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-We officially survived our first week of Pre-K. Xander, according to all reports, is behaving beautifully and having a grand time. His only “problem” is that he can’t remember anybody’s name, except Ms.Sherry his teacher.
-The first 2 days of Pre-K I got in trouble for not following the proper pick-up/drop-off rules. I was pointedly reminded to not “exit my vehicle” at the loading zone (never mind Xander was unable to get INTO his seat and that there was only 1 car behind me). I have since reconfigured the car seats so that they load him directly into his seat, alleviating my need to help him.
-Due to Xander’s new daily schedule, I am able to focus on Sophie’s school work without having to leave to break up squabbles between Xander and Beckett. As such, Sophie’s school day has become much more structured and she has responded very positively to it.
-Sophie and I made an “inaugural-tree” in honor of the impending inauguration. Yes, I may not be a Democrat, but I still respect the office of president. It’s been an interesting current-events activity, although I do find it a tad bit un-nerving to have so many Obama pictures in my kitchen. We attempted to add Cabinet members/nominees but my printer died and we haven’t been able to find any pics that were flattering in our local paper (seriously… have you seen some of the pics of Hill floating around out there??)
-We are finally making something like forward progress with Sophie’s insurance woes. For those that don’t know, we have been fighting with our insurance to have language/speech therapy for Sophie. We have been stonewalled, LIED TO, and run around. Finally, at long last we are making headway and oddly enough it makes me feel a little unsettled.
-It snowed yesterday morning. All of maybe a quarter inch. Just enough to scrape off the cars to make a snowball. The kids had a blast! It was all gone by noon.
-We have another snow “storm” forecast for tonight. Last I heard we were supposed to get less than an inch. Yes we bought milk (but then we were actually out and had to buy milk… but I hated to disappoint for those expecting the stereotype). Didn’t buy bread though.
-Beckett pulled the old act like you’re taking a bite of food while actually dropping it down to the dog trick tonight at supper. While I found it amusing that he thought he could get away with it (and he might have, had he not gotten so tickled with how clever he thought he was being), I did have to impose a punishment… no dessert 
-We renamed the new wether that joined us recently via Donald and Donna from Rebel to Warren in honor of a doctor that M used to work with. They have exactly the same mannerisms and personality (in so much that one of them is a sheep) all our Warren needs is a bow-tie to complete to image!
-Jim’s back in school, complete with clinicals. It’s yucky, but at least it gets us one session closer to graduation.
-I have a cold but luckily the kids are asleep (thanks to Jim) and so I’m off to take meds and crash in the bed!
Aren’t my guys too cute sporting their turkey handprint shirts especially for Thanksgiving? Sophie’s even matches her skirt… how’s that for planning? 
Seriously though the kid’s loved their shirts and they were super cute! I opted for glued on googly eyes and waddles which of course were promptly plucked off, but were cute while they lasted!!
Thanksgiving dinner (or more acurately supper by the time we got everything done) was a big hit. We didn’t make a whole turkey this year, opting for just a half of a turkey breast. It was delicious and made an excellent pan gravy.
Sophie especially liked the gravy….
And apparently so did Kyle!
KKEPSM are here for Thanksgiving weekend and since we didn’t do any shopping today we just hung out around the house. M made gingerbread cookies with the kids and then ended up swindling them into racking leaves (the woman’s tricky I tell you!). I made MiBo and potstickers for supper which was excellent and very filling and very unTurkey, so much appreciated
After supper we were sort of at a loss for what to do so while looking for something else I happened upon my face paints and much hilarity ensued!
Here’s everybody on the couch.
Spencer was so cooperative until right at the end… he made an excellent super hero! Beckett has a thing for cat-faces so it was no shock that he wanted to be a cheetah/jaguar/leopard!
Peter wanted something simple so a pirate was right up his alley! Xander wanted to be a knight… and a prince… I think he ended up looking a little more like the man in the iron mask though.
Elizabeth’s Ice Fairy turned out so great and I’m still struggling with Sophie’s butterfly… but it’s still cute.
I even did Kelly, but I don’t have a pic of that on my camera… she’ll have to send me her copy!
We rounded out the fun by having popcorn and hot chocolate. It was a great evening and we were all a little sad when bath time rolled around and all the face paints went down the drain!
Currently I’m trying to convince Sophie and Beckett that going to sleep is a good idea… Beckett’s made himself a nice little nest on my couch (complete with ‘Hog, Turtle and Puppy) and Sophie’s winding down with a couple battles on Eternal Sonata (her game Jim, not yours… I checked). Xander’s sleeping with M and Peter tonight so I imagine he’s already off to dreamland!
So it may come as a small surprise to a few of you out there that I don’t really sew. I enjoy designing and tweaking images for machine embroidry, but I’ve never really done much in the constructive side of sewing.
After reading Amy Karol’s blog (and buying her book) and being inspired by Julie’s yearly costume creation for Kaedence, I decided to give it a go. If it went well then great, if not, I’d only be out a few bucks.
So… when M and I went up to visit KKEPSM on Tuesday, we swung into MaryJo’s in Gastonia. I picked out 3 prints that SCREAMED Sophie (this, this and this) and even found some of the infamous FOE.
Last night, after drinking way too much coffee way too late at night, I decided to give it all a go.
I think it turned out ok (and pictures will be coming along as soon as I locate the card holder thingy). The hem is wonky but M’s going to show me how to fix it. I totally LOVE the FOE for the waistband.
Most importantly though, Sophie loves it and thinks it’s fabulous. Of course now Dandy wants a skirt too.
A couple things: Yes it’s too long. Like I said the hem is wonky and one of the reasons I left it so long was so that M could help me with the hem. M’s a whiz at hemming.
I know the FOE is totally not visible in this pic but it doesn’t look like much (particularly since it’s just the offwhite FOE as MaryJo’s only had white, black and offwhite).
The hem is not as crooked as the pic seems to indicate. Sophie was “modelling” and had one hip cocked sideways or something.
Yes, she’s standing on the table.
For a first “real” project I’m inordinately proud of it
* I realize that this is most likely my worst ever blog-entry. When I find the card thing for the photo disk I’ll try to revamp… I’m definitely having an off day blog-wise but wanted to document my first real sewing attempt.
I’ve been spinning a good bit here lately. I spun up both the Whorling Tides braids and the PetuniaLu braid as well. It took me a few minutes to transition from spinning Shetland to spinning Merino but I think the WT braids turned out fabulously!
I tend to double ply everything, just because I like it.
Initially I didn’t think I was going to like the PetuniaLu Madder-dyed BFL as it seemed a little stiff but honestly it spun up like a dream and I love it! I think I’m going to be ordering some more of her wool!
It looks quite orange in this photo, but it’s not quite so lightbulb orange in person!
I’ve started on the batts that I got from WT, but I haven’t made appreciable progress on those… I’ll have photos eventually.
So being all inspired by woolie endeavors, I thought I’d try my hand a dyeing wool. So… I dug out a pack of Merino/Silk that I had bought ages ago from Little Barn and divided it in two. I only have 2 acid dyes: Christmas Red and Christmas Green that I had bought at SAFF sometime back. Ages ago we bought a crock pot for the single purpose of dyeing wool (we never use crock pots for actual cooking!) so I dusted it off and you know what? Dyeing wool is fun! Stinky… but exciting! I wasn’t sure the red was going to actually be RED as it looked icky burgundy in the water but then it miraculously turned bright Christmas red and it’s so pretty now!
The red is actually much redder and spins up like a peppermint candy. The green if very soft and glowy what with all the silk in it. I ended up making 3 batts of each on the drum carder last night with the help of both Sophie and Dandy. Beckett only wanted to turn the handle the wrong way so he didn’t get to “help” much. Sophie was fascinated with taking the batt off the drum carder and actually was very helpful.
We were having so much fun with all the carding that we decided to do a little of our Shetland too.
The Shetland is at the very top. I’m still working on getting more of the VM out of the black wool… I was distressed by how much was in it when it came back from the mills.
So anyway… I’m resisting the urge to spin the wool I dyed. M wants to use some of it for a felting project… but that red just spins so nicely and looks so very Christmasy…
Yesterday M and I took Sophie to the local Hobby Lobby (my least favorite craft store btw, but since it’s 20 miles closer than the nearest AC Moore or Michaels and a good 2 hours from Binders, it’s the best I can do with the current gas crisis in our area).
I went to buy some orange craft paint. That’s it! Orange craft paint. I left with 2 (or 3, I can’t remember) different colors of orange paint, some black paint, a plaster of paris mask kit (for Sophie), pirate rubber stamps (for Dandy), a pirate wooden paint-it-yourself thing, a couple stencils, a bunch of halloween cookie cutters (because we have to keep our record of the most cookie cutters in a non-commercial kitchen, you understand!) and then the loot we gleaned from the clearance aisle.
Seriously.
My orange paint ended up costing somewhere close to $100. Mind you I did get craft projects/supplies for the kids’ school projects (we do lots of craft projects!) so it wasn’t at all frivolous. And I did get my orange paint so that I could finish our October calendar banner (which is turning out great, pics coming soon).
I’m glad to report that Sophie actually handled the craft store very well. No real meltdowns, and although she did wander off, she did respond when called. YEAH for Sophie such great improvement!! Her only frustration was after we got home. She didn’t understand that she would have to wait many, many hours for the mask to set before she could paint it (we had tried to explain in the store, but she wasn’t getting it, sometimes she has to learn “the hard way”). What she doesn’t know is that we totally screwed up the plaster the first time and after she went to bed we threw that away and redid the whole thing. The bad thing is that she’s going to be mad this morning as the mask is supposed to dry for an additional 6 hours out of the mold. Hopefully she won’t think about it right off the bat this morning (so far, so good!).
Xander and Beckett have had a blast with their stamps. We made a lunch bag for Poppy last night. It was entirely too cute!
the front of the bag… Arrr!
the back of the bag
They had little pump bottles of paint on the clearance aisle for $0.60 which we used to make the spritzy paint effect. Pretty cool Plus Jim really liked it.
My next update will have the calendar banner, hopefully later today!
