A lemonade stand

I'm afraid I haven't done a single thing crafty or blog-worthy (with the possible exception of some newly invented cookies, but I forgot to photograph them so what's the point?), but I'm posting anyway because Worth doesn't feel well and won't get off my lap, and if I'm going to sit here captive I may as well do something. So here is a random post about things that have been going on! The neighborhood kids had lemonade stand in my front yard. Unfortunately their accounting was almost as bad as their spelling, so it is unclear if the enterprise earned money or just annoyed the neighbors.

Worth got his first favorite pair of shoes. He tried these on at an outlet mall on the way home from an out-of-town wedding last weekend and we couldn't even pry them off his feet to pay for them so we just snipped off the tags and he wore them home. He kept cooing over them and touching them and giggling in his car seat.  Hilarious and cute. I love that we finally found shoes he'll actually keep on, plus they are mercifully easy to clean. The adorable t-shirt was a gift and I love it like he loves his shoes.

This was a picture that appeared on my blog back in June of Belle on her homemade dog bed...

and an updated snapshot, two months later. I'm glad kids don't grow that fast! (And a disclaimer, Belle is not allowed to play with the kids' toys ordinarily, but she has a deep and abiding fondness for this little knitted animal. She doesn't eat it--she just plays with it and loves on it and since it seems to be no worse for wear as a shared toy I allow it. She's just a baby too, after all, even though she's more than doubled in size!)

Black Friday skirt

I am not a big fan of shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  When I was a kid we always spent the day out in the country at a farm belonging to family friends.  When my husband and I were first dating, we enjoyed the "cheap date" quality of milling with the shopping throngs and having lunch out, but now most years I'm happy to leave that scene alone.  All my Christmas gifts are Internet-order or handmade (sorry Toys R Us, but your cheap, bad-quality, made-in-China, creativity-sucking, ugly plastic crap just doesn't do it for me, at any price or any time of day), and I have enjoyed spending this peaceful chilly Friday cozily alternating snuggling my ailing baby with working at my sewing machine. 

I bought some nice black jersey to make a skirt several weeks ago, but with all the real estate hoo-ha I hadn't had time to put it together.  It was a bit hard to cut this project out with much of our square footage being sucked up in towers of packed boxes, but I'm glad I got it done so I can wear it over the holidays.  I based the skirt on Simplicity 2758, which is a pattern I've made (and blogged about) a number of times.  I like the cut of this skirt, and when I make it in stretchy knit I get to skip the zipper, making it that much easier to sew and leaving time for embellishment.  I serged the bottom of the ruffle to look a bit raw, and the overhanging lip of the main skirt panel is serged in the same way, which is inspired by the look of store-bought clothes I've admired lately.  In ten years we'll wonder why we wore clothes that looked like they weren't finished.

We woke to a dusting of snow here in Kentucky this morning.  I called Dorothy over to the window and she was utterly thrilled.  She had her snowsuit in her hand and was ready to go out and play in less than an inch of snow before I'd even poured my coffee.  Rob had to meet with a client so he couldn't take her, and there was no way I was dragging my sick baby out into the cold, but I also hated to deflate Dorothy's enthusiasm.  She was willing to wait until her father got back, but we knew the snow wouldn't last that long, so I came up with an alternative solution.  I took a plastic container out onto the deck and scraped the snow off the railings and into the dish.  Then I gave my little housebound snowbird an assortment of measuring cups and kitchen utensils and she had a blast scooping, measuring and dishing the snow.  She crammed the snow tightly into an empty salt shaker and felt clever, like I'd never get it out, and my salt shaker would be inconveniently jammed with snow forever, right here in the warm house.  "How will you get the snow out, Mommy?  Will you have to use pliers or some scissors?"  Only time will tell, Dorothy...

Pre-Preschool

Dorothy seems to have inherited her father's enjoyment of running, as opposed to her mother's enjoyment of NOT running, which is probably a good thing. We entered her in a 5-and-under road race this past weekend and she had a blast. The event was close to our home so we just walked over with her spectating grandparents. She is incredibly proud of her participation medal, which she won't let me put in a shadow-box frame because "it might not be safe enough," (which I think means "because I wouldn't have constant access to it") and we've watched the video I took of her running approximately 1000 times.

And I'm feeling just a bit nostalgic about these last sweet days before my girl starts preschool. Although she'll probably be coming back home when it's over (we're intending to homeschool), this year will still mark a major change in her life, and loss of innocence. I'm excited about the preschool she is attending and I know it's going to be a great experience, but her wild and free time of babyhood and unselfconscious exploration at my side is coming to an end. Here is a photo of her doing her own thing, in one of these final days with nowhere to be: her teddy bear hooked to her back, her Halloween socks and ruby slippers, her hair finally growing out of the self-inflicted short cut, her hands full of one of her many independent sewing "projects," which involve snippets and scraps sewn together haphazardly but with grand intention (a backpack, a shirt for Maggie, a quilt, etc.).

There's no place like home indeed

We've had such a terrific summer so far, rushing this way and that, getting sunburnt, seeing sights and staying busy. But lately Dorothy and I have been getting a bit edgy, and I think we just needed to spend some quiet time at home. So today we totally ditched our plan to visit the Science Center and instead spent the morning in our pajamas doing fun, creative things while the baby caught up on a much-needed uninterrupted morning of sleep. I sewed a shirt from the sheets I'd bought this spring (more or less on the pattern New Look 6871), and she played and painted. Midway through the project I was starting to worry this shirt was going to turn out maternity-looking, which would be horrifying for someone who is only four months out of that state, but it doesn't. It does need a chunky pink bead necklace, which might require a trip to a bead store. I don't normally wear such bright colors, but I still think this is kind of fun in a very retro sort of way.

Dorothy did a lot of building with Lincoln Logs this morning. When she was still quite small and became the owner of Lincoln Logs for the first time I repurposed an empty kitty litter container to hold them. We store a lot of her things in these big, sturdy buckets, which I fashion labels for out of colored cardstock. This bucket, if you can't tell from the photo, has a portrait of President Lincoln on the side and his babyhood cabin on the front. All of the log-cabin-former-President bit is totally lost on Dorothy, however, who asked for them this morning by saying, "can I have those blocks that look kind of like peanuts? The ones in the bucket with that guy on the side?"

Party time

Every year since Dorothy has been a baby we've hosted a 4th of July-themed bash in our back yard for her small friends. We had the 2010 event a couple days ago, and it was a success. This year we featured do-it-youself face (turned into body) painting, the dress-up box (even more exciting outdooors in 100 degree heat!) and other yard games. I wanted to make some version of the locally-popular game cornhole (basically bean-bag toss) that would be easy for preschoolers, so I stitched up some homemade bean bags before the party.

I used a set of coasters as a template to cut 8 fabric squares (leftover scraps from the matching outfits of last week), stitched them right-sides together leaving a small opening on one side, turned them right-side out, filled them with dried beans from the pantry using a small flexible cutting board as a funnel (see top photo), then hand-stitched the openings closed. Then I spray-painted two lines in the grass about 10 feet apart and put the bean bags on one side and a laundry basket on the other. The kids didn't actually end up playing with it much--the draw of the face-paint was too strong--but I kind of liked the idea and will probably use it again at smaller gatherings when there is less competition for attention. I think it would be a fun multi-generational game.

Here's Dorothy with self-painted cheeks and arms. We like the crayon-style face paints because the kids can paint themselves easily and it washes off with no more than a baby wipe. By the end of the party, some kids were almost fully naked and had paint from one end to the other!

After the party we had to return to reality with a jolt--27 children and 21 adults left, then we had three hours to clean the house and evacuate for a real estate showing. Ugh. No feedback, so I assume that after all that effort the prospective buyers were not interested.

Yesterday was much calmer. The party over, Dorothy went off to spend the day with her newly-relocated grandparents. I took Worth to his 4-month checkup (75% percentile in height and weight!), then he slept undisturbed by sister all afternoon while I got caught up on various quiet tasks and made some invitations to his upcoming baptism and brunch. It's certainly not necessary to send invitations to the small, close crowd of family and friends who will be included in this day, but doing so does seem to set apart this event as something extra-special. I printed a Filippo Lippi painting from the internet (for personal use) that I'd admired at the Uffizi in Florence before I was married and taped it to a little message I printed on cardstock.