I want my Mommy!

No matter how old you get, I don't think a gal can ever get to old to not want her Mommy.  So when my mom surprised me with a phone call around Christmas time telling me she was flying in for a couple days to visit - well, it was about all I could do to not burst out bawling on the phone.  For Joy - mind you, not,  'Oh no, I've got to surgically clean the house cause mom's coming.'

I didn't clean the house, well, cause I don't have to fake it for mom.  She loves me even though I'm messy

And being that she's the worlds best seamstress, she took a few spare minutes to piece together a fleece quilt top for the girls baby dolls. 

 

Lucky Doll.

So what do you do when your mom comes to visit?  Sightsee?  Talk and Shop?

Well we shopped at Lowes and Home Depot.  Then we involved our built-in slave labor force.   Back in the kitchen to patch in drywall...

Spackle, Sand, Texture and Paint.

Thing is you can't just paint the one wall affected.  You have to paint all the kitchen walls...

and the connecting family room...

and connecting hallway...

Tom Sawyer had it right.  Kids do like to paint.

I thought I'd have to blog about some fantastic paint spills, but no.

Grandma was on Quality Control and made sure they cleaned up all their little errant brush strokes, be they on clothes, siblings or walls.

But her quality control was so focused on the little kids that she wasn't able to stop Big Kid Prince Erik from laying Saruman's White Hand on my backside.

I guess mom then thought instead of managing the house of wacky's it would be easier to just paint.  So she took on the ceiling.

 

Then just as the painting was done, it was time for her to go.

She put up with my complaining about probably near everything and patted me on the head and told me that it would all work out.  Also reminded me of just how blessed I am compared to others.  Just as a good mother should.

I love my mom and she can come visit anytime.  I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope we didn't wear her out too much.

The painting is done for now.  We are just putting back, de-cluttering, and totally rearranging furniture so be looking for some fun Before and After pic's soon.

Mad Sewing Skills -T-shirt Dress Style

What happens when you hang out with the World’s Best Seamstress (A.K.A My Mom)?

See she even dresses the part with the measuring tape necklace and scissors. Thankfully no one has been maimed or hurt yet when she walks with them. Anyway if you hang out with her long enough then your creative skills tend to bubble up from their long buried depths. Or at least I find myself thinking on a much thriftier, self-reliant train of thought while I’m around her.

My brain thinking wheels thankfully started turning because of Hope (yes, her again). I should find interesting stuff about my other kids to blog about or rename this blog ‘Living with Hope’. Anyway, Hope loves wearing dresses. Makes her feel like a Princess. Thing is, cheap, durable dresses are hard to come buy and she is constantly stripping down and handing me her nice but extremely delicate Sunday dresses and begging me to help her put on her princess dress. So my big sewing project I decided to tackle while killing time at Grandmas home this week was T-shirt dresses for my girls.

So I paid about $24 bucks for 6 shirts. Three Kid decorative and Three Adult Plain.
For the Two Year Old I bought a size 4-5 Decorative Tee, and an Adult Medium Pain Tee
For the Six Year Old I bought a size 7-8 Decorative Tee, and an Adult Medium Plain Tee
For the Nine Year Old I got a size 14-16 Decorative Tee, and an Adult Large Plain Tee – However next time I think I’d get the Plain Tee in a XL or XXL size.

I hacked up the shirts like so….

Taking about 4 inches off the bottom of the decorative Tee’s and cutting the adult pain tee’s just below the sleeve line. However I made the 9 Year old longer and I tapered it a bit so I could use almost all the material from the neck down. I left the bottom shirt seam on the plain tees alone so I wouldn’t have to re-do the hems.

Next step – Gather the top cut part of the plain tee’s (future skirt). My mom showed me this trick and I’ve always used it to gather material. Sew a zigzag stitch over a larger thread and to gather just pull on the larger thread while bunching the fabric.

Then you pair the gathered skirt with the decorative tee – Right sides together and pin them in place.

If you have a Serger

(Lucky) this would be great but you can sew these two sides together with a regular sewing machine as well.

Flip them right side out and top stitch around the waist on the none gathered side of the decorative Tee.

TaDa! In my first attempt I've just made three dresses. But wait that's not all.

Hope now has a new Princess Dress.

Princess doesn't think this is a bad idea. She likes it too!

And Lea loves the opportunity to model.

Now if you’re related to the world best seamstress then you can take the Tee-shirt scrapes and make the 2 year old a bonus dress. Don’t ask me how? It’s a little too complicated for me to explain in this blog. Maybe future one? I somehow managed it and I think it’s my favorite of the three dresses.

But I like them all. Now Hope has some play dresses that will last and she might give her Sunday dresses a break.

$24 worth of Six tee-shirts = Four dresses at $6 buck-a-roo’s a piece. And it took about 2 ½-3 hours to complete the entire project. I think I’ll have to make some more when I get home. Definately worth my time.

Fire! Help! Someone Save Grandma and Papa too.

I’m currently waiting for my parents to hand me an eviction notice. So far they have been Saints for allowing me and my four youngest rascals to camp on their floor for the past couple of days but we might be wearing our welcome out. They may even be planning a huge old ‘Thank Goodness They’re Gone Party’ for next week when we finally leave. That and thank their lucky stars that our families reunions are only every other year instead of every year.

‘Just How’, you might be thinking, ‘are we wearing their patience level to an all time see-through thin stage.

One four letter guess. HOPE!


Do you like the nice mud puddle she made on their living room carpet after she tipped over the plant?

But the kicker was today she tried to burn down their house. Not kidding folks. I’ve got a live wire here.

On one of her (too many to count) escapes to the backyard, she happened to turn on the stove top in the kitchen. Since my parent’s kitchen is teeny tiny they have a piece of board that sits on top of their stove and functions as counter space until the stove top is needed. Well since the stove top was NOT supposed to be in use the board was in place. Let me tell you a red-hot burner connected with wood results in a lot of smoke.

Fortunately Princess came to the rescue when she mentioned to Papa that his kitchen was full of smoke.

After three hours you still get a whiff of the smoky fumes when you walk through the kitchen.

Needless to say the portable counter-top is now put away for the duration of our visit.

Good thing Hope is so Shirley Temple adorable and you know she isn’t intentionally trying to drive us all nuts.

However I have a feeling it’s going to be a rather long week.

Wild and Crazy Forth!

Hope found…

A. Grandpa’s Black Powder Rifle has an awesome smokey kick to it.

B. She was face painted at the park and this is all that was left of her raccoon mask at the end of the day.

C. Riding in Grandpas open-aired tractor through many a dusty field can leave dust in every nook and cranny of the body.

D. The dirt in Grandma’s garden sure beats the dirt in Mom’s garden.

Stay tuned to see what the real answer is.

I know, I know, I've been missing in blog-sphere action recently. I plead my crazy-busy week. The Crazy included spending 16 hours in my husbands small but fuel efficient car with my four youngest children squished together while traveling to see my folks in their neck of the forest. Prince Erik lobbied strategically for me to leave the two least annoying and much more mature Abner and T-rev with him as he would be staying home and didn’t want the house destroyed while I was gone.

Crazy escalated when the portable DVD player died just two hours into our long trek. I then can’t tell you how long we sang along with Veggie Tale Songs, played I spy and listened to mayhem before I cracked and bought a portable CD player with headsets so I could to listen to ‘Twilight’ and tune the kids out while they fought over who got to play the DS or complain about someone’s hair touching them to the point of annoyance. That and I seriously can’t tell you how many times Princess asked how much farther until we got to Grandma and Papa’s house. I’m back to the drawing board for the road trip home. That or I’m switching vehicles with Prince Erik and he can enjoy my little circus kids.

Needless to say the nightmare of a kid-squabbling road trip ended and I was grateful there were no tire mishaps like our trip last November.

Finally we arrived at my parents for an awesome 4th. The only thing that would have made it perfect was to have my whole family there and possibly eat some cherry pie. But since there’s no such thing as perfect I was hugely happy to enjoy the following.

PR (Wahoo!) as in Personal Record (at altitude in 80 degree morning heat to boot) of 31 min. 40 seconds, in my fastest ever 5K. Of course I ran in my parents little town race along with my brother Arrow, my 1st place finishing speed-walking marvel of a Mom and Lea and Evo-man. Meanwhile Princess, Hope and Sweetie consumed our after-race goodies for us.

Next we watched a good old town parade where they actually still throw candy at the kids. It helped that Grandma was driving one of the floats because she must have unloaded a half-box of candy right at the feet of her grandkids. Don’t know what she was thinking because those sugared up grandkids would be going straight back to her house to climb her walls and drive her crazy later.

Then it was off to the park...

where Grandma and Papa once again treated us to lunch – small town style (roast beef on buns with Pork and Beans and Corn on the Cob. The kids were still too sugared up from all the candy she unloaded on them so we were able to take lots of leftovers home.

Other highlight from my down home Forth included.

The kids and I podding peas from my parents still amazing garden.

Nothing tastes better than straight from the garden.

Running through the sprinklers.

And the answer is... Hope found Grandma's garden dirt so irresistably soft compared to my gardens harder than packed clay soil.

She couldn't resist taking a softer-than-baby-powder dirt bath. I wonder if she will add these ingredients to her future spa treatments?

And with all the clothes my kids went through in one day - well I happily put my parents clothesline to good use. I'm tempted to dig it out of the ground, strap it on to the top of my car and bring it home with me. Do you think they will they notice?

It appears that my mom is all tuckered out from dealing with me and my rascals.

Poor Dear. She only has to put up with us for another week.