Our New Friend

We have a new little buddy at our house.  Almost every day at lunchtime, this guy makes his appearance to putter around the patio and eat bugs. 

The kids think he's really cool.  Today Christopher decided he was going to draw a picture of the lizard to show him. 

 Patrick, of course, had to follow suit, so here is his masterpiece.

Even Elizabeth got into the fun, banging on the window and pointing to the lizard for anyone who would pay attention to her.

This pretty much proves that boys + anything Mommy might find vaguely gross = good fun.

Great Sewing Room Cleanup

OK, maybe room is pretty generous for my little sewing space, perhaps corner would be better.  Whatever it is, it got cleaned within an inch of its life this weekend.  I was going crazy losing things under the piles of fabric and having everything tangled around random lengths of elastic.  So, I spent an embarassingly short time (far shorter than the time I've spent putting it off) cleaning up and throwing out snibbles and threads, filing patterns, organizing notions, and folding fabric.

First, the before:

And behold, the after: 

Complete with OCD-inspired labeled boxes: 

OK, really I was trying to keep the kids out of Mike's hair so he could brew beer, and they LOVE to play with the label maker (are they my kids or what).  As you can see, there may be no money for fancy organizers, but we have no shortage of kids shoe boxes.  And now that I think of it, I'd rather have little feet growing out of shoes faster than I can buy them than enough money for fancy organizers.  Although both wouldn't be too bad :-)

Chair Cushions Finished!

I finally finished the new cushions for our patio chairs. It was pretty boring, easy sewing times 6, so I'm glad they're out the door, literally. They fit nicely and look much better than the old ones, which were literally crumbling to dust when people sat on them.

 They are just plain box cushions with no welting, because as I said before they'll just get baked.  The fabric is from Hancock's sun resistant line, which means they have a prayer of lasting a year.  The ties are just brown twill tape also from Hancock's, which is a better color match in real life than it appears in the pictures.

 Of course, since I was complaining about how easy the sewing was, I goofed.  They always say "measure twice, cut once" when woodworking, but here it should be "read the notes you made and cut the pieces the right length."  I inexplicably cut the edge bands two inches too short (despite having the right measurment calculated and written down), and had to go back and piece in a little bit at one corner.  I had enough fabric left that I was able to match the pattern, so it's not really noticible, just annoying to me as I hate making mistakes, especially stupid mistakes.

I spent this evening working on my Vogue 8295 skirt, though I've taken it back to more like a 3/4 circle and reworked the yoke to be more of a wide waistband since I didn't like where it was hitting my hips.  It should get a zipper tomorrow and hem soon after, so hopefully I'll have that up soon as well.  Then it's on to some seersucker I got a few weeks ago that I need to find a pattern for.