A gift for the classroom

It is a tradition in Dorothy's school to buy a book for a child's classroom on his or her birthday. The book is brought in all wrapped up and the birthday child gets to unwrap it, then the whole class listens while one of the parents of the birthday child reads the book to the class.  I thought it would be fun to make a book for Dorothy's class on the subject of their class pet, a guinea pig.  I took photographs of the animal while he was staying with us last fall (each family gets the "privilege" of weekend sitting for the pet a couple times during the year) and used Wikipedia to fill in some bits about the animal that were not obvious to me. I had almost finished the book the week after our guinea-pig-sitting several months ago. Then we sold the house and my efforts at childrens' literature and most everything else went all to h$%!, so by the time I remembered again that we were expected to gift a book to Dorothy's class on her birthday it was already last week. I considered ditching the effort and just buying some book but decided I'd gone that far, I may as well finish it.  Typing up the last couple pages didn't take long but unfortunately shipping the thing from Blurb.com (on the West coast) to Kentucky did, and I was too cheap to spring for quicker shipping. I still went in to read to Dorothy's class on her birthday, but I just read a book she'd selected from her own collection.  Now that the gift book is here I'll take it in tomorrow all wrapped up to read and Dorothy will get to play the birthday girl one last time. I ordered a copy of the book for Dorothy too and she seems to like it.

 

I really wanted to work on throw pillows for the living room today but it just didn't happen. The baby is fussy over teeth or a cough or something and he is refusing to sleep unless I'm holding him, which means a) he's not getting enough sleep, and b) the rest of the time he's a Grumpus McGurkus, which is our household name for someone who is in a very foul mood (inspired by a favorite book of Dorothy's). I did catch just a few minutes at the machine, however, and made a padded sleeve for my little camera. I know you're thinking, "doesn't she have a big camera? I'm pretty sure I've seen her at soccer practice, one of those moms who thinks she's the press corps?"  Yes, I do, but jokes have been deservedly made about how much I like to photograph my children and my big camera isn't something I can just toss in my purse and always have on hand.  Thus I still have and use my little camera and I recently had to replace it, possibly because the inside of my purse is not a very safe place to be even if you are the small unfussy camera. I used scraps from Dorothy's birthday dress to make a very simple little Velcro pouch. I lined it with polyester quilt batting to make it nice and soft, and hopefully the polyester will repel rather than soak in liquids in the event of a spill.  (Liquid spilled inside my purse?  Well, have you ever dined out with my children?)