the mousie with the mostest

In our house, that's currently Miss Minnie.  We are not a particularly mouse friendly household... and wish our under the stove visitor would find some new digs, but Raina is trying to soften our views on all things mousy by declaring Minnie her BFF.  So much so, that she's going as Minnie on Halloween.

Here she is in her first Minnie costume:  thrift store dress that's way too big, my old Disneyland ears, and (unseen) Minnie slippers.  At first I thought it was cute that she put this outfit together on her own and declared it her Halloween costume.  Then I decided it was a bit too ragamuffin for my liking, and that she'd probably be tripping over the dress the entire time we were out.  So take two...

I ordered this set from the Disney store.  Not as cheap as the first version - but I'm okay with that.  She looks pretty happy herself!


To add to the Minnie couture, I decided to make Raina a skirt that she can actually wear out in public at times when the full on costume is not going to happen!  I was going to use the Oliver and S Lazy Days Skirt Patter, but then I decided to be even more lazy and not use it.  :)  O looked at the pattern, saw that it was basically gathering two large rectangles and adding an elastic, and thought that was enough to go on.  I used a thicker elastic than I normally do in Raina's waistband, and I hope that passes her high standards for comfy clothing!!

The Minnie fabric is from Walmart, and we found it on our annual pilgrimage to Walmart last month.  The fabric is so cheap that I really just let Raina wander down the aisle and point stuff out to me that she liked.  Of course, that means we ended up with a cart full of Minnie, Tinkerbell, Hello Kitty, and Curious George.  This is the George fabric:

My instructions have been to turn it into either zippie jammies or a ball gown.  Hmmmm.....


More notes on our annual pilgrimage to Walmart....

I don't think it's really all that bad of a store, to be honest.  The one we go to has a newly renovated craft section, and a giant supermarket in it.  It also has a Dunkin Donuts and all the usual home/beauty/clothing/toy sections.  The problem lies in taking two cute kids along with me, a mommy who loves to shop.  We just can't make it out of there cheaply enough to go there often!  Of course, the same is true about Target, and we end up there fairly often.  Also, I let Raina wear her pj's and slippers to Walmart.  She wasn't feeling all that great, and she wasn't the only one there folloing that dress code. She was, however, definitely the cutest.  :)

Blogging mojo. (And a kid project)

I have a pocketful of excuses, and none of them seem legit enough.  Sometimes life happens.  In the end, that's what it all boils down to.  Blogging started to feel like another chore in my life, and that wasn't... isn't... what I want this blog to be.  So I started asking myself what I want from this blog.  What were my intentions when I started it?  I didn't want it to be a daily churn out of "look what I made!"  ...and that's kinda what I felt like it had evolved into.  I was sewing like crazy, writing too late, and losing steam.  I was linking my posts all over the interwebs, trying to get traffic and followers... and I ended up actually LOSING two followers.  Now, who knows why they really left.  It could have been lots of things.  But I took it personally, and it was the last straw.

So now I've taken a break, thought a lot, and I want to come back and be funny again.  When I started this blog, it wasn't all sewing projects.  It was cooking, kid things, and rants about life in my mommyhood.  So while I'll still show off things I made, I hope you'll still read my other posts, too!

Thanks for letting me take a break.  Now lets get this party started back up!

I don't think I ever wrote about this activity we did.  

It started off simple enough:  a pile of beads, and a bunch of pipe cleaners.  I was thinking fine motor skills mixed with craft time.  Pretty open ended.

and then, because why not, we added a big pile of feathers:

I'm not sure what I imagine Raina would do with this pile of goodies, but I didn't expect her to build a person and give it feather hair!  I helped with the mouth (chin?), but everything else was all miss Raina!  

Then, from the feathers, a question came up...

"WHY ARE THESE ALL PURPLE, BUT THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT?"

Aaaah, the question the art student and color lover in me has been waiting for!  I'm so looking forward a whole new chapter of color explorations stemming from this!  Do you think Home Depot will mind if I clear them out of paint samples this weekend??