Room to Sew

Can you guess what's in here?

Surprise!

(The fishbowl behind my machine is where I put my scraps.)

I love it!

There's no craft room for me.
And that's okay.
But I did need some designated space
because fabric was ending up everywhere!
In the hall closet,
in a box in my bedroom,
on the bookshelf next to my sewing machine....

I saw this tv hutch at goodwill
and knew it would be perfect
for a "sewing room".

And once I organized everything,
it looked so clean
I wanted to sit right down
and sew something!

Of course I didn't,
because at that point
it was 1am
and I have a baby
that tends to get up at 4am to eat
so that would have been crazy
but still...

In the bottom left cabinet
there are clear boxes for storage
designated for:
1) notions,
2 ) fabric already designated for projects,
3 ) huge batting scraps,
a basket of fat quarters,
and a basket of patterns:



The bottom right cabinet has the foot pedal
and a trash bag for scraps.

There's even a shelf where I can store
stacks of fabric for easy viewing:

(It kinda looks like there's room for more fabric!)
(ps, I should do a post on how I fold my fabric. Is that nerdy?)


And when I'm done,
I can close the doors up,
and there you go!


Hurray!

Sunday & Four's Baptism

Our church does the baptism
as part of the children's sermon:



All of my kids have worn my grandad's,
their great-grandad's, baptismal gown.


It's at least 100 years old
and made from the thinnest muslim
with lace and hand-embroidered daisies.
It's actually a dress and a lining
and has the eensiest little shell buttons in the back.

Love sentimental stuff like that.
None of my cousins wanted it
for their children.
I think they might be a bit crazy
but I really can't complain because
I am so happy to have it for my own babies.

Four did so good during the baptism,
she didn't cry and she even had
her very own hallelujah moment:

Love it!

Summertime....

Today was One's last day of school!
It's incredible to me that he'll
be a 2nd grader!
Part of me is sad,
part of my is so excited!
He's my handful
and I keep thinking it'll get easier
when he figures out this whole
growing up thing.

Like, mom's in charge,
I don't always get my way....
that kind of thing.

So I was all fine with picking him up
on the last day of school.
Wasn't really planning on getting emotional.

Until I saw this:


All of the teachers and staff lining up to wave
good-bye to the students.

The kids were hanging out of buses
yelling good-bye to their favorite teachers,
the buses were going super slow
to give the kids time for that one last goodbye,
beeping their horns in celebration.
It was so moving.


One's teacher even came back from maternity leave
with her 2 week old baby so she could be there:


That got me bawling.
I love my kids' school!

Then here comes my boy:

(With the crossing guard/recess duty/who-knows-what-else guy, Jesse, whom he adores.)

Waving to his mama.

And oh my, it hit me...


My boy is growing up!

Baby Mucho #4

WAHOO!!!!!!
I couldn't be more thrilled!
Two will have a sister!
Which means she'll get a bunk bed,
her whole reason for even wanting a sister!
The division of rooms will be evenly split as opposed to
what would have been three teenage boys in one room!!!
It's a girl!

WAHOO!!!!!!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

One recently told his teacher that he "earned" a baby sister!

When she asked how he did it,
he scrunched up his nose and nodded his head
and very seriously said,

"I did a lot of chores."

Christmas Quilt Along: Week 4

Last week's assignment was
16 small trees!

I don't know about you, but I butchered my first tree pretty good. Those directions were more than a little confusing and didn't create the tree at all like one would think you would create a tree! Thank goodness for forgiving fabric! If you look closely at the pic above, you can see the two diagonal lines where I pieced my fabric back together after completely slashing it the first time.

I've decided I'm going to start showing you the pieces I've messed up on. Crafting perfection is no fun. Stressing over perfection.... Who would ever craft?!? So my hacked up and pieced back together pieces are what make my quilt MINE. Not store bought. Made with love. I cut one of my courthouse square strips too short and had to piece it back together too to make it work. Oh well!

So don't stress about this quilt or whatever else you happen to be working on. If you're a little behind, if you made a mistake...just enjoy what you're doing. We're not working towards perfection.

This week's assignment is
step 3 of the pattern (here).

8 large trees!
You can do it!

Tie-Dye & Youth

I love our youth!
And they love my kids!
My kids love them too!

So at the End-of-Summer Party
they play soccer together,
take them down HUGE homemade slip-n-slides
made even more slippery with dawn dish soap...
(hello, that totally counts as a bath too! :o) )
and help them make tie-dye!

(tie-dye kits that include turquoise and/or fushia will always be bright and vivid!)

Everyone wore their shirts to church yesterday
(We are a fun church!)
and here's what my kiddos sported:

As a tangent:
Any babysitter I've had,
which I admit is not many,
are all from our youth group.
When people ask for babysitter suggestions,
you guessed it,
it's always someone from the youth group!

I've often wondered how people
who don't go to church
find babysitters!

So here is my unsolicited advice:
If you ever need a babysitter, ask
a) high school teacher
b) a church go-er

Happy Sunday

Look who made it into a picture...

ME!
I actually exist!!!

You know, getting everyone to look at the same time
is quite a task!
I think I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself.
Anyway, this was the one and only shot
which is why, if they aren't looking, they are at least smiling....

I love that it's the middle of August and One and Two both have on their fleeces. One is sporting a nice fleece hat too and Two....well, she has taken to fixing her own hair and I am not about to step in the way of that! If you heard her scream absolute bloody murder this afternoon because she thought there was a bug on her...oh the drama. So I will just let her hair be her hair. It says so much about who you are. I think Two's might say, "I'm an independent little girl that's terrified of imaginary spiders..."

Oh, and check out the pensive finger-at-the-mouth-while-seriously-contemplating-the-world look of Three.

This is my new favorite picture!

An unexpected celebration

Growing up I had a baby blue banana bike
with a rainbow on the seat,
streamers and a basket on the handles...
and training wheels.
Because I didn't learn to ride until I was twelve years old.
(Yes, that's right people, I was athletic like that.)

I had no idea how to teach my babies how to ride bikes.
When I finally learned how, I could just do it,
and I never fell down.
(I was twelve afterall!)
So how in the world were we going to teach them?

Our old neighbors just slowly raised their kids' training wheels.
Their bikes gradually got more wobbly
and their kids gradually learned how to balance
and pedal at the same time.

Seemed to work fine.

But then a friend of mine mentioned a scoot bike.
(Oddly enough, I had seen one on Sesame Street
when Grover visited a kid in a Scandanavian country.
Apparently that's what everyone does over there.)
Anyway, her son learned to ride his bike in a week!
So the scoot bike seemed like the way to go
but 90+ bucks?!? NO WAY!!!

So I went to my favorite store and the bikes had just been marked down to $2! Wahoo! We picked out a decent one, brought it home, and DaddyMan took off the pedals. Viola! Scoot bike for $2.

That was three days ago.

Today, One wanted to give his real bike a try.
The one with pedals.
I gave him a push to get started
and then kept running along side him to keep him going fast enough.

But he didn't really need it.

The hardest thing to do was letting go of my baby
so that he could keep going on his own.

But he did it!
My baby can ride his bike!



Here he is with his training-wheel-free bike:



Naturally this called for celebration:


My boy order strawberry:


When he finished , he said "Can I call Gran now and tell her what I did?" Of course!

My baby!
I'm so proud!
And a little in shock at how easy it turned out to be!
:o)

Starlight Parade

There is nothing better than a night parade!!!
A parade at night when it's nice and cool,
they close all the streets down,
the floats are extra cool lit up with lights,
the marching band puts glowsticks inside of their drums,
it's just tons of fun.


One and friends waiting for the streets to be shut down:

(MN.2, MN.1, One)

So I know this one is blurry, but if you click on it, just check out how many kids are playing in the street. In the middle of downtown! Super fun!

More playing:

(MN.2, One, Two, MN.1)

Can I just say that I love that Two is down there with Batman, playing with all the boys? All of One's friends have little brothers. There's not a girl to be had in the entire bunch! At One's birthday party, the boys make Two the "bad guy"....she just sprayed her spiderweb at them and chased after them. It was no big deal. Of course, when the neighbor invited Two over to play with her daughters and Two wasn't quite sure what to do...well, I think Two is in need of some girl friends!

My favorite grad/youth/babysitter came to say hi. Turns out it was prom night! No marching in the parade for her this year. One thought they were getting married!

(Her date is wearing DaddyMan's tux!)

Here is Two showing me how to smile:

What would a night parade be without glow sticks?!

(Um, can you tell that Two's favorite color is still yellow? Yellow shirt, yellow chair, yellow glow stick?)

There were silly smiles:

And Storm Troopers:

It was definitely worth staying up late for!

(clearing my throat - Did I mention we got home around midnight? :o) )

Randomness with tons of pics

Wow! So I didn't mean to take a two-week break from blogging!
I even kept crafting and taking pictures
so who knows what happened?!

Here is the big catch-up:

We went to story time about alligators
and my craftiness didn't quite extend to cutting in between every single tooth.
Two seemed happy enough with it.
Here she is roaring at the camera because what other sound does an alligater make?



We went for a walk in the park back behind our library:



But walking was not enough for Two, she preferred to fly:



I made Three his own set of keys, complete with key fob.
The finished product is somewhere in my mama van,
but as a consolation prize
here, at least, are my materials:

(Materials were about $2, then throw some old keys that you don't remember what they belong to or go to any place that makes keys and ask for a few from their "mistake" bin (free).)


As an only child who had a sibling for a short little while, watching my kids play together is always one of my greatest joys and something I make a point not to interrupt.
Here is One with his legs wrapped around Three
so Three wouldn't fall down
all while rockin' the baby toy air-guitar style!



I planted flowers.
Here is one that is still alive:



And some impatiens look adorable in these pots on my patio table:

(Do you see the roses in bloom in the background? Love them too!)


We got goofy at the mall:

(Then got issued a new credit card when the photobooth company got hacked into... Oops!)


One got his bobcat badge
and some really rockin' make-up:



I'm working on making a reusable snack bag:

The process is slow going because I am making a go of it without a pattern and, oh yeah, I like my sleep.
The fabric is a leftover scrap from this skirt.
Mental note: next time fork out the money for the pattern!


We went camping with friends over Memorial weekend.
DaddyMan made paper airplanes for the kids to throw into the campfire.
It was such a hit, I'm pretty sure it is our new tradition!

Breakfast



And most recently we've taken this guy back to the kidney doctor.

His bad kidney is still several times "normal" size. Another function test is back on the books. Hospital gowns, IV's, catheters, radio-active dye followed by radio-active diapers... We've got our fingers crossed and prayer chains full of prayers for good results because I'm pretty sure bad results will send him to surgery.


Up next are some grad gifts but those will need to stay top-secret for now since I know my favorite grad reads the blog.
(HI Kimiiiiiiii!)
Stay tuned!



Whew!
It's good to be back!