Summer! June 23, 2011

C’s last “day” of 1st grade was yesterday. She was only there from 8:40 – 10:40, and they watched Finding Nemo. Hmmm.

She loved her teacher (as did we), who will be moving to the 2nd grade next year as well. Fingers crossed for a good class assignment for us next year!

The school has a tradition of all the buses filling on the last day and then driving around in a circle honking their horns while all the kids and teachers cheer. It was a bit loud for some participants.

C has grown so much this year (literally, I think a few inches!), really came into her own with reading, made some wonderful friends, declared that she is very popular, and was the top fundraiser at her school Jogathon. She doesn’t look too different from the start of the year though.

Now…bring on summer camp!

(For anyone holding their breath, my lovely skirt did not make it to the finals for Skirt Week. Alas. On the subject of you can’t win if you don’t try, the half marathon is this Saturday!!)

Busy Father’s Day Weekend June 19, 2011

Let’s see…we had dinner at a friend’s on Friday, a birthday party and two graduation parties Saturday, presents and beer festival Sunday. Yeah, that counts as a busy weekend! Especially for the poor little minimal napping and sleeping kiddos…both of whom fell asleep on the 15 minute shuttle ride back to our car tonight.

The birthday party included face paint. Not sure why M picked this style, but we were loving it all day long (and a bit of today, since apparently it wasn’t actually face paint and didn’t fully wash off…)

The graduation parties were in our neighborhood at least, which meant more general carousing. Four “men” in the neighborhood have remote control cars that were in full effect yesterday. Well, until one was taken out by reckless teenage driving (poor G…that’ll teach you to let the neighbors operate your car!) and one was added as a Father’s Day gift. Anyway, there was much racing and jumping of cars.

The kids were out in force. C can get around on her scooter but prefers a ride (have I mentioned how strong M is??)

(Also, note our use of coats and leggings in June…just hoping for equally mild weather for that half marathon next week!)

Today G slept in, then opened presents from his girls. How did M know he would love a beer holster? Came in very handy at the beer fest later on. (I have cropped out some other people in this picture to make it blog appropriate…)

This week is a pretty big one, with C’s last day of school, M’s last day of music class, new swim classes for both (M’s first class without me in the water. How excited am I to not be donning a swimsuit this week!!), M’s last day of preschool, and…my half marathon. Oh, and finalists for that skirt contest will be posted. Not that I am holding my breath (ok, maybe a little).

Sewing Skirts June 16, 2011

One of the blogs I try to read regularly, Crafterhours, announced Skirt Week 2011 and I became very motivated to sew up some skirts. I had five planned but since entries are due tomorrow I think the fifth won’t get done in time (darn my sitter that cancelled for today and my family that wants me to spend time with them!)

The first two are hopefully getting fancied up a bit tonight, so no pictures yet. So far, they are simple No-Hem skirts for M and C.

Skirt 4 was the Insa skirt from Sewing Clothes Kids Love, which I purchased when first released but had yet to use to actually make anything. I had some turquoise print stretch poplin (fabric.com I think) and pink polka-dotted swiss dot fabric (local Hancock’s) in stash, purchased some pink trim last week when C was at sewing class at Pacific Fabric and Crafts and…voila…

  

French seams and elastic gathering on the overlay with a rolled hem edge, matching topstitching on the underskirt, and that trim has a little lace edging on it as well. I had to shorten the yoke by almost an inch (made the 122/128 size which the book claims is 6-7) and the skirt a bit. C is thrilled with this and I put a fair amount of work into it. I am going to ender it into the skirt week contest.

Skirt 3 might be the real surprise…as it is for me! (So is unmade skirt 5). I bought this pattern (Barcelona by Amy Butler) and fabric almost two years ago and finally actually made it. Pictures taken by C while I tried to watch M, and for some reason was wearing a totally non-coordinating shirt…well, I am hoping they don’t do it justice. It doesn’t bunch like that in the mirror!

(Warning! Super white leg alert!)

Anyway, fairly happy with this one too—it is fully lined with an invisible zipper in the back. If I can get some better photos I might enter this into the contest as well. You can’t win if you don’t try, right?

Summer?

Every now and then it seems like summer might arrive in Seattle. Between the long stretches of rainy days that is.

I think the kids have even been in swim suits twice (not just for indoor swim lessons!) to run through a sprinkler. Although hereabouts we start to feel hot once it passes 65 degrees. The first Otter Pops of the season have also been enjoyed…

(Hard to find non-[unintentionally] lewd otter pop pictures.)

C is starting to wrap up first grade. One big hurrah was the science fair. C and G did another electricity project, creating electricity from lemons. C went rogue as well, creating animals out of her lemons and potatoes (the original experimental plan included those) and was able to explain why battery cat [the lemon] was a battery but zinc dog was not.

G did a bunch of planting in the backyard, put down weed blocking cloth, and supervised the spreading of much mulch. We have even seen glimpses of color…

However, many days we still see this…

And not just because M is crazy about her boots…

What else…cherries at the market!

Lots of hobby work around here as well—G is building huge flower boxes for the front of the house. Hopefully there will be pictures before the end of the summer…especially since the table saw he just had to buy is taking up one bay of the garage. He also succumbed to neighborhood pressure and purchased a remote control car…now he is the one coming in at night and saying that the neighbors are outside and want him to come over to play. C has taken several more sewing classes and making clothes for her American Girl dolls. M started requesting clothes for her Bitty Baby, and enjoys picking out fabrics and demanding outfits right away. I have at least made this one with the requested fabric…

Sometimes when you call M a kiddo she says “I am not a kiddo! I am a mommy to all my babies!”

I have been sewing other things as well…more about that in another post.

For now, I leave you with my typical signature photo…