Why I call them my little monkeys

Because they are!!

I can't believe it's even possible for a little boy to climb up a column like this but he does. We also have wide columns (even taller!) inside the fellowship hall of our church and I've caught my boys up near the ceiling on those things, too.


Kendall doesn't quite have the same dexterity so she stays lower to the ground...right where I want her. I'm always worried someone is going to fall and crack their head open. So, no, I don't 'allow' this. I did have to get a couple pictures before I forbid it.

I do remember scaling doorways when I was a kid. And my kids do that now, too.

DH bought the kids new socks last night, short black sport socks. I'm not totally sold on them...seems kind of wrong to not be white. It just reminds me of an old man wearing black socks with sandals. DH thinks they are awesome because they won't stain like white socks do. My kids were THRILLED with their new, soft socks. Greyson invented (his word) a new game called 'Sock Sliding.' He and Kendall were running and sliding on our hard wood floors. Kendall wiped out a couple times. I told them they need to stop because I didn't have any clean clothes to wear to the ER. LOL

So, that brings me to today's monumental task....laundry! Ugg.

I Love Thee, Thread

Today was not a fun sewing day. For the most part, it was a yucky house cleaning day. I did make quite a bit of progress in the dining room. That's where we homeschool and where the kids color, draw and cut things up. Imagine bits of paper under the table and broken crayons and beads under the mule chest. And don't forget to imagine the letter A in sticker form stuck to the wall...because that's what one of my munchkins did when I wasn't watching. So it's a crafting room in addition to being a dining room. And it's a dumping ground. I sorted papers and found that we missed the deadline for our cell phone rebate. (bang head on wall!)

While I was cleaning, I made my 8 year old son come in and work on a math 'game' that we have. He sulked and moaned about it and we had a little talk about priorities...meaning I was going to take away screen priviledges so he'd have plenty of time for math! He had a hard time with multiplication so I brought out some M&Ms and we grouped them so he could see the math problem. It seemed to help and he buckled down and got the work done. When he was done, I gave a different one to my 11 year old and she did it pretty quickly.

So, that was most of the day...cleaning sorting and a bit of homeschooling. DH cleaned out our van....like a 4 hour cleaning job!! It was bad, very bad, and it was loaded with MIL's stuff that has been weighing down the back of our van for a couple weeks. He finally went through it and cleared out our van. It looks new again. :D Once we all got cleaned up, dh took us out to dinner...but first we had to stop at Joann's.


I love thread almost as much as I love fabric. A couple months ago, my handy dh hung pegboard in my sewing studio for my serger, wooly nylon & jean stitch thread. It gives me great pleasure to look at it...so organized and inviting! This picture was before I completely filled the board...so all those empty hooks are full, too.

Jo-ann's is having a 50% off sale on all their thread so I had to stock up on missing colors. I have a new thread addiction....maxi lock swirls, the varigated stuff that I use in my loopers of my serger. It's just so pretty...but who in their right mind would pay $10 a cone??? Even at 50% off, it's a whopping $5 but I just had to add 2 new colors to my collection. Today I got the loveliest orange swirl and a green swirl, too. I also stocked up on Wooly Nylon, another thread addiction. Although my love affair with wooly nylon is waning a bit....since I discovered how easily it MELTS when you iron something with a WN edge. Whoops!

Here's today's booty...



Does it look like $75.44 to you? That's 2 yards of lilac flannel, 2 yards of the lovely brown and rust flannel and a remnant of felt for Mia, in addition to the thread. More then I expected it to be when the cashier rang it up. Cha ching...it adds up fast.

The good news is that I don't think I need anymore serger thread...unless a nice soft green comes along. LOL I am lacking in regular sewing machine thread colors but that will have to wait until another 50% off sale.

After our Jo-ann's run, dh took us all out to eat at The Cheesecake Factory. He hates that place but he went because I like it and it was close to Jo-ann's. It's asking a lot of the kids for them to sit and behave for the LONG wait there but they did pretty good, not perfect but not too bad if you overlooked a few minor infractions.

Internet Addiction!

Last night a wind storm came through. It didn’t sound too bad from where I was but when I came back to the house, after working in my studio, I did notice that our Rubbermaid garbage shed was blown askew. Earlier in the day, my 3 middles wanted me to let them play with the hose so they volunteered to clean the whole thing…and they did a darn good job, using soap and washcloths in addition to the hose. Anyhow, it was all opened up after their cleaning job so I’m sure that contributed to its little flight in the backyard.

So, although our personal experience from the storm was less then blogworthy, there was another side effect……insanely slow internet service! Like slower then 1993 on dial-up. Yet, I’m so addicted to the net that I kept trying to see if it had been fixed. Nope. I even cleaned the office while waiting for pages to load ever so slowly. And I realized that I just can’t do jack without my internet service.

Here’s my high-level to-do list…

1) List (on Etsy) the new unpaper towels that I have finished over the past couple days. I was able to get all my pictures edited so this should be a relatively quick job.
2) Prepare my packages for mailing…not without paypal shipping.
3) List MIL’s old square dance outfits either on Etsy or eBay. I think most of them are over 20 years old which would meet Etsy vintage definition but there are a couple newer pieces that I’m not sure of. I’m having a hard time with the thought of selling those lovely petticoats…which is why I haven’t listed them already.
4) Download the 2nd part of my latest audiobook. This was the thing that was the most maddening to me. I’ve become accustomed to cleaning and working with listening to an audiobook. It fulfills my inner desire to multi-task during every possible moment. So, the internet being down wouldn’t have been toooo bad if I hadn’t just finished part 1 of ‘The Disappeared” and I was really getting into the story. Next time, I will download all parts at the same time.
5) List the rest of my scrapbook stuff and the remaining MIL stuff in my dining room on eBay.
6) Reply to a couple emails that I’ve been putting off.

I thought about baking something but then I would have had to pull out a cookbook and pick a random recipe without user reviews and feedback! LOL

I then thought I should see if I could find an online notice about the outage….not unless I wanted to wait 15 minutes in between each page loading! 15 minutes for google to pop up, 15 minutes for the search results, etc.

It was just maddening and further proof that yes, I am addicted to the world wide web. I rely on it for just about everything…from ordering pizza to checking our account balances.

So, you can see that I posted here. Internet is marginally better…maybe similar to my first days online…browsing bulletin boards on Prodigy on my boyfriend’s (now my dh) new home computer!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get my listings up. I’ve created a basket full of pretty unpaper towels and more are in various stages of completion. On the homefront, I’ve got homemade cinnamon rolls in the works this morning, too, and plans to tackle the massive mountain of clean clothes. . I’ve been busy washing fabric, dyeing fabric and rewashing it so our regular laundry got neglected. {{sigh}} Why did I do that to myself?? It’s so much easier to just fold it as each load completes hot from the dryer so they aren’t too wrinkled. That won’t be the case here. We will have wrinkles a plenty! And I hate ironing…unless it’s fabric or one of my creations.

Here's just a couple photos of what I've been up to lately.

Locked Out!

I headed out to my sewing studio around 9:30 last night. I had a stack of flannel unpaper towels that needed to be serged and I had some already completed ones that I need to take pics of. My oldest child joined me for a while. She played on my laptop while I worked and listened to my newest audiobook, The Disappeared...a free one I got from audible.com..it's got aliens and is set in the future, not my normal type of book. I'm not digging the narrator so it's going to be a slow 'read.'

So I was busy working and taking photos, ironing, carefully folding and then packaging up my newly listed sets. Around 1:30 a.m., my camera battery died so I decided to call it a night. I headed to the house...only to discover that I was locked out! I did have my keys when I went out to my studio. When my oldest child left, she took my keys! Thus, I was locked out.

I banged on the door a little, hoping my dh would be in the office where he could hear it. No answer so I knew he was already in bed. I debated whether I should wake the whole family up by ringing the doorbell and I initially decided not to.

I came back out to my studio and decided to just spend the night out there. I had a sleeping bag stashed in a closet and a pile of fleece fabric as a pallet and a another yard of fleece as my pillow. It wasn't too comfy so I went to the house and rang the doorbell once. No one answered the door so I resigned myself to an uncomfortable night on the floor.

My dh came looking for me around 6:15 a.m. with our toddler in his arms. I'm guessing she woke up first looking for mama. We settled into my bed and I was able to get a glorious 3.5 hour nap so I don't feel too bad.

Today's agenda is to get more photos taken, to finish up my stacks of already cut unpaper towels and to list more on my Etsy store. My first Etsy bill is due already...$12. I'm not rolling in the dough but my 8 sales covered that and then allowed me to make a couple small Etsy purchases. Not bad for using up my stash fabric!

Today I am dyeing more fabric. I really enjoy this part of creating. The results can be so unpredictable. Yesterday I had a perfect brown and my fabric was fully saturated. By the time I used my mordant and then rinsed and rewashed it, I had an amazing mottled multi-colored fabric but not brown in the least. I think this is where my lack of following the formulas exactly comes into play. I'm not heartbroken at all though...even if I didn't get the results I was aiming for.

While I was mixing up a batch of scarlet, my 5 year old daughter climbed onto the table to help me. In the process, she knocked the bucket over spilling red dye everyehere. I grabbed my white dishtowel and sopped it up trying to catch it before it dripped onto our dining room carpet. I saved the carpetbut my hands are now a lovely bright red! My oldest said she was going to call me murderer until it fades away. It does look a bit gruesome!

School's In Session

We have been winding down our summer vacation and I've been trying to wrap my mind around homeschooling 4 kids. It just seems like a monumental task. One 7th grader, one 3rd grader and my 2 newest students...my kindergartners. All while keeping my toddler out of trouble!

Today was one of those days that made me realize that will will get by just fine. We had a rare pajama day. The kids usually get dressed as soon as they get up today was an exception. But it doesn't really matter because we didn't have to go anywhere today.

I pulled my fiber reactive dyes out so that I could mix some brown to use on more flannel for cloth napkins. My 11 year old came over to help. Before I knew it, she had formulated a hands on lesson on primary colors for the younger kids. And she carried it out. I didn't prompt her or ask her. She just wanted to do it and after a bit of cajoling, the other kids wanted to participate. And they enjoyed it. And they learned a little bit, too.

A confession

This is really hard for me to admit but I feel compelled to confess a deep dark secret. There was a time, many years ago that my sewing adventures involved sewing vests from pre-printed panels. :'( I know, I know. It's just horrible! There's just no defense for it even though this was 14-15 years ago. My co-workers even paid me to sew vests for them and their family members. It was insane. There were Christmas vests and Halloween vests, Back to School vests and even a Noah's Ark vest.

This next sewing project relates to those awful, awful vests. I still have scraps of fabric in my stash from those vests, mostly the coordinating fabrics used for lining. Tonight's feature was created using the navy lining from the Noah's Ark vest that is long. long gone. As in probably in a landfill gone!

Navy background, animal print twirl skirt with brown grosgrain ribbon trim and attached korker ribbon 'bow' made from ribbon that I made. Well, I didn't make the ribbon but I wrapped it around dowels and baked it and then I heat sealed the ends.

I must say I think it turned out great! I think it's about a size 18 months, possibly 2T and I think it's destined to be sold. I'm feeling a desire to open my own cart. :-X

Sewing Fool

I have been a sewing fool lately and it just feels so good. My serger, coverstitch and sewing machines have been burning rubber. I'm motivated to actually process my 500 yards (this is a guess I have no idea how accurate it is!) of stash fabric. Today's project was unpaper towels.



The loops of the 'basket' hang over the paper towel rack...which is now empty.

There was a time not too long ago that we used more then a roll of paper towels every day. And this was a roll of Bounty, not cheapo paper towels so it was a BIG roll. The main thing was that we used a paper towel EVERY time we washed our hands. Change a diaper, wash hands, use a paper towel to dry. Rinse or wash a dish, use a paper towel to dry hands. Clean the bathroom? Use 10 paper towels. Get the picture? A lot of paper going in the garbage!

We had dish towels but we really used them for the lowest jobs...cleaning messes on the floor or big spills on the table. I think we all had a germ phobia about what that towel might have been used for. Paper just seemed cleaner.

It wasn't until after I started using cloth diapers that I started thinking about the waste of it. So I made an effort to use dishtowels for my own use. I hung a hook up high for my own dishtowel that wouldn't get used to wipe a little snotty nose and then rehung. (Who am I kidding, my kids just leave it on the floor after they use it!)

My dh has been a bit resistant about giving up paper. 1) he's a germaphobe and 2) dish towels are nothing like paper towels. Neither is flannel. It's too thick or something and just doesn't seem very absorbant to me. I made flannel dinner napkins a while back. The kids and I use them but not dh.

Anyhow, it wasn't until we inherited dh's grandmother's thin dish clothes that dh started to like using cloth. The only problem is that they are kind of big. They are very thin, similar to birdseye so I ran with that thought. Just today, I made over 40 unpaper towels that are smallish - 10 x 8 inches. I'm pretty excited! For the first time ever, we did not buy a case of paper towels when we went to Sam's. For each roll of paper towels that we don't use, that's $1 saved! This should save us almost $30 a month!! Sad, but true.

Sometimes things go horribly wrong

You reach a point where you think maybe just a little more this or a little more that and before you know it, you have something like this.....



;D ;D ;D

I can't draw worth a darn. I know it. I tried hand embroidering the face TWICE before I gave it to my 11 year old for her to try. And no, she didn't make that mess that you see above, I did! My final attempt was with the fabric markers. I just couldn't get the lips to look right and they kept growing. Then I tried a darker color to see if I could get more defined. :'(

I had to resew the whole doll, redo the hair, etc. And I was racing against the clock. I barely made it.

Here's the one that is on it's way to the birthday girl (in S Carolina so I can't hand deliver it.)



And of course NOW I notice how dusty my window sill is. :P

Along with the doll, went an outfit for the birthday girl....


Yep - leftover frog fabric from the quilt. I went out there this morning with plans to sew with 3 cute coordinating prints that I bought from Jo-ann's recently but that went out the window when I saw that the frog fabric matched the Old Navy 'blank' that I had on hand.

Oh....I guess I forgot to blog about the quilt...

I'm on a sewing roll lately. Kendall and Lily inherited a full size bed from MIL a couple months ago...well, actually we bought it from her. Anyhow, it came with....um....bedding that is...ummm....nevermind. ;) It just wasn't girly and pretty.

So, I have been scouring the stores for the perfect set. I like quilts and not puffy comforters with characters...not that we haven't had that type of bedding. Anyhow the stuff I like seemed to be the pricey stuff. But I just couldn't stomach paying $100-$200 or more.

Cleaning out my studio helped me find motivation. After lunch on Sunday, I refound a stack of coordinating frog fabric that I had bought on clearance for $1 a yard. I didn't think there was quite enough and I wanted something to pull together the fabrics so I also pulled out a faux minkee fabric (very plush and super soft) that I had bought on clearance online for $1.95 a yard. And I started cutting 8" squares and then I figured out placement.

I was able to get 98% of it done on Sunday before I went to bed. I finished the binding in about an hour today. It's 100% done on machine. I used most of the frog prints and only have enough left to piece together shams which worked out perfectly. The quilt, however, is NOT perfect. Some of the edges don't line up because the minkee was REALLY stretchy. Oops! I think that done is better then perfect though. I'm pleased that I saved money, used what I had and created something that makes my girls happy. (And it also makes my thrifty dh happy, too!)

I feel like I had a choice here and I did the right thing. I could have easily bought something that would have been 'perfect' in that the corners would have been lined up and they would perfectly coordinate with the sheets etc. But this was something that I made with my girls in mind. It also has the frog theme which is obviously an important symbol in our family.

Without further ado, here it is...

Finally...sewing time!

My past couple weeks have been consumed with estate stuff and ebay. I really haven't had any crafting time other then the midnight knit in at mny LYS and then a bit of car knitting here and there. Yesterday I forced myself out to my sewing studio. Before I could sew, I had to do some major cleaning up. There must have been more then 100 yards of fabric on the floor that used to be stacked on the bottom of a hanging rack that I borrowed for the yard sale. Luckily, my eBay selling spree opened up some closet space so I was able to find a better place for my large cuts of knits. I have an insane amount of thermal knits in cool prints that is destined to become PJs for the kids...some day before they outgrow pirates (boys) and butterflies (girls.) My kids love Hanna Andersson zipper pjs but they only go up to size 100 so I can hopefully recreate them in their sizes with some of the knits I have stashed. (which reminds me that I need to find a cheap source for long sippers.)

After the floor and my work surfaces where mostly clear, I finished Greyson's birthday shirt that I cut out on his birthday a month ago. It's a pale yellow blousy kind of collared shirt with elastic on the sleeves. He loves it and actually wore it to sleep in last night. I didn't get a picture.





My next project was turning one yard of ugly fabric into something cool. The fabric was sent to me as part of a swap on another BB. The fabric I got was an icky feeling taffeta type fabric with a strange border print running down the middle. It told me it wanted to be doll dresses...mainly because I couldn't imagine a real child wanting this fabric against the skin.

I turned it into doll dresses and I am quite pleased with the results.




There was a 3rd dress but it got melted on the bottom of my iron. Whoops! I guess it got a little too hot. Now I have a yucky iron and I haven't been able to find the hot iron cleaner locally. It's been out at my normal shopping places. (I've been looking for it to clean up my old steam press for ebay.) I have almost ordered it from ebay at least 3 different times but I just can't bear to spend $6+ on shipping for a $4 item.

More Estate Stuff & Some Homemade Goodness

We have been going through more storage unit stuff. There was some cool finds in the box of linens. A few really bright and colorful printed tablecloths from the 50s or 60s? I'm not sure how old they are. There were some hand embroidered ones and a couple fine damask linen ones. And most had matching napkins. We just don't use tablecloths so I have no use for them so they will go to eBay. I might have to keep one though...the blue and white one with cherry? blossoms.

I washed them yesterday and hung them on the line. I normally get a kick out of hanging stuff on the line but this was even exploded from that. I am 100% positive that using a clothesline works as a natural antidepressant. Especially when it's vintage linens at are dry by the time you work you way to the last one.

Another cool find.....

Vintage dishtowels that I am keeping!! Mine, mine, mine!!!

I'm massively excited about them! There are a ton of the ones with red thread 'serging' on the edges. At first I wondered if they were diaper flats but they are really long and skinny. I guess they could be. They do look like birdseye. I really think they are the 'paper towels' of the past based on the number of them. I also have 7 incredibly awesome days of the week dishtowels. These ones are a bit thicker then the red edged ones and feel like flour sack material. (I got 3 flour sacks, too!) Each day has a cool 50s? lady doing a specific chore for that day. Wednesday is knitting!

My dh is not as non-paper product friendly as I am. He is a germaphobe and he doesn't like anything that contributes extra laundry. But...he thinks these are cool and maybe he'll use them because we think they were his grandma's. They are times that I think our grandparents did things the right way and I think this is one of them. Here is my new stash of unpaper towels!

In between sorting, I found time to make 2 batches of homemade yogurt. I was experimenting and the first one didn't ever set so I did a repeat the next day with slightly better results. My first mistake was trying to add my berries to the yogurt at the front end. The second day, I had the temp in my roaster pan too high and I think I killed some of the active yogurt cultures. I was ready to give up on that batch, too. I accidently left the roaster on all night and when I went to dump it, I had yogurt! I have been assured by a yogurt 'expert' that I won't kill the family with it. On the contrary, the yogurt I made can be eaten by someone with lactose intolerance because of the extra 'cooking' time.

I also made a batch of homemade granola using this recipe.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Megans-Granola/Detail.aspx

As far as eBay goes, I now have 51 auctions up. Two auctions sold already. If everything sold sold with the bids, it would be almost $70. I have a ton of watchers in the wings so I think that number will go up, up, up.

I have a ton more to list. Yesterday's load included some fine china, correlle and a neat pyrex dish. I also have 4 square dance petticoats and square costumes to list. Kendall has had a lot of fun with the petticoats even though they are for a full size woman! The elastic could be cinched for a child though. I think we might have to keep one for dress-up.