Organizing Uniforms Quick Fix

One consequence of not posting anything for two months is that I've actually accomplished a few things! 

 

This is one easy fix I came up with to take care of Christopher's school clothes.  He's lucky enough to have started a school where they wear uniforms, and I didn't want to fight with him every morning about why he couldn't wear his Ninjago shirt and elastic waist shorts from his drawer.  One of those pocket organizers would've worked but I didn't have one.  I did have clothespins and hangers, though, so this is what I came up with.

 

Shorts and socks (with no logos or animals) get pinned to a hanger

Shirt goes on top and everything goes into the closet

Now it's easy to see if he has clean school clothes and he knows to just take out a hanger with his preferred shirt color and get dressed.  This has also taken care of the navy shirt and navy shorts combo I see some kids wearing to school!

Shirts are sort of boring - here's a shameless cute kid shot of Christopher being a great big brother!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - End of Summer Edition

We've been hanging out around home more than usual lately.  While I was so excited (for me and them) for school to start, now that it's close, I think I'm going to miss them :-)  The up side of all this homebodiness is that I've actually taken pictures!

{pretty}

I cleaned the kitchen within an inch of its life yesterday.  That makes it pretty, or at least a lot prettier than it was.  Goo Gone is my friend.  It took care of a lot of the greasy mess on the microwave underside.

{happy}

After the pantry cleaning last week, I got out the easel for a long overdue (read: it's been many months) painting session.  Little E was not quite paint-eligible, but she was happy to color chalk on the other side.

{funny}

 It's funny, and maybe a little sad, but my kids are such desert rats that one good afternoon of thunderstorms produced some awesome puddles worthy of about 45 minutes of running and jumping in.

{real}

I suppose this is to be expected since she only has big brothers, but here is Elizabeth "peeing" in the potty.  She picks up her shirt and pushes on her belly button and is SURE she's going just like the big boys!  I've started putting her on the potty before bathtime in the hopes that we might not have too big a mess (or struggle to get her to sit down) when we actually start training her!

Simple Wallet

Christopher and Patrick have recently started doing "money jobs," which are little extra chores around the house to earn $0.50 or $1.00 depending on the job. Patrick has been asking for somewhere to put his vast stash of money, but I've been unable to find a small wallet at Target, etc. So the other day I decided we'd make him a little change purse-type pouch for his money.

He's one happy guy, always wanting to do work so he has money to add to his wallet. He looked through the fabric in the closet and homed in on a spaceship print...which is flannel. Yup, kid has a flannel wallet. Oh well, it makes him happy!

I drew out a simple pattern and we cut and stitched it on the machine. He learned how to put in and take out pins, how to line up and sew the seams, and how to press VERY CAREFULLY with a grown-up. The only thing I did myself was putting in the lining and topstitching (with very bad tension, judging from the mess on the inside). Then, of course, the piece de resistance, he got to pound on the snap. Oh happy day! Couture it is not, but it serves its purpose and was a great little learning project.

Still Here and Still Scheming

Has it really been 6 weeks since I posted?  Has anyone really noticed?  Well, I'm now back from a 3 week trip to see my family and I'm all energized to reboot our house.  I've got big plans, as usual, but we'll see what comes of them.  My latest idea is to work on a reorganization of the house bit by bit.  Many closets and shelves have not been touched since I got pregnant with the princess, who is now 17 months old. 


I've become discouraged with the constant mess the kids leave behind, but in thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I can't expect them to take care of and respect their things if their dad and I don't.  Our office area looks like this right now. 

So is it any wonder that the toy area looks like this (and it's actually pretty clean)?

I've come up with two concepts to focus on for the short term:
1.  I need to respect and care for my things so they respect and care for theirs.  That means doing dishes in a timely fashion and cleaning up and putting away books, magazines, projects, receipts, phones, etc. before I have to take them from little hands.

2.  The floor is NOT a place for anything to be stored.  Not trash in the office in need of a trash can, not graduation gear in the bedroom that no one is sure where to put, not books in the bedroom that I haven't gotten around to putting away.

We'll see what comes of this, but hopefully at least a few full garbage bins will give us some much-needed breathing room.

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.

A Gypsy Skirt

This little skirt for Elizabeth is actually from a month or so ago, but I forgot to take pictures of it then, so when I put it on her today, I snapped a few pictures.  The fabric is a linen blend I picked up at Hancock's at the end of last year.  The pattern, as such, is the Gypsy Skirt from The Handmade Dress.  It's actually what she calls a sewing recipe.  It's a collection of proportions and formulas to give you a garment of a certain shape.  In this case, it's a seven gored skirt just right for a little girl who never met a meal she didn't like :-)  And yes, every shot is an action shot with this girl - sorry!

On her, it's a really cute style and I like the extra fullness in the back to compensate for her diaper-clad bootie. 

On her, it's a really cute style and I like the extra fullness in the back to compensate for her diaper-clad bootie.  I also drafted it for myself, but after seeing hers, I think I'll make a few changes for mine.  I'm going to take out the extra gore in the back (and adjust the other measurements accordingly) and maybe take a bit of the fullness out of the waist.  I like the easy elastic waistband, but I don't want it so bunchy on me.  Is it something I could've come up with myself, yes, but Sam's recipe gave me a great starting point and confidence in the outcome.  Plus, she's a super-sweet mama of 4 with a really cute blog with great ideas - that's worth the $6 right there!

After I finish the chair cushions (more on that mess later!) and my little skirt, I think I'm going to do  matching cousin dresses for Sarah and Elizabeth from her Miss Madeline pattern, so look for more extreme cuteness coming soon!

Parting shot - here's my super reader who was very miffed I wasn't taking pictures of him!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - Easter is Here!

Hooray, we've made it through Lent and now we get to enjoy the Easter season, which actually lasts almost 6 weeks until Pentecost!  Here are a few fun pictures from our Easter festivities.

{pretty}

Pretty blessed is more like it.  We have three (generally!) sweet, beautiful, healthy kids.  No matter how difficult some days seem, life is really good!

{happy}

Mama got to make an Easter dress this year (more on that here) and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Now if only the Energizer Bunny Elizabeth would've stood still for a whole 3 seconds, I could've gotten a clear picture.

{funny}

Elizabeth found out about the wonder that is Easter candy this year.  She approves wholeheartedly.

{real} 

Patrick gets constant "coaching" from his big brother, Christopher.  I'm sure my sisters will tell me that I drove them crazy doing the same thing, but I struggle to find a nice way to tell him, "Just let Patrick color his own darn eggs!"  And yes, I took their shirts off because you know that egg dye will never come out of anything, and we're short on clothing that fits right now as it is!

Joined up at Like Mother, Like Daughter - some great Easter fun had by all!

Easter Sewing

I wanted to put up a pretty quick post on Elizabeth's Easter dress.  I'm really happy with how it came out - its probably one of my favorite things I've made her so far.  Excuse the wrinkly pictures - I didn't sew the buttons on until 11:00 Saturday evening, so I didn't get any pictures before she wore it.  She also ran back and forth like the Energizer bunny, so I didn't get a clear picture of it on her.

The pattern was The Tuck Dress by Collars Etc. I made the size 1 dress. The fabric was satin batiste from Chadwick Heirlooms. The original dress was Bridget from the February 2007 issue of Creative Needle (sniff, I miss them). Bridget was made from Ulster linen, but that was really spendy and not at all in my budget, so the satin batiste seemed to be a good comprimise - a little nicer than regular batiste for a dress without much extra embellishment, but not $50 a yard. The lace was also from Chadwick Heirlooms, I believe from the Heavy Lace section. It is an insertion and edging stitched together to form a band with the feel of tatting, but not quite as heavy.

Close up of the collar with lace

Also put a band of lace down the sleeve

Check it out, I even matched the tucks at the shoulders :-)

From the back

The slip was from Simplicity 2900.  It ended up being a bit long, so I cut off some length before attaching a 2" long ruffle. My mom had made Elizabeth a slip for a dress for her first Easter (back when she was still a baby :-( ) and it had a little ruffle on the bottom. I really liked the way the ruffle helped the a-line dress have a bit more body, especially made in such a soft fabric, so I added one this time. The neck and arms were finished with a shell stitch.

So there it is - an Easter dress fit for a princess!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Spring Edition

I have a sick big boy at home, so this will be pretty short this week.  I didn't want to completely disappear again, though.

{pretty}

I love these pretty yellow flowers that popped out in my garden a few days ago.

{happy}

Miss Elizabeth has made the developmental jump to walk-first, crawl-when-I-fall.  It makes me happy because, at a year old it's time and means she's growing as she should.  It makes me sad because she looks so darn big doing it - what happened to my baby?!



{funny} 

This is sad-funny.  This is my sewing table right now.  Apparently I thought that if I took my whiteboard and made a list of things I need to finish and mend, and then sat it by my machine, that would shame me into getting to things.  Yeah, it's not really working.

{real}

My pretty yellow flowers in the garden - they're on the broccoli.  I have no idea what happened there.  I planted about 30 broccoli seeds, and this is the only one that came up.  It went from having a tiny head (maybe 5 florets) of broccoli to this in a few days.  Clearly my gardening skills still need a lot of work.  I'm thinking I'll just bring the stalks in and put them in a vase and enjoy them.  I'm sure the broccoli is not edible now that it's shot to flower.

I have a bunch of other things to put up, but I have to go get Patrick from school and then we'll see how everyone's feeling.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Happy Pi Day!

No, that is not a typo.  Geeks everywhere (or at least in the US where we write our dates the right way around) celebrate March 14 as Pi Day, a celebration of all things Pi, circular, and tasty!  What's better for Pi Day than pie in a Pi plate?  Many thanks to my dad for this genius gift.

We chose to celebrate the circle (which the ancients thought was the perfect shape) with chocolate (the perfect food) in the form of a chocolate cream pie.  First, we mixed a simple graham cracker crust and my trusty sidekick, ChefPatrick, pressed it into the plate.

Then we took a break for strawberry milk with whipped cream.  ChefPatrick had an accident last night while I was cooking dinner (I didn't see what happened) and has a big cut inside his lip/cheek and a little but deep cut outside, so Mama is sort of a softie today.

After WordWorld, lunch, and putting the Princess down for a nap, we mixed up chocolate cream.  In keeping with my plan to try more "heirloom" type recipes (more on that soon), I used a recipe from my Mennonite Community Cookbook.  Once the cream cools, we will top it with homemade whipped cream and our homage to all things pi/pie will be complete!

Happy Pi Day everyone!

They Finally Made It!

Happy Feast of the Epiphany! 

Our Wise Men finally finished the arduous journey from the family room entertainment center,

across the kitchen,

along the living room,

to the piano to see the Baby Jesus. 

It was nice having the nativity out after everything else went away at the beginning of the week.  It helped remind us that with all the cleaning out and putting away that comes with the new year, we are still celebrating Christmas.  Hopefully you had a wonderful Christmas season and are having a great start to 2012!

PS:  Yes, I know my walls need paint.  All of them. :-)