Just a few more days….

It’s that time of year again! The kids are going back to school. This year my youngest child, my daughter is going to start Kindergarten. I have several worries, like will she be scared without me? Will she find her way to her class from the bus in the mornings and get home safely? Then of course, there is the worry about school shootings.  I believe my children’s schools are as safe as they can be, with locked doors inside the school doors so the person coming in has to get permission from the office to come inside. Plus the local Swat Teams, police and I think even the military did training in each of the schools in our district, but still I worry. 

However, for myself I can’t help be feel a little selfish. For the first time in 11 years, I will have time for me again. I have several goals and one of those are to start taking better care of myself, eating right and working out every day. I plan to spend a lot more time on my Etsy shop by adding new creations and improving my skills and expanding my creativity. Also, I have a part time job I work from home where I can answer phone calls for various telephone commercials and take orders. 

It’s been a very long summer. As my children continue to grow, our home is getting smaller and smaller and it’s been impossible to keep it clean, so I will have to spend all of next week getting the house back in ship shape (well, close anyway) condition and maybe even taking a nap here and there. 

School starts in only a few days and tonight is Meet the Teachers Night. Its a bittersweet time because I have gotten used to having my kids with me all the time day and night and soon, I will be alone during the day, my kids off doing their own thing again. Sigh….as much as I am looking forward to a clean and quiet house during the day, I sure am going to miss them. 

My daughter is hiding everything I make

Well, I wish I had some pictures to show you of the things I have made this week. I made my first Trouble Keeper, thanks to a magazine called Mollie Makes I played with wool felt and made a felt bird key ring and after cleaning the garage I found my Felted Zombies book and made my first Zombie bunny out of felt. This morning, I wanted to take photo’s of them, the good ( the key ring and the trouble keeper) and the bad ( Zombie Bunny) however, my daughter has hidden them. 

The trouble started early this week when I finished my first Trouble Maker but decided it just wasn’t quite right, no personality, and so I set it up where I could see it several times a day until I was inspired with what personality it was telling me. Well, Lilly, my  daughter who just turned 5 decided it was perfect and really wanted to keep it. Well, I couldn’t tell her no because she seemed to love it so much. 

Before starting the next Trouble Keeper, I had this project that came free with issue number 26 of Mollie Makes just waiting for me, so I did it. I was a bit intimidated by using felt as I have only experienced the cheap polyester felt and never cared for it. However, when I opened it and realized that this 100% wool felt was much nicer, it was stiffer and did not shed I became excited and within a couple of hours ( I have 3 kids so I get interrupted a lot plus I made a mistake where I had to take apart one side of the bird completely) I had an adorable bird key ring. Well, Lilly also thought it was adorable and I told her she could look at it but couldn’t keep it because I wanted to proudly wear it on my key ring. Well, it’s missing now. 

Okay, well I was inspired by felt and went searching for my book I bought a few years ago about Felt Zombies. I had to clean out my garage in order to find it, but alas I found it! Since I have not been able to find any wool felt in my area and did not want to wait for it to be mailed to me, I bought the cheap polyester type. After 2 hours I had a relatively cute zombie bunny ( and I learned not to even bother with the polyester felt, the wool felt is much better). However this morning when I went to take a pictures of all these things, I could not find them. When Lilly wakes up, as I know for a fact that she is hiding them somewhere, I will attempt to get her to confess and bring me these small treasures so that I can take photos. 

Anyone else have the problem of you’re kids wanting almost everything you make? Right now, it’s a problem however I know that my kids will get older and won’t give two hoots about what I made, right now they love them and I love them so I guess it’s not so much of a problem after all. 

Making pillowcases to help kids with cancer

I haven’t posted anything for a while and it’s because I have been so busy working on gifts, currently a cross stitched baby quilt. Today however, I just could not bring myself to make one more X. I have to admit that I am kind of tired of it and just needed a break. 

Well, a while ago on a tv show called Sewing with Nancy, I saw a segment about making pillowcases for children in the hospital. I looked up their website and was really inspired by how such a small thing like a pillowcase can help make the kids a bit more comfortable and give them something special. By the way, their website is….   http://www.conkerrcancer.org

  So, today I needed to try something new and I went to their site and got instructions for a pillowcase. I have to admit, it looked incredibly complicated and confusing and I decided it was beyond my sewing abilities. All day long I kept thinking about it and finally, about an hour ago actually, I decided to go for it. What was the worse thing that could happen. I read the directions carefully, measured carefully and took each of the 9 steps one at a time and guess what! Within 15 minutes I had a beautiful pillowcase! I was shocked at how simple it really is to do! 

My problem is all my fabric is from what my mother left me and there is very little fabric for children in bright colors and characters. We live off of one income and my spending money is very limited but then it dawned on me. With any luck, I will make a bunch of these in pairs and put them for sell on my ETSY site and for every pair that I sell, I will have enough money to buy kids fabrics. So, once I get a few pair sewing and I will start on that in the morning, for every pair of pillowcases I sell, I will donate 1 pair to this excellent charity. 

The big problem is their is not a chapter in my area, so perhaps I am will look into getting one started. The pillowcases are fun and easy to make and can make a big difference in those kids’ life.