Long Time No Blog

Yes, it has been a long time since my last post - six months to be exact.  A lot has transpired since then.  I've had 3 parties -


A graduation party
 

 

A baby shower

An 18th birthday party 

I've sent two sons off to the prom with their sweet girlfriends...

Taken my son to have his Senior pictures taken...

 

Attended award ceremonies and Senior luncheons and recognition services for Josh...

I've created 10 scrapbooks to give to the children in my class at the end of the year.  That's a labor of love, but a lot of work.


I've moved one son home from college, while getting a second son ready to go off to college. I've attended college orientation for my second son and I did nothing to embarrass myself like I did at the UGA Orientation,.

 

 

Then I moved two sons off to college, one two hours to the north of my house and the other two hours to the south.

Josh in his new dorm room at VSU

 And on top of all this I prepared to move 500 miles away to Louisiana. I will not even go into the nightmare that the move has been, but I will say that we are in our new house and I'm making headway into getting us settled. I do love our house, but it has been difficult going to a house that is half the size. I've lost a breakfast room, a bathroom, a bedroom, a garage and a large storage closet. Finding a place for all the things that were in those rooms has been tricky. I'm getting there though.

Good bye old house

Hello new house

We are enjoying Louisiana, however, as it turns out, I'm not a big fan of Jambalaya (it's too spicy for me!), and I have not run into many heavily bearded men in camo or people with thick Cajun accents who catch gators!  The Louisiana accent is much different than I thought it would be actually.  Not many people have a thick Cajun accent, but instead sound very "Yankee" to me.   I would have sworn our real estate agent was from Long Island, but turns out she was born and raised here.  One thing I have seen a lot of are people wearing Saints and LSU jerseys!  My youngest son and I try to count how many people we see wearing team jerseys when we go to the store.  On Friday Luke's school is allowing the students to wear their favorite team jersey instead of their uniform shirts.  I'm sure Luke will be the only kid wearing a University of Georgia shirt with an Auburn jacket!

I know this has been a long post, but I wanted to tell you what I've been up to and to let y'all know... I'm Back!!!

Sewing for Summer

I was going to say "Sewing for Spring", but I live in Georgia and we just jump straight to Summer around here!  We've had temperatures in the 80's throughout the month of March and April and people are already opening their swimming pools! Either way, spring or summer, I've been sewing up some warm weather outfits for my darling niece.

Actually this skirt is for the little girl for whom I made the ruffle britches  (oooh "whom"!  I haven't used that word in a while! Fancy!).  This was the red monkey fabric that I didn't use on the sock monkey britches.  I didn't want to waste it and I had some solid black fabric laying around, so I whipped up this little ruffle skirt.

This reversible jumper is for my darling niece.  I love the color combination of turquoise and lime green! 

The cupcake fabric is some fabric my sister had purchased for the baby's first birthday outfit, but I went with a pink and white polka dot on the opposite side of the pink corduroy instead. I couldn't let this cute cupcake fabric go to waste so I used it to line the turquoise jumper.  I sewed the rick rack on using a decorative stitch so it would be just as cute on the inside of the dress as the outside!

I had some extra fabric and rick rack  left over so I whipped up some matching shorts.  I also found this cute turquoise and lime green polka dot ribbon, so I added the bows!  I just love how it turned out!

Now on to my most favorite outfit to date!  I love this tie on the shoulder reversible top and matching bloomers!

Isn't this the most gorgeous fabric ever!  I got this at Hobby Lobby and I could kick myself for not buying more of it and now its gone. 

Oui, oui, these are french seams on the bloomers!  So snazzy!

My Sunday school class threw a baby shower for a lady in our class so I made this pink gingham check peasant dress for her baby girl.  I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped it, so this is my friend Sharon holding it up at the shower. 

I am in love with this eyelet and rick rack trim.

Here is another ruffle skirt made with scraps from the ruffle britches

I hate to let fabric go to waste.  Maybe I should learn to quilt! 

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Preschool Crafts

One of my favorite themes to teach in preschool is Community Helpers.  February is Community Helpers month in my class and I thought I'd share a few things that we have fun doing.

Traffic Light Cookies  (oops it's upside down!)

Doctor Bags

All the supplies inside the doctor bag.

Dental Health Week -   The teeth are mini marshmallows.  I let the kids lick one end and stick it to the construction paper lips.  The sugar in the marshmallow acts like glue.

It always tickles me to see how each child applies their "teeth".

One of my favorite activites during dental health week is when we talk about healthy snacks and not-so-healthy snacks. I bring Oreo cookies, apple slices and a mirror to class. First I let them eat an Oreo and then show them how their teeth look when they eat not-so-healthy snacks.

Then I give them an apple slice to eat.

Afterwards I let them take a look in the mirror to see how nice and clean their teeth are after eating a healthy snack!

In Miss Wren's class we are all about some hats!  I love this little police hat and stop sign.  Of course, it reminded me of the Citizen's Arrest episode of the Andy Griffith Show, so we marched next door to Miss Peggy's class shouting "Citizen's Arrest! Citzen's Arrest!"

We had a real firetruck come to visit our class during Fire Safety Week, but guess which teacher forgot her camera that day!?

These hats make me want to say "Romper Bomper Stomper Boo".  Who remembers that from Romper Room back in the early 70s?  Man I'm old!

When I was explaining this theme to my class, we started listing people who are community helpers like policemen and doctors etc.  One little boy raised his finger into the air and proclaimed, "Witches are NOT helpers!"  You got that right buddy! 

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The Sad Tale of a Darling Bunny Dress

As y'all know, I love to sew for my darling niece.  She is a year old now and we're coming up on her second Easter, so I wanted her to have a new spring wardrobe.

Who doesn't just love seer sucker?  I bought this pink striped seer sucker a while back, not really knowing what I wanted to make, but then inspiration hit and this is what I came up with.

I  love this minky dot bunny my friend Marianne appliqued for me.  I have got to get me an applique/monogram machine especially since my friend is moving far, far away this summer! 

I was so thrilled with how this little jumper turned out that I didn't want to wait until Easter to give it to my niece, so I decided to mail it to her.  This is where the sad part comes in...  I went to the post office and purchased one of those padded envelopes to mail the dress and matching bloomers.  As I was addressing the envelope I noticed those "if it fits it ships" boxes and I thought, maybe I should have used one of those instead, but I had already started writing on the envelope and had sealed it shut so I kept what I had.  I've mailed outfits in the same type of envelope before and all was well... but that was then.  I don't know what happened to the bunny dress after I paid the postage and handed the package over to the post office.  It's been well over a week and the package never arrived at my sisters house a mere two hours away.  My darling niece will not have a darling bunny dress to wear to the egg hunt and her Auntie Wren is heart broken. :(  I've got several more outfits made for the baby, but I will be hand delivering them from now on!

**GOOD NEWS!  Since this post, the bunny dress has been delivered! Yay!**

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Hey Girl Can You Make Me Some Ruffle Britches?

Now that I have a new burlap wreath on my front door and Ugly Chair Number Two is finished I have had time to do a little sewing.  I haven't sewn anything since before Christmas and I've been going through withdrawals!  It was nice having my dining room looking like a dining room and not a sweat shop, but sacrifices have to be made for creativity!

Before I show y'all a few things I've been sewing on I have to ask if y'all have seen those hilarious "Hey Girl" sayings that are all over Pinterest?  Oh my word!  They crack me up!  Here are two of my favorites!

He is so talking to me!  Do Not walk in my dining room/sweat shop without shoes on or you will be sorry!

Seriously!  I thought my burlap wreath was awesome, but I guess I was the only one! Waaah!  :(

So anyway, a friend of mine has a precious little girl who wants some ruffle britches (ruffle britches are all the rage with little girls around here) and since she knows I like to sew she asked if I would make a few pair for her.  She bought the fabric and the notions and I did the sewing!

This Tinkerbell fabric was precious.  My friend told me her little girl put them on and wouldn't take them off at bedtime, so she let her sleep in them!

Another precious fabric choice.

There was enough of this fabric to make a cute pillowcase dress to go with the britches.

I haven't invested in personalized labels yet, so for now I just fold over a little bias tape and sew it into the waistband to indicate the back of the britches.

The third pair of britches was made with this sock monkey fabric.  I can't believe I forgot to take a picture, but here is what the fabric looks like.

This is the fabric that was sent for the ruffle.  I didn't like it.

On it's own it could be cute, but I didn't think the reds matched and the ruffle monkeys weren't even sock monkey's.

Turns out my friend wasn't so sure about the combination either.  She said the lady at the fabric store matched them up.  We decided I would just make the ruffle out of the sock monkey fabric and I'll save the other monkey fabric for something else.

My friend's little girl loves her new britches! 

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If You Give A Mama A Cup of Coffee...

If you're around young children at some point in your life you probably know the Laura Numeroff ,"If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" book, along with "If You Give A Pig A Pancake, A Moose A Muffin... etc."  If I were so inclined to write a book like that, it would be called "If You Give a Mama A Cup of Coffee".  Just like the mouse and the moose and the pig, impending doom and chaos will abound when mama's are given a cup of coffee.  I think the same can be said if you give her a telephone, a shower or a visit to the bathroom. The next sentence after "If you give a mama a cup of coffee", would be "children everywhere will come out of the woodwork!"

 Why is it that the minute you sit down at the computer with your morning coffee and attempt to check your emails, sleeping children will arise and being to crawl in your lap? Three children crawling in your lap will cause your coffee to spill all over your keyboard and desk.  Spilled coffee on your desk and keyboard will cause your keyboard to short out and the coffee to run down the walls and onto the floor.  Coffee on your keyboard and walls and floor will result in a mama jumping up and dumping children out of her lap and running to the kitchen for a dish towel.  Dumping children onto the floor will incite much crying and children shouting and blaming each other that because YOU spilled the coffee we can't play Webkinz!

After wiping up the coffee, throwing away soggy papers, scrubbing the walls and floor, drying out the keyboard and banishing the children to the kitchen with their poptarts Mama will be ready to sit down and read her emails.  While reading her emails she'll probably smell the remnants of hazelnut creamer in the carpet and if she smells the hazelnut creamer, she'll probably want a cup of coffee to go with it!

That was how my morning went and I never did get to finish my coffee. Now that the children are napping I'm tempted to put on another pot.  I'm just not sure if I should risk it though!

Ta-da! Ugly Chair No. 2 is Finished!

Just when I thought I was getting pretty good at this upholstering thing, I hit a snag with the second ugly chair.  My stapler started messing up on me and the staples were going in all wonky.  One side of the staple was in and the other was all bent up!  I was so frustrated I was about to take " Ugly Number 2" to the Goodwill and let someone else try their hand at making her pretty.  After much aggravation and staple removing, I finally got the fabric stapled on, only to realize I hadn't pulled the fabric taught in one spot on the back and there was a big pucker!  Somebody shoot me!  I had to remove half the staples from the front of the chair to get to the back so I could pull out those staples too!  I swear I never want to see another staple for the rest of my life! 

Then there was piping issues.  The cording I bought was a smidgen smaller than than what was originally on the chair and it left a gap between the cushion and the chair frame.  I went back to Hobby Lobby and the next size up was twice the size.  I bought it anyway.  I figured if that didn't work I'd just buy some black gimp (I used white on the first chair) and trim it out that way.  In the end I used both sizes of cording and I think it looks kind of cool!  And here she is!  What do you think?

I'll take some more pictures tomorrow during the daytime.  I had every light in the room on and had my son holding a shadeless lamp towards to chair just to get it this bright!

Here she is before her make over.

 And remember how Number 1 looked before the change?

Here she is today.

My two old ugly chairs aren't so ugly anymore!

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