my pink life, mi vida rosada

Summer. Spending lots of time with the munchkins. Super slow progress on the creating.  But yes, progress. My plans to get all the things done last week in my few precious hours of alone time at the house were met with small obstacles....some overcome, some thwarted. I successfully embroidered Miss Middle's name on her new lunchbox. I also finished making her a sweet little dress, using up a piece of double gauze leftover from making the "baby" swaddle blankets before he was born.  Again, thanks to my sister for the assist with button holes, since my machine won't do them. And today I finished up a nap mat for the "baby," since he will be heading to day care in the fall.  For both the dress and the nap mat, I was able to use fabrics (and notions!) that have been in my stash.  It doesn't stop feeling satisfying to use up things that have been sitting around waiting to be used.  For the dress, of course, it was the leftover gauze, combined wi...

It's a lot of stop and start around here....fits and bursts, and not a lot of anything complete. It's also one of my two weeks this summer where I have a few mornings to myself with no one else in my house!!!  This is, perhaps, more exciting to me than it should be. Sweet hubby is making progress in his recovery from the acute back pain associated with his degenerated disc.  He continues to attend physical therapy and to do all sorts of recommended stretched throughout the day.  He and our two oldest are participating in VBS this week, and the "baby" is attending "camp" at his nursery school....and I am trying to make progress on the get-it-done list. I will have a total of three mornings to myself this week.  Each morning is approximately 2.5 hours long. It's not a lot of time. But it is SOME time, and that is more than I usually have. So today, I finished hemming the re-make of the white dress.  It's not perfect, I'm not sure I'll w...

So, not too much to report, since the last getting it done update was only two days ago.... But I've got two new baby bubbles for my "baby".  He might be getting big, but until he can really talk....I'm going to pretend.  And the best way to pretend is to dress him like he's a baby, in a summer bubble. So I put together a quick pattern by tracing a bubble that was already in his closet.  As I worked on the first one, I jotted down measurements for elastics, straps, and the order of steps.  The first one took me about 4.5 hours; the second only took 3.  Clearly I'm not the quickest maker -- but that's ok, since I'm still getting it done, and I'm still satisfied with the results. Both of these bubbles were also satisfying (as was the elephant dress ) because they used up a few things from my stash.  I bought zero supplies specifically for these projects -- I just used things I already had on hand -- making these "free." The f...

Well, I've set aside one project that grew beyond what I had originally planned (cutting a dress shorter, hemming it as a tank top somehow turned into taking the dress apart and remaking it, but longer, and also reclaiming most of the original dress fabric as a tank).  Hopefully by the time I tackle a few more of the pending projects on the project board, I will have a better idea of how to proceed, whether that is re-assembling the parts I already deconstructed or proceeding with the plan to remake the dress, but longer, and also some kind of top, or just remake the dress, and re-claim the original dress fabric for something different. In the meantime, sweet hubby, now about 85% recuperated from his recent back pain episode, allowed me ample time in the sewing room over the past few days.  I completed a set of towels for a wedding gift (I added the monogram). I added some embellishment to Miss Middle's pinafore.  She received this as a hand-me-down from a family...

The frog quilt is done!  It's done!  It really is! I am so happy that I decided to go ahead and send it off to the friend-of-a-friend long-arm-quilter.  My skill level is nowhere near capable of quilting these lovely, free-hand, loopy all-over flowers. In fact, my skill level would have made for some very messy stitch-in-the-ditch trying to follow the diagonal lines of the quilt top -- nothing near as beautiful as what this long-arm expert came up with.  I was not originally planning to put this quilt on my own bed.  In fact, I believe that some 15 or 17 years ago, when this quilt was first started, that perhaps I promised it to my mom as a gift?  But of course, that didn't materialize back then....and as uncertain as I am that it is to my own taste, I am even more certain that it isn't to her taste (other than the fact that I made it -- she is so lovely a mom that she would oooh and aaaahhh just to make me feel good about it, even if she didn't r...

So sweet hubby is still mostly in bed. The kids are mostly out of school. My house is mostly a disastrous mess. The loaner washer-dryer will be ours forever, so very soon (this evening, I suspect) I will start to put the laundry room back together again. And once all the laundry room stuff is back in the laundry room, I'll start to clean up/out the kitchen and dining room. And once the dining room table is cleared off, I will finally wash the table cloth from valentines day. And then the rest of the bed sheets. And then, of course, more clothes. Peanut has her last (half) day of school on Tuesday.  I am looking forward to the kids not waking up quite so early, although I think it will be hard to maintain early early bedtimes if they aren't waking up as early every morning. Sweet hubby finally has a diagnosis for his mysterious and sporadic back pain -- a degenerated disc.  We learned on Friday that he can "look forward" to unpredictable, intermittent...