sews skulls

Since I've been working on my friend's pillow shells and the pillow cases, I'm on a sewing roll. But the apartment is sooooo teensy. I really wish I had a larger place so I didn't have to unpack and repack and then unpack again every time I need to sew or make dinner.

I am also working on birthday! Sweet sugar Mr. C. is 8 today and I have been hard at work yet slightly off center planning a party for him. He wanted a specific venue, I thought for sure we'd invite our 2 neighbors, a kid down the street, and another kid from his class at school. This branched out into also including one of his brother's friends. They went to their summer day program and evidently he blabbed to everyone, somehow all these little kids became convinced they needed to call their mom right away because the party was today at 3:30. The staff called me midway into the lessons, asking if indeed the other kids should call their moms, because everyone was running to the office to call their mothers. I cleared it all up saying the party is next week, but today is really his birthday, so they should wish him happy birthday. I totally planned to send invites with the boy tomorrow to the intended invitees. But! I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings by not inviting the entire class. The staff member could understand that, she said her pre-schooler had invited 40 kids to his birthday, which was only mean to be a family birthday party. So, and this is awesome of her, she called up the parents of the kids on his list, told them what's up, asked for their addresses, phone numbers and permission to give that info to me, and therefore made my life so much easier I can't even hardly believe it.

We had our family party today, sort of. It gimped along. I ended up at WalMart earlier today searching for things. Secret things. Then I looked at my oldest and said, they should probably pick out their own bikes. The goal was birthday bikes today, and some cake and ice cream, then next week the "real party".

See that square thing? Today I got away with a Pepperidge Farm 3-layer coconut cake, which we all thought was delish, and a box of Blue Bunny Birthday Cake ice cream, which was also quite tasty. I am starting to make compromises with myself. I'm not going to stress out and feel bad just because I'm not quite living up to my own expectations. On that note, though, I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the boys on the bikes yet. I was cooking dinner and didn't really make time to take pictures of those. I didn't wrap the bikes, and I didn't even buy any of the other myriad of things he wants and expects to be given for his party. He did in fact go on at length about all the presents he was expecting were all wrapped up in the back of the van for him, when I picked him up this afternoon. His brother told him he sounded really really greedy. He has quite a list. Ukelele, bongos, drum kit, bike, nerf gun(s) plural, more than one nerf gun. Some other stuff. Mostly he talked about the nerf guns. This bugs me because there are nerf guns thrown under our porch. Nobody plays with them. There were nerf guns all smashed to bits because somebody drove over them in the alley behind the house. I don't think I'll be buying any more of those. Hopefully he can have bongos. Maybe the ukelele. Who knows. Maybe I'll figure something else out.

In the photo above you may recognize our skull shirt we made quite some time ago. He drew the picture himself, and he sewed the fabric, then I cut away the blue from the design and there was the skull. So I used that as the cover of our invitation. I just cropped that skull out of one of the pictures I took the day he made the teeshirt. I also used the skull sketch he made for his bookbag design for the info part of his invitation. Instead of gluing the stuff to the card, I sewed it on. First I folded a piece of letter size yellow paper in half lenghwise & chopped that in half at 5.5" to make 2 cards per page. I printed the skulls and invites (made in Picasa, very simple.) 4 per page. I am sure this could be done more simply but I couldn't figure it out, so I ended up turning the paper over each of those times so it printed top and bottom on one side, then opposite top and bottom on the back of the paper. I chopped them apart on my paper cutter, but trimmed around the skull with my scissors so no white showed around the black edge.  

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Since we are inviting a few little girls, I added a real fabric bow to the top of two of the skulls. You might not be able to tell, but I stitched around that outer black line to attache the skull to the yellow paper. On the inside of the folded yellow I stitched the invite part. I left the threads a little long, it ads character and that's the way I do the reverse applique as well. If I get really industrious, I think I'll make more teeshirts with that design. I think it is just adorable. Then I had some colorful envelopes because a card distributor woman gave me a big box of the one day from her card route. I think I should make up some of those cards as well. Wow, two great ideas for the yet unstocked etsy shop! Hooray.

Big Brudder had a party of his own tonight. I am so grateful to have become a follower of the "Fly Lady"

now, I'm sorry but the name Fly Lady seems gross... I really hate having flies around or thinking about them or whatnot. However. Since I was introduced to this website, I have been inspired to use some of her processes around my house. Part of it is the encouraging of my obsessive compulsive tendencies, tempered by the idea that it doesn't have to be done all in one day. So I can somehow spread out the compulsivity from day to day, instead of just being a freak till I crash. This all just means my oldest son invited two of his friends, both girls, over, and then their older brothers happened to come by to pick them up later, and both those boys came up to hang out too, and I didn't even blink. Just before the girls arrived, I tidied up some sewing stuff I had spread around the kitchen, and it all fit into a hamper I was using for that purpose, and everything was fine. The sink was shining, the table was clean-ish... I mean, we always have paint flecks and splotches of glue sticking to the table, but it's a clean table. The dinner was all made, everything went splendidly. The house was clean and organized enough that I could sit at the table and relax instead of worrying the young people would see any real horrendous messes.