Cutest Skirt, EVER!

Head on over to Lucy's blog, where you can see more pictures of a mega-cute skirt she's designed. Then run to her Etsy store, My Byrd Nest, to purchase the PDF tutorial so you can make your own.

She's done all the math so you can make one of these skirts for a newborn baby on up to grown women. She even told me that they've figured out a maternity variation. Now I need a new skirt. Bad. And sort of wishing we had more girls.

Now we have SEVEN?

We're getting a taste today of what it would be like to have seven kids (and one on the way), instead of just four. I'm taking off the last two weekends working Muskogee, due to the heat and the whole eight months pregnant thing. So Vea is working this weekend in my place. Normally, Brent and Levi would watch Natalie, Brynn, and Todd, but they have a must-attend preliminary bike ride gearing up for the Katy Trail. So, for about 24 hours, we have nine people in our house, and two of them are two years old. I KNOW. It's like we have 11, 9, 6, 4, 3.5, and 2-yr twins. I want a nap now.

We had pancakes for breakfast. Usually, I get the first batch off the griddle before I start serving, so I have a bit of a head start on the masses. I should have waited for two or more batches, because the first twenty minutes of breakfast were "I want some more," and "Wait until I have some done, and until everyone else has had one." We used Alton Brown's pancake mix recipe, which is enough mix for three batches. We made two of the batches today, so the last third is ready-mixed for some morning this week when we're back to our normal numbers.

Things I've learned? Well, in our teeny little kitchen, we barely have room for a table that seats six in chairs. Toby made a bench to go against the wall, and as you can see in the second picture, we've got four little kids sitting on it. I think we need to make another bench for the other side of the table, then have chairs on each end. Also, I've been thinking that the mix was awfully thick and I had to add an extra cup of milk, but I just remembered that I didn't add enough buttermilk for a double batch. Um, never mind.

School got out with a half-day on Thursday, so I've been able to more or less sleep in for two days, which has been awesome. I still could use a nap most of the time, but I no longer feel like weeping about it on a regular basis. I'm looking forward to taking the kids to the library next week and having some time to just be together in a non-stressful manner before the new baby makes his appearance.

I've started thinking in terms of what things I'd like to have done before he gets here:

1. Pick a name. Knowing the gender hasn't helped much.
2. Buy a bottle of Mrs. Meyers lavender laundry soap. (I always get one before we have a new baby and use it just for baby clothes. They smell so good, and the one bottle usually lasts about a year that way.
3. Get some summer routines in place so that the house doesn't naturally becomes a shambles whenever we turn our backs for five minutes.
4. Limit TV/Computer/Glowing Screen time for the kids.
5. Finish paying the midwife for her services beforehand. Yay for being able to afford it this year! We paid Maggie and Ivy off with tax return money.
6. Figure out easy, cheap, healthy meals that everyone will eat. Any suggestions?
7. Garden, to help with #6 and #4.

I think I'll start with #2. It's pretty easy and once it's done, it stays done, unlike any lifestyle changes for us or the kids.

Sometimes they dress themselves...

We're back from weekend #2 at the Muskogee Reniassance Festival, and it was kind of #2, if you know what I mean. Back to another week of running around trying to catch up and never having a day off, unless you count the two days this week we're going with the older kids for Field Trips. I do NOT call helping out with a class of kinder- or third-graders a day off. Especially when we're also taking Thing Three and Thing Four there as well, and I will be carrying Thing Five with me at all times.

We have so many pictures of the little girls because they get in the way when we're trying to take bodice pictures. I loved these two particularly because of the smashing color combinations they have put together (themselves). Mag's pants are a nice lavender, and Ivy is wearing bright blue snow-boots. It's the Crayon Box Girls! I personally think these are pretty cool things to wear.

I am LOVING my new sewing machine! I mean this as indecently as possible. Many, many thanks to Toby's dad, Brent for adjusting it properly with his newly learned sewing machine repair skills. It is so quiet and well-behaved and I can go so much faster without my thread breaking or my needle breaking. If you've never broken a needle in a 5.500 stitches per minute industrial machine, you don't know the meaning of fear. It produces a noise and a shock to the system that I hope not to repeat often.

Any of you ladies out there with cranky sewing machines in the area, call Brent. He makes house calls and is awesome! He has resuscitated every machine in the family, including all the ones that were long ago given up for dead and used for doorstops.

Retro Purse Love

This little beauty is my new purse. I've had a simple bag of red and white checks, with a bored-looking bacon mouth and egg eyes on it I do love it, but it is just a rectangular narrow bag that doesn't have any pockets, and my gel pens have leaked all over the bottom of it. Plus, Toby is tired of hearing my phone ring and not being able to find it, and I am tired of him just upending the contents to find the phone.

I want to make some sort of interior lining system so that my stuff is neatly organized and findable. I'm just trying to figure out how to do this without "breaching the hull." I thought of sewing to the inside (tricky, and might leave holes in the vinyl), or maybe hot-gluing to the inside (but I don't want to melt anything). I was thinking of maybe making a very stiff lining that follows the curves of the interior, and just making sure that all the stuff stays in there. Then I can sew pockets onto that lining. So if anyone out there has any ideas, just let me know.

It's Here!

Sadly, my new machine has arrived on a day when I have only a couple hours of sewing time available to me. Toby's upstairs dropping her into the table right now. I'll maybe get to do a bodice or two before we have to finish packing up, ship off our last orders for the week, and head down to Muskogee, OK for the weekend. Come and see us there!