Ben started middle school this year. There is something so wrong about that.
Claire started Kindergarten, while Eleanor is in 2nd and Macy in 4th. I can't believe how big everyone is getting.
Kate is loving having me all to herself. We've kept pretty busy running beginning of the school year errands. She loves to meet and greet the girls at the bus stop every afternoon though. It's so cute!
We had to say goodbye to a very dear teacher and friend, Miss Mary. In February she discovered what she thought was an ulcer was actually cancer. Just a little over 4 months later, she passed away. We will miss her so very much, especially her circle times.
Ben "graduated" from elementary school. I'd show you a picture, but our computer crashed and I didn't back those pictures backed-up before the crash, so this one will have to do.
Claire finished her last year of preschool. She's very excited about moving up to Kindergarten.
We picked strawberries.
Kate didn't want to pick. She liked strawberries last year, but has forgotten that she likes them this year so she won't eat or pick them. She did want to be fashionable while being in the fields though.
We saw this beautiful rainbow on our way to
Disney World.
We stayed in the cabins at Fort Wilderness and I loved having a full kitchen, bus/boat service to the parks and not having to stay in a regular, noisy hotel. We highly recommend staying there!!!
We went to all the parks except the Animal Kingdom as Kate is rather afraid of many big animals right now and a trip to the zoo right before we left for Disney World was a disaster to say the least.The girls and I ate breakfast with several princesses.
That was fun, although every time I put food in my mouth, I had to hop up and take a picture. Kate had a really good time, she just insisted in looking at the ground for every picture.
We ate ice cream every day. That is actually something we do any time we go on a trip away from home. Otherwise the kids usually only get ice cream on Sundays. I'm mean like that. One neat thing happened regarding this daily treat though. On our first day in the parks, The Magic Kingdom to be exact, we had placed our ice cream order and I went to pay, but the guy behind the counter said, "It is your family's first visit so it will be no charge." What a nice and pleasant surprise! (He knew it was our kids first visit because all the kids had buttons that said, "My first visit" that were given to us by the hotel.)
If you have plans to go to Walt Disney World, I highly recommend checking out the book The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2010 from your local library. I would also recommend subscribing to their website touring plans.com . They have these plans that you follow step by step when visiting the parks that help cut down on the waiting in line and they really worked! The longest lines we waited in were only 30 minute waits, and there were only three of those!
One of those rides was Toy Story Mania which had that long of a wait just for the fast pass machines! Actually we wouldn't have had to wait that long had I not made a wrong turn when we got into the park. That messed us up a bit, but we got where we needed to be and rode one of the most favorite rides of our trip. It was definitely worth the wait. Soarin was another favorite as well as Star Tours.
Well Macy didn't much like Star Tours, but she liked these cute Ewoks that made their way home with us. Meet Sammy and Teepo.
It was very hot and humid. Here is Claire signing the word hot. Actually she was just talking while I took this picture and my friend who knows sign language told me it looked like she was signing hot.
I think we rode on the Buzz Lightyear ride the most.
It was fun, although we all decided it was a distant second to Toy Story Mania.
Yes, I'm wearing sunglasses inside a dark ride. It was for the picture. I was trying to look cool. I hate the way I look when taking pictures of myself, so I'm hiding behind my sunglasses.
Of course I made everyone dress up the same. Not every day, just the days we went to the Magic Kingdom. It made it easier to keep track of everyone.
We visited Japan. Not really, but we did go to EPCOT and ate some yummy Japanese food. Macy decided that EPCOT really stands for "Every Person Comes Out Tired".
We decided we really needed two days for each park. We only did that for the Magic Kingdom. We'll have to save up some more money and go back. Everyone was for that!
We spent one morning at the restaurant pictured above. It was much louder than I had remembered from our previous Florida trip when Ben was 4, Macy was 2 and Eleanor was 7 months old. We didn't spend as much time here as we had before because the free stuff was mainly for little kids and no one wanted to spend all their money on the highly expensive games. It was hard to watch Ben struggle with the realization that he spent two dollars and was only going to get to play two video games instead of the 8 or so he thought he was going to get to play. Lesson learned.
We're home now, but we've had fun playing with my new birthday present-a Wii! Actually I haven't had much of a chance to play, but as soon as fair items are entered, I should have more time for things like that. The kids are happy to help me break it in.
Did I mention the fair? Yes, I did. It's just a little over thirty days away and of course there is a lot to do. Probably won't be able to enter any photos due to the computer crash, but that's okay as there were only a couple that were possible contenders anyway. Hopefully the kids got some good Disney shots. I have a little over 180 preemie blankets to finish up for this year's "You be the Judge" contest. A few things to finish up sewing wise and I need to decide if I will bake anything. Still not sure about that. It will be the first year that I get to help with the entering of items from other fair goers. Should be fun!
We're going to Disney World to see the Mouse and of course we want to be ready for all things Disney which means new t-shirts. Being the planner/neurotic mother that I am, I wanted all of us to wear matching t-shirts for at least one of the days we would be at the Magic Kingdom. This makes it easier for me to keep track of everyone since there's a lot of us.
Disneystore.com had just what I was looking for. Well sort of. Don't worry, I'm not going to make Trent and Ben wear Minnie Mouse shirts-I got them Mickey Mouse in the same style. Anyway, they had these cute Mother/Daughter shirts on sale (plus I received cash back by buying through ebates) and so I bought one for me and the girls. Macy is modeling one of the girl's shirts. Semi-fitted, capped sleeved, very cute. Then there's mine:
Uh, yeh. This was not the look I was going for. The fit was okay, but not great. It felt too big, while at the same time, almost too snug. It felt hot and yucky and I kept wanting to pull at the neck and I wasn't even in the Florida heat and humidity yet! I knew there was no way a smaller size would solve the problem. It was time for some t-shirt transformation. First I needed a t-shirt pattern that fit well and one that I liked. I had tried unsuccessfully at making a perfect t-shirt using the Jalie 2005 pattern. A lot of people liked it, but I just never did. I changed my version so much it didn't even resemble the original and even then I wasn't crazy about how it felt or looked on me. I had been wanting to try this Stretch and Sew pattern ever since I bought it (a long time ago!) but had been feeling discouraged by my failed attempts at the Jalie pattern. I had an old t-shirt just waiting to be cut apart and here's the result: Much better! The neck's a little small because I wanted to use the ribbing I had from the original shirt and I really could have used a bit more, but this was more of what I wanted. So it was time to see what I could do with the original Minnie shirt. It turns out, that the parts of the shirt that felt too snug did not provide enough fabric to cut out a new shirt, so I had to purchase a much larger shirt to get my new shirt cut out. Behold the loveliness:
I first washed and dried the shirt to take care of any shrinkage that might occur. Since the shirt I was making was fitted, I didn't want to do all that work, just to have it turn out too small after I washed it. I then carefully cut apart the shirt at the seams, saving all the parts. I laid out the sleeve pattern over the top of the sleeves. I decided I didn't want to re-hem the sleeves, so I used the existing hem even though it meant my sleeves wouldn't be as capped. I was okay with that. I folded the front in half and laid the front pattern piece on top. Since the neckline on the pattern was much lower, I cut it much higher to accommodate the graphic on the front. Here's the picture of the back.
The only piece that I didn't cut down was the neck ribbing as I had accidentally cut it while trying to open up my package and so I just used what I had. If I needed to, I was going to cut apart the first shirt to use the neck ribbing, but it turns out I didn't need to.After sewing up the shirt, I liked the fit much better, but was not happy with the neck. It made the whole shirt feel "off" for me. Part of the problem was my ribbing was just a bit too short and I really had to pull it to make it around the neck. I also really wanted a bit of a bigger neck as this one felt very similar to the first shirt I had tried on.
After a bit of ripping out and readjusting I had a better fitting neckline which made the shirt feel better. Don't ask me why, it just did.
Here's a picture of the shirts side by side so you can see the difference in the neck. Not a lot, but enough that the final product on the right looks and feels better.
So you can see how much better the final product looks compared to the first shirt, here they are side by side:
I think it looks so much better now and the fit is much better too! This is a shirt I would be willing to wear to Florida. Now I'll just have to hope for a bit of a cold spell. At least if the temps are too high, I won't be hating my shirt!
Here are all the shirts I've made using this pattern. I've been playing around with different neck finishes and sleeve types. I'm still having trouble making a truly capped sleeve, but I'm working on it. Can't wait to try the long sleeved and sleeveless versions as well!
(Just so you know-I don't get any kickbacks from the above links. They're just there so you can click through if you're interested!)
Today Claire turned 5! Hard to believe, but true. If she's five, then that can only mean one thing:
Kindergarten orientation!!!!
Claire is VERY excited! I hope she enjoys Kindergarten as much as her siblings did. She's not at the same level academically as the others were going in, so it's not going to be as easy of a year as it was for the others. She is a lot more excited than they were (and they were pretty excited-well maybe not Ben, but with him it's often hard to tell). Let's hope her enthusiasm will continue with the upcoming challenges that await!
In third grade at our elementary school, the students need to read a biography, write a report and then either dress up as that person or make a doll out of a 2 litre bottle of that person and then give an oral report to the class. Macy has been really enjoying the Little House books and since I am a big fan too, I had Laura Ingalls Wilder's biography and so Macy read that for her assignment. We used a Styrofoam ball for the head and covered it with fabric that I had gathered together in the middle to make a nose. I realized while we were trying to cover the Styrofoam ball that we should have used knit fabric. Oh well, when it's Eleanor's turn, we'll do better. I guess we just left the ball white for Ben's project (His report was on Paul Revere). So anyway, that's why the fabric is wrinkly. Wouldn't be a problem if we were making Laura when she was 90 years old. We made a dress out of brown calico (with red flowers) and added an apron and a bonnet. We stuffed the shoulders and sleeves of the dress with leftover scraps of yarn from her hair and then sewed her hands into the ends of the sleeves to keep everything in. I wanted to make a little Charlotte doll for her to hold, but then Macy reminded me that this was her project not mine. As you can see, Laura is not wearing her bonnet on her head, because we all know that she much preferred to wear it hanging by the straps on her back. That's a good thing because even though Macy sewed the majority of this together, I made the pattern based on one I found on the web and the bonnet ended up a bit too small for Laura's head. Laura wouldn't be complete without her braids and red hair ribbons! Even though I helped with pattern making and a few other things (like working the hot glue gun), Macy did the majority of the cutting out, sewing, etc. so she'll be able to enter this in the fair this summer.
This was Ben's last Pinewood derby as a cub scout. He becomes a Boy Scout this week. The Pinewood derby has always been a favorite scouting activity for Ben (and myself), even though he hasn't always done very well. This year Ben did 90% of the work himself as he should as a Webelos scout. I helped with the drill and getting the axles polished (I held the drill) and the hammering of the wheels into place. A neighbor helped Ben saw the bit out for his Lego man. His car is a space ship on wheels.
Patiently waiting for the races to begin.
It's hard to see, but click on the video above to see the first heat. I'm not sure why the picture that goes with the video clip isn't showing up.
For those of you who don't know Ben, he's a bit on the shy/quiet side. He enjoys scouting, but doesn't really have any close friends. It was very touching to hear his den cheering for him before the race. In case you couldn't tell, Ben came in first in the first heat! He also came in first his second and fourth heat. His third heat he came in second. This was the best Ben had ever done in all the years he's participated in the Pinewood derby. Even though he did well in each heat, there were a lot of other great cars with faster speeds and so we weren't expecting much other than the joy of doing so well in his individual heats. Imagine my surprise when they announced den placements:
That's right, Ben placed third for his den. While this wouldn't have been good enough for him to go to the district races (he wouldn't have been able to go anyway because by the time they took place, Ben would no longer be a cub scout), it meant he received a ribbon. He was very pleased and so were we.
I'm a stay at home mom to 5 great children and wife to a terrific husband. I enjoy sewing, smocking, reading and other various crafts. I use the county fair as my incentive to finish projects that would otherwise never get finished!
For the 2013 contest I made 1000+ baby hats and won the most votes for my Despicable Me "minion" baby hat. This year's contest is scarves for the homeless. As always they can be knit, crocheted or sewn. I will probably sew most of my entries, but have a few cute ones in mind for the judging.
Guess what we did today? We went to get Kate's first haircut! She was very excited!
A lollipop is always in order!
Please just even it up in the back.
I know they're not "in", but I like bangs.
All done! Now that everything is evened up, we can grow it out again!
Ben started middle school this year. There is something so wrong about that.
Claire started Kindergarten, while Eleanor is in 2nd and Macy in 4th. I can't believe how big everyone is getting.
It's summer and we've been busy!
We had to say goodbye to a very dear teacher and friend, Miss Mary. In February she discovered what she thought was an ulcer was actually cancer. Just a little over 4 months later, she passed away. We will miss her so very much, especially her circle times.
Ben "graduated" from elementary school. I'd show you a picture, but our computer crashed and I didn't back those pictures backed-up before the crash, so this one will have to do.
Claire finished her last year of preschool. She's very excited about moving up to Kindergarten.
We picked strawberries.
Kate didn't want to pick. She liked strawberries last year, but has forgotten that she likes them this year so she won't eat or pick them. She did want to be fashionable while being in the fields though.
We saw this beautiful rainbow on our way to
Disney World.
The girls and I ate breakfast with several princesses.
That was fun, although every time I put food in my mouth, I had to hop up and take a picture. Kate had a really good time, she just insisted in looking at the ground for every picture.
We ate ice cream every day. That is actually something we do any time we go on a trip away from home. Otherwise the kids usually only get ice cream on Sundays. I'm mean like that. One neat thing happened regarding this daily treat though. On our first day in the parks, The Magic Kingdom to be exact, we had placed our ice cream order and I went to pay, but the guy behind the counter said, "It is your family's first visit so it will be no charge." What a nice and pleasant surprise! (He knew it was our kids first visit because all the kids had buttons that said, "My first visit" that were given to us by the hotel.)
If you have plans to go to Walt Disney World, I highly recommend checking out the book The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2010 from your local library. I would also recommend subscribing to their website touring plans.com . They have these plans that you follow step by step when visiting the parks that help cut down on the waiting in line and they really worked! The longest lines we waited in were only 30 minute waits, and there were only three of those!
One of those rides was Toy Story Mania which had that long of a wait just for the fast pass machines! Actually we wouldn't have had to wait that long had I not made a wrong turn when we got into the park. That messed us up a bit, but we got where we needed to be and rode one of the most favorite rides of our trip. It was definitely worth the wait. Soarin was another favorite as well as Star Tours.
Well Macy didn't much like Star Tours, but she liked these cute Ewoks that made their way home with us. Meet Sammy and Teepo.
It was very hot and humid. Here is Claire signing the word hot. Actually she was just talking while I took this picture and my friend who knows sign language told me it looked like she was signing hot.
I think we rode on the Buzz Lightyear ride the most.
It was fun, although we all decided it was a distant second to Toy Story Mania.
Yes, I'm wearing sunglasses inside a dark ride. It was for the picture. I was trying to look cool. I hate the way I look when taking pictures of myself, so I'm hiding behind my sunglasses.
Of course I made everyone dress up the same. Not every day, just the days we went to the Magic Kingdom. It made it easier to keep track of everyone.
We visited Japan. Not really, but we did go to EPCOT and ate some yummy Japanese food. Macy decided that EPCOT really stands for "Every Person Comes Out Tired".
We decided we really needed two days for each park. We only did that for the Magic Kingdom. We'll have to save up some more money and go back. Everyone was for that!
We spent one morning at the restaurant pictured above. It was much louder than I had remembered from our previous Florida trip when Ben was 4, Macy was 2 and Eleanor was 7 months old. We didn't spend as much time here as we had before because the free stuff was mainly for little kids and no one wanted to spend all their money on the highly expensive games. It was hard to watch Ben struggle with the realization that he spent two dollars and was only going to get to play two video games instead of the 8 or so he thought he was going to get to play. Lesson learned.
We're going to Disney World to see the Mouse and of course we want to be ready for all things Disney which means new t-shirts. Being the planner/neurotic mother that I am, I wanted all of us to wear matching t-shirts for at least one of the days we would be at the Magic Kingdom. This makes it easier for me to keep track of everyone since there's a lot of us.
Uh, yeh. This was not the look I was going for. The fit was okay, but not great. It felt too big, while at the same time, almost too snug. It felt hot and yucky and I kept wanting to pull at the neck and I wasn't even in the Florida heat and humidity yet! I knew there was no way a smaller size would solve the problem. It was time for some t-shirt transformation.
First I needed a t-shirt pattern that fit well and one that I liked. I had tried unsuccessfully at making a perfect t-shirt using the Jalie 2005 pattern. A lot of people liked it, but I just never did. I changed my version so much it didn't even resemble the original and even then I wasn't crazy about how it felt or looked on me. I had been wanting to try this Stretch and Sew pattern ever since I bought it (a long time ago!) but had been feeling discouraged by my failed attempts at the Jalie pattern. I had an old t-shirt just waiting to be cut apart and here's the result:
Much better! The neck's a little small because I wanted to use the ribbing I had from the original shirt and I really could have used a bit more, but this was more of what I wanted. So it was time to see what I could do with the original Minnie shirt. It turns out, that the parts of the shirt that felt too snug did not provide enough fabric to cut out a new shirt, so I had to purchase a much larger shirt to get my new shirt cut out. Behold the loveliness:
I first washed and dried the shirt to take care of any shrinkage that might occur. Since the shirt I was making was fitted, I didn't want to do all that work, just to have it turn out too small after I washed it. I then carefully cut apart the shirt at the seams, saving all the parts.
I laid out the sleeve pattern over the top of the sleeves. I decided I didn't want to re-hem the sleeves, so I used the existing hem even though it meant my sleeves wouldn't be as capped. I was okay with that.
I folded the front in half and laid the front pattern piece on top. Since the neckline on the pattern was much lower, I cut it much higher to accommodate the graphic on the front.
Here's the picture of the back.
After sewing up the shirt, I liked the fit much better, but was not happy with the neck. It made the whole shirt feel "off" for me. Part of the problem was my ribbing was just a bit too short and I really had to pull it to make it around the neck. I also really wanted a bit of a bigger neck as this one felt very similar to the first shirt I had tried on.
After a bit of ripping out and readjusting I had a better fitting neckline which made the shirt feel better. Don't ask me why, it just did.
Here's a picture of the shirts side by side so you can see the difference in the neck. Not a lot, but enough that the final product on the right looks and feels better.
Here are all the shirts I've made using this pattern. I've been playing around with different neck finishes and sleeve types. I'm still having trouble making a truly capped sleeve, but I'm working on it. Can't wait to try the long sleeved and sleeveless versions as well!
Today Claire turned 5! Hard to believe, but true. If she's five, then that can only mean one thing:
Kindergarten orientation!!!!
In third grade at our elementary school, the students need to read a biography, write a report and then either dress up as that person or make a doll out of a 2 litre bottle of that person and then give an oral report to the class. Macy has been really enjoying the Little House books and since I am a big fan too, I had Laura Ingalls Wilder's biography and so Macy read that for her assignment.
We used a Styrofoam ball for the head and covered it with fabric that I had gathered together in the middle to make a nose. I realized while we were trying to cover the Styrofoam ball that we should have used knit fabric. Oh well, when it's Eleanor's turn, we'll do better. I guess we just left the ball white for Ben's project (His report was on Paul Revere). So anyway, that's why the fabric is wrinkly. Wouldn't be a problem if we were making Laura when she was 90 years old. We made a dress out of brown calico (with red flowers) and added an apron and a bonnet. We stuffed the shoulders and sleeves of the dress with leftover scraps of yarn from her hair and then sewed her hands into the ends of the sleeves to keep everything in. I wanted to make a little Charlotte doll for her to hold, but then Macy reminded me that this was her project not mine. 
As you can see, Laura is not wearing her bonnet on her head, because we all know that she much preferred to wear it hanging by the straps on her back. That's a good thing because even though Macy sewed the majority of this together, I made the pattern based on one I found on the web and the bonnet ended up a bit too small for Laura's head. Laura wouldn't be complete without her braids and red hair ribbons! Even though I helped with pattern making and a few other things (like working the hot glue gun), Macy did the majority of the cutting out, sewing, etc. so she'll be able to enter this in the fair this summer.
This was Ben's last Pinewood derby as a cub scout. He becomes a Boy Scout this week. The Pinewood derby has always been a favorite scouting activity for Ben (and myself), even though he hasn't always done very well.
In case you couldn't tell, Ben came in first in the first heat! He also came in first his second and fourth heat. His third heat he came in second. This was the best Ben had ever done in all the years he's participated in the Pinewood derby. Even though he did well in each heat, there were a lot of other great cars with faster speeds and so we weren't expecting much other than the joy of doing so well in his individual heats. Imagine my surprise when they announced den placements:
