A Tale of Three Cousins {Sewing Project #2}

{Please indulge me for a moment before I get to the shark.}

I have this really awesome cousin, Melissa.  To be fair, I have many awesome cousins, but this post is about Melissa in particular.

This is us many many years ago.  And while we both look a little different, I can still rock a monochromatic red outfit complete with heart sweater and yarn headband (Seriously! Who dressed me?!?!?) and Melissa still regularly snuggles with a giant yellow cat.  Ha!

In all seriousness, I've always wanted to be one of those people who is super close friends with their cousins, but for various reasons, mainly the fact that we lived pretty far from all of our cousins growing up, I never was.  But it was about this time last year that Melissa and I, who both live in the same city, but oddly never hung out, became friends on Facebook.  And over the course of the last year, Melissa and I have gone from strangers to cousins to friends.  (If you listen really closely, you can hear Melissa gagging a little as she reads this, and sniffling because my sappiness is making her teary eyed too.)

Melissa is all sorts of awesome, she pretty much taught herself how to sew, she can do martial arts, she is a great mom, and she has a super successful etsy store.  But I am probably most in awe of her talent as an artist.  Check out this repaint of a Monster High Doll that she did!

She is also the talent behind my new blog logo, one of my favorite birthday gifts this year!

Perhaps one of the funniest things about our friendship, is one of the reasons it really began . . . Quinn and Quinn (aka the second set of cousins in the tale of three cousins).

Yup, that's right.  We gave our babies the same name.  I remember when her Quinn was born and his new name went up on Facebook.  I yelled multiple expletives, as I had been planning on naming the little lady growing in me Quinn for some time at that point.  I remember talking to one of my friends who said, "Do you and your cousin ever even hang out?  Who cares if you use the same name?"  "Good point," I foolishly thought.  Little did I know how super cool Melissa was and that we'd start hanging out regularly.  (For those of you gasping out in bloggerland, I did clear with Melissa before I stole her name.  She was cool with it, because she's cool like that.)

Oh well.  I kind of love that our Quinns have the same name.  It's cute.  Not to mention how awesome it is now when they are crawling around and we say Quinn to one of them and they both spin around.

Melissa has been my mentor in me learning how to sew.  In fact, she got me my sewing machine.  And she answers all my annoying newbie questions.  I was so grateful to her that I decided to sew something up for her Quinn.  Which brings us to the final set of cousins.  Shark and Bird.

Remember the bird tag buddy that I made for Quinn?  This is Bird's long lost cousin, Shark.  Shark is better in oh so many ways.  For one, he crinkles.

He has detached fins that also crinkle!

He also has googley eyes.  Googley eyes make everything cooler.

I'm not at all too humble to say that I am getting better at sewing, which also makes Shark far superior to Bird.  (Poor Bird.)

Shark's one major flaw is his snaggle tooth (okay, so my measuring skills leave something to be desired . . . ), but I choose to see snaggle tooth as endearing.

Thank you Melissa for all your awesomeness!  But particularly with your patience in me learning to sew.