“Mommy, what if an hour had a hundred minutes and a dollar had sixty cents?
If a dollar had sixty cents, I’d have a lot more dollars.”
Archive for the 'kids' Category
3 buckets of water + 3 squirt guns + 3 crazy kids = 1 fun way to cool off when it’s hot outside
My girls are going to be part of a local relay race this weekend. The race has four parts: running, kayaking, biking, and a two person obstacle course. They organized a team with three friends, and I had all five girls over at the house on Friday to make team tee shirts. My dilemma was how to create a tee shirt craft for five girls, ages 7 through 10, that would result in nearly identical, great-looking shirts. Freezer paper stenciling was an ideal choice. I designed a little logo with their team name “the best girls team ever” and some icons to represent the different parts of the race. Then I printed it out and layered it over five pieces of freezer paper before cutting out the pieces with an X-acto knife. This was definitely a grown-up task, as our logo was fairly complicated. It took me most of an hour to cut out the design, and many times during the process I was grateful that I could cut all the stencils at once, rather than repeating the process five times over. I then ironed the stencils onto the backs of each shirt. The girls’ part was to paint the stencil. After the paint was dry (I couldn’t wait so I used a hair dryer to help speed the process along) we peeled off the paper, revealing the finished design. We personalized each shirt with the girl’s name and the icon for their part of the race on the front left chest.
This time with better pictures, thanks to our new camera lens.
E. hits the springboard for her vault.
A. finishes her shoot-through on the bars.
E. is fearful of beam, but she managed a little hop and made her coaches proud.
E. poses at a pause in her floor routine as her teammates and coach look on. She did awesome, and even finished the routine with her roundoff-back-handspring.
A. is caught mid-jump while performing her floor routine. Look at the height she got!
Both of the girls showed improvement in their scores, and were pleased with their performance at the meet. Our level four team finished in third place, and brought home a new trophy to display at the gym.
We had a quiet Christmas at home with the kids this year. Here are the excited kids in front of the tree on Christmas Eve.
During the afternoon on Christmas Eve, the kids and I made gingerbread man cookies.
Here, the girls are writing notes to leave for Santa along with the gingerbread man cookie. One of the notes told Santa that there was a glass of milk for him in the fridge. I guess Santa got the message, because come morning, along with stockings full of presents, the cookie was gone, and an empty milk glass stood on the counter.
Here are the lumpy, bumpy stockings after Santa filled them. Even Moose had a stocking (although I didn’t get his initial sewn on it in time) and got some tennis balls and a new leash on Christmas morning.
And, there were many presents under the tree to be opened!
One of E-boy’s gifts was a new leapster game:
E. got a new game:
And A. got a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (confession time: I probably put 950 pieces of this puzzle together…I could not walk past this on the counter without stopping to fit some together):
There were more presents opened, but after a while, I stopped taking pictures. Because, really, if you’ve seen one grinning kid tearing the paper off a gift, you’ve seen them all. I hope your Christmas was filled with grinning kids of your own!
This weekend was the first opportunity we had this year to venture up to the ski slopes as a family. It was E-boy’s very first time on skis and he had so much fun on the bunny slope. He wasn’t the least bit scared, and kept asking when he could go up the lifts. Daddy and the girls did a few runs from the top of the mountain while E-boy practiced. Since the skiing part of the skill seemed to come naturally to him, I was working with him on stopping. I think he just was having so much fun skiing fast, he didn’t want to stop. He had a great time, and can’t wait to go up to the mountain again.
Pajama-rama!
Published December 4, 2009 clothing , fabric , handmade , kids , Ottobre , Sewing , Uncategorized 5 CommentsHere’s the trio of pajamas that I just finished sewing up for E-boy. When asked which was his favorite pair, he chose the doggies. Hopefully, when I put these into his closet, I can also remove the much-loved and now-too-small Christmas Tree pajamas from last year without any complaints.
I also made some nightgowns for my girlies. This is the pattern from the latest Ottobre. The girls have decided that they like long nightgowns, they’d never had any before these ones. I still need to put some labels in to tell whose is whose, but all in good time…
The little man is getting bigger! At three-and-a-half, his size 2 undies were getting a bit snug on him. So, this week I whipped up a new set of undies in size 4. Now, the hardest decision of the day is which pair to put on in the morning.
Check out my pattern here if you’re interested in making undies for your little ones. Both boys and girls styles are included in sizes 2-4-6-8 for years of comfy and cute little tushies. Once you try them, you’ll be convinced that there’s nothing like mama-made undies.
How many striped shirts does a boy need? Apparently, five is not too many.
I sewed up this quintet of striped tees for E-Boy the other day. I got most of these wonderful striped jerseys on clearance from Chez Ami, where you have to buy a two-yard cut of each print. As I was cutting out the shirts, I realized that a toddler sized tee doesn’t make much of a dent in two yards of fabric. We may have matching shirts for years to come. Oh, yes, for those of you with a long memory, the one in front is a duplicate of one we had last year. Fortunately, I’m the only one in my house who remembers (or cares) what clothes the boy wears from one year to the next.
Here are some of the shirts I’ve been sewing for the girls this Fall. I’ve been hoarding this purple campan stripe since I bought it this spring, just waiting for long sleeve weather. The pattern is from the latest issue of Ottobre. I used knits for the butterfly applique, leaving the edges raw to roll a bit when they’re washed. The rhinestone antennae add a bit of bling, and I used a reverse coverstitch with woooly nylon for the hems (you can just see it on the sleeve in this picture). The two shirts are identical (no wonder people think my girls are twins) except for the tags; one has pink striped ribbon for a tag, the other has pink polka dot ribbon. Wouldn’t you know, the girls both wanted the one with the polka dot ribbon tag.
I love the stripe/dot combination on these tunics. I used another Ottobre pattern for these, the “strawberry tunic” from Otto 3/08. I lengthened the sleeves since I’m sewing for Fall. I also had to alter the back to have a yoke, since I was working with half-yard lengths of fabric. The girls had to flip a coin over these shirts, since they both wanted the pink/blue one. Me, I prefer the red/pink version as I had both coordinating solids for the yoke/binding.
