Bride and Groom Aprons

Here is an unusual wedding gift that I created for my youngest sister's Trousseau Tea.  I made her and her fiance wedding day aprons.  When she first explained that she was going to have barbecue fair for her wedding I joked that I would make her and her fiance bibs.  After some careful thought and consideration, I deemed bibs far to impractical-- when would they ever wear a bib again?  So I changed it up and made them aprons.  I thought that they might actually use aprons again, as they both like to cook. To my delight they actually used the aprons during their wedding reception because they opted to bar tend  to greet their guests instead of having a receiving line.  This was just one of the many unique things they did for their celebration.

 For her apron I used a store bought white canvas apron and added my own embellishments.  I used netting that I had left over from some packaging, ribbons and fake pearls.  I made a net overlay skirt to give it a bridal dress feel.

 For the groom's apron, again I used a store bought black apron and attached a baby boys white button down shirt and boys black suit jacket that I bought second hand.  I cut down both articles of clothing to fit the bib front of the apron.  I then had to make a black bow tie.  I made this from lining from the suit jacket.  The most time consuming aspect of the project was cutting out the lining and hiding my stitches.

I hope they have the opportunity to wear their aprons again and in doing so have wonderful memories of their amazing wedding.

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Pinterest Challenge Continues

Okay, I have had a rather insane two weeks since I last posted.  On the trip back from my little sister's medical school graduation my parents had a horrendous car accident.  Their injuries were minor considering how bad the accident was and the complete destruction of their car.  Although they were injured enough to require some surgery and supervision so they spent the week at our little shoebox.  I tried to nurse them as gently as I could but I guess we live a much more rigid and structured life than my parents could handle.   So they demanded independence, and are attempting to recoup at home.  My other sister spent the night with them and we delivered their lunch, so it isn't complete independence but we'll see.  Personally I think they are insane for going home.  My Mom can't walk and my Dad can't use his right hand. There are steps leading to each of their home's bathrooms but if Mom prefers using a portable potty and my Dad doesn't mind changing it- go for it parents.  If that is better than me harping on you about putting your foot up and taking your medication.  How could I dare stop you?

None of this has anything to do with my Pinterest challenge so forgive the digression.  Just a little venting after a very challenging couple of days.  Okay, I'm done.

I hope to have some cute father's day project posted soon as we will be celebrating with the grandfathers' a week late due to the accident.  For Daddy we framed an art project he helped create and both Poppy and Daddy got ties that were fabric painted at a church festival a few weeks ago.  So poor Daddy doesn't have to wait a week he did get a few gifts (and his own bed back).  We'll see if he is brave enough to wear the tie to work!

Since I didn't put together a cool Pinterst father's day project, what could I use for my challenge this week?  Well to help with our summer activities I did find a great pin about free Montessori printables!  

Source: simplymontessori.blogspot.com via Annelyse on Pinterest

So far I have printed the daily routine chart, puzzles for matching lower and upper case letters and cards on the body parts.  I also signed up for the email because the site looks great.  My oldest attends a Montesorri preschool,and the youngest will start in the fall, so this was a no brainer. I just need to laminate these suckers so we can start getting good use out of them. I am super excited.

Now when will I ever get up the nerve to test out the freezer meals I keep pining?

I wish everyone a wonderful Father's Day and some quality time with your loved ones.  I am ever so thankful that I am venting my frustration about how silly my parents act rather than having to pour my heart out over their loss.  Give your family some extra loving and take good care of yourselves.  Life is precious.

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Putting My Pinterest Pins to Use

About a month ago I decided that I needed to make good use of my Pinterest surfing to ensure that I didn't go overboard with my surfing or collecting.  Two dear friends had commented that their new hobby had become pinning not actually doing any of the crafty things that they were pining.  This scared me.  So I decided to put myself to the test.
The deal is that I can not go on Pinterest more than once a week.  I also can not return unless I actual do one of my acquired pins.  I should add that in most situations I am pinning things that I can make relatively cheaply, most often using things I already own.  It wouldn't fly if every project required making purchases.  The project has really worked.  I've made two recipes (pretty good as I am a novice foodie), numerous kid art and educational projects, a new hair style and several sewing projects.

I have now challenged myself to post here about said pins.  I hope that I can not only develop pinning projects but also a reporting habit.  Pinterest is such a great source of material.  I can't believe all of the great things that I have found.

Today the boys and I made a variation of :

Source: oneperfectdayblog.wordpress.com via Annelyse on Pinterest

I say a variation because I only had gel food coloring and no droppers so I was forced to dye the salt rather than have the boys drop the food coloring on to the salt to create the colors.  I definitly need to invest in some eye droppers.  This is the third project I had to modify because I don't currently own any.  The sad thing is thinking about all of those baby pain relief bottles I got rid of with out a second thought. I digress.
I ended up placing the salt into Dixie cups because I thought the boys would enjoy pouring and spilling the salt. Both boys enjoyed dripping glue on their paper, pouring the salt and starting the process over and over again. It was a great project because they were able to do much of it on their own. I will admit that I helped with the final glue design but this was after three sheets of their own making. You may find from my pictures that my youngest lost patience after twenty-five minutes and did make a bit of a mess. I was thrilled he made it to the twenty-five minute mark.  I generally brace myself for very short production times.  There is usually an inverse ratio of how much effort I put into setting up a project versus how much time they actually spend on it.  This project was highly successful.  They worked longer to complete it then I spent making it.  Although little brother did make a mess, I am fortunate that big brother likes helping with the dust buster! Here is our results:

Their first attempt included nice neat piles of salt.

Subsequent pictures were messier but still engaging.

Here is the final project for little brother and his mess!


I am also quite proud of my first Modge Podge project for Mother's Day that I will also include in this post.  I recreated this fantastic project:

 

Source: homemade.tipjunkie.com via Annelyse on Pinterest

Here are my final projects.  (I actually made an extra pot for myself.  A lesson learned from coveting projects I made for the grandmothers in the past- always make one for yourself.  The other lesson I learned?  I totally love Modge Podge!

Here are the pots drying in the mud room.

Here are three of the pots after plants were added.  Big brother picked out different plants for each person.

There are so many other projects that I have tried and enjoyed but I'll save them for another day.  I need a little practice with embedding and cutting and pasting.  Needless to say forcing myself to actually use the projects I see on Pinterest has really been an enjoyable motivator. I don't have to feel guilty every time I hop around in Pinterest.  I also don't have to look at my dear friend R's amazing ideas for play date crafts and feel completely jealous.  I am wracking up the fun and experiences too.

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Sewing

My paternal grandmother, my Nana, was an amazing seamstress.  She made her own gorgeous wedding gown and gowns for each of my aunts.  She would tell stories about how she was hired by her shop to snoop out designers new designs and sketch them so that her store could replicate them.  I try to picture her in her twenties, glasses sliding down her nose as she quickly and covertly sketched.  What devious angle for such an angelic grandmother! 

During my life time she continued to make beautiful designs.  She made my brother a knight suit complete with a metallic knit chain mail that was amazing.  I had a matching princess outfit that I wore long past Halloween and until it was just about rags and could no longer fit me.  She also made my communion dress.  In addition to actual creations, she taught my mother, her daughter in law some helpful sewing lessons. 

My mother in turn made countless Halloween and theatrical costumes for me and my siblings over the years.  A set of dinosaurs that all of us kids wore and have now passed on to our kids is a classic.  One year she made a fully tailored sports jacket for me because I was in a summer production.  I have no idea how her sewing such a complicated piece saved time or money but I think she loved every button hole challenge.  The hours she must have put into making that thing!  She made my formals, my prom dress from a recycled vintage dress and all of my sisters and my graduation dresses.  This is not the full catalog of her creations but it at least gives you some sort of idea.

This tradition, of making something out of nothing with our own hands is a wonderful tradition that I am so thankful I acquired.  I remember at a very young age cutting and sewing with my kiddie sewing machine.  When I upgraded to my mother’s machine she would patiently rethread the needle and the bobbin every time I screeched for her to rescue me.  I still struggle if I am ever forced to use her machine.  I never took any classes to learn to sew.  I just watched my mother and struggled to figure things out on my own.  Following a pattern always seemed like a daunting task, somehow harder than making a pattern up on my own?  As I grow older I am slowly learning to follow patterns, read the instruction manual of my machine and figure things out as I go along. 

I am now starting to build my little list of things I have made for my own children.  I feel absolutely motherly making my son’s Halloween costumes.  With mom’s help I have made a few quilts for dear friends when they have kids and started a tradition of making a little library bag for friends’ babies on their first birthdays.  It is an easy yet special gift to give especially when people state that they don’t want gifts on the invite but everyone brings a gift anyway. 

I whipped together one this afternoon using scraps of material I had stashed in my sewing box.  It was fun to quickly and simply sew the bag using left over pieces.  The bulk of the bag was from material I used to make runners for my youngest baptism.  Other pieces helped put together a gift for my neice.  I know that the background and history of the material will be lost on its new owner but it delights me just to know.

When I sew something it is a culmination of so many things.  It is the beauty and design of my Nana.  It is sitting with her in front of her giant industrial machine.  That huge machine with its fast and powerful needle saw her through so many projects and so many years.  It is watching those long elegant fingers and my father’s eyes through her thick lenses. 

It is also the hard work and ingenuity of my mother, the countless memories I have of her working late into the night.  It is those countless nights that I would see a pile of material in front of her machine when I went to bed turn into a finished product when I awoke the next day.  All of these things get stitched into the pieces I now make. 

With these memories each of my stitches slowly over time has become straighter and steadier.  I think about the stories both women shared with me about sewing as I pull out crooked stitches or am forced to start again.  I am so proud of my ability to fix my own machine.  Pleased with each new skill I acquire and each project I finish.

I hope that I have the opportunity to share this passion with my munchkins one day.  If not, I hope they at least let me continue to sew for them and for their children.  

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Get Out of the Boat

My pledge today is to get out of the boat.  I need to stop being afraid.  I am fully capable of submitting my work for production and publication.  I am fully capable of writing as a career option, versus dreaming and pining for it.  If I would like to create and do more.  I just have to do it.  I have to stop fearing it.  To quote Jeff and Deborah Jay "Things have a way of falling into place if you keep moving forward."
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How to Retread A Sleeper

     I love watching Baby 2 walk around the house.  He has this cute and wide "I just learned how to walk a month and a half ago" gait.  He is now able to bend over and pick things up with out sitting down.  He is mastering the turn and change direction maneuver and is even gaining speed.  My baby is officially a toddler!   
      His new found skill highlighted one problem with our hand-me-down pajamas.  It seems he only had problems walking in his sleepers.  Maybe it isn't fair to call his sleepers just his.  Baby 2 is the lucky recipient of Baby 1's hand-me-downs, many of which came from mom2mom sales or a cousin who also has two boys.  So it is easy to imagine that his pj's have been worn by at least two others, in many cases, but the grippy life of a sleeper is short, even if you are the proud first owner.  So my little toddler was walking or falling in fairly slick sleeper feet.
     My fast and easy solution to this problem was to puff paint the bottoms of the sleepers, to retread the grippies, so to speak.  I even let Baby 1 help paint some of the bottoms.  The puff paint made for a fast and easy solution that seems to be standing up to multiple washes with out a problem.  My little guy is able to walk our hard wood floors with out slipping and our old sleepers are good as new for the cost of few tubes of puff paint.  (I think I got six tubes on clearance for about $3.)
     I got the idea to use puff paints from reading Amanda Blake Soule's Handmade Home.  She has a project that gives the option of using puff paint on the bottom of a bath mat.  I thought this was the perfect way to combine being crafty and frugal with recycling.   
     I made sure I used a very thin layer of puff paint in rather big designs, avoiding big round polka dots, to ensure that the little one didn't attempt to pull pieces off and stick them in his mouth.  He's not known to do such a thing, but it is better to be safe, then sorry.  I had fun painting little hearts across the bottom of a few pairs and Baby 1 loved dictating which color choices I should make. 
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Trying to Hold On To My Heart

As Baby Boy 1 gets older it is amazing and anxiety producing to watch him interact with other children. At a play group activity today I was barely able to keep up with a quarter of the conversation the mothers were having because I was preoccupied with my boys activities and most especially how 1 was getting on with others. I realize now that one of my weak spots, or points of concern will be how my children interact with friends. There was this rush of pride, fear, and overwhelming love as I watched Baby 1 explain to the two other boys riding on the sea saw boat that his sweatshirt said “Toy Story.” In a soft earnest voice, with his fingers crossing his chest for emphasis, he said more than once. “It says Toy Story.”

Would they be impressed? Would they think he was cool because he liked Toy Story? Would it count against him? Would they be happy that he wiggled his way on to the boat to join them?

As a mother I have such an incredible love and joy for this little guy and pray like crazy that the rest of the world sees him as I do. Who couldn't find him adorable? Endearing? The cutest thing on earth?, I mean, come on. Now I fear that my own experiences might turn me into one of those helicopter mommies, there by creating the exact problem I wish to avoid.

As a middle schooler I some how fell victim to the cattiness of a big clique of girls. At twelve my group of friends, friends that were a part of my school, neighborhood and church lives, decided I was the pariah.  As our neighborhood, school and church were tight knit, I spent the next three years of middle school trying to maintain friendships with these girls despite their efforts to exclude me.  Oh the mind games of our on again, off again friendship. I don't want it to sound like I was this tiny, delicate wall flower bullied by a large group of oafish tarts, I have always been feisty and outspoken, but lets just say that during that already incredibly awkward and self conscious stage of my life, my friendships didn't buoy and protect me. The end result left me incredibly insecure about friendships, even to this day.

I realize everyone wants to be loved and accepted but middle school antics can leave scars. It is hard not to revert to that twelve year old getting a call on her birthday from all of her “friends” at another girl's birthday party. Real nice birthday wishes- . See the sting is still there some twenty five years later.

I translated that insecurity into aloofness in high school. Friend to many, close to none. The sad thing is that I followed the dumb cliché of developing relationships with boys rather than attempting strong friendships with girls. I let my high school sweetheart become the only relationship I bothered to really work on.

It seems when I had problems with friends I was much more likely to kiss the whole friendship good bye rather than really dig in and fix things. To a large extent I haven't outgrown that. Recently I have found myself distancing myself from two friends due to a conflict rather than get myself dirty sorting it out. My father calls it our “Irish heritage", this defense of “wiping people.” Not something I am overly proud of mind you.  In my late thirties I have a strong desire to connect, really connect with other women.  For the first time in my life, I guess, I'm at a place where that is really important to me.

So there I was watching my baby working on befriending these other tots in the play area, and I found myself sort of holding my breath. I was thinking in one big rush just below the surface- “love him, he's lovable, wait honey, are they worthy?” Crazy, huh?

My heart just wants to burst sometimes with this desire to make a perfect world for my children.  I want everything wonderful for my children, and to spare them pain and heart ache, to equip them with everything that they need. Yet I know that there is no way we can do everything we wish we could for our children. It truly is an awesome responsibility that breaks my heart and catches my breath.

So my playing field is already tilted due to my own anxiety and baggage, then add the fact that little kids always want to play with older kids, who rarely want to play with younger ones, and there I am watching my kid, trying to remember to breathe and not take it all too seriously. 

My husband and I go back and forth about whether or not a child number three will happen. I feel strongly that we aren't finished, but he doesn't want to buck the status quo. I understand his sentiments, what we have is amazing. How blessed and fortunate- two beautiful, smart, and healthy children. I get it babe, I get the desire not to press our luck.

I try often to have a heart to heart with myself about this desire for number three. In my heart of hearts do I want one more because I really do want a girl? Is that it? Some days I think yes, yes I would love to have a daughter. I would love to have a relationship with a daughter like I feel I have with my mother. Other days, especially days when I have observed five year old girls at play; (“Mommy Madison just said she doesn't want to be my friend anymore!”) I think that I probably couldn't handle all of the drama that girls for some reason create and live through. On these days I think that I am most definitely suited to being a mommy to boys. I think about how I was such a Tomboy. How my favorite doll, a Madame Alexander in a pink lace dress, was christened Tommy. How even at eleven I prayed for little brothers when my parents started the adoption process. (Sorry to my sisters!) On these days I think just boys are just right for me. Throughout these heart to hearts, I don't think I ever come to the conclusion that I'm done, sorry husband.

I guess in closing I just need to take away with me the pride I felt in my little boy putting himself out there. Introducing himself to other children- even to a little fourteen month old. He knows who he is and what he likes. He is not afraid to be himself. He got on the sea saw boat, no problems or issues. They rode for awhile, chatted, giggled. People got on, people got off. I didn't hover too close to catch all of the exchanges. I let the boy have some space, I hope. And he was so cute, and so proud of his sweatshirt, a shirt he demanded to wear despite my efforts to cajole him into a doggy sweatshirt he had never worn. On the way home I asked if he had fun, if he met any nice kids. He told me he did, there were good kids there Mommy, good kids.

This love for one's children- it is powerful stuff.

Oh, and Baby Boy 2 spent a third of this time climbing things, another knocking things over and the rest blowing kisses to any and all, God love 'em.

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