From My Inner Scout to Yours

I love to be prepared. In theory — I’m usually not all that prepared anywhere but in my head. My kids are lucky for aunts who always bring snacks, I’m just saying.

We’ll start again.

I love the idea of being prepared; nothing makes my eyes light up more than a kit. Ooh. I loves a good kit. So, along those lines, this handy-dandy little wallet is what we’ll be giving to Joey’s “extra” teachers [you know -- P.E., music, art -- who don't see him every day, but help shape him into a well-rounded individual] this year:

Summer-y, right? Wait, it gets better — go ahead and open it!

We’re talking summer in Houston, folks. Imagine the surface of the sun, if the sun were swarming with mosquitoes, and you’ve got the idea. Yet, there’s always that time when you leave the house without your sunscreen or handy can of Off!, and your skin will tell the tale the next day for sure. No longer! Before you head out, get your summer on.

 

We plan to tuck in a little gift card to our favorite yogurt shop to complete the set. He has had such a great group of teachers this year; I hope they enjoy this little token of our appreciation.

 

Specs: The wallet itself was greatly inspired by this tea wallet (and by inspired, I mean the only change I made was to the closure). Mosquito repellant wipes are sold in stores — I got mine at Target — and I found the sunscreen towelettes on Amazon.

Back in the Saddle

Let’s back up the train to Mother’s Day weekend:

I’d noticed a trend in the editorials of the May women’s magazines. What do today’s moms really want for Mother’s Day?, they asked. A day off from kitchen duty. Again and again, this was mentioned.

AMEN and AMEN.

Not that I don’t love food or preparing it and what have you, but man! It just never ends, so, yes — I asked for a day off from meal planning and execution. I didn’t want to think about not one meal, nor did I want to dish it out. Frankly, I could not have cared less about what it was; I just didn’t want to be involved (aside from the eating. Girl still has to eat.) Kevin was surprised, but agreed to grant my fondest wish.

And boy, did he! He and the boy made delicious french toast for breakfast, and then we had Subway for lunch. Didn’t care — beats waiting at a restaurant! Dinner was a free-for-all that I didn’t fix, so that was great, too. It was a really lovely day, probably the best Mother’s Day so far.

It was those lovely memories that I clung to the next day when I was suffering mightily at the hands of a stomach bug. A bad day, last Monday, but by Tuesday I was so much better. Phew! Not fun. Sadly, though, by the time I got back into the fridge (because I really hadn’t actually cooked anything since the Thursday or Friday before), it was a bad scene. Quite a bit of the box ended up in the bin. (Actually, it was the stock from the week before that, but still.) Fail! Fail fail fail!

And the aprons that I cut out for my Craft Hope contribution? Still sitting unstitched on the cutting table. Blast it!

So that pretty much brings us up to present. To sum up, very little has been accomplished in the past two weeks, and I feel more behind than ever. Fortunately, we live to fight another day! Today, I got all pro-active with the vegetable bin and made a big ol’ batch of broth:

It may not look like much, but it yielded three quarts and gave new life to some scraps and aged zucchini. Since it was clean-up day, I decided to address the blackening banana situation on top of the fridge (and two others passing time in the freezer) and gave this recipe a whirl:

So good! I mean, I knew it was going to be, because I’d tasted the original, but still. Mm. Okay, and let me just tell you: I once again rushed through reading the recipe and almost didn’t make it. All that oil! So much sugar! Oh…wait…it makes three loaves? Totally acceptable! And superior, actually, because it used up all of the bananas and made three loaves without me having to do the math of tripling the recipe. Score.

Tomorrow, I plan on sharing the end-of-year gifts that I made for the teachers. Here’s a hint: It’s cute and practical, and it’s not a mug.

Starting Small. Really, Really Small.

You know what? I’d probably get a lot more done if I spent less time stumbling across cool new-to-me blogs. Know what else? I can’t stop! There are so many inspiring people hiding in plain sight. Right now, one of the things that has me all twitchy is Jules’ William Morris Project. Oh boy! I wanna play!

I’ll tell you Secret #1: It took me a week to actually sit down and put pen to paper to make my list. Like it’s a binding contract? I don’t know — maybe I just didn’t want to come across one more “this time for sure” list two years from now. Well, I’m all about trying again, so The List was made and this girl is ready to tackle it!

But, one mustn’t rush, so I chose something super manageable (if somewhat embarrassing.)

It may sound strange, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time in my son’s room. Usually, I’m either there to wake up, tuck in, or put away laundry; there’s always a purpose. Truth be told, though, it doesn’t take long for the unusual to become very…not unusual? Not exactly normal, but nothing that would draw my attention, either.

All this to say: Yesterday, I decided to take matters in hand and box up The Boy’s Christmas decorations. Now, I know that I’d mentioned it to him several times since New Year’s Day, but never really cared enough to be the enforcer. Then, the other day, we had bedtime stories in his room instead of ours. Halfway through the first chapter, my eye came to rest on his Santa Snoopy lights strung across the wall. And — glance to the left — yep! There’s the tree on the desk.

“Son! It’s really time to take down the lights and the tree.“

“Aww,  Momma — not yet!“

But if not now, then when? So, without further ado, I [miracles of miracles!] remembered to stop in while he was in school and boxed it all up. That was yesterday; to my knowledge, he hasn’t even noticed. The rest of the room is slated for a little updating this summer, but I already feel better about the state of affairs around here.

We’re doing things!

Fresh From the Farm

So far this year, we have been blown away by the beautiful produce our CSA farm has been delivering this spring. It’s amazing what a little rain will do!

This is last week’s selection, which pretty much represents every other week in April:

The password is “greens”.

Chard, collards, lettuce, beet greens, kale and more kale — lots o’ greens. There was a cauliflower or two at first, but that ship has sailed. Now come the onions. What am I going to do with all of those onions?? So far, I’ve only used one; good thing they keep a while! Do you think it would stink up the freezer if I caramelized a bunch and put them on ice?

Hey, do you see the big white thing in the bottom right? It’s a watermelon radish. Biggest radish I’ve ever seen. Tasty, too! And those brownish things are Indian Corn Cucumbers — such a delicious cuke.

This week, I neglected to take a picture before packing it all away, but here’s the rundown: more cucumbers, chard, beets, onions, zucchini, summer squash, carrots, and blackberries. I’m thinking of making pickles out of some of the cucumbers and carrots, because the thought of wasting even one is too terrible. As for the beets, they’re starting to pile up a little, so tonight I made a batch of chips to go with our sandwiches.

[Oh would you look at that. I managed to use the one chipped plate for my little photo shoot, here. Nice!]

This is the recipe I use for the chips. The only change I made was to toss the vegetable slices with olive oil rather than spray the pan, and that’s only because I didn’t feel like using the spray. The beets roasted up in about ten minutes. The whole bunch of beets only makes enough for about four servings, but they don’t really keep so it’s perfect.

I’m telling you, I can hardly wait to see what’s waiting for us next week. They say that melons should be coming soon. MELONS!

 

 

Warming Up

The latest Craft Hope Project involves aprons, so I thought I’d get in gear by finishing a couple that had already been cut. These are little ones [Christmas 2011 gifts for my girl and her cousin -- ahem], so they came together lickety split. Funny how that works, once the fabrics have been selected and prepped. Also funny? The last time Bridget put on her only other apron, I noticed that it was getting a little snug. Did I remember that before I cranked this one out, when it would be perfectly easy to go up a size now that the [Basic Child's Apron] pattern has been updated? When, in fact, I was actually making the larger sized one for my niece? No. No I did not.

Meh. She won’t care, and it’ll get the job done until I get around to making the whole lot of ‘em new Christmas aprons. You know, because they need them.

Anyway, now that I have two more works-in-progress completed [WOOHOO!], I’m ready to move on to the main event. And now that they’re cut out, maybe I’ll even make the May 31 target date!

KCWC: Finale

Don’t you dig the heavenly blast of light on this dress? Even the angels sing when I get around to finishing something!

This dress is adapted from the nightdress pattern in Making Children’s Clothes; some of you may recognize it  as being strikingly similar to last year’s model. That is because I bought this fabric at the same time, with the intention of making myself a skirt. Well, here we are a year later: I’ve not made the skirt (which seemed like less and less of a good idea as time wore on), and the “polky-dot” dress is waaaay too short, so…second verse, same as the first!

Once again, I have no idea why I left a project this simple “in basket” for so long, and I’m totally happy to be done with it. There’s actually one more sundress left to complete, but it’s one that requires elastic thread. It’s been a while since I’ve used that, and now I have to get all psyched up in order to tackle it. In a few weeks or so, I’m sure I’ll be back with another edition of “Why Did I Wait So Long?” Til then, it’s on to other things!

KCWC: Day Three

The Dreaded Pajama Pants — done and done!

I still don’t know why I make such a big deal over making these. It might be because there are usually several pair lined up and ready to go, and cutting them all out takes up about all of the energy I’m willing to put into them. That having been said, banging out the actual pinning and sewing over the course of two hour-long sessions was the way to go! Once they were done (about half an hour into Day Three), I was able to start working on one of the two dresses left sitting in the basket. Turns out that the prep work that I did way back when really left something to be desired; I only cut out one of the main dress pieces. Of course, I didn’t discover this until I’d attached the sleeve pieces to the front…and didn’t find a back to attach them to in the next step. Yepper. Well, that explains why there was so much of that fabric leftover! So, I spent the last ten minutes of sewing time cutting out the back piece.

And then I got distracted by errands and re-organizing the kitchen on Day Four, but thought that I’d sneak in an hour of sewing in the evening.

Then The Girl got up from her nap with a roaring fever, so we got to go to take a field trip to the pediatrician instead. [It's a virus -- hooray? Well, could be worse!]

Hey, I can show you something else, though. There’s another thing spurring me along this year: I recently re-organized my fabric collection. By “recently”, I mean sometime in January. Anyway, thanks to this genius idea (which I found through the magic of Pinterest, naturally), I ran right out, bought a pack of comic book boards, and got to winding. So exciting! My shelves were going to look so good! And then…

… I ran out of boards, and had to go get some more. That was a little sobering.

After some [what felt like ruthless, but probably wasn't] fabric purging, here’s a look at what’s left:

My, but isn’t flannel bulky?

And my, don’t I like blue?

That gives you an idea of what we’re dealing with here. My 2012 goal is to shrink the collection significantly, and so far great headway is being made! My little stack of empty boards is growing by the week. There’s still a lot of work to do, or else I’m determined to make another sweep next January — partly because I’d like to make better use of the space and partly because I’d like to buy more fabric.

There, I said it. There are beautiful collections coming out every day and I want more! But I’ve been showing great restraint. It’s hard to justify “needing” something with a cotton army staring you down from their perches.

Here’s wishing you a healthy and productive (or relaxing, if that’s your thing) weekend!

 

KCWC: Day Two

Second verse, same as the first!

Well, almost the same, but yes — it’s another skirt. Can’t have too many. Yesterday, I managed to wrap this one up and get halfway through the pajamas.

The pajamas got a whole lot easier when I realized that I’d made a mistake in matching up the legs on one of the pair. It was a really cute striped seersucker print, and it’s almost impossible to tell the back from the front. Unfortunately, I was patting myself on the back for going the extra mile, carefully trimming and finishing the seam. You know how long it takes to rip all of that out? Me neither; I promptly threw it back in the basket. Three pair just became two. Onward!

KCWC: Day One

Skirt #1, using a combination of two of my favorite tutorials.

In the one hour allotted, I managed to finish this skirt and get halfway through a second. Today, the plan is to finish the second and start on the stack o’ pajamas.

KCWC Begins!

Here’s the funny yet all too typical story behind this basket (featured in yesterday’s post):

It is filled with ready-t0-be-sewn clothes for The Girl. I spent a Saturday, about three weeks ago, cutting everything out so that I’d be ready to go whenever the mood struck. The idea was that it would be sometime the following week, which was a shame because I had wanted to participate in the Kids Clothing Week Challenge this year. Alas, I was far too ahead of the game, but that’s a good problem to have, right?

Well…fast forward three weeks…and I’m right on time. Huzzah! And still ahead of the game, because the cutting out of the item is half the battle for me. So, every day this week, the plan is to spend one hour and one hour only whittling down this particular pile/basket.

Time’s a-wastin’! Let’s see how this system works out, shall we?