Lately

So many people have been asking me: "What have you been up to lately?" and I find that nothing big springs to mind. I mean, we haven't done any renos, don't have any big parties planned. I feel like I want to answer: "Nothing much," but that doesn't seem right either.

I've gotten the hang of (as much as you can get the hang of such things) having four kids. The house is clean again. Sophie and I have been sewing. A lot of sewing. She needed new shorts and skirt for summer, now that her winter stuff is packed away. So we've been sewing together. A little arduous, I'll admit, but fun.

When I first told Sophie that I would be making her some new skirts and invited her to choose some material from the stash, she was pretty excited. Then, she fell in love with the first thing I pulled out (a stripey tank top that I thought I could re purpose) and wouldn't choose anything else. Oh well, at least that meant that I got to make the fashionable choices for the rest of the material right?

After making the stripey skirt, where I did a cool thing with the top and made pockets for the front, I also made her this one using a pattern I found a while ago from Melly Sews. First ever drawstring. I really like this skirt. What awesome pockets right?

I tried to actually do a photo shoot with Sophie wearing her skirts, and as you can see, failed rather miserably. It doesn't help that our camera is rather old, or that she's two and a half, but even things like lighting and what else she was prepared to wear were troublesome. I have much greater respect for other bloggers who have their kids in great shots for their newly sewn outfits. Maybe they use chocolate bribes. This is the best photo I have. It's a little bit depressing.

Anyway here is Rachel getting in on the photo shoot action. She looked pretty darn cute in that dress, which looks home-made but is not.

I also made Sophie a pair of shorts out of some larrey floral fabric that I've used before in some tops which I blogged about here. They are pretty crazy, but given that she wears lots of boy-coloured shirts, I was happy to have some out going floral shorts to make her look less like a little boy and more like a little tom-boy type girl.

We spend lots of time outside in the sun, enjoying the sandpit and the spacious backyard. I set up obstacle courses and dump multitudes of cardboard boxes on the lawn for building and climbing into. The kids swing in the swings. We wear lots of sun screen but still manage to look a little pink at the end of the day.

I've been cooking lots of new meals. Pizza buns and roast vegetable tarts. Delicious. This is life. It's nothing big to remark about, but it's a whole lot of little things that add up to a lot of fun.