Spring!

Yeay! The trees (& weeds) are green again! It's warm, it's sunny, it's not winter! I know, I know... I live in Florida. It's hot, a lot. But we do get a couple months in the winter where we can't going swimming or break something on the slip and slide. So, in honor of warmer weather, I thought I'd share one of my favorite evening summer-time activities with the kids. Sidewalk Chalk.

What's the big deal? Nothing really. It's super cheap, it comes out of clothing, the rain washes it off, and it's an excuse to be outside (just like bubbles). And so far, the amount that has been in Austin's mouth doesn't seem to be poisoning him. This is our activity while we wait for Daddy to come home from work since I get home with the kids about an hour before he does. Barefoot in the driveway, that's us.

And, you can get some really great colorful photos of your kids. Like this.

And this.

Short on princess crowns? Draw one.

Austin was too small at this time to participate, but he sure loved sitting in his stroller outside just observing.

On one occasion, we backed the cars up a bit to give us more room at the top of the driveway. They just happened to be blocking the sidewalk and we got some evil sneers from a few pedestrians who were forced to take two steps in the grass. They apparently weren't aware of the fun sidewalk chalk is. Thus, another need for this post. Maybe I should have offered them a stick or two? Next time.

Happy tanktoping.

Let's be friends!

Sewing: Place Mat Pillow

When I got pregnant with #2, a boy, I was really excited to have a reason to redecorate an entire room (it was our guest room/office). I started in Photoshop and slapped together my ideas. I take a picture of the room then "paint" the walls in Photoshop, add pictures of furniture I like from different websites, add art work, bedding, fabrics, etc. Doesn't everybody do that? (no? heh heh... ummmm) Anyway, here is what the room looks like today...

It's light blue, navy blue, white, with an orange accent. The furniture was all bought on Craig's List, the chair is from Walmart.com, and the rest is from IKEA. (That blue chair could sure use a pillow!)

I also had this white ice cream parlor style chair with a pink seat I got at a thrift store many years ago. It traveled to all of my college apartments with me and I couldn't let it go. I think I paid $8 for it, my husband hated it, and it was really uncomfortable. Sounds dreamy, eh? Here's pretty much what it looked like... with a pink upholstered seat.

I decided that I was going to recover the seat and it would make a good place to sit and put on your shoes. Genius! Fast forward to IKEA shopping. I found place mats. Blue and white striped place mats! Like this, but a different pattern...

See how cheap? They would be perfect to recover the chair! I got 2. Then I brought them home and they were too small. Dang it! I guess that's why you should measure and why IKEA provides paper tape measures. So smart of them. They were also too thick to sew together and make a bigger piece of fabric. I thought of that. There would have been a big thick seam in your butt if you sat down. No good.

So, the place mats became a pillow and the chair went to the curb. (Someone took it before the garbage people got there... don't worry... it lives on.. on a farm with other forgotten chairs... and pets... and other gross furniture we have put out there) But I tell everyone that the pillow was my plan all along. Why does it seem like a lot of my craft projects develop from accidents?

Here's the finished product.

Let's be friends!

Sewing: Men's Shirt turned Toddler Dress

Let me start off by saying I'm aware of the wrinkled mess this dress is in the first picture. It was either the wrinkled mess picture or the night-time-flash one in our living room (below). I opted for natural light, and plenty o' wrinkles first. The wrinkles were courtesy of an entire day at day care... now you understand. I'm sure there is a pound of sand in her shoes as well. The one with the flash was taken in the morning before day care... yep, still dark out.

I saw this dress here. How awesome is that?! It looked a smidge on the difficult side to me but the tutorial is step by step and I can follow directions. Genius, I know. Here we go! (Hey, that rhymed)

First step, my husband's closet. I know, I raid his stuff a lot for sewing projects. But, since we had just done a closet clean out/Goodwill trip, he had no dress shirts I could cut up. Plan B, go to Goodwill. Since the closest Goodwill to me is actually really close to my work, I went on my lunch break sans kids. One trip through the men's shirts and I found this striped one with some pink it it for $2.00 ish. Did I mention it was a men's XXXL?! So much fabric for $2! Awesome!

Side note: Those pink shoes she is wearing I also got on the Goodwill trip for $4! They are from Gymboree... score!

Here is a really horrible picture I took with my phone the night I started to cut the shirt up. Since the picture was so bad anyway, I crapped it up further by making it black and white, super grainy, and added some lovely hand drawing ala the mouse.

There's my kid sitting on the shirt. If she were to lay down she wouldn't even take up half. It's huge. I also want to point out she went to bed right after this photo. I don't know how the tutorial lady did it with her kid there and awake. I sewed while the kids slept and my husband was on a conference call. I do remember running in to excitedly mime to him the progress I was making while waving dress parts in his face. And him waving me off like a I was a crazy homeless person trying to wash his windows or something. Maybe I should have waited until he was off the phone. hmm.

There's the post daycare wrinkletastic back. I did not do the knife pleats in the tutorial. I opted for a simple ruffle. All of the pink you see is that same Walmart curtain panel I bought for $4. I also used it in the Ballet Bag and still have tons left over. I will be shopping the dorm room section again this fall : )

I think the sleeves are so cute. Make one! Goodwill has way too many dress shirts anyway. Can you tell someone is really sick of taking pictures?

The end.

Let's be friends!

Sewing: Baby Yoga Pants

So, I have a confession. I have made very few things for my little boy. Let's admit it... girl stuff is just so cute and easy to make. A skirt is a tube of fabric with an elastic at the top. Easy peasy. Pants and shirts are harder.

I knew a lot of bloggers/crafters out there were making pajama pants (Or yoga pants. Many people stop short of calling them "pajama pants" because of all the rules there are with infant pajamas... fire resistant, yada yada) so I decided to give it a try. If they can do it, I can do it, right? Because I was pretty sure these were going to come out terrible, I didn't buy anything for this project. : ) Here's where I went for instruction.

I cut up an old t-shirt of my husband's (he won't even know it's gone... I think it had Woody Woodpecker on the front. Eww.) and used navy blue thread because I didn't have any brown. Ha! You can even see the blue thread in the pictures. Bad, I know. However, they actually turned into functional pants! Even with my lack luster attitude, I managed to make some pretty stinking cute yoga pants for my little man. (ok, maybe it's the baby that is making them cute... and not the actual pants that are cute..hmmm)

My mistake this round: I cut the crotch length too short (Maybe I should have paid attention more to step 6 in the tutorial... haha, nervous laughter). Before you sew the elastic in, it looks like you are making old man pants that are going to come up to his pits. But, after you fold it down twice and make the casing for the elastic, they should come up right to his belly button. I saw the old man pants taking shape prior to making the elastic casing and cut them down. Now they don't come up high enough to cover his diaper. Oh well. Live and learn.

There's his big sister showing off the brown pants/blue thread special in her stylin' purple monkey jammies, as we call them. (Gotta love Target clearance)

Let's be friends!

One of those days

It's been one of those days. No second nap for kid #2, and no nap at all for kid #1. Day 3 of getting rid of the bottle cold turkey (why is this so difficult... it's milk! Drink it!). Laundry as far as the eye can see. College basketball on TV as loud as my husband can possibly put it without his ears bleeding. Unmade beds. Dirty dishes. Weeds taller than my kids in the back yard. Dust bunnies having a party behind the couch. A toilet that could really use a scrub. It's like I'm on a treadmill that day by day gets faster and faster and I can never get off. I organized the kids puzzles and games in the living room only to have them tear them apart 20 minutes later. So then I feel like what's the point? But at the same time, if I don't maintain constantly, it's going to get really out of hand, really fast. Like Hoarders out of hand. Or at least those are the visions I have in my head (minus the dead cats).

I just can't keep up, and I only have 2 kids! How do you do it with more? With a bigger house? It seems impossible. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe stay-at-home moms who love their stay-at-home lives have some secret I am not aware of. How do you break out the bleach and give the toilets a scrub when a 1 year old wants to join you and - A. breath in the fumes, and - B. touch everything? And emptying the dishwasher is like an invitation to grab knives as quickly as possible. How does he grab them so fast? It's like he turns into stealth ninja baby.

I know I shouldn't complain. I have two healthy kids, a loving husband, and a roof over my head. It's all I ever wanted as far back as I can remember. I guess it doesn't need to be clean all the time. But it's like that lie that is the cover of every magazine. You see a woman who is impossibly beautiful because she's been retouched ala Photoshop, and you think that's what you have to be to be beautiful. I'm well aware of the Photoshopping that takes place and still compare myself to those women. I see homes in magazines, on commercials, in TV shows and think people really live like that. There's never sticky juice spots on the kitchen floor, never a pile of laundry preventing the hamper lid from closing, never the smell of poopy/chicken carcass garbage that hits you when you walk in the door from work because you forgot to take it out in the morning after you threw that diaper in there and the leftovers from last week, never that ring in the toilet that never comes off (though I guess no one is filming the insides of toilets) never globs of toothpaste stuck to the sink. Know what I mean?

On the weekends I can get the house back to acceptable. Towards the end of the week, it looks like a frat house with some toys sprinkled in. On Fridays I get worried that someone might happen to unexpectedly drop by and see what we're living in. Sometimes I think, I should just forget about the laundry right now and play with my kids on the floor. So I do, and then someone doesn't have any clean underwear the next day. And you can't really pull dirty underwear out of the hamper, spray it with Febreze and throw it in the dryer. That only works with semi-dirty non-crotch-touching items. Not like I do that or anything... never mind.

I've have learned to combine play and housework. They do like to help me when I ask but do I really want to turn every task into a project involving two toddlers? "Don't eat the dryer lint!" Sigh...

Such are the struggles of a mom. Work/play/kids/cleaning/cooking/and fitting in sleep. It reminds me of a quote I've seen a few times lately... or maybe it's an Irish blessing?

"May you live as long as you want, And never want as long as you live."

I'm working on it.... but I still want a clean house.

Let's be friends!