Blue-eyed beauties 3-2-1

I wish I could say I’ve been busy slaying dragons and conquering new skills, but no. Mostly just housework, hanging with the littles, and reorganizing my house. Actually, we shall restate that first bit. I have slain a dragon. Our playroom. I have completely reorganized it into an entirely unbeautiful and very functional toy storage system a la Rubbermaid, that makes it way easier for the kids to spend five minutes cleaning up. Instead of me spending two hours reorganizing every toy into it’s special spot, I have a bunch of buckets that are either by theme or by type, and they get one at a time, and if they want another they throw everything back in the Rubbermaid first. Pinworthy and beautiful? Not particularly. Functional? Absolutely.

I’ve also been working on skills, actually. Firstly, on my houseworking skills. Let’s be real here – it does not come to me naturally. If I strike you as the homemaker type, I apologize. In reality, I am the artsy fartsy type, and if I leave myself in my natural state I tend to sit up every so often and wonder what the heck happened. I’m forcing myself to create new habits and routines and so far I’m doing pretty well. I mean, two steps forward and one back – I have a toddler and a baby after all.

Secondly, I’m giving running another go. It’s actually just happenstance that I took it up in the New Year. That’s just when my husband and I came to the conclusion that going to the gym was not fitting in particularly well in this season of my life. Jackson has been clingy off and on, and my husband struggles with him when I’m gone, and that’s stressful for everyone involved. So in lieu of not having a whole gym available we opted for a second hand treadmill. I’m nearly done my second week of it and I’m getting stronger, faster, and yes, losing weight as well. But mostly I’m feeling more energetic, which is really helping with that housework skills thing… especially since I’ve got less sleep lately than I ever got when Jackson was a newborn. C’est la vie, and this baby season is long days and short years, and all the snuggles and laughter are totally worth the lack of sleep.

However, I have resolved to do or create something every day, even if it’s just a photograph. So, on a particularly crazy day, I pulled out my dslr and took pictures of my crazies. Then I edited them another day. Every day a little bit of something! Running and creating even just little bits, that’s what’s keeping me in a happy, healthy place (mentally and physically) this cold cold winter.

How about you? How do you keep in the happy healthy zone?

Nicole’s Skirt Project

First off, a quick follow-up to Monday’s post. Little Hailey’s heart surgery was successful with very few complications. She did better than expected, swelling is not bad, and she is busy healing up. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with her family, we are glad that the waiting can be with a lighter heart now, and hope that soon they can be back home! (If you’re curious, her dad is my cousin.)

Now, onto the project I did with Nicole! Thursday’s post left you with an image of Nicole heart at work (haaa) cutting away at her skirt project.

Before I give it away, here’s a few more images, see if you can guess what kind of skirt she was making!

Does that line give it away a little bit??

Teehee, I’m sorry, when those pants slipped down I couldn’t resist. Hard at work! There was so much focus, it made my day. Here’s the skirt we were working on… the circle skirt tutorial by Dana at MADE!

After I’d sat down with a coffee and some sailor-talk to figure out the maths (anticlimactically, the maths were stupidly easy, so I had to browse Pinterest for a few minutes to finish my coffee) and let Nicole choose a fabric out of my stash, the whole procedure took about an hour. Ten minutes of that, at least, were spent rethreading my serger with pink thread, and then re-rethreading it after I’d tried to take a shortcut and learned a valuable lesson that sergers don’t take shit from nobody.

The fabric Nicole chose is from Ikea, my mother in law (aka Nana) brought it and a few others down the last time she was visiting. She watches the as-is section for me. (our Ikea is supposed to open this year! Right around the same time I have a baby, I hear! Do they have prime parking for people with babies??)

So, I’ll break down Nicole Did and Laura Did.

Laura did the maths. Nicole chose the fabric and the length of skirt she wanted. Laura drew on the fabric with the magic fabric marker. Nicole cut the skirt out and chose the color of thread for the serger. Laura rethreaded the serger lovingly, serged the raw edges of skirt + waist elastic, and sewed waistband elastic into a circle and pinned it like mad. Then Nicole + Laura sat together and slowly sewed the skirt to the waistband with a zigzag stitch. Then Nicole wore the skirt and gave joint credit to both of us for making it. (which is funny, because she spent more time on it than I did, and if she tosses sprinkles on or chocolate in to a batch of cookies she claims full credit.)

It’s a big old full spinny skirt. I’m actually surprised she wanted it so long, she would have gone floor length if I had let her. I went and did a more practical tea length so she wouldn’t land on her face all the time. Once summertime hits, I’m going to invest in a rainbow of tanktops so she can wear this skirt and others like it with joy and happiness and leggings-turned-int0-modesty-shorts-because-she-ripped-all-the-knees.

She was so excited about her skirt that it was impossible to catch a good picture of her. “Well, what of outside?” you ask. I missed my window of Uncommonly Decent Weather and it is –40 (C and F match at 40, kids) with windchill today, so, yeah. No outside shots. (“Wait, what?” ask those of you who weren’t here last year. “Winnipeg.” I say, and we both nod sagely.)

But here is a shot of the skirt folded up a bit. The waistband is literally just a thick white elastic. I could have dyed it if I wasn’t doing a quick project that I didn’t want to turn into a non-quick project. I really recommend Dana’s Tutorial. I’m thinking about making one for me, with that elastic it would likely work great as a maternity skirt this spring. I bet you could whip up an entire family’s worth of skirts in an afternoon, it really is that easy, especially if you serge the bottom hem.