Material Madness

I've been in a sewing mood lately. Mainly out of necessity. So a lot of my fabric is out, and that means playtime to my wild ones. I don't mind, infact it's kind of neat to see what they do with it. Yesterday they were playing "beach" with some old sheer fabric. They were putting it in front of the fan and pretending it was the waves. One project that needed to be done was to reupholster our kitchen chairs. They were really stained and ripped and gross looking. The problem is the original upholstery is the same fabric as the kitchen curtains and the bench in the kitchen and upholstery fabric is super expensive! But I guess it's much cheaper than buying new chairs and curtains.

Anyway, here's the old fabric, the new fabric,and the wallpaper I needed to match it with.

Making Sarah's birthday dress...

Sarah has long legs. So long that it's always been a challenge finding dresses that will even go down to her knees. Tom and I decided long ago that if we want to have teenagers that dress modestly, we'll have to teach them when they're young. Something that's really hard to enforce when the styles of little girl dresses are these cute little short things. Every Sunday it's the same thing: Sarah gets dressed for church and when she comes out I always say, "That's too short, you'll have to wear something else." It's gotten to the point that only 1 or 2 of her dresses are long enough, so, I decided to try to make her one.

Now, I'm an extremely impatient person. I like the end result of sewing, but I don't like all the pinning and cutting and measuring. I found this pattern for something called a "pillow dress" that's super easy. I didn't even start it until about 10:00pm last night, and it was completely finished by midnight! That's the kind of sewing I like.

So, here's the finished product. Like I said, it's extremely basic, and I needed to make it longer than it's supposed to be. But, believe it or not, Sarah's knees are just above the bottom of that dress, so it's the perfect length with a little room to grow.

Pre-Mother's Day Acitivities

For a primary activity today, we framed the "Proclamation on the Family". In preparation, we bought mat boards for 8x10 pictures, and printed out the proclamation on normal sized copy paper. We invited families to come and bring pictures of themselves, and provided a table for each family with glue sticks and scissors to make a collage of their pictures on the matboard as a frame to the proclamation. It went really well. The children and parents all worked nicely together cutting out the pictures and figuring out where to place them.
After the activity, I needed to go to the grocery store. Tom being gone, I took all 4 little ones with me, something I don't usually do. When we got there, one of the ladies in the bakery came over and asked me if the children could decorate cookies for Mother's Day. Of course I said sure! They had a table set up with sugar cookies, frosting, and sprinkles. Alan, Sarah, and Kaitlyn had fun decorating them while I did a little bit of shopping. When I was done, they each had their cookies in a tiny bakery box with the writing, "Free Cookie" on it. What a nice store!(It was Publix on Milgen Road for those of you in Columbus.) Now that we're home, the kids are in a "giving spirit". I never said anything about gifts on Mother's Day, they just decided they wanted to do things on their own. They are all going around the house looking for ideas for presents that they can make for me. They were all in the play room and I was forbidden from going in. Now Alan is in the kitchen doing the dishes, and Sarah is wrapping little presents she made.
I never thought I would have much of a Mother's Day this year because Tom is in Europe, but this just might be the best Mother's Day I've had.