Ten

1.  Have you noticed I don’t have anything on my left-hand side yet for Finished Quilts of 2010? I have. And am sad. 😦

2.  I hope to have some Finished Quilts of 2010 soon though! Must! Finish! Bindings!

3.  I am serger shopping!  I quite sadly sold my Texans’ PSLs.  Boo.  But it means I have a little money to play with and am looking at bottom-of-the-line sergers right now.  On top of not having a lot of money to play with, I don’t sew enough clothes to justify an expensive model, but would still like to be able to serge.  Any recommendations would be great!

4.  A couple of TV shows really are helping Elena expand her vocabulary. She told me Sunday, in between bouts of stomach flu, that it, well, reeks. Why thank you Martha Speaks!

5. Sorry about talking about the stomach flu in the previous post.  Hopefully nobody’s stomach turned.

6. Julia has decided that it is fun to yell out requests for a good hour, or two, after she is put to bed.  Her requests?  Oh no, not water.  She already has that from the get-go.  Instead she insists that we take out that play food that belongs in the play kitchen and not on her shelf, or that we put Elena’s pillow that she happily napped with back in Elena’s room where it belongs, or that we take out that wall clock that has been in there since birth because it is suddenly “mean”, etc etc.

7. In other news, we are considering letting Julia sleep in a room that has just the following in it:  her bed.

8. Elena was shocked to learn that jelly does not come from jellyfish!

9.  On a cold rainy day recently I was looking for an activity for the girls to do inside.  So I put them in their bathing suits and threw them in the bathroom with a can of shaving cream.  Last time we did this, they happily drew stuff all over the bathroom floor with the shaving cream and I cleaned up by mopping while they were in the bath.  This time, they had other ideas:

10.  The game ended pretty early this time because I couldn’t stop Julia from covering her ENTIRE face!  She had watched Daddy shave since the last time we played this game and needed close supervision, to say the least!  She was trying to give me heart attacks!

By the way, shaving cream does AWFUL things to the texture of hair!  I couldn’t get a comb through the girls’ hair after washing up — needed to shampoo more than once!

Colorado and Corduroy

For the Colorado trip I brought a much-belated birthday gift for my niece: a homemade corduroy skirt.  Admittedly, instead of being done in October, it was done the week before our trip.  Oops.

I also planned on making Elena a matching dress to her cousin’s skirt, but alas, I ran out of time.  So did I give up?  And ruin the opportunity of having the fave cousins in matching outfits???

Oh, you should know me better than that!  My mom knows I will do anything for a photo op!  I might not have had the dress sewn together, but I could still pack the fabric and pattern –  ha!  So while the cousins ran circles around the house, my sister-in-law and I sewed up Elena’s matching dress.  Turns out that was a great idea:  the pattern was a bugger and I don’t know if I ever would have finished it on my own.

And here are the girls: Julia in a corduroy dress from the Salvation Army (have I said yet how much I *love* thrift store shopping for the girls – great finds!), Elena in her homemade corduroy dress and their cousin S in her matching skirt:

Elena’s dress is Simplicity 2574.  And I LOVE how it came out. Isn’t it just great?!? But I cannot imagine ever making this again. I generally don’t need to have the freedom to make an apparel pattern “my own” and really wanted to know exactly what I needed to make the dress on the pattern front. I mean, I religiously watch Project Runway but the inventive part of my sewing is saved for quilting, not clothing.

And the dress just has a TON of parts and steps. My sister-in-law and I are both competent sewists but the two of us worked together on this dress for several hours. We were determined, though, because we wanted to see the girls all together in their dresses.

And we did!  And isn’t the photo just a great reminder of the beautiful moment of 3 matching girls?!?!? Um….

The skirt is McCall’s M5920. According to the pattern’s recitation of measurements, my niece took a size 14. My sister-in-law thought that sounded about right, but MY GOSH,that skirt was HUGE. We had to take in the skirt 3-4 inches at the waist!  Of course, since my sister-in-law had a machine this was no problem at all but yikes if I had given it to someone else.

As a post mortem, the two corduroys on Elena’s dress were very different weights — the pink was much heavier than the plaid.  It has unfortunately caused a hole to appear in the plaid fabric where one of the pockets is attached.  Still usable, but lesson learned.  Boo.

My Colorado Vacation: The Winter Edition

Headed toward sledding.

Spring is upon us, BUT I haven’t shown the great snow vacation pictures yet! I thought I better get cracking! (Just a warning: picture heavy and no crafting involved!)

Our sledding hill in the state park with Pike’s Peak in the background. Not much snow on the ground admittedly, but enough for us to have fun! By the way, if you click on this picture, you can see the tiny pink spots on the left hand side – my girls playing in the snow while we did a couple sledding runs without them.  Don’t worry, their aunt stayed with them!

Isn’t part of being a parent trying to give your kids something you never had/experienced? For me, one of those things was SNOW. I remember being in elementary and listening to my radio non-stop when they were telling us that It. Just. Might. SNOW. in. Houston!

To say I was disappointed more than once, well, yeah.

Now, in my 20s I did get get an opportunity to live in northern Indiana for 3 years and got quite my share of snow then, but it is still magical to me. And I had never been sledding before!

So back last fall when Southwest Airlines had super-cheap fares for flights in January-February,  I jumped on the deal!   Being Texans, my girls had never seen snow and Elena especially was fascinated by the idea of snow.  My husband couldn’t take the time off work, so it became a little girls-only vacation to see my brother and his family in Colorado.

Girls only!

I was a bit worried about the trip on my own with my girls, but even with a 3-hour flight delay the girls were awesome.  And Julia in the airplane was hilarious, sitting for half the flight with her hands just so, tucked under the seatbelt:

And my brother and family were fantastic hosts!  The only money I spent all weekend was for our lunches on-the-run and some necessary winter clothing for the girls.  Can’t beat that!

I was worried Elena wouldn’t take to sledding at all. She tends to not like being out of control, and I thought this would be too much out of her power and comfort level. For instance, Elena HATES swinging. She’ll sit on a swing, but don’t you dare move her!

My worries were all for naught. Elena LOVED sledding. Without hesitation she got on with her Uncle C, and then proceeded to sled with anyone that’d give her a ride!

Inaugural trip with Uncle C a success!

Julia likewise LOVED sledding, but that came as no big surprise — our little 2-year-old is a thrill junkie! The vacation had her a bit off kilter though and she’d only be with me, but she and I had a great time.

Julia’s and my inaugural trip. Never having gone sledding before, *I* was nervous and started halfway down the hill for fear of spilling and crushing said thrill junkie!

The girls also thought the trip up was just as much as fun as the trip down:

Whee!

Squee! Showing my fave pic of the entire adventure.  Again.  LOVE.

I found the trips up the hill fairly exhausting…

Okay, totally unflattering picture of me, but I swear I *was* wearing 2 layers of clothes!  There are jeans under those black pants!  I had to dress for the cold somehow!

…but Elena apparently thought they were the perfect opportunity to lay back, relax, and contemplate the wonders of evergreen branches.

The girls also made snow angels:

and played in the snow as if it were sand:

and sledded some more:

Girl power!

and played in the snow some more. Or contemplated the view? Or maybe became unable to move in their Christmas Story-esque snowsuits and waited for rescue?

I would love to make this trip every year or two. The girls obviously loved the snow, and, even more-so, really loved seeing their cousins.

Elena enjoying a trip down the hill with her fave cousin S.