Playing Catch-Up

I posted the run-down of what all happened since George was born.  Now it's time to catch up from there...

I found a new job very quickly.  It involved relocating three states away though.  Fortunately, three states away was HOME.  So we're back in Florida and loving living mere moments (relatively speaking) from the grandparents rather than a two-day road trip away!

The new job is awesome.

The new church is awesome.

Spending 45 minutes in traffic on a Friday afternoon to get to the Target that is only 5 miles away is an entirely different kind of awesome.

Living less than 90 miles from the nearest Target is the former kind of awesome.

We've been here nearly a month and are not yet unpacked and moved in because we've been spending nearly every weekend with FAMILY.  Woot!

I'm hoping to get back in to some kind of routine around here.....

Concert Dresses

I have a huge garbage bag full of t-shirts I no longer wear but can't bear to part with.  Most of them are from concerts I attended in high school and college.  Some are from clubs or groups I belonged to.  Others are just 'old favorites.'  I thought about using them to make a quilt, but I'm not so quilty.  I'd been long considering making play dresses out of some of them for my little lass.  I am NOT an experienced seamstress, however, and while I am a decent puzzle solver and fairly adventurous, I didn't want to ruin them trying to figure out how to make them cute and failing.

This is where Made comes in.  I was poking around and found this.

In sticking with the musical references, I consider these 'variations on a theme,' as I made a few adjustments to the pattern be able to accommodate a narrower & shorter t-shirt, since these were mine and not men's XL.

They went together really easily.  We learned picked up some pointers along the way, like 'tie off the strings so the gathers don't come out while you're sewing the yoke' and 'don't use a really stretchy knit for the yoke.'  I'm a big fan of the instant gratification & can't wait to try out some of Dana's other patterns and tutorials!

Two Disclaimers:
1) My wonderful mother-in-law did the sewing on these.  I cut, ironed, and watched.  We were at her house, I didn't want to mess up her machine (or the garments!)
2) I am not a photographer.  I have neither a decent camera nor the  knowledge base to take a decent photograph.


While typing this, I realized my baby monitor was not on and ran upstairs to find my son screaming in his crib :o/

Down So Long

The laptop died shortly before George's birth.  I was reduced to webbing on an iPhone which, sadly, did not get along all too well with blogger. Things that have taken place since my last post:

Dave's game released

I returned to work from maternity leave

The breastfeeding thing seemed to work itself out....considering my son, at 3 months old, was in the 50th percentile...for 9 month olds.

I lost my job.

Yep. That about sums it up.

Now that the laptop is back up and running I have lots of things to catch up with.

Fun Stuff

I want to share this opportunity to help out an important cause and get your ears on some awesome family-friendly music at the same time. I've been following Ryan's blog for nearly two years now and really love his family. He's an incredibly talented photographer, an awesomely devoted husband, and a super dad. He's the parent of a little boy with special needs & dreamed up this album to raise money for research that might some day help families like his. And then he made it happen. And I want to help him spread the word. So buy the album & then give some love to the artists who donated their time and talents to the cause. (Oh, and I want to draw your attention to the 'make a donation' button in the bottom right-hand corner...in case you want to do more.)  Feel free to make all kinds of virtual noise about this using your preferred social networking tool!  And buy the album. :o)

Announcement

David and I finally had a minute...or a few hours, actually...to sit down together and hammer out George's birth announcement! 

The inspiration came from an actual circus ticket for the "Loomis Bros. Circus."  They performed in Okeechobee, FL a few years ago and my dad snagged an extra child's ticket to send me. I had this idea to mat and frame it for 'the kids' room' some day.   When George arrived, I realized it could easily be translated into a birth announcement.

I had this image in my head and no way to get it on 'paper.' And David, well, he's a photoshop genius. The way the ticket was laid out made it perfect to swap out the show info for birth stats.  I wanted to avoid the over-used 'welcome' or 'announcing' headline.  I figured the announcement would speak for itself in that respect.  So we came up with 'Admit One Child,' since that's, in effect, what we were doing! The original ticket actually said 'great family fun' at the bottom so we left that part alone.  When all was seemingly said and done, David pointed out that the year was nowhere on the ticket and he worked it in.

Now to have them printed & send them out...