Sunday Randomness

So having kids can be delightful as well. Like when they do random funny faces or you teach them a new trick. Or even better, when you find out they one of them has a craft talent and it's a dirt cheap one to boot lol. Ebbie likes to decorate.... ANYTHING. Wal mart has a huge section of kids crafts. Something tells me Santa Claus is spending alot of time in that section this year. Here's some random pictures. And well..... video too, cause I'm one of THOSE mommies.

Anyone else freak when they get ants?

So I get up as usual this morning. All is well, I go make my coffee, get Ebbie ready for school and take her in, then I come back home. Not 10 minutes after I get home, though, I realize my kitchen sink and counter is FULL of little brown ants. I thought at first they were red ants and I went haywire. I grabbed my spray and went nuts. After I fully sprayed all tiny little crevices and ensured that all living ones were dead, I then proceeded to clean up the many carcasses. At this point, I realize I have sprayed all the clean dishes in the drainer. Le sigh. So now I must wash them again. I cleaned the counters off, wiped them down with vinegar (for those that don't know, it confuses ants, they follow a scent trail and vinegar depletes that), then scrubbed the sinks and everything that goes on the counter. It's been about 2o minutes since I did all that and I see no signs of critters crawling so I think I deterred them. Usually I have carpenter ants everywhere. The apparently are eating away at our houses here. *Yay* I've been spraying inside and out once a week for the last month and have miraculously seen only a stray one here or there. I will not tolerate a home invasion! You cannot overrun me! I am bigger than you! I am top of the food chain dammit! I will not submit, nor will I surrender! This is just my feelings on it. I don't tolerate spiders in my house either. Mosquito hawks, yes, spiders no. I will allow as many mosquito hawks in here as they please, because should a stray skeeter make it's way in my front door (or window or back door or garage) then I know something will be properly guarding my home :) Now, back to my dish washing.

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So we're looking for a kitten. I found a couple of real cuties on Craigslist. If we hear from them, great, if not, we will continue our search for our new child. My theory is what's meant to be is meant to be. If the bouncing bundle of fur is supposed to be with us, he will be with us. Doug is currently throwing around names though and I find it hilarious. They are names from world of warcraft. He's so funny. Today is probably going to be a pretty blah day. Nothing much in the way of eventful has happened thus far, minus the miniature army that attempted to rush my front line this morning. My flaming arrows put them to rest though :)

Rain and wind and puddles OH MY!

So we have the famous Nor'easter coming through right now. Wind gusts up to 50 mph, rain falling sideways, idiots on the road. Everything you would expect with a tiny little storm. I don't know about everyone else, but I used to think people in Cambridge were crazy drivers. Being here, I don't understand their logic! Example: We live RIGHT across from the school. I literally pull out of my driveway, make a quick left, quick right and bam, right at the school. I can stare at the front doors of the school from MY front door. So yes, it's pouring out, Ebbie only has an umbrella, no raincoat. Izzy is still sick. I decide I'll just jump in the car and drive her over since I have to sign her in to her program every day. I get in the car and look to my right down the road and traffic is backed up past the stoplight, around the corner onto the main road. What?? What happened to all the kids that ride buses? I know the kids from my development have to walk, i can understand that traffic. But why are people coming from everywhere else? Why are your kids not on buses? Not to mention, the special service they seem to NEED to do at this school. If you drop your kid off, no need for you to get out, get your kid out, etc etc. Pull up, they open the door and get your kid into the school. Nice. Not really. They have 2 people, 2 pull up spots. These people also want to converse, in the pouring rain, with the parents and hold up a HUGE line of traffic. Ebbie's program starts promptly at 8:30. The door gets locked at 8:31, if you are late, you have to go to the admin office, explain why you are late, sign your child in there, go through the interior door to the classroom, sign them in again there, then walk them over to the main school to meet up with the class for breakfast. They are incredibly particular. I left my house, my home that is only a 5 minute WALK to the school, at 8:10. I got her into her class at 8:28. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Needless to say, I believe a lot of the kids at the main school were late this morning, as there was still an incredibly long line of cars trying to get into the school at 8:35, which is the late bell time at the main school. Virginia is for ....... idiot drivers.

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Today, due to weather, I have nothing I can do outside. I can't clean the floors, well, because it's raining and my stupid roof is leaking. A leak they told me was fixed long before I moved in. I've watched a bubble of paint increasingly get larger over the months. Dave (supervisor of the maintenance crew) says to me, "It appears it's just the drywall tape pulling away, lets poke a couple holes in it and see if it leaks when it rains in a couple days." Dandy. I hadn't noticed this morning, but my ever observant Ebbie did. "Mommy, did you spill water in the floor?" "No, why?" "There's a puddle in the floor, is it raining inside?" "There's a WHAT?" Yep. There's a puddle in the floor, and wow, would you look at that, it's RIGHT under that 'loosened tape'. Go figure. So I called the office, told them to get in contact with Dave, tell him to get his caboose over here to witness that, yes, my roof is leaking. And I'm not as nice as my neighbors. They WILL have it fixed within the next week or I'll be calling my dear old Daddy to come on down for a visit to fix it for me and to make sure to charge a good labor amount because it will be done CORRECTLY, and then I'll happily pass that bill on to housing. My mom should be proud of my bitch level these days :)
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So I'm going to take a wonderful picture of this baby/toddler blanket that I've been working on since April for my baby cousin Emma. My plan, since I can't lounge outside and eat bon bon's Peg Bundy style, is to work on this blanket ALL day. If I do that, there's actually a chance that it could be done today. Really. Wouldn't that be great? Then I could begin finishing the afghan I started making for Ebbie 2 1/2 years ago. That one, you will need to see a picture of. It's actually very detailed, so I've moved really slow on it to ensure that I don't mess anything up. It has twisted stitches, cables, knots, slipped stitches. The whole nine yards. It's actually quite beautiful. If I could ever get to power knitter status, I would make these by the dozens and sell them for $50 a piece. I'm fairly certain that price is actually rather low and they would sell like hot cakes.

Working at home pt 2

So I've picked a path I want to go on. I've spent the entire day researching, discussing with Doug, talking to several different reps, etc etc. It's something that was actually presented to me a long time ago and I declined, but am now interested. It's also not something I'm going to do right now. I think in January I'm going to offer to do people's basic taxes online for them for $10 a pop, plus filing fees for state if applicable. Or not..... I'm tired and I'm running out of ideas to help me coast through the holidays without breaking the bank and then robbing the bank. I could start busting my @$$ and really start knitting and making holiday themed baby blankets for those snuggly winter babies and selling them on Etsy. That could work.... if I was motivated lol. I'm still working on a blanket I started ummm, back in April? My poor baby cousin will be big enough to use it for her dolls at the rate I'm going. Nah, I'm just extending it and putting her initials into it though. It's cute, really it is. I'm going to start back on it tomorrow, when I don't have any meetings or research to do. I spent most of the morning in an online conference, then most of the rest of the day talking on the phone to this rep and that rep. Then I spent a large chunk of time emailing people with questions and calling people. Then after I did dinner and got the kids cleaned up and in bed, I attended yet another online conference. I keep telling myself to get used to it because when I begin this journey, this is what every day life will be like. I'm actually going to have to WORK again. I think I need to wash my mouth out, that word tastes nasty.

Trials and tribulations of trying to WORK AT HOME

For years now I've been desperately searching for a work at home job that doesn't entail me going on doing sales, parties, or making telemarketing calls. Basically, what I would LOVE to do is at home data entry or tax prep or something of that sort. Something where I won't get fired if the baby cries in the background because the only person I would have to call is my boss. Something tells me this type of job just doesn't exist. Everything I've found was some sort of MLM scheme, though most of those actually work...... IF you put the time and money into it. Isn't there a market for people like me? Doesn't someone need someone to type up business letters? Isn't there someone that needs their checkbook balanced??? Le sigh.

It's a Beautiful Morning

Have you ever had one of those mornings? You know, the ones where you wake up refreshed because you went to bed at a reasonable hour? Where you get up, get a shower and feel so nice and clean? You sit down in the early morning silence with your cup of coffee and enjoy the sunrise (what you can see through the clouds). You smell the fresh autumn breeze blowing at you (or gusting at you). You feel at peace with yourself and your surroundings..... and then you hear "MOMMY! IZZY'S GOT BOOGERS!". Le sigh. Yes, this was my morning. I went to bed at 10pm last night. I got up at 5:30 after a nice full peaceful night's sleep because even though Izzy and Ebbie are both sick, they both sleep right through now. I got up, took myself a nice warm shower and had a nice quiet breakfast. I packed Ebbie's lunch for school. Still no sounds of stirring upstairs, YES! I make my coffee and proceed to enjoy a peaceful cup of coffee and a cigarette outside, where the temperature is about 68 and the air is moving a little swiftly but it's nice. There's a nice sunrise this morning and it looked spectacular because of the dark clouds scattered. It was wonderful. Then I heard the above phrase through the baby monitor. Yes, they were both awake, though I had heard nothing from them. My guess is they had been watching TV in Izzy's room. Ebbie can't stand to see Izzy's nose run in the slightest. So I go upstairs to wipe her nose and find her entire face encrusted. Wonderful. Thus began my wonderful (sarcasm) morning.

I get Izzy cleaned up and downstairs to breakfast. I get Ebbie her clothes out and she wants to get dressed downstairs. Fine, whatever. I proceed to tell her to get dressed.... 18 million times.... over the course of the next half hour. She is wearing a little t shirt for pajamas and is claiming that she is warmer in that than she would be in a reg shirt and jeans and socks. Shut up kid and get dressed! Izzy is eating bananas and smearing them all over her freshly cleaned face, at this point it's hard to determine if anything on her face is snot because, well you know, smooshed bananas and boogers kinda look the same.

About 15 minutes before it was time to take Ebbie over to school, I gave her her antibiotics and told her to brush her teeth. Her response was "I'm too slow to brush my teeth." Huh? What does that have to do with the price of eggs in China? I told her I don't care if it takes her 15 minutes or an hour, she's brushing her own teeth cause she's a big girl. She proceeds to get in a huff, stomp in the bathroom, attempts to stomp onto the step stool and promptly lands flat on her butt. I laughed. She cried. I said "are you hurt?" She said "No." "Why are you crying?" "I'm sad." "Why are you sad?" "I don't know." I laugh harder. She gets up, finally brushes her teeth, we finish getting her ready for school, I clean Izzy up and get her dressed. I now have 5 minutes left to sit and hopefully enjoy quiet because the neighbors kids are out front and Ebbie hangs out with them before we all go over to the school. Ebbie is off playing, Izzy is contently sitting in the stroller waiting for our morning stroll. Ebbie comes over and........ her pants are around her knees and all she says is "oops." So I run upstairs and get her belt. Grumbling, I put it on her and tell her she needs to gain some weight. I walk her over to school.

On the way back from the school, the clouds parted and the sun began to shine. Izzy's nose is miraculously not running. The gusty wind has died down to a breeze. Yes, oh yes, it's going to be a beautiful morning after all.

ACK THE MONSTROSITY!

It's done. I quit lol. This is horrible. Well not really. What should have been a princess dress is now a pre-princess cinderella dress. Check out the pictures.

I guess the important part is that when I was done and showed Ebbie, her face lit up as she exclaimed "Oh mommy, it's BEAUTIFUL!".

Day 3 Better late than never

Ok, so this sucks. I haven't screwed anything up yet, not really. I sewed the sides of the skirt together and did the bottom hem. The sides came out decent enough, the hem....... notsomuch. Can you say tad uneven? I know that you can! What's done is done, I nearly broke my back trying to pin the fabric down for the hemline. 42 pins all the way around. Someone remind me again why I decided to do this? Oh, yeah, I wanna be super mom. Sheesh.

So there are no pictures this time. I took a bunch and they came out so bad because of lighting that it just makes my monstrosity look even worse lol. However, I'm about to tackle putting on the elastic, which should be fun. I wanted the waist to look gathered, so I cut the waistline of the skirt to be 3 times Ebbie's waist size. Something tells me it's going to come out looking bunchy instead of gathered, but at this point, I DO have a backup plan. A pretty, wide lace curtain pullback that is JUST Ebbie's waist size that I can sew over top of it if it looks too terrible LOL.

So here's the order I plan to do:
Elastic at the waist
Swoopy things on the sides..... or maybe I should do those first? Have to think about that one.....

Ok...... redo:
Cut and hem swoopy things, then sew them together
Sew them to the upper hemline of the skirt
THEN do the elastic.

Perhaps that will work better. I still haven't figured out what to do with the top of the dress. My neighbors husband suggested I go get a Bedazzler. How a man knows about those things, I will never know..... and the fact that he remembered the actual name...... wow...... guess it's a Navy thing LOL. I guess I've still got time, about 4 weeks, to figure it out.



Ok, here it is, about an hour later. I leaned towards elastic first so I went ahead with that. It was probably a mistake, but I'll make it work lol. I've made cutouts of the swoopies. I decided instead of making 2 separate pieces of each layer to do one like an oblong donut to sew to the waist. Probably another mistake, but I'll make it work. Can you see the white trash princess idea starting to really take shape? So now I have to hem both sides of each swoop and then attach them to the waist, that should be the really fun part cause all of this cloth is like rayon and slippery lol. YAY! *note sarcasm* This project is ALMOST DONE. I feel as though I'm on a mission now to complete this today. If it gets done today, then YES, I'm NEVER sewing again. J/k. Or am I? Maybe next time I'll just use a pattern.




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Fun Fun Fun. WT Princess is really super coming together now. I hemmed all the swoopys. I lost patience because I cannot hem a rounded edge to save my life so now it looks horrible..... well not really but it looks very amateur. I guess it won't really matter on Halloween night when it's dark and people are just going to see the basic quick glance of it, eh? le sigh. I'm on a mission to get this done today. So pictures WILL be on here. And hopefully, once it's all done, I can put it on Ebbie and take a pic and see just how WT she really looks.

Day 2.... sorta

So, here it is, over a week later. I say Day 2 because well, it's the second day of working on the dress LOL. Well actually, I should have posted this yesterday because now it's day 3. Yesterday I got the top underlay portion of the dress done. Pictures to come, I promise. It was definately an adventure. Someone far more seasoned than me could have done this in probably about an hour. I took my time to ensure that I thought out what would happen if I did a and b. That way I was pretty sure all would work out correctly. This is why it's tough doing this without a pattern.

Patterns are nice, they give you directions, even if you cannot understand them because you don't speak sewing-ese. This actually required thought. The previous night had been a long one. Ebbie has an ear infection and sinus infection. She was sent home from school 3 school days in a row. She went to the dr. The dr said she couldn't believe that Ebbie could even hear, she had so much fluid behind her ear drums that for the air pressure test, her ear drums didn't move. So she's on antibiotics and a nasal spray. Nice. I stayed up way too late that night due to some anger issues I had with a forum. Well not really WITH the forum, they just kinda encouraged those issued to appear. For the last couple of weeks I've had alot on my mind, alot actually happening and not much of it is good. Either way, it's better now. So yesterday morning at 6 am I decided since kids were still asleep and dh was gone to work, I would start trying to tackle this top while I had peace and quiet. My first adventure was the zipper.

The zipper. My friend the zipper. When i made the original pattern, I did not consider a zipper into it. Probably a mistake. Once I figured out I would need one to get this poor dainty top over Ebbie's giant daddy dome (genetics suck), I realized I was going to have to cut down the middle of the back of the dress. I got the shortest zipper wal mart had, which was 7 1/4 inches. I sat and began to contemplate how to do this. I could cut the entire back piece in half to create a seam at the bottom and bring the edges closer to the center of the zipper, or I could just cut the length of the actual zipper from the hemline and hope to make it work. Whats the worst that could happen right? I pull the stitching out and have to continue to cut down the full back anyway? So I make my markings, I cut, then I cut about a 1/4" on each side of the zipper created cut at the bottom so I will have room to fold it over to create a clean sewing line. This took me about a half hour to do just this much. I could hear the kids stirring, I had to hurry up. So I pinned the zipper on. Here's where I started to worry. The zipper is about an inch wide. After folding over the hem part next to the zipper (feel free to jump in anytime with what these things are really called in sewing-ese cause I haven't a clue lol), I realized the opening was more than an inch wide...... or well it looked like it. I somehow managed to sew the side hems onto the zipper at the VERY edge of the zipper without stitching off of the zipper cloth at all. At this point I am SO thankful that zippers come with that melted edge to avoid fraying. That will keep that stitching from slipping off. YAY ME! Then there were kids, one of which asking me "Oh mommy, is that my beautiful dress?"....... yes honey, that's your white trash princess dress.
Later on, once the baby and Ebbie had been fed, I went back to work. Here's where I made my first mistake. I sewed all the attaching parts of the front and back together. NOT COOL. I mean, well they all lined up and all was perfect... until I realized that it was gonna be a real bitch to do the edging seams in the arm holes and the neckline. *Sigh* I started pinning the seams. Realizing that I had to cut the fabric if I wanted the seams to curve without bunching or pulling. I'm actually pretty sure I may have learned that in sewing class 20 years ago..... how I remember that I have no clue, or maybe I saw someone do it on DIY lol. After much fidgeting, sewing VERY slowly on my psycho super fast sewing machine, I got all the seams done. I got them done without having to redo them. I got them done and everything came together nicely and evenly.... well mostly lol. You can tell I'm no master by looking at this. Really you can. You can see that I didn't turn the seam in just right here and there, and the front of the neckline puckered a bit anyway but who cares??? I made the top of this dress! And what's great ??? My neighbors. They are a really good ego boost lol. The guy next door laughed when I told them my plans for this dress and that I had never sewn anything but patches on clothes and curtains. I showed them the finished top and he looked shocked. He said "Wow, that looks really good"...... and MEANT IT. I grinned, got giddy. You know, all the things us SAHM's feel when we get complemented on learning a new homemaker style task that make us feel more like June Cleaver :)
So for the pictures. This is fun. I'm not even gonna describe them this time, just look and gawk, laugh, point, stare........ whatever :)

Day 1, pieces for underlay are cut out

Ok, so here's what I've got so far. I have the front to the top of the dress, the back to the top of the dress and the 2 halves of the skirt part. I need to go and buy some elastic and a zipper, but other than that, the underlay is ready to be sewn! And I THINK I did a pretty good job doing freehand. I can only hope that it sits right, but something tells me that I should have curved the edge of the skirt upwards at the outside/seam edge because now that I think about it, its' going to dip down at the seams. But that can be all fixed with a quick re-measure and a snip of the scissors, so no big deal. Better to have cut too far down than to have not cut enough and be screwed :)

That's the front of the top, freehand sketch. Not too bad if I do say so myself. I MIGHT actually be good at this LOL. Or I might have just got lucky :)

Then there's the front and back cut out and pinned. They are folded in half in case you are wondering. Makes for good measuring so I hear.

This is both halves of the skirt part stacked. Like I said, I do believe that I should have tapered that right corner on the bottom up to maintain an even hemline. I'll measure it all out and get it right tomorrow while the munchkin is enjoying her first day of school .

Here's all the pieces.

Like I said. Basically, this is the underlay of the dress. Maybe. I know the skirt is gonna have the swoopy things on the right and left sides like most standard "princess" dresses do, but I haven't decided whether or not I'm going to detail the top much and if so, then what with. I do, however, have a lace sash of sorts that I'm going t sew around the waistband once I get the elastic and zipper in, just to cover the elasticized waist. If the munchkin likes it enough, she can wear it again next year lol. I have it measured right now to be down to her ankles, so unless she hits a massive growth spurt (doubtful knowing my gene pool), then she would be ok to wear it again next year. So this concludes my fun for the day. I've fried my brain the max fixing this up this way and that and doing the mathematical figures to ensure correct seamlines and measurements. As I said, this is gonna be a blast. Keep your fingers crossed that I'm not a total moron with the sewing machine LOL.

Day 1, sewing a princess dress....... no pattern!

Ok, so here goes. Today is my first blog, my first attempt ever and freehand sewing. My first attempt ever at creating a pattern. This should be a blast. I've sewn piddly stuff before, but come on. Honestly, I can't even sew the patches on my poor hubby's navy uniform without sewing the sleeves shut LOL. I don't know what possessed me to think I could actually do this, but hey, I got free fabric, I'm gonna give it a whirl. My 4 year old wants to be a princess (what one doesn't?) but who's to say that all princesses must look the same on halloween? My princess may look like a trailer park princess but dammit, she'll be unique LMAO. Sooo. I'll post the pictures of the pattern/cutouts for the under part of the dress, and pictures for each section afterwards. I will fully document each part of this wonderful experiment to find out if I have what it takes to eyeball and successfully pull off making something (that fits) without a pattern to use. Or if I can even get it sewn together right :)