If you do nothing else in the next week...

...you MUST go see Hubble 3D. Trust me.


photo by NASA, retrieved from popsci.com

It was probably the most amazing film I've ever seen, and I'm not even a space geek. I don't know how to describe the impact that this movie had on me. It was only a 45-minute film, but I left the theater feeling like I had been part of something historical, like I'd been out there in space with the astronauts on their spacewalk. It was so.... real.

If, at like our theater, the movie only plays during the day, check your kid out of school for "an appointment" so you can take them to see it. They'll think you're super cool for letting them watch a movie instead of sit in class, and it will be far more educational than anything they'd do in the classroom.

Do it.

Toodles,

Layered hoodie for Liv and a dress for her doll

The first few weeks of school are always my most productive. I have the house to myself during the day, and my own responsibilities as an instructor (online course) are fairly light. Once the semester gets further underway, I have to spend more time actually working. But for now, I get to play.

This weekend I made a hoodie for Liv.

It's from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love. It takes a lot to get me to purchase a sewing book, but the photos in this book had me weak in the knees. And the patterns in the book are super versatile. The t-shirt pattern includes several sleeve options, two bodice options, and two optional hoods. You can mix and match to get the style you want.

I chose a long-sleeve with a gathered cap layer on top, along with a rounded hood. The knit for the body of the shirt came from a man's polo shirt. The flowered knit on the sleeve is yardage from the fabric store.

While the styles in the book are cute cute cute, it turns out that the pattern sizing for the hoodie was too broad through the shoulders and too big through the sleevecaps. I spent yesterday morning recutting and refitting the sleeves and I think we've got something that will work.

I'm super excited about this hoodie pattern now.

Here's a full-on view so you can see the way it's all put together.

And Liv wasn't the only one who got some new clothes.

So did Dolly Rachel. Check out her new dress!

Toodles,

Make last minute wrapping cute with scrapbook paper

Yesterday was my mother's birthday. Even though we had planned in advance for a little birthday cookie/coffee time, it totally slipped my mind until that morning that I hadn't addressed the issue of a birthday present.

And of course, when you run around town all morning looking for a last-minute birthday present that doesn't suck, then you're also left with last-minute birthday present wrapping. Keep in mind that my sister always has the most beautifully packaged presents for people, usually wrapped in vintage wrapping paper and embellished with cute-as-a-button vintage tags or ribbons.

So how to make my last-minute gift and my last-minute wrapping not look like the pitiful stepchild?

Easy! Just bust out the scrapbook paper scraps, your Sharpie, and your gluestick. Oh, and a pair of scissors, too.

Instead of seeing the present as a 3D object, look at it as a blank canvas.

Draw and cut out a fun kitty cat. And maybe a thought bubble. And a cupcake, of course. It IS a birthday after all.

Don't worry if you "can't draw". I "can't draw" either. But somehow "can't draw"-ing always looks cute when done in a Sharpie on patterned paper.

Glue your picture down, and add some happy words. Voila!

Liv was so excited when I showed her how I had wrapped her present for her Nan. On the way to Nan's house, she asked me, "Mom.... Will Nan be careful when she unwraps the present?"

Toodles,

Donut hole drama

photo from Orange County Register

Yesterday we had little girl drama at church, and it was all over donut holes. I'll spare you the details, but sufffice it to say that there were tears and two little girls who left church early very very sad. Okay, that's a little bit too vague. I'll give a little detail. We grabbed the last donut holes out of the foyer before the service started, but there was some misunderstanding about sharing and one girl ended up having gotten more donut holes than the other. And since we had grabbed the last ones, there was no running back and grabbing a few extra to even things up.

My attempts to help Liv help the other little girl feel better only resulted in Liv feeling worse. I suggested that she give the little girl on the Silly Bandz on her wrist, or perhaps her treat from Children's Time. I didn't realize that Liv already felt rotten about unintentionally making the other little girl sad, so she took my suggestions as me giving her a punishment. So then she was reduced to tears, and then we have to make our own exit.

Eventually we talked it all through. In the hallway, in the bathroom, and in the car. What I realized through the whole discussion is that my little girl is me made over. I've always known that she is intense and has sensitive emotions, but I didn't realize until then exactly how much. Just like me, she's quick to feel guilt and to feel it strongly. She felt so bad about the donut incident that her stomach was tied up in knots. And because she already blamed herself, my attempts at helping her achieve a happy ending were turned inside out and back on herself as even more blame. My poor girl!

The happy side of this whole thing going down is that I now know better how to handle my daughter's feelings and protect her gentle spirit from her own inward-facing assaults. Of course, the guilt-ridden side of me is thinking back to every time in her 6 years that I've lost my temper, or sighed audibly at the thought of getting up "one more time" to help her with something, or any other time I may have inadvertantly hurt her feelings. Like mother, like daughter, right??

Oh, and the donut drama? It ended up with a trip to the bakery and two sugar-iced flower cookies, and the girls sharing them over a little kid-sized table in the playroom. And an impromptu playdate with baby dolls and girl time.

Happy children. Healed feelings. Sugar rushes all around.

All is good.


Toodles,

Summer vacation is over!

So I had a bit of an unintended summer vacation from the blog. WHY WHY WHY did I think that my life would be simpler with little girl home from school? Ah well, we had a great time this summer, me and my girl... But she's back at school and I'm getting back to my routine and that includes no longer neglecting the casserole blog.

Toodles,

Fabric storage inspiration? Not quite.

I spent all day waiting for fabric storage inspiration to hit, all the while sorting and folding and stacking. I knew I had a lot of fabric, but I was still surprised to see how much was there. The pile of wool garments ready for felting was the largest, thanks to my mother cleaning out all of her business clothes when she retired this year.

In the end, fabric storage inspiration didn't exactly hit me in the face like I was hoping. Instead, it kind of tapped gently and gingerly on my shoulder saying in a timid little voice, "Ummm... I think maybe if you put these pieces in a box together, ummm... it might be a little bit better than it was. That is, if it's not too much trouble for you, cause, umm.... I might be wrong about this."

So rather than a photo of some eye candy stack of fabric all neatly folded and organized, I'll give you a quick description. Same fabrics, but sorted and in stacked plastic tubs rather than spilled out all over the floor. Not earthshattering, but it gets my studio back to being functional again. (I'm still not finished; plan on being there by this time tomorrow night.)

------------

On a totally unrelated note, I just had to share some of Liv's homework. The teacher asks them to write a "story" on the back of their worksheets - basically just three sentences all about one theme. Usually it goes something like, "I like cats. Cats are the best. Yay for cats!" Every now and then she gets creative and we get some real winners.

Like these....




"My mom has a mine (mini) van. I rid to scool in it. I love mine vans!" I love her illustration of the mini-van. She's got the pointed nose shape DOWN. What you can't see in the scan is that there's a body all slammed up against the pointy windshield. That's me. And the picture of her in the side has her wearing a seatbelt. Safety first.




For this assignment she had to write three sentences using her spelling words, which included "you", "not", "sit", and "do". So of course she strung them all together and wrote, "Do you not wat (want) to sit and do your homwrk? No I dot (don't). I do not like homwrk."


And finally, a set of sentences about her daddy.




"My dad plas goof (plays golf). he uoosis (uses) a cluB. he pas (plays) Good."

Toodles,

Progress

So today I got the big idea to clean out my sewing studio. I am NOT one of those people with the dreamy sewing room, with decorator colors on the wall and inspirational art pieces scattered on shelves throughout the room. My studio is purely a place to put things until I want to work with them. Except that sometimes I get so much stuff stacked around that I can no longer walk into the room.

I'm at the point right now.

Those boxes in the floor are all vintage fabrics. I had been "storing" them in my van, but since we went on vacation and had to use our minivan for its intended purpose, rather than just a storage room on wheels, they ended up in the floor of my studio. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike.

What you can't see in this photo is that there's an area of the room that is literally knee-deep in knit yardage and garments for refashioning. I spent the morning hauling it all out, sorting it, and folding it on my dining room table. I no longer have a working dining room table. I'm waiting for storage inspiration to strike for this as well.

Now that I'm all depressed about my fabric hoarding and lack of storage, perhaps I should show you some progress that's happening in our house. Remember my ugly fireplace? It started out as this:

and then my sweet husband added sheetrock above the fireplace (actually, it was fireboard because it's a working fireplace) to cut the ugly brick fireplace off at its knees. He also built a new mantel that's considerably deeper than the ridiculously shallow one that was there before. After mudding and sanding and mudding and staining, it now looks like this:

I'm totally digging the dark stain on the mantel. We'd be all done except for the decorating (see my pretty new bottle on the mantel?) except that Home Depot did a piss poor job matching the paint and now we have to repaint the rest of the room. I'm not going to think about that right now. Instead, I'll start obsessing over what to put above my new mantel.

Toodles,