Valentines and Burp Cloths

The girls decided to make Valentines for their cousins, Grandmas and Grandpas, and a few of their friends. These are just a few examples of the ones that they made. I think they ended up making about 20. They turned out really cute! I, of course, cut out the hearts and shapes, and the girls glued them to the papers. They also had a few stickers. One of Claire's valentines ended up having about 15 stickers on it. Anyway, it was a lot of fun!

Here is Claire with a few of her valentines:

Here is Meredith with a couple of her valentines:
(note the summer attire and "dancing shoes")

Now...on to the infamous burp cloths...
I started setting up the sewing machine on Friday night while Josh was installing the new water heater in our current house (it is in our contract with the new buyers). He didn't need my help, so I thought I would tackle the burp cloths. Thankfully, I had the sewing manual in front of me because I know I wouldn't have succeeded with out it. (I barely succeeded with it!) Anyway, so I threaded my bobbin, threaded the upper spool of thread through the sewing machine and the needle, and figured out how to get the lower thread to come up through the sewing machine in the right place. Doing well so far. Now comes the hard part...the actual sewing.

I get my first burp cloth up on the sewing machine, press my foot on the pedal, and begin to sew....or not. All of a sudden, there was a ton of string under my burp cloth, no string in any of the holes being made by my needle, and the string was broken. Hmmmmmm....something must be wrong. I looked through the manual again to make sure I did things right. The exact same thing happened again...and again....and again....and again. At this point, I was getting a tad bit frustrated! If I was a girl who used profanity, I would have used a few choice words! I seriously could not figure out what I was doing wrong.

So, I decided to start over....something must not be set up correctly. I rethreaded the top spool of thread. While I was doing that, I decided that might have solved the problem. I thought I may have missed one of the loops earlier. I began sewing again....yeah! SUCCESS AT LAST! I was actually sewing this time (professionals would probably disagree), but I was at least doing what I set out to do! Josh calls out from the other room, "Is that domestication I hear?" And it was. And here is a photo of my 4 finished products:

Ahhh yes....sweet victory over the sewing machine. I'm inspired to tackle more projects in the future!