Easy come, easy go

Ah, my dear Christmas money.  Where oh where have you gone?

Every year my wonderful in-laws give us each some wonderful Christmas cash.  I had so many wonderful ideas of how to spend it. After much thought and deliberation I had decided that I would renew my subscription to my favorite sewing magazine ever - Ottobre Design Magazine.  

It is an amazing magazine from Finland that is published 6 times a year - 4 children's issues and 2 woman's issues - for a total of about 188 different sewing patterns a year!!!

Instead this happened...

Which then caused this...

Okay, it actually wasn't quite that bad.  But the damage was bad enough that when dear hubby hit the curb he caused over $325 worth of damage to his wheel.  

I guess we still need to be thankful that:

1. No other vehicles were involved
2. No one got hurt
3. Ran wasn't with him at the time
4. It happened very close to home, so he was able to drive home to wait for AAA
5. And finally... It could have cost a whole lot more if he had cracked the frame!!!

Oh well, I guess my Ottobre subscription will have to wait till next month.

Still no Sienna Dress from me...

My dearest Heather has let me off the hook on the first of our 52 projects.  We figured that since I have already made over 30 Sienna Dresses - at least one in every available size - that I could take a pass this week.  That is awesome, since I have been so busy prepping for a craft we have to do in Ran's kindergarten class that I haven't even started cutting out the dresses for Lily Bean.  I have a nice 4 day weekend this week, so I promise I will get it done then!

Tomorrow we are the guest reader in Ran's class.  With our nice long vacation in Florida we decided that it would be perfect to read a story about the ocean.  We chose Seashells by the Seashore by Marianne Berkes.

Along with reading a story we have to provide a craft for the kids to do.  While sitting on the beach I came up with the idea of shell necklaces.  We spent lots of time collecting shells, which is one of my favorite things to do at the beach!  Yesterday I spent hours drilling holes in those shells and today was spent putting them on o-rings.  Resulting in a nice pile of....

To make things go a little smoother tomorrow we put a little bag together for each of the kids, containing the elastic, a shell and a bunch of pony beads (half of which glow in the dark!)

I can't wait to do the craft with the kids.  We ended up with enough supplies left over that I think I will do the same craft with my Camp Fire USA group.  Here is the end result.

My little recycler

 Okay, to start with I have yet to do the first of my 52 projects.  This week we are making Lil Blue Boo's Sienna Dress.  It is an absolutely wonderful pattern for a adorable dress using recycled t-shirts.  I have made a number of these dresses already for friends and family.  Here is a small selection of the ones I have made already.

This week I am going to tackle some for dear little cousin Lily Bean.  I have the perfect t-shirts for her, I just have to get in gear and start working on them.  The pattern is a wonderful pattern that you can download in pdf form and comes in sizes from 6 month up to 6 years. 

On to my real story of the day...

I am proud of my little man - the recycler.  He is great about recycling everything and anything.  He is also learning the art of sewing and its benefits.  Recently he made his first sewing project for school.

Yesterday at school his backpack got broken.  I assured him on the walk home that I could, and would, fix it.  His response to that was, could I please make him a new backpack instead - one with Spiderman on it.  I told him I could, but that I didn't have any Spiderman fabric right now.  He looked up at me and simply said "well, you can take some of my Spiderman shirts and use those."  When we got home he even brought me his beloved shirts that I could use.  Well, I didn't make a new backpack yet - fixing the old one took me about 5 minutes to replace the broken piece.  I guess a backpack project is in the future!