Catching Up

I've been avoiding my blog like I avoid my sewing areas after big projects!  :D  Seems like the weekly homeschool posts were too much for me to keep up with.  Since I keep up on my Homeschool Tracker software as well as a yearly binder, I just find it to be a lot to post about it too.  I may find another way come fall...maybe a highlights vs. a log.  We're about 1/2-3/4 done with the ITBS (our standardized testing) for the year- hoping to finish that up by Saturday.

Onto the pics!  Mostly some of my most recent projects.

This is a sketch of a chicken I made for Mother's Day for my mom.  The frame idea is from Pinterest.  If you are curious, I can dig up the pin and subsequent tutorial.  Otherwise, if you follow me on Pinterest, it'd be in the house and home section.  After J cut the frame, I taped to paint the inner border white, then painted the outer area black and the inner frame with the black boxes to make it checkered.  I sanded a bit to rough it up and then coated with a couple layers of sealer after modge-podging the sketch on (which I'd sealed prior to that as well so it wouldn't smudge).  I'm very pleased with the final result and now we have a way to frame our own artwork at home in a very cost-effective way!



J participated as a delegate at the GOP State Convention this year.  He got to meet Ron Paul- the reason he got so involved this time around.  Met up with some people he knew and was able to have some good conversations with new folks as well.  
 

I made a few things to welcome my new niece, Imogin, who was born the end of May.  I made her 2 outfits, then had to make big sister Romi matching pj's and a little doll outfit too.
Here's a pic of her in the hospital:
 
Ooga Booga monsters:

Little frogs:

Romi's pj's with her doll:

The doll outfit looks huge here, but Romi's doll is bigger than the ones we had here at home:


Following Imogin's arrival was Emily's 9th birthday!  My sister Cassie made an awesome Perry cake!:  


We had a nice birthday.  A family party at the farm, and a good time out with a friend at the Mega Mall- rides, treats, Build-a-Bear, and the Rainforest Cafe.  

I participated in a charity dress sewing group online in May/June.  I took some of the older girl sizes and sewed up these two dresses to send to Haiti with some missions groups that were going.  One of the groups left a little early, but we're hoping to catch another group the end of June.  Both dresses have ties a the shoulder so they're more adjustable.  The grey one has ties in the back as well, with a flower and hummingbird appliqued on each pocket, size 10.  The printed dress is a typical 'pillowcase' dress, with pockets, size 12.



Also participated in a doll clothes swap on my favorite sewing board.  Sent them in yesterday and will hopefully have outfits back in a couple weeks!  I made 2 ballerina outfits, plus one for E:

2 tunic/legging sets:

And my favorite- a woven wrap dress with a belt a matching headband.  I made 2, but we kept one of them.


Out at the farm this year, if you're lucky, you'll spot some really cool hummingbird moths!  We thought it was a regular hummingbird at first, then saw the antennae and proboscis.  He wasn't afraid at all...this is a cellphone pic- nothing fancy.  We were able to get really close and he kept coming back.


I turned 29 just a couple days ago, so it's my last year in my 20's!  J's started back at school and it's been a grueling month.  We're hoping July will be a little less so.  We're shooting to get all of his pre-requisites done by the end of fall so he can apply for a master's program in Jan that starts Fall 2013.  He's going for occupational therapy.  It's a pretty competitive program, so please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  That field would be a dream for him- very fitting for his personality, skills, and work history.

Phew- hope I'm caught up now!  :)

Swimsuit swap

I participated in a  one-to-one swimsuit swap on my favorite sewing board.  We each sewed 2 suits...I sewed 2 sizes for her 2 girls and she did 2 for E.  E had decided she'd rather have 2 suits than 1 suit and 1 coverup- so I let her choose that and which fabrics she liked best.

I altered my tried-and-true KS pattern (I did buy the newer version for the smaller sizes) to make it 1-shouldered.  I sewed them up here on my serger and used another sewingmama's coverstitch machine for all of the elastic topstitching.  E's suit I used my triple-stitch zigzag.  These were fun to do, and I learned a new technique of binding with elastic inserted in the seam.  When you fold it over, it keeps a nice, even binding- which was my biggest worry in binding knitwear, especially swimsuit material.  I also lowered the rise on the bum of the suit...way too much fabric back there.  This was also my first time doing a tankini- I was nervous about hemming without the elastic, but it wasn't a problem at all.  I didn't have enough fabric to do a 1pc...barely eeked out this suit!  The fabric I bought in DC a couple years ago shopping with my older sis.  We'll love having a 2pc in rotation for longer beach days!

Dd's suit by me:





The suits I made for the swap- the younger one is a size 4/5 with ruffle, the older is a size 7/8 sans ruffle and with a bit of fun colorblocking and an extra strap for fun.

4/5suit:




7/8 suit (looks wrinky on my size 5 body double):



These were the suits we got back- we were so pleased with this swap!  We both love the little skirt with the bottoms attached- so cute!  I'll sew the straps to the back later...we both left those to adjust when we received the suits. 

Ugh.  The fish lips start already!  :P

I'll attach the straps in the back to the suit- not halter-style as you see in the pic:
 

The blue suit (I pinned that strap too far over here...I'll adjust it when I sew it on):



This was a great way to use up some of the fabric that I've already used for dd in other suits, as well as to have another style or suits without buying a new pattern.  We're set for summer- probably next summer too!

HS Week Review 2/13-2/17

I’m changing things up already!  The list of completed tasks that I was posting was just too long…I’m glad I did a couple of weeks that way so friends and family could see what we do in exhaustive format.  But since I already keep records on my own I just can’t make myself do it twice, yk?  So we’re going with the highlight route!  I’m sure most of you will be glad…even I don’t like reading a whole post about reading x amt. of pages in our grammar book, doing lessons such-n-such in math, etc.

Highlights of our week:

1. Started off rather poorly, actually.  E’s been having trouble just getting the daily work done in a timely manner without complaining.  This is one of the downsides of homeschooling and not having peers around to ‘perform’ for.  It’s just you and mom and you don’t feel like it.  So you can schlump in your chair, answer with a sigh, poke and poke and poke, etc.  You get the drift.  When things get tough, the tears start immediately.  Again- it’s just mom.  No one to impress here! 

So we had a few talks this week and J had a couple bible studies on self-discipline, self-control and complaining.  I’ve also re-evaluated what we’re doing as each time we have some sort of ‘block’ I always ask myself if we’re doing too much.  And 9 times out of 10 we are.  I continually have to weed…when you’ve got one kid you tend to just throw everything you’ve ever wanted to learn or teach at the poor child and wonder why they don’t want to sit and school for 8 hours a day nonstop.  Ok- not quite that bad.  But still.  Bad enough! 

So this weekend I went back over my Homeschool Tracker software and rearranged items, freeing up some writing weeks so the programs don’t overlap as much.  Spread Science out a little more.  I would have removed one of the vocab programs, but the Building Language Lessons is almost through anyway, so I just pushed off our other one until it’s done.  Although E has been complaining about NOT wanting to finish that program…high praise!  We’re almost done with our regular handwriting program so that frees up more time too for the rest of this year.  There are only 2 health lessons left and I spaced those out further too.  I am combining the Writing With Ease into 2 days/week instead of 4, but we’ll be dropping the dictation exercises in lessons 1 and 3 that go along with the reading and summarizing.  Overkill, esp. since we have other writing programs.

There’s probably more, but that’s what I can remember right now.  All in all, I think we’re both feeling better about going into this week. 

2. We did manage to get about 70% of our items done last week.  The rest I’ve rearranged throughout the rest of the school year and the ones I haven’t I hope to have caught up by Wednesday.  The biggest catch-up will be in Story of the World…we can’t push that any later this year!  That's always been the area that we drag out-  there are so many resources we like to go through!  But we can’t keep doing that or we’ll be in Ancient History until she’s 19.
3. We enjoyed making our Valentine cards and projects this week for each other- we spent a few hours doing that on Tuesday.  We exchanged with friends during a playdate on Thursday. Here's a few pics of Emily sewing up cards and the like, and of my deck of cards I made for J.  I got the idea here.                                                                                                                                                                              
4. It was a rough end to the week as well- Emily’s pet rattie Silvermist died.  :(  They really are such cute pets, and so smart!  She was Tink’s bff too, and she’ll be missed greatly.  She came down very suddenly with a respiratory illness- Emily had held her Friday a.m. and when she brought her in to visit us, I noticed how odd she felt.  Lightweight and lethargic- not good.  We got an appointment at the vet for that afternoon.  They couldn’t tell for sure but diagnosed it as a respiratory ailment.  I verified that it was later on, as she got really congested (that’s finally what ended it all).  At any rate, she got some meds but it just worsened throughout the night and she died early Saturday a.m.  Luckily I was able to wake J up and get Tink out to be with her…she licked her and stayed close the whole time, chattering with her ears laid back.  Really sad.  :(  Emily is quite bummed.                                                                                                                  
5. We’d missed our Omni at the Science Museum to take Sil to the vet and unfortunately that was the last day Omnifest ran.  So we only made it to Shackleton.  We also skipped our monthly naturalist class as it was snowshoeing and there’s zero snow out.  I heard they still had fun, but we were finishing up our cards for people and getting a few things done after the slow start to the week and didn’t mind missing this month.                                   
6. Other highlights of the week- it was my sister Cassie’s birthday on Friday and we celebrated Saturday with a delicious meal and dessert (poppyseed cake, of course!) at Mom and Dad’s.  Had nice conversation as we sat around the table…never did crack open a board game.  We were all quite tired heading home that night.  I’d stayed up with Sil- partly to watch her and partly to fix my schedule; E was up later than usual b/c of Sil too and J had the post office that day and was bit on the leg by a dog!  He’s never been wary of dogs before this job and I doubt that helped!.  We zonked as soon as we got back.

Well- I’ve got lots of tweaking to do to this homeschool weekly wrap-up.  Who knew it’d be so hard to get the week’s highlights down??  I seem to have skewed the other way now and included lots of non-school, personal updates!  That’s ok though- in homeschool the line between school and home is quite blurred anyhow.  :)

Yearbook Page

Just finished this tonight- so proud of my photoshop maneuvering!  Each child at co-op gets a bio page to put a few fun facts/photos/etc about themselves.  I really love the idea and am excited to see how it turns out!  I blacked out our last name- that bar won't be there in the yearbook.  :)

That is all!  I've had a post on the back burner since Monday morning about our homeschool highlights last week, so we'll get that up tomorrow or Thursday.  I've switched things around already- it was taking entirely too long and was dull and boring to wade through- even for me!  So we're going with a highlight route now and we'll see how that pans out.

Some Vday, quilt, journal and misc

Quickie pair of Vday yoga pants from our favorite Kwik Sew pattern.  I went with a ruffled leg theme after getting distracted tracing and cutting one leg off at capri length!  Heh.  So I hacked them both up more and we now have yoga pants a la Matilda Jane.  Quite cute!  This fabric isn't the best choice for yoga bottoms...they don't have as much recovery and therefore get a little bagged out by the end of the day.  But we like them for around the house and for Valentine's Day.  :)  Plus, they brought back memories of when I first started sewing knits...she had a pair, same style with a white waistband that I sewed when she was 4.  Her dolly got a pair too.  I'm pretty good with that lately!

 


The cute tag:


Her doll also got a new hat, scarf and pair of socks from an old pair of knee highs that became ankle socks as the years passed for E.  Saw the tutorial on Pinterest- quite cute!  We tried tights out of another pair, but I biffed that by not accounting for the lack of stretch in a sock vs. the doll nylon-tights.  Next time!  :)


My favorite sewing site  was having their annual doll quilt swap, and while I was too nervous to sign up this round, it did inspire me to give it a go on my own.  J and E also cut out their squares the same night, but have yet to sew them up.  A few of these fabrics date back to late middle school or early high school when my mom was on her quilting kick.  I remember picking out a handful of fat quarters at a cute quilt shop.  The black paisley backing and the brown swirly squares on the front are from that trip.  :)  I also tried free-motion quilting!  Harder than it looks and I've got lots to learn.  I love the stippled quilt look though- definitely want to try more of that sometime.



The binding isn't too shabby if I do say so myself!


I finally remembered to take a few pics of my journal I made this last summer.  It's a smaller size as that's the size leather I had hanging around.  Quite proud of it!  Someday I'd like to learn leather tooling and/or painting.  The pages are hand-torn which didn't take as long as I'd thought it would.  The closure is leather and a little button I had hanging around in my stash.  There's a little bookmark of a few beads and a cross- next time I'd make it a wee bit longer so it wouldn't shut in the book, but would hang right below it when closed.  It's lined with felt.





Other odds and ends this past week?  Yogurt making again...this time I overcooked the batch by not turning the crock pot off when it was time to let it cool.  I just shut the thermometer beeper off and set the time for the cool-down period and walked away.  Oops!  So this batch was quite runny.  Made great yogurt-fruit pops though!


And lastly- this was E's Vday gift from us this year.  We don't usually do large gifts, but we'd gotten this off Zulily about a month ago and couldn't wait until her bday.  It's to replace 3 dress-up dresses we had to finally retire.  She loved it!  She enjoyed swooshing around, dancing with her Daddy:
 

The next day, she spent most of our school-day in it.  Here she is curled up in the chair reading:


I'll have to post our cards and my gift to J later, I forgot to take pics of those before uploading this week!