Our first outside painting session of the year. Yeah! Bea painted our back yard – you can see our garden with its green fence and the nice brown soil. Not sure why she made the other side of the yard GOLD??? The garden soil is a lot duller looking in real life. But we do…

This is the first time I’ve sewn this Oliver + S pattern – the Birthday Party Dress. I’ve always loved the little button tab and the box pleats. The fabric is an old curtain that I got at a rummage sale. It looks like summer doesn’t it.

We finished off our great weekend with a warm walk down a ravine trail to Lake Michigan.  This trail is at one of our favorite walking spots, Fort Sheridan. I think they finished this particular part just after we moved away. There were three of these colorful sculptures: one in greens, one in browns and…

I made a dress for Claire – the Playtime Tunic pattern from Oliver + S. I added some hand stitching around the colar and the hem. My silly girl is so used to wearing sleeveless dresses (all winter) she said “is it a nightie?”  The problem with the clothes I tend to sew for Claire is…

We had a very happy Easter with Grandma and Grandpa J and I have lots of pictures to prove it. I hope you had a lovely spring weekend too.

We drove over to DuPage county for a little hike on Saturday. It was so warm – almost hot and there were little bits of spring popping up in the woods. We saw about six snakes. Yikes.  It’s handy to have a Daddy to help you wash your hands in the stream. Too bad she…

FOE for sure. My attempt at a clever title for this post has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. I used FOE for the first time – that’s Fold Over Elastic. I made a Summer nightie for Claire. The fold over elastic was great and easy to use – no casing and no…

We finally put up our swing. It’s the swing that I bought before I even knew if we had a tree to hang it in. Jenna was kind enough to help us break it in.

I don’t have any great pictures to show for it, but we had a very exciting day on Friday. Here’s what Jennifer and Jenna, my girls and I did: – listened to a talking donkey – watched a train travel from Chicago to Seattle – learned to draw Donald Duck – stood in a vortex…

Jennifer and Jenna have been visiting and we made bunnies. Oh how fun! First we made our balled up newspaper forms and then we covered them with plaster gauze. Messy but pretty easy. Claire and I learned the process in the art class that we take together. We made a snowman a couple months ago.…