Crafts

The last month has offered some exciting opportunities for crafts, and Emily's birthday has its own post, because those were not individual projects, as she is a willing helper. I also cut hearts out of coke boxes for over a month, in preparation of Valentine's Day, but it was a bittersweet day to be sure.  I've included the picture here too, because the other post is a work of emotion and reflection, which I may not feel up to revisiting each time I want to recall a very sweet Valentine's Day memory.

Around the time of a snow event, my mom asked if the big girls would be willing to make a homemade baked good for the church's bake sale at the chili dinner. With the snowy roads, I declined, but as the roads cleared had a change of heart, and made the baclava, for which, I already had the ingredients on hand.  I delivered it to the church, along with some cookies that Sarah made (since I was stopping by her house en route.)  My mom sent me a follow up report, telling me that it was gone quickly, and the bake sale was a success.

The three rounds of snow days gave me the time opportunity to get started on, and ultimately finish end of year teacher gifts for the little ones' teachers.  I don't think I have the persistence to make the 14ish bags that I would need for the big girls' teachers, so I'll have to come up with a different gift for them.

I considered making two bags for the twins' teacher, but ultimately decided that she probably did not need two bags (if she even needs one) and put their handwriting on either side of a single bag.

The t-shirt that I cut up to use for William's teacher was a very slippery material, and my machine did not care for it. It took many failed attempts, and finally an iron on fleece to stabilize it enough to make it useable.  (Also, I hope he never sets it near something hot, because the iron brought out a faint smell of cigarette smoke, which was not present at room temperature.)  And, it wasn't until ironing out the embroidery hoop on the twins' teacher's fabric that I realized it would melt and shrink under a hot iron (I guess the iron had been 'heating' on previous presses.)  So, I ended up trimming it a bit before sewing, and it looks okay in its finished form.

Despite all the setbacks and periods of ripping out failed stitches, I managed to finish!  Surprisingly, this is not even the earliest I've ever finished end of year bags, but it feels good to have this project finished!

Emily and her bag were home long enough that I was able to repair the handle cover on her strap.  Sadly, with the repair, the hook could no longer fit through, and so I had to cut apart the strap itself and then reattach the hardware (twice, because the strap ran through the cover twice on the pass over.) = 6

When the girls' Easter dresses arrived (I shopped around Christmas time) I made William a matching bowtie.  I love the colors of their dresses!!!

I'm glad I waited until the dresses arrived, because the pictures made me think that the dresses were much darker in color than they turned out to be.

I'm thankful for the gift of time.  The hours of dropping off and picking up the children never sounds like much, but it might just be enough to get in one extra craft.  = )

later days

All the Fun! Part II

When I sorted through my pictures for Part I of this post, I must have been interrupted, because I was missing a few pictures that I knew I wanted to post.  When I went back through the folder, I found many pictures that I wanted to post.  So, since the previous post is all wrapped up and finished, I'm adding a second part that is separate, for no other reason than that I found more pictures I want to remember. = )

Alice's ID, well, all her pictures actually, had a typographical error.  I found it super funny, personally.  Honestly, I was tempted to leave it and just let her be Alice Crockov for the rest of her school days.  Ultimately, we got it corrected, but I still find it humorus. 

I always think that it's my last year with MOPS, but I think since it is my primary social time, I just need to accept that I'm going to be in it a long while.  Technically I'm in MOPS next, for the official record, since all of my children are older than Kindergarten.  I love the theme this year!  It's "We go together" and it is all about kindling friendships and maintaining old ones.  So far, I've loved all the media they've produced.

I had 15 minutes to run into Aldi and then go collect someone from somewhere.  This is what a trip for one single item looks like in rush. lol.

Speaking of Aldi, they had these laundry baskets, for about half of what I'd priced them out for, and so I did it.  I completed step of one improving my sanity.  Now, I just lay the clothes in the basket for each child as they come out of the dryer, and if they need something, they know where to get it.  If the basket gets full before they hang up their clothes, I start getting rid of things.  

Eventually I would like to have a rack put in, like the inspiration I saw many years ago, but I will need to find a new home for the coats and ski pants. So, it may be a few years.

I bought the ingredients to make baclava to bring to Steve & Natalie's housewarming party, but simply ran out of time.  So, I made it earlier this week and brought her some to try.

For spirit week, leading up to homecoming, Emily planned out each of her outfits.  We found a huge flannel at a yard sale, but were able to borrow a smaller one from Natalie, which looked much cuter.  She also picked out some cute boots to wear with the ensemble.  Alice decided on Tuesday to join in on the fun, by requesting a 'country' hairstyle.  I was very happy that she wanted to participate!

The next day was college day.  I have a pile of Texas Tech shirts that my mom has collected for me over the years, just for spirit weeks, but Alice ended up wearing one of the ones from my regular rotation (every week is spirit week for me!)  Emily found a cute flannel when we went back to the thrift store for a piece of her Halloween costume.  She was so excited about it, she didn't want to wait an entire year to wear it, so she wore it over her tech shirt the next day.

Autumn is in full swing.  While the days were fairly mild, we took care of many outdoor chores, including the first round of leaf raking!  

They are looking for sign-ups for Trunk or Treat at the little ones' school.  Now that my crew is older, I feel like I can finally be on the giving end!  

I searched the internet to see what cool things they had to pass out (instead of just candy.) While they have some nifty and interesting things, I can't help but think about how much junk is being put into the environment for the sake of novelty.   I wanted an alternative, and thought of something to bounce off of my children.

I asked the craftier of my children if they would help me paint "dead rocks" to pass out.  When they heartily agreed, we swung by our favorite landscaping place, and bought an entire bucket for $2.

We washed all of the rocks, then started to paint.

Grace worked really hard, but eventually started getting sillier and more creative.   So, we have several rocks that stray from the "dead rock" collection, but I think they'll find good homes just the same.

Even with 4 of us working (mostly) industriously, we did not finish decorating the pile.  So, on day 2 of painting, we managed to finish them all off.  Juliet and the rock were both dead by the end.

A few of the rocks that received extra paint:

Grace helped me take out my dead garden vines earlier in the week, so this will be my final garden update for the year.  My porch doesn't look quite as 'orange' as my imagination suggested, but I love my 3 pumpkins that grew!!!

Now I feel like all of our events have been covered.  We have many things coming up on the calendar, hopefully I can get them in the blog a little bit faster.

later days