These boots are made for walkin...

Me and my new pink cowgirl boots (yes, I really did get these, Jay thinks they are hideous) are off to MacKay, Idaho tomorrow morning for one long glorious week. I'm taking some sewing with me (we shipped my old sewing machine out there last week) so hopefully I will have some projects to show when I get back. I'm taking both Jane Sassaman quilts in progress and my knitting needles (supposedly there is a fantastic yarn shop near where we will be). So look for a full report from way out west next week, hopefully with pictures of mountain vistas and wild horses. Bye!

End of an Era

School's out! Wooo Hooo!

My soon-to-be-1st grader was quite happy to be out for the summer, and I have to admit that I am quite happy to not have to get her to school by 7:15 for a few months. However, today was also the end of two mornings a week every week spent with my youngest. She had preschool this year on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and we hung out together on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do work from home, so I have to admit that a lot of this time was spent with her watching Tom & Jerry and entertaining herself coloring and playing. However, there were also a lot of really nice moments with just me and her...

watching the birds,


stealing her sisters things when she wasn't around to yell about it,


long baths (with the bathtub all to herself!)...


building forts,


today especially I let her decide what we would do, and she wanted to sew! Mel commented that she wanted instructions for this little activity, there isn't really a lot to instruct but here are the things you need:


And if you are letting a 4 year old be in charge of the day and she realizes that you only have blue yarn (and she wants to make a red cardinal) then an impromptu trip to Michael's ensues...


Ahh, much better.

The book is for tracing out of, the girls are into birds at the moment so this is the one we have used. I let them pick out a bird and then trace it onto some burlap with a fabric marker. Into the hoop it goes and then I just let them sew around the lines (I've instructed them to come up from the back, move over four holes, go down and then come up in the next hole and repeat. I figure this will at least give them a feel for making their stitches similar sizes.)


After some sewing we made cupcakes. I've been wanting to make these ones for a few weeks and our neighborhood is having a last day of school party (we are actually waiting for some rain to move through while I write this so we can go) so I decided to take them to that. They were a bit fussy to make but are quite delicious. This was the first (and possibly last) time I have ever made butter cream frosting, which is also a bit fussy, but somewhat of a magical process. Good thing I like cream cheese frosting better anyway, it's much easier.




I will miss these mornings we have had together on our own, but I betcha in a couple months I will be really ready for both of them to go off to school!

Will you pleeeeeeease teach us how to sew today?

This activity brought us all ridiculous amounts of delight and satisfaction. My youngest worked on hers all morning and then took it to the bus stop to show everyone, my oldest whipped hers out after school. They were both thrilled with the process and results, I was thrilled at their interest.

Zakka Bag for Mom's Day

While puttering around on the web a couple of weeks ago I came across these lovely basket/bags on this blog (there are some great pictures of these zakka style bags there). I thought they were super cute and such a good idea (since the bottoms of bags are always the tricky part for me) and would make a fun Mother's Day present. Then I won a free yard of fabric from Sew, Mama, Sew! (they are so awesome over there, if you sew anything you need to be reading their blog) and took it as a sign that I should definitely make one. For my free fabric I picked one of the new Amy Butler Midwest Modern fabrics and I even had a coordinating fabric already in my stash. My original idea was for it to be a bag for mom's knitting projects, but as I made it I realized it was going to end up much bigger than I had intended and that it would also make a great beach bag. I mostly used this tutorial (and I really love her bags with knitted bottoms, definitely on my list of knitting projects to make), with a few modifications to fit my lazier style of sewing and I'm really quite happy with how it turned out, I think mom was too! There will be more of these in my future, especially since I got quite a few half price baskets at Michael's...



I had no idea why these were called Zakka bags, so I did a little web snooping and was able to find the best description here as "zakka has come to represent a style of art and craft that is simple, charming, and of Japanese esthetic". Well, I think simple and charming definitely applies, Happy Mother's Day Mom!

The future zakka bag owner herself, it cracks me up how much my youngest child looks like her:

Love Thursday on Saturday

Couldn't resist throwing this one in for the Love Thursday "Hearts In Nature" post on Shuttersisters. We have lots of these heart leaves coming up in the woods...

Thom Yorke Rocks - Radiohead at Lakewood Amphitheatre Atlanta

Alright, the rest of Radiohead is awesome too, but it was such a treat to watch Thom do his rocker-caught-up-in-the-moment dances last night. I mean really, to be able to go on stage in front of thousands and thousands of people and just shake your booty like its nobody's business and then get paid for it? What a gig. Did I mention that Jay and Thom Yorke have the same birthday? He's that cool. Oh, and to the sixty or seventy year old guy next to Jay singing every song and playing his air guitar, rock on man, rock. on. I was trying to find a way to stealthily videotape him but it was just too dark. You'll have to settle for a video of Thom instead.

and some pics:




Mental note, there is a reason people pay for parking outside of the main lots at Lakewood, even though the main lots are free. They don't have to sit in traffic lock-down for an hour to leave.

The set list was:

All I Need
There, There
Lucky
15 Step
Where I End and You Begin
Nude
Pyramid Song
Optimistic
Arpeggi
National Anthem
Idioteque
You and Whose Army?
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers N' Mash
Bodysnatchers
Videotape

The Gloaming
Talk Show Host
Just
Faust Arp
How to Disappear

Paranoid Android
House of Cards

Busy, Busy, Busy Weekend - Mostly In Pictures

Was a fun and crazy weekend starting with...

Bubble art on Friday...




A wedding and after-wedding gathering on Saturday...

(alcohol and pom poms are a dangerous combination)

(admiring Meredith's Wii bowling technique, she kicked all our asses)

and lots of planting and weeding on Sunday.

(new itty-bitty rose garden)

(my path to nowhere is now a path next to the beginnings of a shade garden with new hosta and astilbe)

(and a new patch of Columbine, because they are super sweet and make me smile)

Was too tired to fit in sewing too, but such is Spring.