing so i gave in and said i would make it for him.

he knows i can't resist a cute stuffed animal.

so i started studying this cute little guy and Matt actually found the website that goes with it.

the website was good for pictures and to start me out but it had one major flaw, it didn't say anything about what size to cut your fabric out to make each little piece!

that caused me to do a lot of trial and error.

anyway here's what i ended up doing...

first i went out and bought some tan fuzzy fabric, white fuzzy fabric and brownish colored fur fabric.

then i bought some new fabric because Matt didn't like the first ones i picked out.

i always try to get my fabric in the remnants bins and i was so lucky to find just what Matt wanted at Joann!

then i had to figure out how big to make this guy.

Matt said he wanted him to be BIG so i decided he should be about a foot long.

i made a cardboard cutout to measure all the body pieces out of the tan fabric so they would be just slightly bigger than 6in x 12in so after they were sewed together they would be perfect.

after cutting all four pieces i had to sew them together.

after sewing all the sides together i had to cut out the two end pieces.

i didn't make a cardboard piece to measure these i just made them a little larger than 6in x 6in and then sewed one end on by hand.

then came time to put some fluffy stuff inside to make him nice and cuddly!

and i sewed the other square piece on the end to finish off his body.

then i had to make his short chubby legs.

those were about 6in x 4in of the same tan fabric and i sewed them into cylinders.

then i measured 8 circles with a diameter of 2 1/4 in. to be on both sides of each leg and sewed one end on each of them, stuffed them but before i put the other circles on i had to make sure they were sturdy enough to support the big bantha body i made.

they were!

i decided before i sewed his legs to his body i better make his horns so it's not so hard to handle him.

the horns were 2 pieces of fuzzy white fabric that measured 6in x 4in.

i sewed the two long sides together and then stuffed them with fluffy and put some wire inside so i'd be able to shape them the way i wanted and then i sewed up the bottom part.

then it came to sew it to his head.

i just put the horns on the very front corners of his head and did some fancy hand sewing work to keep them there.

after his horns were done i went back to sewing his legs on.

this took FOR-E-VER!

first i had to make sure i put them in the right spot and then i had to do some funky stitching to sew the cylinders onto the flat belly.

i guess it was worth it because he stands like a champ but i really need to think of an easier way next time.

after what seemed like hours of putting his legs on i realized he was almost done!

only eyes, mouth and fur to go!

i got two black buttons and sewed them on so he could see.

then i measured piece after piece after piece of fabric to try to find the perfect size mouth and finally settled on 4in x 3 1/2 in.

it sounds big but you need to fold the two long edges in so they meet in the middle and then fold the fabric hotdog style and sew it together and then hand sew it on his face.

i know it sound confusing but that's what i decided was the best course of action when it came to his mouth.

that way you can open his mouth a little bit and pretend he's eating that mean old tusken raider that's always sitting on his back making that annoying sound.

now all i had to do was the fur!

it was a very messy part of the project because fur fabric always sheds.

i hand stitched all around his body so the hair would hang all the way down by his feet.

then i cut a piece to fit across his forehead like little bangs.

then came his goatee and after 5 straight nights of slaving over my sewing machine, getting blisters on my fingers and having crazy headaches from getting frustrated...he was FINISHED!!

Matt was a little excited.

okay he was psyched out of his mind!!

and then he decided that his new bantha friend will live here...

where everybody can see him!

it was a lot of work to make Makachu, that's what Matt named him, but i'm so glad i did.

i can't wait for my next sewing project now.

i'm quite the seamstress ya know.