Kindy Dress Mark 2

Sophie's Kindy Dress has received much attention and talk from the other kindy kids and mums. Maybe there is a business opportunity here, but thankfully, Ikea don't have the fabric anymore, so I can't get too carried away.

Anyway, one of Sophie's friends from kindy is going back to Malaysia at the end of the year with her family, and when Sophie mentioned that she liked the dress, I suggested that we could sew one for her as a gift. I had enough fabric left for a dress for Rachel (for next year) and one more, so why not?

Sophie's friend came over and they had a grand old time colouring the dress in together and after they left, I sewed it up while naps happened.

It's much more coloured than Sophie's was, so we might add some more colour to Sophie's now. And Sophie's dress, after only four weeks of repetitious wear, looks a much different colour to the new one too. You can see the pattern is repeated on the girls dresses, although in different locations. Sophie's doll and pear tree are further down, while Sonia's is up near the neckline.

Sonia chose the square buttons that I put on (so hard to get through the button holes, but I guess that's not really my problem...). I had to do the button holes myself actually, which is always an ordeal.

Sophie wrote the tag/message in yellow and I traced over it in the blue. She is super excited to give this to her friend on Wednesday. They are both planning to wear them on Thursday.

Sweet.

Tomatoes

They grew from this to this:

We picked them.

Some had caterpillars in them, much to Rachel's delight.

The plants died (of natural causes), and we had lots of fruit.

And now we eat them in lunch boxes like this:

In the Making

I'm a little bit excited about what is in the making right now. It's not finished and I don't want to give away too much, but it does include some of my favourite thing to sew. I'm trying to take more progress shots than I usually remember to take, but since I'm working on it predominately at night, the photos are pretty ugly.

Making things is fun though, and I love to see it come together. Some nights I lay it out and I'm daunted by how much there is left to do, and other times I'm spurred on and think it's nearly done.

There is a lot of thinking to do with this project. There are a whole lot of steps that need to happen before other things can be sewn. So far, there have been no mix ups of the order that require unpicking, but I'm really trying to think things through so I don't make any mistakes that do require unpicking. So far so good.

Even though we don't really celebrate the slow, sometimes painful, making process, I'm glad to be in it, because it reminds me that God has me in the making. I've been reflecting on this a fair bit lately. I've been following Jesus for over thirteen years now, and it occurs to me that it's a long road to eternity. The making process is not always easy or glamorous. Not something that we often photograph, but it's a process, and each step is one step closer to that finished product.

So here's to being in the making, and to the fabulous end product I'll have to show you, hopefully soon.

Kindy Dress

Sophie asked me if she could wear a dress to kindy before the holidays, but she had such a great time at kindy playing and painting, that whatever she wears is inevitably going to get completely trashed. She has plenty of dresses, but they are all pretty lovely, either made by me (like this one, or her Easter Dress, or her Bear Dress) or my mum (recently this gorgeous new Japanese-print dress, and a dinosaur dress), and I wasn't ready to risk any of them just yet.

Enter the Ikea fabric that I'd bought a long time ago. We are talking a long long time ago actually, like, in the Time Before Children. I bought it so long ago that they don't even stock it anymore. It's so cool though. I made the most basic dress I could, (which I've made before, here and here) and then let the girls colour it in.

I helped with the colouring too.

After it was coloured, I sewed it up, iron it and washed it, as per the instructions (to set the ink). Now, Sophie has a kindy dress!

It's perfect. She wore it the first day back after the September holidays, and also the second day back, which was photo day. Yes, two days in a row. It was totally trashed after the first day (as all of her kindy clothes are) and I had to wash it, but she was pretty insistent about wearing it for photo day, so I didn't mind too much. I mean, when your kid really wants to wear something that you made for photo day, you can't complain right?

Too Fast

I've been thinking about blogging for about three weeks now. I'll see things that remind me, or make me think: "I should blog that", but for some reason, the actual blogging has not taken place. We have been really busy, and, for the most part, sick. I guess the sickness is pretty self explanatory, but the busyness of late has been more than the usual.

Allow me to explain. Back in March, my younger sister was up from Melbourne and we were all having family dinner. It was a Friday night. Parents, us, Fiona, Sarah, her Steve and Hugo. The topic of Christmas came up. Fiona had realised she would have time off this Christmas and asked about our plans. It was a strong likelihood that Sarah and I (both married), were going to be spending Christmas with the in-law sides of the family, not in Brisbane.

So Fiona announced she wouldn't bother coming up then, but travel somewhere else. At which point my parents said they would also travel, since no one was going to be a round. And suddenly, in the strange commotion that is a loud semi-Greek family having dinner, we were talking about a white Christmas and Sarah was looking at air fares.

By the following Monday, people had begun to book. In less than a week, everyone was going.

Unbelievable.

In fact, we had organised air fares and accommodation in about two weeks. Then it took me a good three months to get my head around the fact that we were actually going. Passports were organised and the months ticked closer. (Honestly, the passports have so far been the funniest part; getting the girls to stand still for their photos. They took it so seriously, and I was dying of laughter as they over compensated with every movement. "Don't smile" was translated for Rachel as "scowl at the camera". "Sophie, tilt your head up a little" meant "look directly up at the ceiling with your entire face". Words can not describe how hilarious it was; they were just trying so hard.)

Then Steve came home from work one day and said he'd been asked to go to Seattle for six weeks. I can't say too much, because details are not finalised and there are some NDA's floating around, but suffice to say, I'm so proud of him and the work he has done to be selected to go. I pretty much have the best husband in the world. He was even leaning towards saying no because it would mean leaving me alone with the girls for six weeks. Such an amazing opportunity though.

So we re-looked at our travel dates. Now, Steve was going to be flying back from Seattle on a Sunday, and we would all be flying out to Budapest (on an extremely long 24hr flight) the following Friday. It just didn't seem like a great idea. So we looked at options and all of a sudden, we are extending our two week holiday by a week to include some time in the US.

What is this madness!?

It is madness. I still can not get my head around it. 2017 was supposed to be relatively quiet year!

Anyway, we've spent the last few weeks now planning not only for a white Christmas, but also time in LA and trying to figure out what it will look like to have Steve gone for six weeks. If the three weeks away with the girls wasn't complicated enough, it's even more complicated knowing you have to plan most things before Steve leaves so you can do it together.

We also have some small trips planned before we go too, can you believe it? We've had one already - heading up to Bundy for a long weekend for strawberry picking with friends. That turned out a little differently to what we expected but was a generally lovely time.

Our other getaway is for Steve's mum's 60th, which is at the end of October. Actually, Steve will leave for Seattle from there, so we have to pack a beach suit case for all of us, a Seattle work suitcase with whatever else fits for Europe for Steve and then I've got the left over suitcase with the rest of the Europe things in it at home. Can you see how this is more busy than usual? I'm so looking forward to that weekend though, with Steve's mum and John, Aroha and the kids too.

I think next year will have to be a quiet one, because this year is racing towards the end and it's all happening just a little too fast for me. Anyway, I'll endeavour to be a little more on top of things in the weeks to come. And really, when Steve is away, I'll have no excuse right? Because I'll have loads of free time in the evenings for productive things like blogging. :P