my pink life, mi vida rosada

 The kids are back at school, and I'm finally finding time to tackle long-listed items on the to-do list and also to avoid some of them, still.   The house is clean (not just tidied, actually clean!) and the laundry is ready to put in the drawers and there is a loaf of zucchini bread cooling for later.  There has not been a lot of "making" this summer.  In fact, there has been almost zero.  As soon as the kids started summer vacation, the project room became a dumping grounds for all of the things I couldn't/wouldn't take care of with the kids around or because I was too exhausted from caring for the kids all day.  The girls each took a turn going to sleep away summer camp.  They LOVED it; they are each begging to return for a longer session next summer. (Miss Middle will get her wish; Peanut will have to wait one more summer so that I'll have the convenience of not giving up 8 weeks of summer to having one child at camp! Both will attend a 3 week...

 Well, life.  It continues on.   The goods, the bads, the highs, the lows: they all keep coming.  There has been some good progress on my make 9 goals for the year.   There has been some progress on using previously acquired fabric.  There has been some fabric shopping, too, although I did make it two months with my only fabric purchase being specifically for a ring bear outfit for my "baby."   Ready for a photo dump?  Here it comes! Flower girl dresses, Geranium pattern by Made-by-Rae fit check, upcycle from a house-coat, Geranium pattern by Rae Hoekstra Another fit check, Geranium  upcycle bow tie (I'll have to look for the pattern) face mask self drafted baby bubble, back self drafted baby bubble, front "Mimi's boy" suspender shorts, Sewing for Boys  book Jade and Flashback Skinny Tee s "Mimi's Boy" suspender shorts, Sewing for Boys  book Biography day costume, to be Maria Mitchell, first woman to see a comet, cir...

 Well.  What a season. Christmas has come and gone, the New Year is well underway, and I'm only just now settling in to cleaning up and cleaning out and declaring the intentions for the new year. Make no mistake, I'm working on the intentions already....just taking my time to really clarify what, exactly, it is that I'm trying to work towards this year.  In the project realm, that includes updating my "Make-Nine" list -- nine projects to focus on for the year. In 2021, I accomplished 7 of the 9, which included the extremely large project of reupholstering a love seat that we inherited from my Grandmother.  Please enjoy the before (yellow) and after (teal).  It was a big project, it is not perfect, but it is DONE.  Will it survive another 50 years of constant use?  Probably not.  But is sure looks nicer in my living room now than it did before! Over the past several years, I've worked hard to finish up long abandoned projects. In 2021, I carted aro...

 Well, I guess it's been a minute.... School has started, routines are forming, Covid numbers are falling (and hopefully continuing to decline? Or at least stay lower for a good long while?).... Here's life around here, lately: The girls are back in school full time.  We were planning to go back to public this year, but in our lovely red state that disallowed mask mandates, we were having a hard time feeling comfortable with the Covid risks and lack of school based precautions.  Very last minute, we enquired about space/possibility of the girls attending a private school, and very last minute, that became our plan.  The girls are VERY happy to be in the classroom with non-mom teachers, peers, friends to play with, "specials" throughout the day....They don't mind wearing their masks all the time indoors, eating lunch and snacks outdoors, and one has even survived a week of "connected learning" when a classmate tested positive.   "The baby" start...

 Summer is on the way out (just the vacation part, not the weather) and we are making plans for our children to return to in-person school, even though our state has a law disallowing schools to mandate mask wearing and the children are all too young currently to be vaccinated against Covid-19.   Hubby and I are still caught up in a cycle of miscommunication, too-high expectations of each other, misunderstandings, and on and on, and it is exhausting.  I'm doing my best to let his unawareness (or un-caring-ness?) of the ways that his actions and words affect me roll off of me and not affect my interactions with our children, or my parents, or my siblings, or my friends...but it is hard, and an uphill battle.  I'm scheduled to see a therapist (new to me, we'll see if she is a good fit) in a couple of weeks, and I'm very hopeful that I will learn some new communication techniques and see our situation more clearly over time.   I'm scheduled for a medical ...

 Today is the anniversary of my husband's mom's death.   My mother in law's death.  My children's grandmother's death. This year (plus some) has been a very difficult year, punctuated by difficult emotions, fights with my husband, lots of sadness, and a few really high highlights (usually totally unrelated to all of the difficult emotions, fights with my husband, and sadness).  Briefly, this morning, we mentioned (I mentioned?) to the children that today is the anniversary of Mimi's death.  My five year old: "What is an anniversary?" Later this afternoon, we'll tell stories about Mimi to help them remember her, even though they spent very little time with her.  They were 6, 4, and 2 when she went to heaven, and our visits to Chile and her visits to us here were few.   I have wondered, too many times to count, over the course of the past year (plus some), whether the difficulty, and sadness, and fighting were a poor expression of our grief....

 The month is off to a hopeful end, for me.   We had a *mostly* stress free family photo session with our long-time family photographer, this time in a blooming peach orchard.  I've only seen a few sneak peeks so far, but I'm always impressed with the shots our photographer captures.  I managed to finish sewing the girls' dresses and an outfit for myself, too!  I decided that "the baby" should wear a nicer shirt than the tee I sewed for him, so bought him a snazzy little button down.  I swear he looks older than 3 in the pictures...maybe I need to put him back in jon jons and rompers for another summer (ha!  he probably wouldn't let me this summer, even though last summer he only wanted to wear bubbles!).  Each of these dresses has a sash that matches the collar/cuff fabric, also. And of course, there is lots of mess in the background.   My top matched the Peanut; my skirt matched Miss Middle. Hubby and I took a weekend away to cele...

 I almost made an "Ides of March" joke/title, but (crossing my fingers I don't jinx it) so far, March is looking better than February.  I mean, we are here in something like 3rd winter/beginning of the pollen season, which also means the weather is super unpredictable and gives me sleeping trouble and headaches, but all things considered.... Sweet hubby and I took the kids to the beach to meet up with a couple of Chilean friends (who currently live and work in the US) who have been very Covid-cautious for a long weekend.  IT WAS SO GOOD.  Y'all, I remember how excited I was to add each family member back into our bubble almost a year ago....and this?  This was even better.  I guess the amount of time that has gone by, combined with being their VERY FIRST bubble expansion....It was very meaningful.  We stayed up late, ate Chilean food, and spoke in Spanish.  It was an amazing experience for my kids, who haven't visited Chile in almost 4 years now (...

 Onward!  This new month is bringing with it some warmer weather, flowers blooming in the yard (daffodils and camellias, and they are so, so welcome!), and the promise of renewal that spring seems to bring with it.   My husband has gotten his first Covid vaccine shot, and I am so grateful for that, too.  There seems to be great progress towards returning to a life that is lived more outside of a bubble, and the promise of being able to reconnect with friends and extended family is providing some much needed hope and enthusiasm.  The Easter bunny has been working diligently behind the scenes, and purchasing treats and toys to fill three little people's baskets at my house.  The other day, I sent my husband to pick up a pair of target orders. The next morning, I had an email from Target saying that my items were being put back on the shelf since I hadn't picked them up in time....except the items were already in my house, some in use.  I called the ...

 Well.  Here we are.  Only a couple more days and this (LOOOOONG) short month will be over.  Some good, some not good.... Anyone else find themselves struggling with the fact that we've been readjusting our lives to Covid-19 for nearly a year?  I think that is the wall that I'm facing -- but it could just be other things. Or the other things might just seem harder because we're nearing the one year mark of life being turned upside down, and so much of that trauma is still unresolved.  (If you didn't experience some kind of trauma when the world shut down due to Covid-19, congratulations!  Three days before schools went "virtual" here, my husband and I made a very last minute decision that he should fly to Chile the next day, to spend time with his mother, who was in the hospital, leaving the states before the airlines/airports shut down.  We predicted this accurately, and by the end of that weekend, he would not have been able to get into Chile....

 This month feels like it is going ON and ON and ON.  I guess 31 days in a single month can make it feel like the month will never end.   It's not a terrible month....it just....it feels like we aren't really getting anywhere.  I keep teaching my kids, we keep doing our "normal" routine of which books we work in and what subjects we study and where and how much we play outside....and the days, they all feel like more of the same.  I start each day calm, and quietly giving directions, and about two hours later all thoughts and feelings that "homeschooling is working for us, this is fine, I could totally keep doing this for another year" fall away and are replaced by feelings of anger and frustration and OMG could my kid please just listen to me ONE TIME and do what I ask her to do ONE TIME without me having to raise my voice? Well.  So that's how homeschooling is going. The homeschooling blogs and facebook groups all seem to agree that this is a tough t...

 Welp, we're back from the beach.  Hubby is out of travel related quarantine. The kids are overjoyed to be back with him.  I'm glad to be back home with him too, but probably overthinking every single thing, as I was when we were together before his trip.  We haven't had any of the tough conversations that we probably need to have, partially because it has only been a couple of days that we've been back under the same roof, and partially because it is no fun to have tough conversations, and I seem to avoid them at all costs. (Current cost appears to be my sleep.) My immediate family has been extremely careful, since March, related to preventing contracting Covid-19.  I'm homeschooling my kids; hubby is wearing KN95 masks in the school building; brother and sister and their families taking similarly restrictive approaches to work and social lives. My extended family, on the other hand, who tend to have different political views than my family, have not been quite...

I present to you: Miss middle, jumping with joy at finding soup in her stocking.  In our family, if you are naughty, Santa brings you soup instead of coal.  She got lucky that Santa didn't decide to pour the soup into the stocking, but rather chose to leave the soup in its own container. She also got lucky that Santa brought her toys AND soup, rather than just soup, because she is often naughty.  The thought of soup in her stocking had caused much worry and many tears over the past month or so, because she really does make naughty choices quite a lot. Also partially pictured: the loveseat (yellowish) and a grey chair, both mentioned later in this post.  Well, the excitement is over and the busy-ness of solo-parenting is taking over.  I'm crossing my fingers that the busy-ness will overshadow the loneliness and the feeling of sadness from the husband leaving mid-day Christmas day to travel to visit his family in Chile again, to be there for the first New Year's c...

 I just deleted a personal pity party (you are welcome!) and all that's left is this list, punctuated by some poorly lit pictures (and some disappeared as I was trying to move them into their correct places).   For a few days, I managed to put my phone down and not spend much time on social media.  Instead, I focused on advancing a variety of sewing projects.  1. The flying geese quilt is finished.  I think of it as "flight behavior," but I haven't made so many quilts that I need to name them.  I *did* go back and zig-zag the opposite direction for each of the nine columns.  I am more confident that it will survive what will likely turn into frequent washing.  I was able to bind the quilt with a large amount of leftover bias tape from making baby blankets for "the baby" three years ago, combined with a little bit of the same fabrics used in the quilt (but not cut on the bias). This quilt contains a variety of scrap fabrics that are meaningful...

 (Also, can I just state here that I wish this wasn't part 12 already, and that the original "stay safe at home" campaign in MARCH had been effective?  I mean, I'm an introvert, and I like to stay home, but GEE WHIZ I'm ready to be ALONE in my house or wandering through a store already?) We spent the week of Thanksgiving at the family beach house.  We managed 3 days of school -- two sort of "normal" homeschool days and one field trip.  We went to the swamp and got up close to the pitcher plants and the venus fly traps.  We've been learning about plants off and on throughout the fall, so this was a fun way to sneak an extra plant category into our science learning -- we'll be reading about them a little for follow-up over this week (and writing about them and drawing them and so on).  Did you know that Venus fly traps are very small?  The average size we saw was about the size of my thumbnail. Perhaps you can see them better if you zoom in? It was...

 Well, Halloween has come and gone....but it was a fun one.  Different, for sure, but fun.  We *DID* trick or treat -- probably the first "normal" thing that we've done in a long time.  I turned a mermaid tail blanket into a dress for Miss Middle to wear; she dressed up as her favorite imaginary play character.  No one could tell who she was, but she would proudly announce her name and the adults, who probably generally don't know who kids are dressing up as "these days" would exclaim things like, "of course!" and "that's the best _____ costume I've ever seen!"  Miss Middle was very pleased.  Peanut decided to dress up as a flower.  I acquired green pants and green shirt, and she decorated a hat as a flower.  I think she did a lovely job.   And "the baby" dressed up as a black cat.  He figured out pretty quickly that it was easier to ride in the stroller and let big sisters bring him candy for his bucket.  I loved that m...