casserole blog

It's official

2009-06-01T20:26:00.006-05:00

I had a sneaking feeling when I started washing out my baggies. But I pushed it back, reasoning that I was only washing the gallon-sized ziploc baggies.

Later when I was cleaning out my fridge, I found myself looking at the tail end of some salsa I made and thinking, "Hmm... Half a cup of salsa. That might be just exactly what I'm wanting for a snack one day." And then, as if on autopilot, I pour the salsa out of the larger container and into a smaller one. But I didn't break out a grease pen and label the contents, so really I wasn't being over the top.

And then tonight. I was going to refashion two old tees into one cool new tee, but I miscut and I was faced with two large rectangles of knit fabric that needed to go into the trash can. Except instead of throwing them away, I start cutting them into 7" squares. I stacked two squares and serged the edges together to make a dishrag. I got 5 double-layered dishrags from the old tee.

As I was admiring my thriftiness, I realized that there was no more fighting it. It's official. I have become my grandmother.

Over the years we've made fun of my grandmother for all of the above acts of thriftiness, so I have to laugh at myself when I find myself repeating them. I suppose it's in the blood, the need to stretch the usefulness of all that you have at your disposal - whether it's a wad of food or a bit of fabric. She raised two babies during WWII rationing, and did so for several years in a house with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. This woman knows about thriftiness, about repurposing, and making do. So while I laugh at myself for washing out baggies and hoarding little morsels of food, I also find a certain bit of pride in seeing my grandmother's traits in me.

I need to find me a denim jacket

2009-05-28T08:39:00.003-05:00

...so I can make a jacket like THIS one at HodgePodge Farm.

Seriously. I NEED that jacket.

Toodles,

Yellow halter dress from hell

2009-05-22T16:00:00.004-05:00

So Liv loved the dress-shirt-turned-kid's-dress I made her. So much so that she asked me to make another one. I had another shirt that I snagged at the same time I got the shirt for the first dress. I was all ready to repeat the process when she said that she wanted it to be a sundress for summer.

I was all planning on just making a simple elastic band across the top with thinnish straps over the shoulders when I saw the pieces left over from the first dress. (I'm not the best at cleaning up after my sewing self.) In particular, what I saw was the collar I had cut off.

At first I thought the collar would be really cool placed across the top of the elastic band, like a wide shirt collar across the dress. Then I realized that the points of the collar are shaped for the collar to be in a circle around your neck, and that when you straightened out the collar the points overlapped. No good.

But then... but then... inspiration. What if the collar wrapped around the neck? What if the collar was the strap of a halter dress? Yes, yes!

And with that, I began the project I now know as "The Yellow Halter Dress From Hell". Without any instructions or any templates or any patterns to work from, there was a lot of ripping and resewing, re-ripping and re-resewing. But in the end, I came up with a dress that I really, really love. Even better, Olivia loves it too.

The fit of the top is a bit off in these pictures. I realized the day after I took these photos that the reason it seemed too bunchy at the top was that the collar was too long. I had already taken one bite out of the back when I made the dress, but I went back and took out another tuck. Now the fit is perfect! (But the dress is dirty so I'm not retaking the photo...)

Here is a close-up of the front. The tab in the front is actually a bit of one of the cuffs. The collar is stitched down on one side, and buttoned down on the other. To put on or take off the dress, you just unbutton the one side. The buttonhole is actually the original buttonhole on the front of the collar. The bow is just something I made with a bit of the extra fabric from the sleeve. It snaps on and off (snap is hidding by the cuff-tab) so it doesn't end up in a wad after being laundered.

Toodles,

More of what I've been sewing

2009-05-11T11:54:00.004-05:00

Here's another peek at what I've been sewing lately. This dress was made from a man's dress shirt. Isn't that just the cleverest thing? I can't take credit for the idea - I used this tutorial from MADE.
Liv loves it so much - she wants me to make a yellow one next, except she wants it to be a sundress. I've got some ideas knocking around in the skull, but haven't had a chance to actually try them out yet.

Oh, and gotta share a few pics from the Mom's Day celebration at Liv's school on Friday.

First some pics from the little music program. Nothing says childhood like songs with accompanying hand motions!

And then Liv presenting her Mom's Day gift to me.

And the two of us on the playground.

Altogether a very sweet day at Liv's school.

Some of what I've been sewing: baby dress & matching shoes

2009-05-06T08:25:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Tony's cousin & his wife welcomed their first child into the world. A red-headed girl named Avery. I wanted to make something special for this little bitty girl, so I grabbed up some fat quarters with soft colors, ultra feminine prints. I ended up with a handful of prints from Anna Griffin's Fiona line. (The exception is the celery and white polka-dot. I have no idea who made that print, but it coordinates so perfectly.)

For the dress, I used this tutorial from Made By Petchy, but followed RedInstead's tutorial for the neckline so that the ties would come up from the armhole rather than across the top. (This makes a safer neckline for a little baby, as it does not involve a drawstring casing around the baby's neck.)

I also made a pair of shoes to match using a free pattern from New Conceptions Sewing Patterns.

Here they are from the front. I pieced the front of the dress because I didn't have enough of one type of fabric (fat quarters, remember) to make the whole dress. Then, because of a piecing foobar, I ended up having to recut the back. Except I didn't have a big enough piece of fabric to match the front, so I ended up raiding my stash for another print. Here's the back:

And a close-up of the little shoes cause they're just gosh-darn-it-cute.

Toodles,

What to do on a rainy day...

2009-05-02T14:22:00.002-05:00

Make a clubhouse.

No, make that a movie theater.

And invite all your Webkinz to watch a movie with you.

Toodles,

My poor, sad, neglected blog

2009-04-22T22:06:00.003-05:00

I haven't posted anything here in several weeks. I'm a bad blogger. Bad, bad, blogger. Not that there hasn't been anything going on worth blogging about.

There was the trip to visit my SIL in Wisconsin, a few sewing projects, the madness of prepping food for Codie's wedding, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... But in the business of actually doing all these things, I didn't have the focus to actually WRITE about all these things.

I've got a couple of cool projects up my sleeve, which I'll be posting in the next few days. Okay, next few weeks is probably more realistic, given that now we're entering into the last few weeks of the semester.

Toodles,

I think I created a monster...

2009-03-26T21:40:00.004-05:00

...though I don't think I mind in the least.

Tony just walked in the room from tucking Miss Liv into bed, and reported that she had tried to curl up under her dolly quilt. And then he says, "I think I may have started something I shouldn't have... but I asked her if she liked that quilt so much, did she think maybe she needed to make a girl-sized quilt with mommy. And she said yes."

I'm not sure what makes me happier. That my girl wants to make take on a girl-sized quilt, or that my dear husband is so supportive.

Life is good,

Buttercup, buttercup

2009-03-19T10:42:00.004-05:00

Wye is a small town about 30 minutes outside of Little Rock. In Wye, there's a small Methodist Church that plants a hillside with daffodil bulbs. Every spring the entire hillside turns yellow with buttercups and they host their annual Wye Mountain daffodil festival. It's kind of a local tradition for parents to take their kids to the festival and to snap some pretty spring phtos.

Yesterday evening we did just that with Liv. Tony had to work late so Denise went with me. The drive was beautiful, leaving the city behind and winding deeper into the hills. The weather was perfect - 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We got there just before sunset.

Happy Spring!!

Tutorial: Shamrock pins for St. Pattie's Day

2009-03-15T17:11:00.015-05:00

Liv and I made these fun shamrock pins other day in honor of St. Patties day. It's really a simple idea, and it can be adapted for just about any holiday. They look like they've been coated with UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) but really it's just a thick spray glaze.

What you need:

--chipboard (I pulled a cream puff box out of the recycling bin. Yummm....)

--newspaper scraps

--die cut machine that can cut chipboard. I used a Sizzix with a retired shamrock die. Really, I don't suppose you *need* a die cut machine, but it does make it super easy to cut shapes from chipboard.

--Decoupage medium. (I used Aleene's, but that's just because my Mod Podge wasn't handy at the moment.)

--acrylic craft paint

--Deco Art Triple Thick Brilliant Gloss Spray (I love this stuff!!!!)

--pin backs

--strong adhesive for gluing pin backs. I used E6000

So here's how you do it:

1. Cut the newspaper into thin strips. You don't need very many, just enough to cover the piece of chipboard.

2. Coat the chipboard with the decoupage medium and lay the strips down, covering with a second coat.

3. After you've covered the whole piece of chipboard with newspaper, paint the newspaper with a thin coat of acrylic craft paint. I used several different colors of green and mixed them together here and there. You should be able to see the newsprint faintly through the paint.

4. Wait for the paint to dry. This could take a while so go do something fun while it's drying.

4. Now here's the fun part. Use your die-cutter to cut out a bunch of shamrocks from the painted chipboard. Then, spray the shapes with the Triple Thick glaze. You'll end up with some very shiny shamrock shapes.

5. Now, just glue a pin back on to the back of each shape.

Voila! Shiny pretty shamrock pins.

Tuesday night is dinner party night

2009-03-11T13:43:00.003-05:00

We have a new and old tradition in our family - Tuesday night dinners. When I was a kid, Tuesday night was one of my dad's visitation nights. He'd take my sister and I out to dinner while my mother was at night school. We continued our dinners long after my mother got her degree, but finally as my sister and I became adults it was harder and harder to keep it up.

Fast forward 15 years. My father was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He'd most likely been experiencing symptoms for years, but we just chalked it up to his natural ditziness or his habit for smoking something he probably ought not. We realized that we didn't have that many years of good times together, so we restarted our Tuesday night tradition. With the addition of my sister's husband, my husband, my husband, and my daughter, it wasn't financially feasible for us all to go out to eat. So the Tuesday night dinner party was born.

Last night my stepmother was out of town and my sister and her husband had to work, so it was just my father and my immediate family. We hosted at our house. Lemme tell you how my last night went:

With my stepmother out of town, it was iffy whether he would remember our dinner or not. So I waited until early afternoon to even invite him, and then 10 minutes before he needed to be here I called to remind him. If he had remembered to come, he would have already left. Naturally, he forgot. I told him to come on over, that dinner would be just coming out of the oven. Now, it should take no more than 20 minutes for him to get to my house, so I was a little concerned when 40 minutes later he still wasn't here. He probably just took time to get dressed before he left, I think. So I call his house and get no answer. Good, he's left.

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law calls me to get the update on my grandmother. I hadn't told you that part yet. It was about midafternoon when I got a call from my mother saying that my grandmother had fallen outside her house, and that she'd been laying on the ground calling for help for 30 minutes before a neighbor saw her. (No broken bones, by the way. We think she'll be okay.) So, all the while I'm trying to get dinner together and trying to order things so that my father will remember to show up, I'm playing phone call clearinghouse receiving updates from my mother at the emergency room and then passing that information on to all interested parties.

So I'm on the phone with my mother-in-law giving her the update on my grandmother while Tony is shuffling around all the food in the kitchen either finishing up the cooking or trying to keep it warm. And that's when my dad calls. "Hi hon," he says, "It looks like I've gotten myself lost."

So I quickly end my conversation with MIL and proceed to find out how far off track my father is and give him real-time directions all the way to my house. AAAAAAAHHHH!!!! It was at that point that my brain started to explode.

Anyway, the dinner worked out really nice. My father was on good behavior, we think because it was such a small group. Sometimes at our "dinner parties" he can be overly self-centered or thinks it's fun to get my daughter all riled up. The previous week he had said something very hurtful to me, and then had no memory of having said it. I was a bit nervous about this week, but we ended up having a lovely time together as a family.

After dinner, I went over to my grandmother's house and sat with her while my mother ran a few errrands in order to get settled in to stay with her for a few days.

So that was my Tuesday night dinner party night - stressful, but filled with feelings of kinship and the interdependence that is part and parcel with such closeknit groups.

Toodles,

Remember the doll quilt?

2009-03-08T22:11:00.004-05:00

We finished it last week.

I'm so proud of my little girl. Not only was she integral in the design process, but she stitched every single seam of this quilt. I'm afraid at times I was a little bit of the quarter-inch-seam-Nazi but by the end of the quilt she really got the hang of how to feed the fabric through in order to maintain the straight seam allowance.

We pieced it together in rows, then attached row to row to make the rectangle. Her eyes lit up when she saw the pattern taking shape, and she let out a little gasp. "Oh!" When the top was finished, I sandwiched it and pin basted it for her, then let her do the quilting. I used a edge-stitch foot to help her keep the stitching as much in the ditch as possible. She did surprisingly well.

As a reward for finishing her quilt, Denise and I took her to our local quilt shop to show off her creations. The ladies oohed and ahhhed and gave her a round of applause, and generally made her feel like a rock star. And then we bought her more fabric for her stash. She's got good taste, I think.

Toodles,

Dude... These are our curtains

2009-03-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

This was Thursday's Daily Swatch over at True Up. AND it's the fabric in our living room curtains. How seriously cool is that?!?!

Toodles,

Yeahhh, I'm still here

2009-03-06T20:04:00.003-06:00

Remember how I said I had a busy, busy week? I guess I actually had a busy, busy week followed by a lazy, lazy 2 weeks, and then another busy, busy week.

I don't know why it is, but once a week had passed without posting to the blog, it got harder and harder to write this entry. I think I thought that with that much time away, I had better write something significant - either to justify my silence or perhaps penance for my silence.

So tonight I'm just writing the "get the feet wet again" blog post. I won't bother you with the details of my absence, but I'm back from blogging vacay. Liv finished her dolly quilt (even did the quilting herself) and I'm finishing up a cool mini-art quilt. Will post pictures tomorrow. Or Sunday.

Still here,

Busy, busy week

2009-02-16T11:31:00.002-06:00

Okay, so I kinda dropped off the face of the planet for a week. We hosted a baby shower at my house yesterday and the preparations took over my life. It was all kind of craftiness getting ready for it, but I'm ashamed to say that I got so busy that I didn't get any pictures of the final result! (I'm hoping Denise or Scarlett got one???)

I'll post later with more details. Right now I'm kind of braindead with the post crafting/party letdown.

Oh, and guess what came in the mail Saturday??? The Orange Dreamsicle print from Marisa!!! It's going to hang over my computer desk. Off to the frame store to find something that will do this justice....

Toodles,

I totally jinxed myself...

2009-02-09T16:55:00.002-06:00

...when I said I thought we could have Liv's dolly quilt made by the weekend. Just 4 hours later, Liv comes down with a stomach bug.

That'll teach me.

It was only a 24-hour bug, but it kinda interrupted the crafting mojo. Gotta make a bunch of stuff for a baby shower this weekend, then we'll get back on track.

Dolly quilt sneak peek

2009-02-05T09:58:00.005-06:00

We're making progress on our dolly quilt. It's actually going together much faster than I had expected. Yesterday while Little Bit was as school, I cut all the pieces for her to sew. I had thought we'd spend days sewing little pieces of fabric together, but now I'm thinking that we can get the whole thing knocked out by this weekend.

We started with Liv's birdie fabric that her Aunt Scarlett had given her. I think she went for that one because she had the most of it, and she didn't want to actually run out of any of her precious fabric. I added some "dogs" from my own stash to get our palette:

Based on Liv's design changes, I came up with the basic pattern. Each square represents 1 inch.

AND just so I won't be called a tease again (punkinhead), here's a sneak peek of the progress so far.

No, the corners don't match, but keep in mind that it was sewn by a 5-year-old. Her seams were actually pretty straight. I hovered a bit, I'm ashamed to admit. Every time it looked like she was getting off of the 1/4-inch mark, I'd tell her to stop and we'd straighten it up. By the end, she was starting to get the hang of it.

We're gonna sew some more today. Hopefully I'll have a finished top to show you tomorrow.

Toodles,

Gonna make a dolly quilt

2009-02-03T11:00:00.004-06:00

I saw this post on Sew, Mama, Sew! about a doll quilt sew-along and immediately wanted to make one, too. So I showed the post to Liv and explained what a sew-along was and she asked me, wide-eyed, "Can we make one, too?" Oh girl, I love how you take the bait!

Of course, I follow it up with the fact that she'd have to use fabric from her own stash to make the quilt. "Or, we could make it with part my fabric and part your fabric" she countered. My little hoarder.

I found some old dogs in the stash bin (that's what we call the ugly fabrics - dogs) that matched one of her fabric pieces. I laid them out for her and she immediately starts showing me with her hands where we need to cut the pieces to alter the pattern from straight square blocks to squares and rectangles. I love the way her brain works!

Today, I wash the fabrics and then we'll cut them into rectangles and squares. I think this is gonna be fun.

Toodles,

This might actually get me to buy brand name butter....

2009-02-02T12:55:00.002-06:00

...at least one time, just to see if this really works.

http://averagejanecrafter.blogspot.com/2009/02/and-you-thought-butter-was-all-innocent.html

Toodles,

Orange Dreamsicle print

2009-01-26T14:06:00.003-06:00

OMG, check out ElegantBloggery's Orange Dreamscicle Cupcake print!

And get this - it's coming to yours truly! YESSSSSSSSS!!!! A while back she hosted a contest to come up with a flavor for a new cupcake print, and if there's one thing I know, it's sweets. I suggested an Orange Dreamsicle cupcake, and that was the one she chose. I am so flippin' excited!! I can't wait to hang my new art print above my desk. It'll be like guilt-free, calorie-free indulgence all day long.

If you want one of Marisa's prints for your own self, check out her Etsy shop. Her prints are lovely!

Big home dec project revealed, part II

2009-01-21T08:53:00.003-06:00

This is where we left off in the previous post - everything loaded up into my van. We arrived in Fort Smith around noon and immediately began the process of unloaded all of this. Keep in mind that the "crew" is just me and Denise. And both of us are weaklings with bad backs.

Lucky for us, my kind, sweet hubby nailed together a makeshift dolly. Just 4 2x4s nailed together with casters on the bottom. but it did make the process of moving much easier. That, coupled with the fact that Scarlett's apartments were originally designed as a retirement community, which means that all apartments are wheelchair (and furniture dolly) accessible.

After much pushing and pulling and grunting and panting, we got everything inside. With the exception of the big pink metal desk, we were able to manage it all just the two of us. (Luckily with the big desk, a strapping young 20-something showed up at the apartment house catty-corner at exactly the right time. Little meek Anne had to get big and bold and knock on a complete stranger's door, but he helped us.)

Four hours later, the apartment looked like this:

The couch, coffee table, and chair function as a sitting area because all the fabric is now on shelves and all the paperwork is now in a file box.

The black card table is replaced with the pink metal desk. We used this as Liv's changing table when she was a baby, hence the pink color. The bottom drawer was big enough to hold Scarlett's DVD collection, which freed shelves up on the entertainment center for books and pretties. (Also made the entertainment center feel far less cluttered.)

And do you see that turqouise bucket on the bottom shelf in the picture above? That's one of the half-bushel baskets spray-painted a pale turqouise and lined with white broadcloth. We ended up with 5 half-bushel sized baskets, and 3 bushel sized baskets. All were spraypainted. I fell head-over-heels-giddy in love with the trigger attachment for spray paint cans. It's SOOO much easier to pull the trigger than to push down on that tiny little button on top of the can.

Here's the sewing nook:

The sewing machine sits on the table donated by my sister. How perfect is that table?!? The blue shelving to the left are the old metal shelves from my basement - with a fresh coat of spraypaint of course. Bushel baskets sit on the blue shelves.

On the back wall of the sewing nook is another new set of shelves. They hold bins of fabric, and the top is exactly the right height for a tabletop ironing board. She'll still need to pull out the large ironing board when pressing large fabric cuts, but for pressing seams open on small quilt blocks this is just the right size.

By the way, check out her design wall above the ironing board. It was already there before the re-do, but I wanted to call attention to her quilt in progress.

Finally, just to the right of the sewing nook is the cutting table. Now that this table is devoted solely to cutting, she's got full use of the cutting mat. Two bushel baskets sit underneath to catch the scraps. (Later, we ended up transferring her entire collection of fabric scraps into those bins.) I had wanted to make a piece of artwork to hang over the table, but I didn't have time.

So there you have it - the surprise apartment makeover. If you add up every bit of money spent on spray paint, shelves, fabric, organizers, table top ironing boards - the total adds up to LESS THAN $75.

Toodles,

My big home dec project revealed

2009-01-19T21:17:00.005-06:00

So I'm back from my weekend in Fort Smith, and now I get to tell you all about the home dec project I've been working so hard on. I was busting to write about it last week, but I couldn't talk about the project until after the trip to Fort Smith. Why is that, you say?

Why, it's because the home dec project took place in Fort Smith.

Here's the quick and dirty backstory: My dear friend Scarlett's had a lot -LOT- going on in the last few months. There have been a string of medical crises in her family. Though these crises were not with her own personal health, it was the health of loved ones. The frequent drives to and from Little Rock (2 1/2 hours from Ft. Smith) took both time and energy, which she gave freely and with love. However, it was also taking a toll on her apartment. Her living room/dining room functions as a living room/home office/sewing studio but she didn't have the right kind of furniture or organizing systems to make this work efficiently. So stuff ended up piled here and there, which was made even more overwhelming by her travel fatigue. The addition of a few pieces of functional furniture (desk, shelving, etc.) would fix this, but the travel and health crises made purchases like that impossible for the near future.

So it was in this context that about a month ago this idea flashed through my head to do a surprise apartment re-do and create a functional living space for her. Given my own financial constraints, this had to be a super-dooper-budget project. As in, what could Anne do with $75??

Enter my angels. The first angel is Denise, who eagerly signed on to help with this project. She was my co-conspirator, contributing energy, inspiration, and $$ for some of the materials. Another angel is my sister, who helped me locate an inexpensive bookshelf for Scarlett's fabric. She also generously donated a sewing table to the cause. Another angel is my friend Jennifer, who upon hearing of the suprise apartment makeover, wanted a piece of the action and donated hanging file folders. There were also two Freecycle angels: one who donated bushel baskets, and another who donated plastic organizing bins for the drawers.

I just realized I've typed a jillion words and still haven't shown any pics. I suppose that's a bit mean of me, but I wanted to give some context before the big reveal.

Now, for the before shots. They're a bit blurry due to some difficulty with the camera.

The computer lives on a card table, which doesn't give any space to store papers, pens, files, etc.

There's no place to store fabric in here, so it ends up in piles here and there.

You can't see it very well in this picture, but the sewing center is just a small dining table. There isn't room on the tabletop for both the cutting mat and the sewing machine, so the sewing machine ends up sitting on top of the cutting mat - which makes for a smaller cutting area. What you also can't see is that just to the right of the couch is an ironing board. When Scarlett is working on a quilt, she has to walk across the room to iron out each set of seams.

During the weeks that we planned this secret project, we collected up a number of furniture and organizational pieces:

1 - Old metal desk that had actually been Liv's changing table when she was a baby. The person we bought it from then told us that it was from the 1930s and came from the old nursing school here in town.

2 - Small set of wooden shelves, about 36" wide and 30" tall. Perfect height for a small table-top ironing board.

3 - Small set of metal shelves, discovered in the dark recesses of our basement. They were rusty and nasty, but a good cleaning and a coat of turquoise Rustoleam had them looking like they came from The Container Store.

4 - Wooden sewing table, courtesy of my sister. Very stury - a very nice piece of furniture.

5 - Set of bushel baskets from Freecycle. They had glued ribbon around the outside of them and used them for storage in their daughter's playroom. We took the ribbon off, spray painted them in fun colors, and made cloth liners. Denise was a genius figuring out how to make the liners with as little fuss as possible. We ended up with 5 half-bushel sized baskets, and 3 full-bushel sized baskets.

6 - Set of small plastic organizing bins for drawers, also courtesy of Freecycle. We ended up with probably 10 that were 4x6 inches, and 3 that were 6 x 9 inches. She also ended up throwing in some cutlery organizers that were perfect for organizing pens and pencils and such.
7 - Hanging file boxes scavenged from around the house and outfitted with the hanging files donated by my friend Jennifer.

That's a lot of stuff!!! To get it all to Fort Smith, we had to take out both back seats in my van:

I'll post tomorrow to show what it looked like when we got done.

Craftily yours,

Teaser

2009-01-14T13:58:00.002-06:00

Just had to post to let you know I'm working on a home dec project. It's top secret - I don't want anyone to know exactly what I'm doing until I post the finished product. I'll give you a clue though - it involves digging around in my basement, some generous freecyclers, a bit of sewing, and a large amount of spray paint.

Curious?? I can tell you no more until it's complete, which will have to wait until after my trip to Fort Smith this weekend.

Laughing maniacly,

Aprons and antennae and stars

2009-01-07T08:11:00.009-06:00

I think I'm in denial right now. I've finally gotten some free time after all of the end of semester-Christmas-pillow madness and I'm being rather selfish with it. I haven't blogged. I haven't commented on blogs. I haven't even thanked all my friends/relatives for the Christmas presents I've received. I'm just being bad, enjoying all of the fun of being a true stay-at-home mom, rather than a stay-at-home mom with a part-time job. Of course, that all ends next week with the beginning of the new semester, but I've still got a few days to pretend I have no responsibilities outside of my four walls.

But even though I've been hiding out from the outside world, we've stayed pretty busy at our house. Liv's been practicing sewing on my big sewing machine and amassing her own fabric stash. She's also developing the fabric hoarding tendencies, as evidenced by her inability to cut into her charm squares in order to make a dolly quilt. She actually hid them from me rather than having to use any of them in a project. "But they're so pretty," she said, "and if I use them up then I won't have them any more."

Luckily, her Aunt Scarlett gave her a yard cut of a piece of fabric this weekend, which allowed her to use some of it and hoard the rest. So yesterday we completed her first real sewing project - a very simple half-apron.

And of course after we made the apron we had to make cookies. Too bad I got sidetracked and put in only half of the flour. Cookies didn't exactly turn out that good.

After the apron sewing project, she decided to create he own Word Girl costume. Word Girl wears a space helmet; Liv used a bicycle helmet. Word Girl has a star on her shirt; Olivia had me cut out a star which she colored red and taped on to her own shirt. "There are 5 points and I have 2 pieces [of tape] already, so that means I need 3 more." Then she made the antenna and taped it to the top of the helmet.

Here she is doing her Word-Girl-in-flight pose.

I know it looks... ummm... phallic? Even more reason to take tons of pictures. This is SO blackmail for her teenage years.

Later, Liv figured out that she could pull up the webpage with a picture of Word Girl and check to be sure she had everything just right. Turns out Word Girl doesn't have an antenna at all; that's some guy named Huggy Face??? So the big penis came off of the helmet and got taped to the top of a stuffed kitty that she was pretending whas this Huggy Face character. So now we have a black & white stuffed kitty with a penis on his head sitting in our living room.

Yeah, we're classy like that.

The science of cleaning up

2008-12-31T11:32:00.007-06:00

So this morning I was moving a little slow so I parked the little one in front of the TV while I had my coffee. I know, bad mom. Whatever. We keep the TV on PBS at least.

Anyway, after watching an episode of Sid the Science Kid, she gets up and goes to the computer and pulls up the website for the show. After clicking around a little she comes to me, bright-eyed with ideas. Seems she wants to make a chart. A chart of what, I ask. Of food, she says. In my big toy kitchen.

Whoa... Mama wakes up and has to do some quick thinking. Her room is a total pigsty, as is the den, and the last thing I want to have happen is her getting out more piles of small objects.

The wheels start turning... Hey, I say, I've got an idea for a chart. "How about we make a chart of all the stuff on the floor in here." Her eyes light up. I go in for the kill. "We'll make a mark for each thing we put away, and when we're done we'll know which kinds of toys were most on the floor."

She took the bait.

And so she drew out this chart. I wrote in most of the labels, but she did write in the words "cat" (for all her stuffed kitties) and "science".

Based on our chart, it seems that there was more dress-up left out on our den floor than anything. Art stuff comes in second, and science pulls third place.

If you've got little ones around the house, or not, check out the science songs over at Sid the Science Kid. (Sorry I can't provide links to the individual songs. Their website is set up with a scrolly navigation thing that makes it where I can't.) They're kicky, fun little ditties. Be sure to check out the ones about:

Charts. This was the inspiration for today's cleaning activity. "I'll be checkin' out charts, cause charts rule. A chart is a handy-dandy scientific tool. It gives you information you can see with your eyes. Charts help you vis-yooo-ah-liiiize... You get the picture, so do I."

Decomposing. "De-caaaay.... De-caaaay.... Nature happens that way. De-caaaaay.... De-caaaay..... While you were dozin' they were decomposin'"

Estimation. Sounds like a tween angst song of sorts, but it's actually about estimating. "Cause that's my.... best... guess.... Guess I mean more.... or... less..."

Gawd, I love PBS Kids.org.

Toodles,