Creating a legacy

Behold, the Elder Princess Ella's first major sewing project!



This was her first ever sewing class at our local Joann's. I had the Ariel fabric in my stash and she picked out the purple border (a perfect match I might add). With minimal assistance with pins and scissors, she learned how to put the pedal to the metal and make the machine go all while guiding fabric AND removing pins. She was also the youngest kid in her class by at least 1.5 years *and* she finished first.


*beaming* I'm so proud of her!

Unfortunately, the picture quality isn't great because it was taken with my HTC 8585 SmartPhone. C'est la vie.

Out of the mouths of babes...

Err... First Graders...

I don't blame her. I wouldn't want to either!

Brief Update

As I'm sure you've noticed, the look of this blog has changed dramatically. Instead of the frenetic and sometimes psychotic color and theme changes of the past, I've moved to a more stylish, sleek and "less is more" look since I just don't have the time - or inclination - to keep up with the other way. I hope you enjoy it!

In other news, I've joined the Iron Cupcake: Earth challenge and though I missed out on the last one (Coffee), I'm excited to get involved in the next challenge. Check it out here. I'm proud to display the badge on my sidebar.

Also, please do check out the links under the heading of My Cafe' Press Shops. I have a lot of fun designing stuff and it warms the cockles of my heart when I see people order things I made. I'm an artist at last!

On addition to art, I've been working on screenplays and that has taken a lot of my time churning out pages like there's no tomorrow. I imagine that in the next few weeks, I'll be back at it again working on the rewrite.

On a more personal level, we're almost 2/3 through first grade homeschooling. I'd like to say that it's easy and fun and whatever. But it's been difficult and emotionally draining. Partly because the child in question has emotional outbursts that we're working on with a counselor and partly because my patience level has been at -10 for a VERY long time due to chronic health issues. Thankfully, we're weathering those with a great pain management specialist and regular injections into the affected joints.

We're also in the midst of putting in a vegetable and herb garden. This was inspired by last year's 100 Foot Diet challenge. I never was able to get in on it then, but I did a lot of reasearch and finally was able to make the investment out of this year's tax return. Thanks in part to Ray at GardenWeb and other online friends, I was able to plot out what I wanted and where I wanted it to go. I'll blog that adventure separately.

The Younger Princess Ella turned 5 on the 20th and I'm wondering where the time went. All she wanted for her birthday was a "Rapunzel" cake like her "Sleeping Beauty" cake. I'll blog it separately, too. Prince Lorenzo is slated to turn 3 on St. Patrick's Day and has requested either a "pincess" cake or a "thomas" cake. Three guesses which one he gets.

One more thing - a stream of consciousness list so that I don't forget the things I want to blog later:

Yatta!
Cats
Gardening
Cooking Vegetarian
PurseBuzz
Health

The Best Thing About Homeschooling

You want to know what the best thing about homeschooling is?

The fact that when Mama doesn't feel up to numerous iterations of workbooks and educational videos, she can just give the kids some paper dressed up as a "book" and let them have at it and it COUNTS! It's educational, I promise. I gave them a "project": Write a story and illustrate it. I think we're covering art, grammar, spelling, punctuation and creative writing as well as the all important "leave Mama alone so she can blog about you deal with her overreactive gallbladder" subject.

Here are the books BEFORE the Princesses Ella got hold of them:

The Younger Princess Ella is the one in the pink Sleeping Beauty Nightgown

You should only know how long it took me to FIND this picture once I uploaded it from my camera to my hard drive. Why it got sent to my VIDEO folder, I've no idea. Anyhow...

What I did to make the books:

• Find card stock in pile on desk.
• Let girls choose their own color from about 20 choices (the Elder choose purple, the Younger chose the pink)
• Grab handful of printer paper (there's a reason I buy this stuff at the warehouse store)
• Stack all paper together and cut roughly in half on the long side of the paper (exactly half would have been 5.5" but who's counting?)
• Find 3-hole punch and arrange puncher thingies so that it punches 3 holes down the "long" side of the paper
• String 3/8" wide grosgrain ribbon to make book
• Field exactly 3,874,089,152 questions about what the books are and are not
• Take picture and hide in office to blog about it while the girls knock themselves out creatively

Life is good. Except for my mother-frelling gallbladder which makes me irritable and tired and nauseated. It's days are numbered. Poor my kids. Little do they know that once Mama is done recuperating, their days of watching PBS all day in their PJs and eating Scooby Snakcs for breakfast are O-V-E-R. But I'm not telling them that. Let them have their little fun.