Browns Point Elementary Carnival

We spent Friday evening at Bella's school carnival.
Owen and Bella loved the bounce house with the slide

Serious cuteness!

I helped out with this strong man booth. It was the longest hour of the week. I am not sure how it always works out that I am placed right by the karaoke booth which blasts the loudest music. Pair that with giving elementary aged children a mallet to hit a small moving target (the whole game moved constantly to the left) and you have an hour of pure torture. I was thankful when my service time was up but I still have a sore throat!

Owen loves the games

Every week Isabella has to write her spelling words out in sentences before her spelling test. I really liked number 4 and had to share it. It says "I think the hottest person in the whole world is my mom." Hottest was her spelling word. And that my friends, is why I keep that girl around!

When we went skiing in December with my brother, we managed to get a nice little rock chip in the windshield. Mike pointed me in the direction of 312th street and the zillion people around that area who could help me fix the chip in my windshield. Well, being the ever do it yourself-er, and the constant cheap one in the family, I thought for sure there must be a home kit for fixing your own rock chip. I mean they can set up a booth and some teenager smacking gum and listening to their ipod can do it...why can't my hubby? Luckily, they do make such a thing. And it cost a mere $7. The little kids thought it was super fun to watch Mike at work and really, it was quite successful.

Kid Venture Bake Sale

We started a penny drive at church to raise funds for Haiti and immediately I was approached by the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade girls with the idea to have a garage sale. I like garage sales as much as the next guy, but I was pretty sure these girls had no idea how much work was going to be involved in having one. As I was politely explaining why we couldn't have a garage sale to raise money, another girl spoke up and said how about a bake sale. Now while bake sales aren't a new idea for a fundraiser, these girls had never done one, so it was new to them. I ran with the idea and told the girls if they wanted to do it, we could bake the items at my house. We had such a great time and never have I been more thankful to have 2 kitchen aid mixers and a double oven!

The girls made posters to put around the church and good were sold after both services on Sunday.
Carson and Jillian worked on packaging the items.

Kyla did a great job jumping in and doing the constant dish washing

Caitlyn was on muffin and brownie patrol

Bella helped with a little bit of everything. In fact, all of the girls did. I hosted it, but really, the girls did all of the baking, measuring and packaging and the boys from Kid Venture did the bulk of the selling.

Carson was super excited about her new cookbook and mixer that she got for Christmas. She set to work making a double batch of white chocolate chip cookies. YUM!

We made cupcakes the night before so they would be cool enough to frost when the girls came over.

Owen was a little intimidated by all the ladies in the kitchen so he made himself sparse after the initial cupcake baking.

I was so proud of our small group and what big work we were able to accomplish with one idea over the course of the week. Our Kid Venture crew (if you aren't familiar with the lingo, Kid Venture is our sunday school program) made of of K-5th graders were able to raise over $1200 at the bake sale. And with generous matching programs that total is going to be nearly $4000 that our KV group is going to be able to send to Haiti! Nice work kiddos!

With glasses...

without. Either way, I think my kid is pretty darn cute. However, that didn't stop him from having a middle school meltdown and insisting that every child was going to make fun of him wearing his glasses. Aidan often thinks that we aren't quite as smart as we are and insisted that he would wear his glasses. His tantrum made us second guess his willingness. So with the threat of impromtu visits at school to make sure he had them on, we were ready for the first day of glasses wearing at school. Mom followed through with the threat and showed up midday. After a class poll to make sure he was doing a good job wearing them, Aidan got my approval and I was able to leave him at school knowing he would wear them through the day. Nothing like having your mom check up on you at middle school to bring home the point!

So, I'm sure you didn't notice but our blog has gotten taken over by a manic mommy. I discovered craft blogs and couldn't help but post all of my latest projects and the inspiration that came from them. But for those of you who really are just in it to keep up with our family (which is totally fine, we are happy you came to visit!), I plan to put all of my lastest craftiness on our new blog. You are welcome to join me there. I would love to have you see what I do to stay sane...I mean busy. http://holy-craft.blogspot.com/

Only one sweatshirt was harmed in the making of a new sweatshirt.

Fabric is so darn expensive. Even with discounts, sales and coupons making your own clothes is not very economical, especially when I shop at garage sales and get deep discounts. I sat next to one of my workout friends at Aidan's band concert last night and fell in LOVE with her sweatshirt. I sat there staring all night thinking how easy it looked to make. I became obssessed with it. Then I found it on the internet and saw the price tag, then I really wanted to make it. I just didn't know how. I had dreams about it ALL night. I know, dreams about a sweatshirt, crazy! Anyway, I took myself to Joann's today and looked around. I found fabric I sort of liked and a pattern that I could tweek a bit but $25 later, I decided to look in our goodwill pile. I found two sweatshirts that I paid a dollar a piece for. I thought if nothing else, I would at least start cutting and make my own pattern and see how easy it would be. Thankfully, Owen kept himself busy and I got to work! So here's the story of two lovely sweatshirts inspired by Free People's Ebb and Flow sweatshirt. http://www.shopbop.com/free-ebb-flow-jacket-people/vp/v=1/845524441848887.htm?folderID=2534374302029428&extid=froogle-FREEP20368

Mike's sweatshirt headed for the goodwill

My hollister sweatshirt with the same fate

The first cut is always the hardest! I cut down the middle of the sweatshirt and then started cutting lines (about 4 or 5) up the back about every 6 inches.

I pinned one strip along the edge with pleats, then when you sew over it you get the ruffle look

The back detail was one of the sweatshirt cuffs that I cut off, and then cut in the middle to open up. I laid it flat on the back (mental note, wish I had laid it lower along the back, it ended up way too high!), and gathered some material under it so that when I sewed it down it would have a little diminsion.

Here's what it looks like laid out before sewing the bottom layer on. I was trying to fix the fact that the gather on the back was put up too high. I added a little extra material, pinned it together and then serged it and gave it an exposed seem.

Here it is gathered and pinned before being serged.

I cut some little thumb holes and gathered the sleeves. I also put a piece of fabric inside the hole and looped it around and serged it together. Hard to see it in this picture though.

The back

and front

side view

Aidan had his first band concert of the year. He is now playing bass clarinet and really had a great time preforming.

Standing room only for this concert!

I think this is the ultimate in craftiness for 2009. I always rack my brain for what to get Mike for his birthday and for Christmas. It never fails that the majority of what I get him, ends up heading back to the store. Thankfully, this gift was a hit! Mike's uncle Dave made his very own wedding ring years ago. About 8 years ago when I was getting a new wedding set (long story!), I was without my ring for about a month. Mike didn't like me being in public without a ring on my finger (guess he was afraid that the two small children on my hip wouldn't be enough to fight all of the available bachelors off!) so he made me a temporary ring to wear one day in the machine shop at work. I wore that bad boy everyday until I got my ring back, and if I didn't like diamonds so much, I would probably still be wearing it!

Anyway, Uncle Dave's two boys have both gotten married in the past few years, and each wife made their husbands wedding band with the help of their new father in law. Chad and Shawna were the most recent wedding, and while looking through their wedding pictures there was a shot with the two girls and Dave holding the wedding bands. Mike saw the picture and made a flippant comment like "why don't you make me a ring?" Well, I tucked that little gem in the back of my mind and decided I would ask Uncle Dave if he could help me make a ring for Mike for Christmas. Fast forward a few months to late November, and I finally asked Dave if he would help me make a ring. I only had one available day to work on it (Owen's pre-school is just not long enough sometimes!) thanks to a playdate after school, so I called up Davie to see if he could help me. AST has been making parts for some of the machines Mike is designing for Weyerhaeuser, so we had to make sure none of those guys were going to be there that day. Thankfully, everything fell into place. I did ask Mike's dad if he could help me, but unfortunately, he had a business meeting that day, and since Dave had done the whole ring making thing a few times (and he was retired with nothing but a spin class on his calendar) it seemed to be the way to go on my limited availability. I showed up at AST and got to work on this stainless steel ring (after some calculations from Mike's dad on the ring size--I was totally shocked that people actually use pie to solve equations!) made out of the same hunk of stainless steel that Chad and Josh's rings are made out of. Dave helped me on the lathe and we got to work on Mike's ring. I love that the edges are beveled and the front is thicker than the back (sort of off center). I came away from the morning with all my fingers in tact and some experience on the lathe. As much fun as it was, I'm not trading in my sewing machine anytime soon!

We spent Wednesday evening at Wilson High School at the PTA reflections award ceremony. Isabella's story on Beauty is..., was awarded top honors at her elementary school and moved on to the next level. Even though we think she should have won the excellence award, her journey ended there and we were quite proud of her!

Pictured are the Brown's Point school kids that made it to the district level. Bella is in the middle of the front row (always the smallest in the bunch!).

Here is Isabella making her way down the path of dignitaries that were there to honor the kids, including the mayor of Tacoma.

The sweet girl waiting for her ribbon.

More Christmas discount finds! I was really hoping to find the smaller candy canes for making Valentine's hearts, but beggers can't be choosers! I found these boxes at Rite Aid and the dollar store for 25 cents a box. It was a major pain to unwrap each of them (again, the smaller ones are in little bags so I think it would have been easier) but with a sharp knife and some persistance, I got all of the candy canes out of the packages. The ones that broke got smashed down for topping on ice cream, yogurt, and cookies. I set the oven to 300 degrees and cooked these bad boys for 5 1/2 minutes. I tried to put sucker sticks into them (I bought some at a garage sale (unused of course) for 50 cents), but the bigger candy canes are too heavy, so the sticks ended up breaking out of the candy cane. Live and learn. Again, the smaller candy canes probably would have worked better. Once the timer went off, I took the canes out of the oven, and pinched the ends together (yep, burnt fingers). Then I let them cool. I am going to put them in some fancy bag and tie it with a cute red ribbon. More on the finished product later.

Remember my little trip to Target where I bought a zillion Christmas ornaments? Well, normally I bring my own bags with me to reuse (you get 5 cents off your order for each bag you use at Target so it's totally worth it for me), but this time, I had SO many items that I ended up just getting them in plastic. Plus I had seen this cool tutorial so I had a crafty motive behind it. Here's the tutorial from MADE

http://www.dana-made-it.com/2008/07/tutorial-recycled-grocery-totes.html
I really like her use of only the white side of the bag, but I got a little excited with the project and just wanted to do it rather than wait to collect more bags (we are talking like 25 more bags) and I didn't have any more major shopping to do at Target! So the first thing I did was lay the bags out flat and cut the tops and bottoms off of them. I saved all the extra that I cut off and used it to make the sides and bottom of the bag.

I printed letters off of word in a font that I liked and then traced them backwards onto wonder under (love that stuff!), and ironed it on to some red scrap fabric I had (leftover from hemming Aidan's curtains 5 years ago! I knew I held on to it for a reason!), then cut each letter out (can you say carpel tunnel?) and iron them onto the bag.

Here are the pattern pieces and sizes that I had laid out.

And the pattern pieces after they were cut. Notice I didn't use any of my new fused fabric for the handles, only the red canvas that I used on the letters. None of my "fabric" was long enough.

And the finished product!

The only thing I don't like about it is that I forgot to serge the top of the bag. I realized it after I sewed the handles on (that took FOREVER!) and couldn't go back and fix it. Total cost for the project ZERO dollars! I did take me about two hours to complete the project start to finish though.