Summer Projects!

I love love love Summer time!  Aside from banishing my seasonal-lack-of-sun blues, summer makes me giddy with all of its possibilities.  Granted, I'm a stay at home Mom, so technically I could do whatever, whenever, but something about summer motivates me!  Combine that with a sale on Butterick patterns at Jo-Ann, and here's what I came away with today:

I have to admit I'm a little excited about trying my hand at millinery and creating a hat or two!  The fabric in the background will be used to make the dress with sleeves on pattern B5209 (lower left side).  Here's a close-up of that:

It's charmeuse.  I just like the way that sounds when you say it.  Try it!  I'm currently working on another retro Butterick pattern:

Cute, huh?  It's taken quite a lot of time.  Not because of difficulty, but because of A's first dance recital!  I sewed bits and bobs for a few classes, and designed and sewed A's Strawberry Shortcake costume.

I added silvers stars to her cowboy costume (as well as those of her classmates) and designed and constructed their tap shoe spats:

I ended up making satin flapper spats for another tap number, and frilly ruffs for a "Phantom of the Opera"-esque ballet costume.  Fun fun fun!  All of the kids had a blast and felt beautiful and talented, that's what's important!

Now to get sewing!

We've Been Inked! or, Arch Enemy Part II

So here's my laundry room today:

Tada!  I know it's not perfect, but at least the laundry that's left in there is all folded or hung.  That's good enough, I say.  I even put a door hanger on the cabinet to hang dry small things like tote bags and lunch boxes.  I thought that was pretty creative.

Now on to the inked segment.  You may have noticed a few, errrrr, "some" days have passed since I promised that I'd clean that mess up.  It's not that it has taken me a week to get the laundry cleaned up, not exactly anyway.  The day after my last blog entry the laundry room was lookin' good!  But then it happened.  E got into Matt's office as Matt was getting ready for work, and he found a bottle of ink.  Matt uses it to refill his fabu fountain pen.

I do actually love fountain pens.

After the lid was unscrewed, the ink managed to find its way into the keyboard of Matt's LAPTOP, then into all of the electronics therein.  Matt had just left when I happened upon a black handed toddler in the hall and discovered the catastrophe.  The carpet under Matt's desk also suffered a grievous blow.  I did the best I could, but we also sacrificed a good number of towels in the effort, which is how the laundry room cleaning and post was waylaid.  The towels are a lurid violet color now, thanks to some clorox.  There was a valiant effort to save the Acer, but it unfortunately succumbed to the ink.  ::sigh::

At least my laundry and laundry room are clean!  (Note my bag of Charlie's soap on the counter in the laundry room.)