September Saturday Sewing

After missing last month's sewing, I was ready to head south and sew sew sew with my friends.  This was definitely my most productive trip yet.  I finished a throw sized quilt front and almost finished a second.  Then I took a break and broke out the yarn and crocheted a little while watching the very disappointing Auburn game.

Here's what everyone was busy doing:

Kim's new husband.  I love the fabric.

My scarf.  This is Jiffy by Lion Brand that I found on clearance at Hobby Lobby.  Score.  This is also my current favorite pattern.  It's just single crochet and chains.  Super easy. (sorry, no pictures of the quilt.  I'm keeping them on the DL for now) 

SDJ saving The Judson money by replacing a zipper on academic regalia.

Heather making bibs. I love the dog fabric.

Marie binding her baby quilt.  I'm going to be excited to see this finished.  It looks great so far.  (Marie, you  looked like a constipated fish  so I cropped out your face.  I must get better at waiting until people are ready before I take their picture.)

Mandy working on a crayon roll.  And now she has me interested in making some for the kids. She used my machine while I took the crochet break and she can verify that my sudden increase in quality is due almost entirely to this machine.

JSS's baby quilt is ready to bind.

I really love how she straight stitched the border.  I'm such a big fan of the quilting process and how it really adds to a quilt.  It definitely gives added dimension and interest.

Plus, we got to ooh and ahh over two very precious babies.  Great sewing trip indeed.

Wordless Wednesday: A rained out Braves game long ago

Treasures from the past

Over the last few weeks, Husband and I have been cleaning up and cleaning out our entire downstairs.  We're talking a finished space that's 5 rooms and about 900 square feet that we have just been wasting but much more on that later.  

Anyway, the cellar is the room where the hot water heater is and various old stuff gets stored there.  All my college notes, my two door sized windows from Jewett, all my jewel cases for my hundreds of cds,  Husband's old dishes from before I moved in, all the Christmas stuff, old campaign signs, all the kids stuff they outgrow and MOST of my Husband's childhood toys and trophies.  Including about 15 wrestling "action figures"   seriously.  When Husband was cleaning up and reorganizing the cellar, he gathered up his wrestlers and threw them in the dishwasher to clean them so he could introduce his wrestlers to the kids.

all cleaned up and ready.  This is everyone but King Kong Bundy -- they've already been playing with him for years.

here's a crazy green tongued guy who's name I don't know and Hulk Hogan in the background

Daughter was amazed.

Son was too.  He kept asking, "who dat? who dat?  He for me?"  

They've been carrying them around ever since.  Son loves to pick out a wrestler and start at his feet pointing out all his clothes and what colors they are and all his body parts.  He loves the ones without shirts because they have belly buttons, a favorite body part in our house.  And those wrestlers have been on all sorts of adventures.  Safaris, airplane rides, trips through the sticky mud.  It's hilarious all the games they think of to include their wrestlers in.

Muffin Tin Lunch

To celebrate their new thrift store table and chairs, the kids got to eat lunch at it (well, and most lunches since.) BTW, I'm loving this new-to-us wooden Dora table.  It's quite durable. and $6 for the table and 2 yellow little tikes chairs -- um, I couldn't pass that up. I'd love to have more childless time to explore our 3 in-town thrift stores.  I love finding good deals.  Maybe I'll start going Saturday mornings now that football has started.

I wish, wish wish, we had two 6 hole muffin tins, so each kid had their own "plate." But we only have a 12 and our walmart only has a 12.  So the search continues.  And they shared well.

Anyway, they had garden tomatoes, apple slices, mandarin orange slices, carrots, celery and cheese sticks sliced up so they fit in the tins.  And because my kids cannot eat celery or carrots without it, dip in their own bowls.  And when I say DIP, I just mean Ranch Dressing.  Nothing fancy here, folks.

I was pleased with how lunch turned out.  They ate a little more than normal and a much bigger variety of healthy foods than normal.  Usually it's a sandwich and a fruit or something similar.  a main thing and one fruit or vegetable side.

If only I had an equally healthy lunch! I think I had a couple of handfuls of raw almonds and a handful of reece's peices.

His Turn to Paint

Husband took over crafting over-seeing duties a few times last week so I could do something else ... and Son got his first real taste of painting "the white animals" as Daughter calls them.

wow, when did this little baby become a little boy?

concentrating.

I love how he's turning into such a fun, sweet, smart little boy.

excuse the mommy brag ...

In the last month, Daughter's drawing ability has just EXPLODED.  Before she was drawing shapes, a few of her favorite letters and blobs of things that she would later have to explain.  NOW, she's drawing things that we can actually identify.  And it's pretty exciting for 3 out of 4 of us ... Son just couldn't care less.

Last weekend we introduced them to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 on Dvd (We have read both kids all three of the Golden Books, but they haven't seen the movies yet)

Can you tell what inspired this picture?  Toy Story 2

a carrot, a horse, and a rope shaped like a lasso

I LOVE: GOOF OFF

It does not matter that I THINK there are no non-washable crayons in the house, there always seems to be some somewhere. (sigh) Seriously, if you buy my kids non-washable crayons - you're on my "I don't like you" list.  

Notice Daughter pointing to Son's latest masterpiece

It drives me crazy whenever the topic of crayons on walls come up and people start screaming "MAGIC ERASER."  Guess what ... in my house, on my walls, Magic Eraser is almost as effective as water and a rag.  Apparently, I have super non-responsive wall or some other such garbage.  But I have never been able to get Magic Eraser to get ANYTHING off my walls.  (except washable crayon -- but well, water and a rag gets off washable crayon and it's hella cheaper)

Anyway, I was just resolved to the fact that we were going to have to repaint the walls and cut off Son's hands so he couldn't color on the walls anymore (completely joking about chopping my son's hands off. maybe.)

Then I remembered this great stuff that I bought to clean up a fantastic cabinet that my Pawpaw built for me when I was about Daughter's age.  Growing up, I definitely didn't treat this amazing piece of furniture with the respect it deserved and when I moved in with Husband, it needed a deep deep clean to get off years of crayon, glitter paint, puff paint, chalk and all the other stuff I did to it.  So this stuff has been under our kitchen sink for 5 years, completely forgotten about.

the ULTIMATE REMOVER.

The only downside to Goof Off! (and it tells you on the list of things it removes) is wall paint is susceptible to it's magic removing ability.  Some of our wall paint faired much better than others.  The paint in Daughter's room was completely unphased, the red paint in the dining room didn't care.  Our pantry cabinets that fell victim to a tragic sharpie accident a couple of years ago sang with JOY with they were cleaned (well, that was me singing). The living room walls were the only walls that we really had to be careful with.  We ended up using a q-tip so we only got the crayon.

All our walls look great now.  Not a crayon mark in sight.  And so far, no ones hands have had to be removed.  I love GOOF OFF!

Wordless Wednesday: upgrade from the crib