Lollapalooza Pants

Check out Bryce's new wardrobe! Thank you to Natalie for aptly naming them Lollapalooza Pants. They look perfectly comfortable for crowd-surfing or jumping into a mosh pit. I found the pattern for these recycled t-shirt pants here. I had originally planned on making them for Kari, but after a long week of Pharm D interviews, I was clearly tired and made too many mistakes along the way, despite it being a terribly easy pattern. This was fortunate, because Kari wanted absolutely nothing to do with these pants anyway.

Natalie and I got together Friday night and sewed like a couple of little old ladies at her new house in her fabulous craft room. It was great to have time solely devoted to sewing. It was a little slice of heaven!

In other updates, Bryce never did have croup, as we had suspected earlier. Amazingly, I was probably too proactive in getting Bryce to the doctor early, since it amounted to nothing. Instead, he fevered on and off for three days and wound up with a fantastic smoker's hack and runny nose.

Kari has officially wrapped up swimming lessons and has one remaining basketball lesson. Four of Kari's classmates from school are in lessons with her, so she feels comfortable going each week, and her skills keep improving too. Saturday they took the last 15 minutes of class to put all their learned skills together and play a game. I should have taken video. It was one of the funniest things you'll ever see. I'll try to remember to take video this Saturday.

Week In Review

Wow. What a busy past few days. We've had a whirlwind of activity and people through the house it seems, but the more the merrier! It has been most memorable.

First off, Grand-MO arrived early in the week. Kevin had arranged for the she and I to attend the Purdue-Wisconsin game. She hadn't been in Mackey Arena to see a game since it first opened back in 1967. The game was wonderful and it was great to see the Boilers win.

Aunt Laura arrived on Thursday for a weekend getaway. We don't get to see Aunt Laura very often, so this made for quite a special weekend. She showered everyone with gifts and just dug in like a regular member of the house- laying some remnant carpeting, carpet cleaning, and teaching me some sewing machine maintenance. The best part was that we were able to celebrate her birthday with her!

Kari got to play hooky from school on Friday.

Lunch at Windsor Dining Court

Birthday breakfast tea party complete with chocolate muffins

Aunt Laura was also able to help me with a sewing project which I'll debut soon. It was such a fun weekend; we hope we can do it again soon!

I Only Pretend I'm Crafty

I follow some craft and sewing blogs quite religiously, so it's no surprise that I've got more projects I'd like to do than I actually have time for. But, I was able to complete a couple this weekend while Grand-MO and Aunt Laura were here.

First up is this upcycled sweater vest. It was surprisingly an easy little project and not overly time consuming. I wasn't brave enough to attempt the V-neck (I know my sewing limitations) but the finished product looked quite, quite professional!

This next project is not an idea from any one particular place. But, I was inspired by whom the gift is for. My best friend from high school, Amy, is about to have Baby #3. Photography and documenting events and occasions have always been super important to her. I always appreciated that about Amy. And because I know she loves to document the important milestones in her kids' lives, I decided to make monthly onesies for her. I corresponded most of the shirts to the month's major holiday. This was quite a fun project I was able to complete using my Silhouette.

They all turned out really well and will be a gift to use throughout the whole year. Big sisters Abby and Emily are also getting t-shirts to wear to the hospital. Amy, I sure hope you're not reading this!

Happy Valentine's Day

from 47906. Kari took off for school with her Valentine treats for her classmates and for her teachers and administrators. The nifty bags for her teachers came from a free download at The Farm Chicks.


Bryce and I stayed home to experience our first encounter with Croup. Since we had no prior experience with it, we decided to be proactive and were fortunate to get an appointment today with our regular pediatrician. While diagnosing croup is not a certainty, doctor's orders included sitting in a steamy bathroom each night and digging out the humidifier. Oh, and no daycare until Wednesday. Ok, we can handle that. Fortunately, he's in good spirits and otherwise acting like his normal, 18-month old self.

Text Messaging

Kari is four quickly going on 14.

Snow, Snow and More Snow

We had an interesting week here in West LA (that's for you, Uncle Mark!) Purdue, in a rather unprecedented move, cancelled classes for Tuesday and Wednesday after getting a combination of ice and snow accumulating to about 8 inches. We took advantage of the time at home playing with the Clawson kids outside.

Yes, poor Bryce is in the pink snowsuit again.

Thursday afternoon Kari and Bryce headed down to Indy to spend the weekend with Gran and Beep Beep. It's a particularly special weekend for Gran, celebrating the Big ##. She's not telling, and neither are we! We haven't heard much from their way so we know they're having a great time.

Without the kiddos around, I took advantage of cleaning out and organizing the pantry the minute I got home Thursday evening. It might not look like much, but it feels wonderful.

Before After

And now it's snowing again. I believe we're to get another 1-2" this weekend. I saw this online yesterday and couldn't agree more.