Anyone up for an animal rescue?

I’m up to my arm pits in Diego rescue packs. I had a few orders for them in the past two days. It works out well since I prefer to work on projects together. I only have a bit of the orange fleece on hand, so it’s off to the fabric store for us! While I’m there, I have an idea for a new shirt and skirt for Bee and some patchwork shorts for Lou. I saw an outfit on a little girl at mommy- and-me this morning that gave me some great inspiration.


I made my first Diego pack for Bee during a brief phase where she loved Go Diego Go, or ‘Go Go,’ as Lou calls it. I just sort of pieced it together and it turned out pretty cute. I put them on etsy, and got a pretty good response. I finally made myself a little pattern, not something I normally do, and have been very glad that I did. It cuts down on my mess ups almost completely and they are more similar in size. Maybe I should consider patterns for other things too!

Easter shark?

Easter was a fun and busy day for us. Bee and Lou were excited to get their Easter baskets, almost as much as I was. I could not wait to see her reaction to a very special satin nightgown I made….strawberry shortcake! It even has a ruffle at the bottom and puffy sleeves like she’s been asking/begging for. Lou found a balloon ball in his basket. I didn’t make this, I bought it from a shop on etsy called SDK designs. I had one similar when I was young and was excited to see one on etsy. I love supporting handmade.

We went to church where it actually rained on stage. The roof wasn’t leaking, they made it rain in the sanctuary as a visual element to demonstrate God’s cleansing power. I am often 'critical' of things during service, I don’t mean to be. I say it’s because I grew up in the church and at some point had four parents employed in and by the church. It was everyone’s job to analyze elements of the service and work to improve those things. I admit that I pay more attention to lighting, power point slides and stage décor than I should. Regardless, it takes a lot to impress me… however, the rain… impressive. The kids wore their Easter outfits. My mom and I found Lou’s outfit at an outlet store when she was in town at the end of spring break. It’s seersucker and has a little bunny appliquéd on front. There may be one more year that I can get by with a seersucker romper for him. I wanted to make Bee a coordinating dress, but I had already purchased a dress the end of last season. I got it for about $6 and I couldn’t make one for that. Hannah carried her Vera bag from Grandma, this she calls her 'church purse.'

After a lunch of warmed leftovers and then naps, we headed off to see friends in town. My best friend from high school, Kim and hubby’s best friend from high school, Keith, live about 4 hours north, but have parents in our area. These are friends from where we grew up, 1000 miles away. We got there just in time for meal 3 of the day, Lamb. I love lamb and haven’t had any since Kim and I were in high school, maybe college, and we would go to her grandma’s farm. Kim’s grandma raised sheep, goats, and ducks and chickens. She always served lamb when we came. They had a great old farm house and had more indoor/outdoor pets than I’ve ever seen someone have. They also kept fresh eggs in their basement at ‘room temperature’ which I was always concerned about. I guess I wasn’t too concerned; I ate deviled eggs there all the time. She also made rhubarb pie a lot for us. yum.

There was an egg hunt for the kids. There were roughly 230 eggs for about 6 kids. My kids found about 16 each, guess others found a lot more. The best find of the day might have been a large shark tooth found in the front yard, partially buried. A few people seemed sure that it was a megalodon tooth, but it’s hard to say. It was heavy and larger than my hand. It was a good find for sure.

Finally we ended up at our neighbors for meal 4, fillet minion! Another delicious meal! We spent the evening with two couples from church. The kids played fantastically upstairs in the bedrooms, the men folk gathered in the living room and found something sports related on tv, and the ladies found themselves around the kitchen table with a delicious dessert and mint juleps. I think we ladies got the best end of the deal.

Our Waldorf Ways

This is our Easter season table centerpiece, a princess rock and some yellow weeds from the yard. How Waldorf of us. We’ve been sculpting with natural beeswax which we ordered from a cute etsy shop, Twinkle of my Eye (she has a great sale going on right now!). Combine that and our recent interest in wooden blocks and mermaids and we are there… Waldorf.

Actually, our increased mermaid interest has come from our recent visits to Weeki Wachee Springs park.


Bee showed some interest in mermaids around Christmas when she got the mermaid Polly Pocket. I made her a mermaid towel that she has been using after bath time. Her brother is now into mermaids as well, much to my husband’s amusement. They have a little set of mermaid stick puppets that we made on a whim a few weeks ago. When my sister was in town at the end of March we decided to make the hour drive to the mermaid show. Other than two very scary scenes, the kids loved it. After the show, they even got to meet a mermaid, Mermaid Kayla. We went back in early April to see the show again when my husband’s parents were in town. Both kids have been putting on their own mermaid shows around the house and it is the most sculpted item when we get out the play dough or modeling wax. Bee wears her mermaid towel almost every night and Lou is pretty insistent that he wants one too. I can’t sell these on my site since I copied a cute towel already listed on etsy (although I just noticed that it's no longer listed... maybe I could...). Lou has a lion towel that I made. We tell him it’s a mermaid lion. He seems ok with that.

lunch

I finished up several odds and end that have been waiting on the sewing table, some for a good while. I finished up my sister’s sandwich wrap that matched the lunch sack and snack bag that I made for her while she was in town visiting during spring break a few weeks ago. I needed a tiny bit more fabric and didn’t have any other excuses to go to the fabric store until recently.

She picked out a pretty green and cream swirly-like print and a coordinating small floral green print. I used my mesa red Vera Bradley lunch tote as a model, but made a few changes (My VB style is apparently no longer availabe, the newer style is a good bit differnt). It came together nicely, better than I thought. It’s lined on the inside with the vinyl laminate that I use for snack bags and sandwich wraps. She’s going to look super cute taking it into the teachers’ lounge at school. My mom has already requested one for mother’s day.

I also finished up an order for my old job share teaching partner from Indiana. Her son is in 2nd grade (I think… that’s so bad that I don’t know for sure…) and has been talking about earth day and eco friendly ‘stuff’ at school. The kids have become concerned about their lunch waste. My friend was very happy to tell her son that she had an idea. I got her order out right away since I knew her son was eager to start using them. I made a sandwich wrap, two snack bags, and a cloth napkin in a baseball print for her oldest son and a snack bag in a truck print for his preschool aged brother. My old partner-in-crime is sure that her MOPS group will be interested in them too. Their speaker this month talked about being ‘green.’ I have finished up all my other orders, so I am ready for more.

Apron strings

I sent out an order for an apron today. The pears and apples fabric is so cute and has been a top seller for me. I line most in pink, but have done some in brown or blue by special request. All my aprons come with a pot holder and over mitt as well as a cute cooking accessory (short wooden spoon, mini rolling pin, cookie cutters, etc). I was advertising them as little helper aprons for cooking, but have had many people tell me they use them for art. We do as well. I should offer an art accessory for those people. I think I'll stock up on water color sets when they go on sale for 75 cents in July.

The first apron I made was for Bee's second Christmas. I made a little yellow one with black bees on it. I also made a pot holder and oven mitt. We wore that apron until just this past summer when it was clear that a new apron was needed. I packed away that little paint stained apron in her box of baby treasures. We cooked and crafted together numerous times while she donned her little bee apron. Bee now has a navy apron with red white and blue flowers. It wasn't my favorite fabric, but it was one I wasn't selling much of, so poor Bee got the leftovers. Lou has an adorable baseball apron. His was an ordered one, but I felt the pocket was a bit crooked and couldn't ship it out. I made a new one for my customer and Lou got the crooked pocket apron. Someday, he will probably pull that out of his box of baby treasures and remark at what a poor seamstress I must have been. Oh well, my kids always get the prototypes or mess ups for all things Mama Bee. I'm sure the other crafters poor kids all have seconds too.

I love going to the cotton print section of the fabric store. I line my aprons with a coordinating print or solid and find most of my fabric for aprons in this section. I really like picking out custom order fabrics for people. I have a lot of fun when someone tells me what colors or theme they want and turn me loose. I usually buy several choices for them, and just use the rest for other projects. It all gets used one way or another. The kids usually claim a good bit of it too, for their projects, you know. I think they like new fabrics as much as I do.

Productive Thursday

Today was much more productive than yesterday. Perhaps the fact that we got up at 6:30 instead for yesterdays 8 am had a little something to do with it. My Thursdays are typically productive around the house since I watch a friend's daughter all day. The kids entertain themselves so well, I am able to clean the house and do some laundry or sewing. Today, our little friend was with her Aunt, who is in town on spring break.

The kids played on the floor at the clubhouse 'gym' while I ran on the treadmill. There is probably something wrong with me because I would rather run inside on the treadmill than in this mornings perfect Florida spring weather. The kids fight while sitting so close in the jogging stroller and cry to go play at the playground, it makes for an unenjoyable jog.

Lou raided his Easter basket. Things were a little quiet and I should have know that meant he had found either some candy or make-up. It was not candy, he skipped over that when he saw the rain boots! I found some super cute stride rite fireman rainboots on ebay and got them for a really good price. Bee argued that since he got something, she should too. She threw herself down on the floor in a fit when I presented her with bath confetti from her basket. So, Lou got rain boots and Bee got nothing this morning. I told her that if she is a good listener today and did not yell at me anymore, I would think about getting the bath confetti back out this evening. So far, so good. Perhaps I should have made the reward contingent on dry undies.... that seems to be an issue today.



Then we went to the farmers market. Lou wore his rain boots. I was ok with this since I have a bit of a weakness for kids who wear boots (rain or cowboy) at the wrong time, with the wrong outfit, or in the wrong season. I think it's about the cutest thing ever. You know that they really just wanted to wear their boots. We have a picture of my brother dressed up for Halloween in a cat outfit wearing his cowboy boots. Precious. I am standing next to him in a strawberry shortcake outfit my mom made, wearing appropriate footwear. Wish we still had that costume, I think I will be making one for Bee for Halloween this year. Today she said she want to be a pirate though so I will not be starting any time soon. I did not need much from the farmers market, but found several things that looked delicious. I went a little crazy on tomatoes, but I know they will get eaten. I bought all the things I need to make salsa and guacamole which I will make for dinner so we can use up the rest of the bag of our favorite tortilla chips. I used my home made produce bags, and as always, the gal took a little off my total since I did not use any plastic bags. I also found some excellent white aged sharp cheddar that Bee and I both thought was a necessity. I served it at lunch and neither kid ate any, although both said they wanted some. I gobbled up my portion as well their leftovers. It was slightly warm from sitting in the car during errands this morning and was perfect. In a moment of weakness I also bought a Belgian waffle. That will be the best $3 I spend all month. No more said on that.

Finally, this morning was topped off with a trip to my favorite fabric store, Lou still in boots. I found a nice online 40% off coupon for Joann fabrics. So combined with my mailer coupon and the one from the newspaper, I did rather well this morning. I found the cutest brown pear fabric. I will be making the sandwich wrap for the give away on my friend of friend's blog using it. I may end up making Bee a shirt with it too, it's really cute. The kids helped me pick out some fabric for an order for snack bags, sandwich wraps, and cloth napkins. I found a remnant for 89 cents to make some PJ shorts for Bee. I think they will be short, but should be fine for sleeping. I have some cowboy flannel waiting to be made in to PJ shorts for Lou as well. They should look nice with his rain boots since it looks like they will be a permanent fixture on his feet. He napped in them today and only took them off for bath after a bribe.

(That's not snow in the farmers market/rain boot picture. The produce man dumped out some ice that big piles of fresh herbs were packed in. All the kids at the market ran to the 'snow'. Poor Florida kids, they did not know the difference between that ice and snow.)

Things not done today

List of things to do today: work on a friend’s resume, wash diapers, fold laundry, wash dishes, clean kitchen, clean bathrooms, email one of the youth group girls from church some encouraging words, sew 3 sandwich wraps and 3 snack bags, and put away a huge pile of books on the floor in Bee’s room.
What actually got done: made a new muffin recipe with Lou, played with blocks, had a movie date with Bee during Lou’s nap (Curious George), made up 6 coffee cozy’s (I don’t even drink coffee), danced to Jack Johnson’s sing along and lullabies cd, chatted on the phone with my old teaching partner, and plucked my eye brows. I did dump two loads of laundry on the bed to be folded later, that sort of counts. We did all manage to get dressed and brush our teeth before lunch and did get down for naps at a decent time. It was a successful day.

A blog friend suggested I list a coupon code or some other bonus for someone who shops my etsy site and has read my blog. So, any order placed this month that mentions the code “first free stuff” in the ‘notes to seller’ section will receive a lovely free gift. It’s one of the coffee cozy’s I made today. Maybe you drink coffee.

This is serious (in my best Ming Ming voice)

I mailed out an order for a cape yesterday. I have only had two or three capes to make since Christmas, a welcome break from the crazyness of capes that was my December. Over Thanksgiving weekend alone, I had 16 cape orders. I don’t know who Isabel is, but she is turning 3 and someone who cares about her is getting her a lovely pink and purple handmade cape. She may be a super hero or a princess or even a Wonder Pet, something we play sometimes.

When I started making capes, I detested working with the slippery satin. I now have a love hate relationship with it. I don’t really dislike sewing with it since I have picked up a few tricks with pinning and ironing that have helped keep things from slipping while I am working with the satin. But more than that, I love the finished product. I think the finished capes just look so nice and polished. It is a finished product that I am proud to sew my tag onto. I have several shields available, most of which have been ideas from customers wanting custom orders. This particular satin comes in about 15 colors. Between the colors, shield styles, choice of sizes, and personalized letters, I doubt I have made two alike in the approximately 50 I have sewn in the past year 18 months. My favorite thing about the capes is the great pretend play that comes from wearing it. My own children and their friends have been numerous creative characters when they done their capes. I like when I get to be Ming Ming.