Early Easter Egg Hunt

We've begun to do "spending time" with our boys every weekend. We rotate which of the boys is with which parent and we go out and do something with our boys one on one. Hunter took Paulo to a train store. I took Andre to a yard sale that our ward pre-young women were putting on to raise money to donate to Haiti. (I found some awesome Adirondak style chairs for the boys to sit out on the patio. I'm currently sanding them down. After I stain them, I'll post pictures.)

When we got home, Hunter rode bikes with Paulo on the driveway for a while and Andre and I went upstairs. Ten minutes later, Paulo comes and finds me upstairs and says, "Daddy's hurt! He has blood. Lots of blood." I sprinted out the door and down to the driveway to find Hunter sprawled out next to his bike, unable to get up. He hit his knees pretty badly and has been icing them for the past two days. Nothing was broken--don't worry. But he developed a huge bump on the inside of one of his knees, and injured his bursa on the other knee, causing sharp pain if he's not really careful. His scrapes are scabbing over now-sort of.

Anyway, this is a long explanation of why I took the boys to the Easter egg hunt alone this year. (Hunter had to keep off his leg as much as possible and elevate it at home.) But I had a lot of fun with my boys. Andre slept through most of it and then was irritable when he woke up. It's funny because Paulo has a picture almost exactly like Andre's--bawling next to his Easter basket. It was a beautiful day. I love the month of March in Pasadena. The climate is perfect. Enjoy the pictures. And Happy Easter!

Handsome Boys In Church Clothes

Just A Typical Thursday Morning

Another Sewing Experiment

I can hardly believe it's been over four months since my last post. I've been keeping busy and haven't been motivated to document anything. But thanks to encouragement from family, my new functioning computer, and the completion of my latest sewing project, I actually have something to post.

I don't feel like sewing every day, but every now and then I get so sick of my current wardrobe, and I don't have money to go out and buy something, so I dig through my old work clothes and get the urge to experiment and try to create something I actually feel like wearing.

So, this lovely tuxedo business shirt became my next victim. With a chop here...

...and a chop there...
...I've got something a little more feminine. (None of these photos look very good b/c I took them from my phone, but you get the picture.)

I pinned, ironed, and hemmed the sleeves first.

And then I found out that I chopped off too much. Oops!--I swear the only way I learn in these experiments is that I make mistake after mistake after mistake.--Anyway, I wanted to keep it modest, so I went looking for fabric to sew around the collar, and found this old flowery fabric that I've kept forever just because I think it's pretty. (it came from an old dress from when I was in young women, which became too short as I grew, and I chopped of the bottom and made it a top until I outgrew the bustline. I gave away the top, but saved the scraps.) I thought I'd give it a shot even though the fabrics don't really go together.

Once again, I pinned, ironed and sewed the bias for the sleeves...
...and the collar...
Then I found out that you can't just sew on a strip of fabric and make your neckline smaller, because it just sticks out and exposes your chest anyway. I had to sew darts along the neckline to get it to lay flat, and even after all that, it still looks bunchy. It was quite the process, and I have no clue why the photos of the darts wouldn't send to my album, but anyway, here's the finished product:

By the way, the skirt used to be a white linen skirt with stains on it that was handed down to me. I tried using fabric dye for the first time, and now I have a brown skirt to match.


Other than being a little tired of looking at these clothes after making so many mistakes over a period of a few days, I guess I'm overall pretty happy with the outfit. I will wear my new outfit this Easter Sunday (remember the old days when we looked forward to new pastel, floral Easter dresses and those gargantuan hats?) And best of all, I learned a lot from this project.