Ahhhh...

...that's better.  Made myself a new header and I think I like it.  Carry on.

Sew Simple!

I don't really sew much.  I know how to sew - I was taught well by my wonderfully talented mother.  I was even in 4-H sewing fashion shows as a kid.  It's just expensive and time consuming to sew now and I'm not in the habit of it.  Recently, however, I dusted off the old sewing machine to make simple pillowcase-style dresses for a Ugandan mission project supported by our church.  I made a number of these little dresses to send over along with many other little dresses that other ladies have made.  I was really happy with how they turned out.

I made a really pretty blue one with daisies on it, thinking that Rella would look so cute wearing it with yellow leggings.  When I showed her the darling finished dress, she promptly thumbed her nose at it, so I promptly sent it off to Africa with all the others.

I noticed in this weekend's Target circular that they were selling beach towels for $4 this week.  I saw the bright colored towels in the ad and had one of those ah-ha moments!  For a total of $8 plus tax, I made pillowcase dresses out of beach towels, and my girls each now have a fun and cozy pool cover-up.  I think they will be perfect to snuggle up in during those late night swim meets.

These are so simple to make.  To make each cover-up, it only required making three cuts, sewing 4 straight lines (the towels come nicely hemmed - so no hemming required!), sewing in 2 pieces of bias tape (on hand) along the arm openings, and threading in one length of ribbon (on hand). For the striped towel, I did cut it down just a little along the sides so it would fit my smaller daughter better.  I made these while Geof was out playing tennis. Quick, easy and inexpensive! (I am not detailing the steps here - if you want details on how to make one, just google pillowcase dress instructions.  There are tons of sites with instructions, like this one, and they are all pretty much variations on the same theme).

See ya at the pool - with these bright dresses, 

you won't be able to miss us!

Please Paint My Walls!

I am soliciting input, dear reader, on what color to paint my little front living room.  I have all these lovely canvases sitting around waiting to find their permanent homes on my wall, but first I need to paint.  And before that, I need to settle on a color.  Here's the gist of what I'm doing on the walls:

Currently the walls are a hateful shade of lemony yellow.  It was horrible the day I opened the paint can, and it is still horrible today.  I'm excited for a change.  At first, I was thinking of a nice, soft neutral for the entire room, offset with white beachy furniture with some coral and watery blue accents here and there.  But now I'm wondering if the pictures won't pop enough off a neutral colored background since there's a lot of neutral color in these photos.  I'm not averse to painting the gallery wall a nice bright color, but I don't want to overpower the photos.  Hmmm - what to do?  I've tried coral and dark brown, but I'm not sold on either of those.  My dining room is already a nice deep "newberry port blue" (aka Ethan Allen's version of navy), so I don't want to go with a blue and have all that blue going on when I first come in the house.

If you have thoughts on colors that you think might work well, please leave a comment and I'll give it a try (using my photoshop paintbrush).  I'll even do a follow up post showing the results your suggestions and maybe take a vote or something.  Or I might just paint the room and forget to tell you about it, knowing me!

So bring on your thoughts!
xoxo

Eyes and Ears

Look who's eyes opened and ears stood up between this morning and this evening!

We found this one in our garden (nestled in the lap of the neighbor cat...), but he was a-ok.  We shooed away the cat and this little guy hopped all around until I scooped him up and put him back in the nest.

We found a second baby rabbit out of the nest and in the front yard, and though he seems fine, he was a little worse for wear, showing a couple of scrapes and a bloody nose, and his eyes weren't opened up yet.  He was pretty shaky, so we nestled him back with his brother, and hopefully he'll be fine.  The other 4 rabbits are nowhere to be seen.  I'm hoping they hopped out and left the nest (we have learned that rabbits leave the nest about 10 days after birth) and were not victims of the cat.  For poor Fancy's sake (who is SO sad that they are growing and leaving her), we are going with the "they were ready to hop away and have more babies" story.

Wildlife Update

After much gentle poking and prodding in the nest (with a small twig - no humans have touched the babies), we determined that there are at least 5 bunnies down that rabbit hole, and my quick eye noted that at least 2 of them are males.  Fancy is keeping track of all the bunny data in preparation for her sharing time at school next week.

In addition, the giant turtle turns out to be a female, and she laid a nest of eggs in our side yard.  At least one of the eggs was eaten on site overnight, as was evidenced by the soft, discarded shell by the nest.

Rella is now hoping that a mama armadillo or hippo will come lay eggs in our yard.

Wildlife

Geof reported that earlier this week he saw a black snack in our driveway, and there is evidence of a snake hole that it's been using to come and go from underneath our garage.  Today I followed a giant turtle from one side of my house to the other, making many pit stops along the way to crouch in fear of the strange biped with the camera phone.

There's a cardinal family in our crape myrtle, and there has been an abandoned rabbit hole in our front garden.  We saw the rabbit making the hole one evening several weeks ago, and we were looking forward to baby bunnies, but it seemed that the hole was quickly abandoned.  I assume it was because of so many dogs and kids coming and going up and down the street (not to mention the snake and lumbering turtle).

Today the kids were playing briefly in the yard and I heard all this squeaking.  I chased the neighbor cat away and discovered this:

Our little hole was now covered with dried grass, fur fluff and mulch.  I could see the nest moving and hear the little squeaks.  I quickly called the kids over but gave orders for no touching, and then I proceeded to poke around with a twig (I did not touch anything with my hands).  Then this little guy popped out!

We have brand new baby rabbits!

Piper, the cat next door, was VERY interested and kept coming to dig around the nest and agitating the babies, so we had to call in the neighbors to remove her indoors.  Hopefully they will be safe from her for the time being.

 After some careful poking around in the nest, I'm pretty sure that there are 4 babies.  There may be more, but I decided to leave them alone rather than dig deeper, especially since they finally got settled once the cat was removed.

 Here's one of the babies after the cat had pulled him out of the nest - their ears are still flattened against their heads and they seem to wander toward the smell of the nest pretty quickly. Their eyes appear to still be closed.  We're going to keep a close eye on our little nest and keep our fingers crossed that the nest stays safe.  The kids can't wait for their next glimpse of the baby bunnies!

And for the record, these baby bunnies are way cuter than baby chickens!

Dance Recital 2011: Other Cast

I wanted to include a bunch of photos of some of the other principal dancers in Alice in Wonderland.  It's fun, of course, to see our girls on stage, all dressed up with their hair and makeup done, showing how much they have learned in their dance classes this year.  But it's also fun to see the school as a whole - what the girls can potentially work toward if they decide to stick with it.  Brings back a lot of memories of my time in dance.  While I certainly don't intend to force the girls to stay in dance, it's fun to see the kind of dancing they have to look forward to as teenagers if they do indeed turn out to be dancers.  As I said before, CDC puts on quite the professional production and we're so happy to have our girls be a part of it!

 Alice and the White Rabbit

 "Gravity" (as Alice was falling down the rabbit hole)

 more "Gravity"

 "Alice"

 Very flexible "Tears"

 The Tweedles

 The Caterpillar and her "Smoke"

"Caterpillar" - Fancy was so taken with her.  As a result, we saw a lot of this this weekend:

You know, I don't stand like this enough when I'm just chit-chatting with my friends.  

 

Or waiting around in lines. 

Or dancing on stage, for that matter.

Mad Hatter

 Mad Hatter, March Hare, Doormouse and Alice

The Cheshire Cat (Rella's class assistant)