At the hospital

Sammi and I are at the hospital with grandpa today.

My dad has been unwell for many months now and after a serious of doctors with a series of (not small) issues that have never been addressed my brother and I finally convinced him to go to the ER last night.

He is facing really scary stuff and your thoughts and prayers would be much appreciated.

It is heartbreaking to see my dad go from a vibrant man who was hiking and biking and working to someone who cannot even get in the car without thinking he is going to die.

:-(

I will be back when the dust settles a bit.

flour sack apron

How about one more picture of Sammi in that vintage dress? I think that dress + that quilt is picture perfect.
I bought some fairly pedestrian things at a garage sale this weekend. A small piece of fabric.
A piece of enamelware.
But then I spotted some tiny fruit fabric in a big bag of other ugly fabric and asked if she would sell me just that piece. When I got back to the car I noticed the remnants of a flour label.
And the original pattern for an apron were still on it.

Cute huh?

Too bad I can never use it for anything else now though. I couldn't ever cut it. LOL

Yesterday did NOT end well

My children are cute. (Thumb sucking in her vintage dress.)
It's a good thing they are so darn cute. (Playing cowboy.)
Because one of them is more than a handful right now.

And he is not getting any better.

Yesterday involved a lot of drama that included gallons of water in the air conditioning vents.

I think I almost had a stroke when I looked down and saw a lake in there.

I mean a LAKE in the hvac vent!

Lord.

Help me now.

Or at least send wine coolers.

I am going to need them.

What Sammi is wearing, the Friday version

This is not my favorite dress/background combo. But cheeks is sick and wasn't feeling up to her photo shoot this morning.

And if you look too closely you will see how snotty she is.

Oy.

If you signed up (or think you signed up) for the Halloween swap, you should have a swap email. If you don't see it, please email me asap so I can figure out what happened. We have a larger than usual number of folks interested, so it's possible I have made a mistake somewhere while juggling the children and the cats. LOL

Halloween swap update

Hello again,

First, I may or may not have bought something at Michaels this morning to make my ornaments. I am so happy that everyone is excited to play along!

Second,
If you commented under these names:
Sara
Stephanie
Lee
Green Gemini

Please send me an email at makinprojiks@gmail.com so I can add your email address to a contact list. You are all listed under noreply@blogger right now.

And last but not least, I think we are pretty full. So I will go ahead and close sign ups now. Once I have the last 4 email addresses I will send a group email to everyone and see if we can work out some details.

A halloween swap?

I am seriously starting to think I have lost the will to live. I don't want to sew, paint, clean, or do anything.

But tweekala is right, what I need is a projik!

When I was stewing on what that project might be I thought perhaps some of you would be interested in a Halloween ornament swap? I am always looking for new things to hang on the Halloween tree and the Valentine swap is wildly successful at doing just that.
These images are from Martha Stewart.

You can find all the links on my pinterest board here , along with some other ornament ideas I dug up.

If anyone wants to join leave me a comment or shoot me an email.

If there is interest on Friday I will come up with some details.

My Missouri Daisy

So what does a girl do with herself when she is clearly in a funk?
She has baby fashion shows every day.
The fact that it is ridiculously fun to pick out a little dress and then choose a vintage quilt from the cabinet that works well with the dress is the first sign that I need an intervention.
I was thinking the other day that I had no issues getting rid of *most* of Jack's baby things.
But the baby dresses?

Lord almighty how am I ever going to get rid of the baby dresses?

*The vintage quilt pattern is Missouri Daisy. The beads Sammi is playing with are chew beads . They are a little pricey, but they are brilliant little things.

One of those days

It's been one of those days.

A dear friend from high school has cancer (he has two very little boys and I am just devastated for him and his family).

Sammi is sick (thanks to the VERY sick child who was crowded into a non air conditioned gym that was so crowded it was standing room only and who would NOT stop touching the baby).

Jack is argumentative (about every little thing today).

I lose blog followers constantly no matter what I do/don't blog about, no matter how often I do/don't blog.

I have a headache.

It's hot (so sick of 100 degrees).

I am sad for Jack, who asks me every day when they are going to teach him something at school. (He wants to learn "social studies and division with decimals". Instead they teach him how to raise his hand for social studies and have him play with blocks for "math".)

I had to yell at the neighbor kids for trying to knock the stop sign down at 8 am.

Sammi has puked about 100,000 times today (all over me, all over the rug, all over her toys).

You know what kept me happy today?

Sweet cheeks.

Even if she was sick and snotty and not her usual happy baby self.

(I am determined to take a photo of her in every last one of her sweet summer dresses before summer is over. Her being sick might put a little glitch in that plan.)

Vintage fabric mission

Friday night I spotted a garage sale ad that touted "vintage fabric". I've fallen for "Craig's trick" before with promises of vintage fabric, but since this ad also claimed they had hankies and chenille blankets and a quilt top I figured it might be worth the 30 minute drive.

I went to bed Friday night with a plan - wake up early, leave the kids with Dave and be there 5 minutes before they started.
(Do you see those little birds?!?!) Except Saturday morning dawned with a HUGE storm bearing down on us and the skies were black.
I decided it wasn't worth driving 30 minutes (wasting all that expensive gas) for nothing. So I tried to find 2 interesting sales closer to home. But there was nothing. At this point I had wasted 30 minutes and that first sale was still calling to me.
So I hopped in the van and raced the devil to get there before the rain drops started to fall.
I managed to make it there 5 minutes after they opened.
And just as I was getting in line to pay the rain drops started to fall.

(This is a bed skirt! I cannot wait for Sammi to be in a big girl bed so I can use it.) It obviously wasn't filled with piles of 1930's/1940's fabrics (my DREAM yard sale), but it was worth racing the devil for.

Now if I could just find my motivation somewhere.

And a big pile of pinkish vintage hankies so I could make that quilt I am positively LUSTING after on pinterest.

That's the way we roll

Dave decided he should join in on the planking craze at Target this morning.
Jack had a go at it too.
I decided to take a photo of Sammi this morning. Ha. I nearly had a nervous breakdown! Between Jack talking to her (making her look away), the cats butting in on every picture, Dave asking me a million questions about where shit was in the kitchen and the baby! The baby has decided if she is sitting on her bottom on the hardwood she can use her hands and scoot herself backwards.
Maybe I should call her scooter instead of cheeks. Or Charlie Brown because of the tongue?
Pete the pirate?


Nah, I'll stick to cheeks.

But it will be awhile before I attempt another photo session.

:-)

P.S. How's that for the most incoherent blog post ever? Jack has lost the boomerang on the roof, the cats won't get off me and I have too many distractions.

Moping? Maybe a bit.

It's been a good 3 1/2 years since Jack took a nap every day. Which means I am very, very used to caring for him from sun up to sun down. Without him here I feel kind of lost. Sammi takes two long naps and the house is silent and I find myself wandering around wondering what I should be doing with myself.

It's weird.

Until I figure out exactly what it is I am supposed to be doing* (LOL) I am just kind of sitting here doing nothing at all.

Well, if cruising ebay counts as doing nothing at all, that is.

I got this wild idea that the bitty baby I bought for Sammi NEEDS a wardrobe of vintage clothes.

I bought a big lot of vintage doll clothes (cheap because the photos were total crap) and when they arrived they were even better than I had expected. I spent some time washing and stain treating them, and now there is a pile of them waiting to be mended.

Here are some of the cuter ones:
flannel pj's that say sleep tight;
three very sweet matching little pieces (that hat! is adorable on the doll);
totally terrific little jumper with matching vest (most of the pj's are this style);
a silky little dress with sweet pink embroidery;
a beautifully made (fully lined!) coat and matching hat;
a lovely pink dress;

and a sweet embroidered romper.

These little clothes are just so sweet and they seriously appeal to the vintage fabric junkie in me.

If you need me I will be cruising ebay looking for a little suitcase to keep them all in. LOL

*I told Dave we will probably have the cleanest toilets in the state. So far I have managed to completely avoid cleaning a damn thing. Clearly I AM moping.

And off he goes

(A little heart plaque Jack and I made yesterday from shells we found at the beach.)
Just like that, Jack is off to school full time.
Eating lunches there.
Being gone from 8 15 to 4 40.
Riding the school bus.

And setting off out into the world without me for the first time.

In many ways the years have gone both slow and fast, but one thing is certain, it is QUIET around here without his constant chatter.

I am outta here for a few days while I regroup and rethink a few things that need my attention.

See you this weekend!

Savoring

One more sleep until school starts.

We have been:
To the beach.
For a swim in the lake.
Trying to build a sand castle.
Holding Sammi while she takes a little nap (I don't get to do that very often, she really prefers sleeping in her room).
Watching Sammi take a little snooze on the beach and listening to her snore ever so softly.
Reading books, doing puzzles, practicing some fractions and playing card games. (We also had meet the teacher night yesterday. I specifically phoned the principal and asked her to find a good placement for Jack this year and I think she made a good choice with this year's teacher.)
Eating our first mum mum. (Baby cracker.)
Having Jack's favorite - taco bell - for lunch.
Making cookies.
Playing "pillow land" (which happened to make a lovely patchwork background for baby photos).
Stopping at a "never able to frequent because it is too far away" thrift store and scoring a very sweet baby quilt.
Falling in love with it.
Thinking about fixing it since it is not put together very well.

And considering it the icing on the cake of a few wonderful days.