co-op preschool

Tuesday is preschool day. We are involved in a co-op preschool, and it has been exactly what I was looking for in a preschool and exactly the teaching outlet I need (almost- there's a bit too many pee accidents to be the ideal teaching environment). Last summer another teacher mom and I were trying to decide what to do with our kids for this school year as far as preschool was concerned. I toured four schools but wasn’t interested in paying for something that I was pretty sure I could do myself… I just needed other kids. We asked around at church and found a total of 7 kids who would like to be in our co-op preschool. Miss Sarah and I take turns teaching and another mom rotates in as a helper. Someone brings snacks each time. We have had themes for each week with a color, a letter, a shape, or a number as a focus as well. I wanted a preschool that was a lot Montessori, a tad Waldorf, and a bit traditional (since all of these little ones will be going to public school anyway) and found I had to start is myself. Our church lets us meet there, but we can’t call ourselves a preschool or say we are affiliated with them. We meet only 2 hours, one day a week. On another day of the week, we have another one of the moms teach dance class. We did consider hosting co-op preschool at our houses, but decided the cur ch was a more central location and had a nice fenced in playground. They let us have two shelves in the closet and we were set!

Today was a pretty typical day. The theme was forest, the letter(s) were ‘sh’, and the number was 17. We painted hand print forests, played with the forest scene on our felt board, rode bikes, counted out 17 of different items, had snack, had our old lady eat –sh words (sort of like the old lady that ate the fly), and made hand print baa, baa, black ‘sh’eep. Bee and I taught the other kids some signs for forest animals. We danced to our CD (it has Jim Gill, Laurie Bernker, Dr. Jean, Kids in Motion, and a few others) and did some finger plays, felt board poems, and acted out a forest animal skit.

Here are some of my favorite links for ideas for preschool. I often change the animals in the poems to whatever our theme is for that week. I springboard a lot too, I see a craft and then use some of the ideas to form something different. can teach, everything preschool, DLTK, kids crafts, Kaboose, idea box, preschool education, Gayle's, toddler toddler, AHK

"arrrr!" said my pirate

I have a new item! Last night I finally made up a clear snack bag. I have been thinking about a way to make a clear bag, or maybe one with a window so that we could see what is in each snack bag. I had about 5 yards of clear vinyl left over from a project I never got to about 3 years ago. Perfect! On my way up to bed, I passed the vinyl lying out on my sewing table, and had an idea. I sewed up the vinyl as I would have a normal sandwich bag, then I added confetti and glitter and colored Velcro. They turned out super cute. The best part might have been that they took a fraction of the time as a regular snack bag.


This morning, the kids and I took a trip to the fabric store for some other items and found some cute pirate and fairy stickers, perfect to go inside a clear snack bag. The fun items are sewn in between two layers of vinyl so there is no fear of the items being eaten or getting cracker crumbed. I know I have some confetti with Bee’s name left over from her birthday party last year, and I am now trying to hunt it down. Lou has been carrying his around saying "Arrrr!"

giveaway- it's my turn

I forgot this weekend to post my giveaway. Between a sick family and and a birthday this weekend, my mind was elsewhere. Here is is. I have a purple owl sandwich wrap ready for a new home. Here's how to win this handy wrap, just leave a comment here and I will figure out how to use that random selection tool. If not, my kids will draw a name out of a hat :) Make sure and leave your email address unless you are clickable. Then, I'll contact the winner. I will ship anywhere (even the UK, which I now know the location of). This giveaway ends Tuesday, May 5th. Feel free to visit my shop, Mama Bee Designs to see more about my wraps, snack bags, and other goodies.





Mrs. Cline's giveaway ends today, so you still have a little time.

a cough and a sneeze

The sick bug has come to our house! I am the only healthy one and keeping my fingers crossed. I was up all night with Lou on Wednesday and then Thursday we both felt pretty bad. I was better by Friday, although both kids woke up Friday with crusty faces…. Nice. This morning Lou woke up with gunk in his eyes. I thought it was probably nothing, until after we infected the entire church nursery with what has turned out to be a pretty nasty case of puffy yucky eyes. We will be heading to the doctor first thing in the morning. Hubby came home from volunteering with the youth group saying he was probably going to call in tomorrow, he’s not feeling well now either. This should make for a fun week.

I’ve been sneaking elderberry into smoothies and tea all weekend, have vaporizers going in the bedrooms, and made sure we got some nice salty air at the beach on Saturday. We went to our favorite beach spot, Honeymoon Island. We went with friends and watched two strangers get married on the beach. Bee was excited to see them kiss. Surprisingly, Lou fell asleep about 10:30 in the morning, while we were beaching... guess that was a sign of the sickness to come.

These pictures aren’t from this weekend, they are from a few weeks ago. But, they are from our favorite beach spot.

happy birthday daddy

Friday was hubby’s birthday. He took the day off of work and we really had a nice day riding bikes, going to the park and seeing friends. I made his favorite strawberry pretzel dessert. I don’t know what it is about this dessert, but boys especially seem to like it. It might be why he married me. Luckily, our friends ate so much pizza tonight, that not everyone had dessert. We have a lot of leftovers!
This is one of my mom’s favorite desserts to make, I do not know where she got it, but I do remember it was for special occasions or special company. It takes a good deal of preparation and the construction should not be rushed or you will get runny results (as I sort of did today).

1st layer/bottom:
2 2/3 c. crushed pretzels
½ c melted butter
melt butter, add pretzels, mix well. Bake at 375 for 10 min. Cool well.
2nd layer:
8 oz cream cheese (room temp)
1 small tub whip cream (room temp)
2/3 c sugar
Blend well, top pretzel layer and let set up in fridge
3rd layer/top:
1 large or 2 small boxes of strawberry jello
2 c. water
2 bags of frozen strawberries (I like to slightly smash one of the bags)
-boil water and add jello. Pour into bowl with frozen strawberries. Let sit for a few minutes and then add to top of dessert. Let set up in fridge for several hours, overnight if possible.

international superstar?

International superstar… well maybe that’s a bit much, but Mama Bee Designs is going international. I have had several sales to individuals in Mexico, Canada, and a handful to the UK (which I am not even sure where/what that is… I even have a concentration area in social studies with my elementary education degree- I won’t name the name of my university!), but I have had a wholesale order from a place in Mexico. They will then sell my item at their shop/eatery and hopefully make a profit for themselves as well. They are selling my coffee cozies, and since I use leftover scraps to make them, I will be making a profit even selling it at a wholesale price. They are located in Mexico City. I asked if they knew my brother and his wife but they did not (really? there are only like a billion people in Mexico City...). Kelly and David live outside of Mexico City and Kelly works in Mexico City. I told her about Kelly’s job and she thought that sounded super interesting since she herself speaks Spanish, English, and Korean, the three main languages spoken at Kelly’s school. Kelly writes a great blog about their time in Mexico called Southern Hospitality. So if you happen to be in Mexico City you should stop by the Bruno Tavern and show the Mama Bee merchandise a little love. You might even want to mention how you wish they carried other items from this up-and-coming American crafter.

Just like the locals

We enjoyed one of our favorite Florida meals this evening, Tampa Cubans. This was a new meal to us when we moved to Florida two years ago. The Cuban sandwich is supposed to have been invented in Tampa. The recipe, or more really the order of ingredients is strict. You must have Cuban bread (long bread like a French loaf) sliced lengthwise and order the sandwich the following way: bottom cut of cuban bread, thinly sliced deli ham, shredded roasted pork (cooked in orange juice), swiss cheese slices, dill pickle sandwich slices, yellow mustard, and top of bread. These are then cut in about 6 inch segments and pressed and grilled. We have had them at several restaurants, but honestly our favorites come from the liquor store. I have never been in to pick them up, so I don’t even know if they have a kitchen, or how they prepare them in the liquor store, but they really are good. I sometimes get free Cuban bread a the farmers market so I decided to try to make them myself. They are lengthy to make, and pretty messy to make, but very much worth it. I press them in the George Forman grill, which I have read is not very authentic, but it gives the same result in my opinion.




While I am mentioning our favorite Cuban sandwich, I want to mention our favorite Cuban restaurant. Our favorite place for Cuban food is this whole in the wall restaurant in Oldsmar called Andy’s On The Bay. It is a bit like the soup restaurant on Seinfeld. It’s small, it’s popular, there is a line, the staff is serious, and you better be ready to order when it’s your turn. They have a daily menu that changes, but they always serve shredded pork and black beans and ‘special’ rice. To my best guess, the special rice is a yellow saffron style rice. They have a long counter you stand in line by and order from and you can see all of the food. The pork roast that they pull your meat from does not look like a lean cut, but it is worth an occasional indulgence.

How funny- I just went to look up Andy’s to see if they had a web site, they do not, but one of the comments on this site also compares them to the Soup nazi from Seinfield.

A little gift for Earth Day

No, I did not find another excuse to give my children a gift…. I am involved in a giveaway on another site. A friend of a friend has a blog with more than three readers (thanks for being loyal Grandma, Kelly and Christina) and does occasional giveaways. So I sent her the cutest brown pear sandwich wrap and she is featuring it on her blog.

She wrote about how lovely it is and how much mother earth hearts my sandwich wraps. Then she sends her readers over to my etsy shop and maybe my blog and then has them comment on her blog about what they are doing to celebrate earth day. A winner is drawn randomly from the comments and that person is sent the giveaway item. So, head on over to visit Mrs. Cline and leave a comment to have a chance to win the sandwich wrap. Her contest is over the 28th. I am doing a give-away of my own this weekend on my own blog, so make sure you come back for that too. Also, I have a coupon code for all April orders for a free gift back on April 8th.

What's that smell?

My house smells great, thanks to our kind neighbor. The kids were out playing ‘mermaid show’ in the yard this evening when Bee spied our neighbor cutting flowers. Bee is too friendly with people and before I knew it she had acquired several gardenias. Who was I to argue, they were very nice and I really did want them. We brought them in and spread them around the house. One little bloom is enough to give a whole room fragrance. I am going to have to get a gardenia plant some day, boy do they smell great! I put the blooms in little shot glasses which is funny because they have only ever been used by our house for flowers. Maybe my grandma will know more about them, but I picked out several little shot glasses out of my great grandma’s things. My grandma was getting rid of some of my great grandma’s things about the same time that I was moving into my first apartment. I don’t remember any stories about anyone in the family doing any drinking; they probably just used them for flowers too.


I asked my hubby if he liked the smell and he said he couldn't even smell them. I told them that he wouldn't mind then if I planted a gardenia of mine own then.

Lame or not

Whether the shorts from yesterday were lame or not, Lou wore them today. We had dance class this morning. I figured what better place for a little guy to wear possibly lame shorts, than an all girls dance class… where my son dances. He did not start out in dance class when it started in January, but he just wanted to dance. We didn’t let him join officially until a few weeks ago and he is doing wonderfully. His sister is not very happy about it, but does not complain once we get there. This dance class is kind of part of our co-op preschool. The moms all wanted their daughters in some type of dance or gymnastics and one of the moms agreed to teach dance once a week to the girls from our preschool.

I was able to have Bee try on the black shirt that goes with the bird skirt. I put some elastic in the sleeves and up both sides and it gives it a bit more personality than a regular t-shirt. I am mostly happy with how it turned out. I love the skirt so much that I really may make myself something from it… as soon as I learn to make something that does not involve an elastic waist band.

I thought it was cool, maybe it's lame

I was not working on Diego bags this evening as I had planned. The fabric I bought yesterday finally came out of the laundry and I could not wait to get started. Now, I think I may have wasted a few hours... I have been seeing lots of little boys wearing cute patchwork shorts. Lou is not in need of any shorts, so I couldn’t see any reason to buy a pair when I could make a pair. Also, I had two little button up shirts that he had grown out of that I really wanted to use in a project. I spent way too much time making the patchwork fabric to cut into the shorts. I have the shorts done, but now I think they look more like hobo shorts, than the cute little patchwork shorts that I keep seeing. I think the patches should have been smaller. Lou liked them, I am indifferent, Hubby thinks they are a little lame. He did say that if Lou likes them, that is all that matters… he’s only 1, he can probably pull it off.

I also made a skirt for Bee. I have been trying to think of a project to do with this adorable yellow bird fabric. I am pleased with the skirt, and think I might like one for myself! I should have though ahead for the shirt, I found it more difficult than I would have guessed to find a black top. I had to get a boys black t-shirt. Tomorrow when I try it on her, I may be able to do some altering to it to make it less t-shirty. I thought I’d leave it for the night, I tend to mess things up if I keep going.

Bee's sweet deal

The kids were sent $5 each for ice-cream in their Easter cards from my grandma. This afternoon Lou did not take a nap. I knew it was going to be a rather long afternoon, so I said we should go ahead and buy our treats. Lou immediately said “pretzel” our favorite mall treat. Bee then remembered that the smoothie place was right next door to the mall and said that sounded really good. I explained that her money could either buy ice-cream or a smoothie and pretzel, but not all three. I wanted to make sure that she knew if she got the smoothie and pretzel, there was no money left for ice-cream. That didn’t sit well with her. Lou was certain he wanted pretzel and smoothie, Bee decided on ice-cream. Then she looked at me and said, “Maybe you could find some coupons.” About three minutes and three quick online searches, we had a coupon for each of the stores we needed. Lou had a buy one get one free for the smoothie place and a buy one get one free for the pretzel place. Bee had a $1 off for the ice-cream shop. My smart girl knew what to do to make her money go farther!

To sweeten the deal, when we were at the smoothie place, they messed up our order and ended up giving us 2 medium smoothies instead of 2 smalls. We had our coupon, so we got 2 medium smoothies for the price of one small. There was so much smoothie to be had, I asked for an extra cup and Lou and Bee split the medium. I enjoyed the other. At the pretzel place we used our coupon and got two pretzels for the price of one plain. Bee, Lou and I all enjoyed pretzel. Bee still had all of her ice-cream money and had enjoyed the same snack as everyone else.

This evening we went to a local music street festival. She was pretty excited that there was still money in her envelope for another treat. I was trying to put her off another day since we had treated ourselves enough for one day, but frankly- this savvy shopper earned her treat. With her coupon, she had enough to get ice-cream for herself and one for Lou, with $ 1 left.

On our way back to the car, with dollar in hand, she spied a fairy halo with ribbons and flowy tule at a vendors table. She asked the lady how much they were and was told $2. She looked at her dollar and back to the lady and said that she only had one dollar. The nice lady told her they were on sale for $1 today and she could have whichever one she wanted. Bee made out like a bandit today. That’s the farthest I’ve seen $5 go. Maybe she should take over grocery shopping for me!

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.