I can’t stop making skirts. I made this one a little shorter than the last.  I started sewing late and ended up with the kids asleep in their sleeping bags, not far from the machine.  I am a little bit in love with this mod, floral fabric from JoAnn’s.

I have finally taken enough sewing classes that I am feeling more confident with my sewing machine.  I love this simple pattern from Oliver + S.  The pattern, Lazy Days Skirt, is a freebie from their blog. I am going to make a bunch of these for the girls for summer and school in the fall, when it will still be so hot here. There is an awesome flickr group of pictures of pieces people have made with Oliver + S patterns.  The group is great to look through for inspiration.

Here it is!  I made this yesterday in my sewing class.  Melissa Morgan taught this class at the Stitch Lab.  The class format if very relaxed and easy.  Because there are only a few people in each class, every skill level can work at their own pace.  I really enjoyed having Melissa as a teacher.  She is also teaching some other great classes including, baby overalls, ring slings, pocket slings, and some great sewing classes for kids. Check out the schedule here.

(E’s awesome matching sandals are from Target.  She calls them her “rainbow sandals.”)

Tomorrow, I go to the Girl’s Pillowcase Style Dress class at the Stitch Lab.  I would love to be able make dresses for C & E.  While I know they will probably protest dress wearing, sometimes I am able to coax them into one for special occasions.  I am hoping this cute apple and pear fabric from JoAnn’s will be appealing enough to entice them into putting them on.  I also want to make one for my cousin’s daughter D, who is seven months old.   When I saw this red, nursery rhyme toile, I thought of her.  I am sure that the sweet folks at Stitch Lab will be able to remind me how to use my sewing machine, because it has been a long time!

Who could resist this giant jar of craft beads? The kids have been playing with them, as well as using them for crafts. The beads are good for measuring, pouring, scooping, counting, stringing, and gluing. They are also small enough that if the odd bead gets popped into the mouth of a passing toddler, mamalibrarian might just turn her head the other way and pretend she didn’t see anything. Mostly because any more calls to the Poison Control are no doubt going to warrant some kind of uniformed personnel showing up at the door.

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Anyway, we embarked on the bead melting project one afternoon, when I was trying to keep everyone calm. It took a long time and a lot of dexterity to get the beads placed on the melting peg boards. (also from IKEA) The only instructions showed a woman with an iron and a piece of wax paper, so I had to wing it. I just set the iron to low and placed the wax paper on top of the beaded board. It took at least 2 or 3 minutes of the iron resting on top of the wax paper and beads to get them to fuse together. Then we let them cool, pulled off the wax paper, and removed them from boards.



I also picked up this cute hippo? fabric. With IKEA, you just never can quite tell what the animal is exactly. Flodhäst is what we are calling it. I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. It is a little stiff feeling for clothes, but a little A-line jumper experiment would be awfully cute. In case you are in need of a chart with the translation of hippopotamus in many different languages, here is a link.



And for my friends Average Jane Crafter and Haiku Mama, I grabbed these market totes. I am anxious to see what kind of crafty gear Average Jane Crafter puts in hers.

Look what I found on the way home today at a roadside tent! I stopped at the corner of Stassney and 1st, right by our favorite chicken place, El Regio. It was just too cute to pass up for E, and it was only $12.
I would love to be able to make this kind of simple dress with embroidery for C. and E. I am hoping I can copy some of the embroidery for other projects. I would have gotten a dress or a blouse for myself, but they only had kid sizes available. I’ll have to keep looking. I did find a link to a site that has a pattern for a traditional Mexican dress. The Mexican Dress has a downloadable pattern for $5. Dare I attempt this? I’ll have to add it to the list.
Here is a picture of my unwilling model.

For the first day of summer, the kids hung out in their pjs with some wax lips! (see flickr photo)

And obviously, a first blog post for me and for my son! We are both still working out the kinks.

Lasts
The month started off with my son H’s last day of 2nd grade. We marked the occasion by visiting a new candy store in town called Big Top. H and C chose large, rainbow lollipops, Bubble Tape gum, and wax lips. As a mother you sort of feel like they should be handing out toothbrushes at the door, but I tried not to be “no-fun mommy” on the last day of school, so I kept quiet. After all, it was my idea.

I helped my parents move into their new house. While the old house wasn’t the house I grew up in, it was the house I brought H to when he was only three weeks old. We all had things that we would and would not miss about the house “in the country,” and we were thinking about them on the last day in the old house.

We’ll be missing:
The quiet – At night especially, it is what made living in the city so shocking for me.

The seclusion – Where else can you sit out in a lawn chair half dressed and eat a popsicle? (Both my parents might add to this, where else can you have a corvette with a huge engine that will not disturb the neighbors, but that is a whole other argument.)

The wildlife – Never a dull moment, there were giant pigs loose, wild turkeys, herds of cattle, gophers, wild hogs, deer, turtles, and armadillos.

We sure won’t be missing:
The snakes-a special thanks to the neighbors’ cats for keeping them somewhat at bay. The cats and a good hoe go a long way.

The drive-twenty minutes doesn’t seem like a long time, but if you have three kids in the car, it can be an eternity. No pizza delivery, no quick trip to the store, no let’s go rent a movie.

I have to throw in scorpions falling from the ceiling. Although this only happened a couple of times, it was enough to make me look up at the ceiling all the time.

And finally, my mom announced her last day of work. While she is young to retire, we are all looking forward to what the next stage holds for the grandma, librarian, mom- extraordinaire.