Bridal hairpiece & Luke's latest

My friend (RS President I serve with) Jana's oldest daughter Meleese is getting married! You know how antsy I get about weddings and wanting to help, so I volunteered my services at our presidency meeting on Sunday. I hardly know Meleese, but she trusted me enough to ask me to make her headpiece for her wedding. She's a hairdresser and is super adorable, so you know. NO PRESSURE or anything. We met up at Jo-Ann's the other day and bought this:

Simplicity jeweled feather plume, Laliberi Feather Pearl Blossom pin & clip, Darice jewel beads and a hair comb. I think everything together was around $10-12.

She liked the filigree medallion and long feathers (except they were too long) on the Simplicity piece, but not the rhinestone, and she liked the white tulle & feather hair clip (except she didn't want the clip, she wanted a comb) but didn't like the plastic flower "jewel" thing in the middle either. She did like the Darice jewels. So I had to verrryyyyy carefully take all the components apart and assemble them into one piece with everything she liked. The filigree medallion was full of hardened glue and so it took a while to get it all off and out of the holes. Plus the hair clip was soldered onto the back so I had to pry it off.

There was a brooch pin still on the back, so I just stuck the pin through the tines of the comb to hold it in place. Then I ran a stitch through the tulle on either side to close up the gaps that were showing.

  Fabulous!!!!!!

 

Not that I'm going into hair accessory business or anything, but that was a fun little project. I think I'll also he helping to put her centerpieces together at some point. :D

Then I realized that I could use a leftover feather piece and add it to a rhinestone comb I had. It was the perfect size.

 Madelyn loves it! She and her friends have been making huge messes playing dress up lately, so I'm sure it will be featured in many a fashion show.

And now, because you know if I don't keep current with this, there will be 14,000 Luke shenanigan pictures on backlog, here is the 

Mess of the Day

by Luke

Well, mess(es) of the last few day(s).

Yesterday, he decided to climb up on the bathroom counter while I was in the shower and smear the mirror allll over with lotion. Madelyn and Mark were gone, and I of course couldn't stop him from where I was, so I'm sure he was thinking HERE'S MY CHANCE!

He is constantly eating on our bed, so Mark and I are always finding crumbs in the sheets. It's lucky that the ants in our kitchen (who live and thrive off of Luke's crumbs) haven't figured out how to climb up there yet.

"Hmmm! Which color?" He is an Otter Pop fiend. Sometimes I use them to bribe him to get out of the car, or to come in from the front yard--two places he loves to play but isn't supposed to.

Tuesday, he decided to scribble all over his sheets (and ours) with pink LipSmackers. I was seriously worried that it wouldn't wash out because of the oily factor, but I scrubbed the stains with straight liquid detergent before washing and thankfully, it all came out. Whew.

Later that day, he threw off his bib and made a pudding masterpiece. Can't count the number of times this has happened....

  

Last night, I was pruning my roses (oh, you didn't know that we planted roses, huh. I need to do a yard post...) and he wanted to hold this one I cut off. Then I looked over and he had bitten off a chunk of stem and was chewing away at it. Can't count the number of times he's tried to eat flowers or various plants, either....

  

"Yucky..."

 

This morning, he got a hold of my camera and took 26 pictures of himself.

About half of them were extreme closeups of his eyeball, and the others were all of his knees. He happened to catch the back of me in this one. Then:

 

I caught him pulling string from the spool that is threaded through my sewing machine (10 feet away). Twice. Oh and he's constantly bringing in his dusty Adirondack chair from the back porch. He likes to pour water/rocks into the little cup holder.

 

And not five minutes later, he realized the light in the garage was on, so went out and messed with my tole paints, putting them inside vases and stuff. I also found a screwdriver in a vase. Mark's always wondering what happens to his tools... Luke wanders off with them and puts them in random places, that's what happens.

Well, the little rascal is napping for now, so I'd better try and get some stuff done! Hope you have a good weekend!!

Alterations

Altering clothes is a skill I kinda wish I didn't have. Instead of going out and buying new clothes that fit (= fun!), I feel compelled to alter stuff instead (= tedious and not fun whatsoever, and sometimes results in a broken sewing machine). I have a whole stack of cute projects to sew but told myself I needed to do my mending and altering pile first. So there it has sat for months, peering out at me with a disgusted look, saying "Fix me!!!" in a screechy voice and making me feel guilty every single day. I'd finally sewed up all the holes and tears in Mark and Madelyn's clothes a week or two ago, but still had alterations to do. Well, here's what I got done today:

 Stuff magically gets ironed when you do alterations, too!

 Madelyn came home from a field trip one day wearing this shirt. (I forgot to take a "before" photo, but just picture something hideously big and boxy.) 

 It's a Polar Pride shirt for her elementary school, which the kids are supposed to wear on Fridays. I'd never bought her an official school t-shirt (because they were hideously big and boxy) and she just wore school colors instead. Finally I decided to do something about this one.

 

I didn't take pictures of the steps because even though I've altered a LOT of t-shirts, I still haven't perfected how to get smooth armpits in the process. But I trimmed off close to 2 inches from each side, and then shortened the sleeves using this method, usually used for hemming pants.

 Using that same method (which keeps the original hem), I decided to shorten a pair of pajama pants that had shrunk and were too short for pants but not short enough for capris.

  

Keeping the pants right side out, I rolled up the legs about six inches on each side (using a measuring tape to make sure everything was even all around) and pinned. Everything below the original hem will be cut off.

  

 Then I sewed right below the original stitch line.

 Dug out my pinking shears form the garage.....

  

 Cut down towards the new seam

 ...and then cut all the way around

 Flipped the hems down, pressed with an iron

...and then sewed right above the new seam so that it would lie flat. See how the original hem with the notch is still there? Nifty.

It's not perfect, but it's good enough for pajamas! If it wasn't striped fabric, you probably wouldn't be able to tell.

Then when I tried them on, they looked my legs look like XXXL fat sausage legs, so I turned them inside out and sewed one inch from the inseam all the way around.

I highlighted the new seam in blue.


 Then I trimmed off the excess, and in the process cut a giant hole in the seat of the pants, which I then had to stitch up, and Mark looked at me like I was crazy for STILL TRYING to make something out of these stupid pants.

But I wore them to bed and they fit and were comfy, so I'm keeping them.

Anyway.

 Then I tried to do the same thing to this pair of jeans. "Tried" being the operative word.

 

 Oh, look who's awake to help!.......

 The problem was, these are boot cut jeans, so the hem is slightly flared. If I was just trying to shorten them by an inch or two, it probably would have worked. The pajama pants worked because they had straight cut legs. But the jeans had extra material to try to ease in (and denim does no such thing), so it bunched and puckered and got stuck in the machine. So I just unpicked the seam and now they're back to normal. SEW before you CUT! (The tutorial I was using said to cut before you sew. Maybe that lady never make mistakes, who knows. But there's no going back after you cut.)

 Now on to something (hopefully, maybe) fun!!!

The Yoders unite

 

Last weekend was sort of a mini Yoder reunion down in Hurricane. Mark's got nine siblings, and six of them--Frank, Sheila, John, Mike, David and Paul--were able to come, so it was a good turnout! (Minus about 20 nieces & nephews, but what can you do.)

On Friday, we met at Sand Hollow Reservoir, which is technically in Hurricane. It's fairly new and is a great scenic place for pictures, so I took a lot, you know me. Yes, I color boosted them a little, so what. The sun was so harsh that everything had looked washed out before I did.

 The water was chilly, but that didn't stop Luke. He only got out after about an hour when he started shivering violently. Of course, it was 2,049°F 102°F out, so it didn't take long for him to warm up again.

Paul kayaking

 Love the different colors of the water! It gets bluer as it gets deeper.

 The thing is, when it's over 100°F and you've got a body of cold water nearby, that creates wind. LOTS of freaking wind. Mark said it was about 25-30 mph. Imagine a Dementor (from Harry Potter, duh) sucking all the air and moisture out of you through your mouth. That's what it felt like. Or like standing inside of a giant hair dryer.

 So most of us just hunkered down beneath the shade and sat around eating cookies and saying, "Well, isn't this fun!" while sand blew in our face and got into every crevice. Little Cove slept through most of it, I couldn't believe it.

 Uncle Mike & Cove (8 weeks)

 Uncle John (when I say "uncle", I mean that they're my kids' uncle) took a turn with Luke, making sure he didn't drown. Thanks, John!

Madelyn and her cousin Autumn (both 7) had a blast running around together

Alex and Noah, and Luke and Mark

 I really do radiate light like that--it's my pasty skin!

We spent the rest of the day in Hurricane at Mark's folks' house and up in Apple Valley.

  

 I took these pictures as we drove by the new addition to Hurricane High school. Those squatty tan brick structures on the left are what's remaining of the old school, but a lot more was torn down. :(  I am absolutely flabbergasted at the size of the new part. There were only about 600 students when I went there 12 years ago. I guess the city has grown a lot.

 Little Cove is chunking up and smiling, he is so cute!!

 This cabin in Apple Valley used to be Mark's parent's, but they've since moved down to Hurricane and Mark's sister Sheila and her husband Mike bought it as a second home.

 Uncle Mike (Brown) always has fun teasing the girls.

 We had a fun white elephant exchange with lots of gag gifts. Noah got a package of XL men's briefs.

LOL! I guess you had to be there...

 That's West Temple (part of Zion National Park) that you can see from their back porch. This is where Mark lived when I first met him. We used to spend a lot of time up here.

 Back down in Hurricane, John had this awesome outdoor movie setup, and the kids were going to watch Madagascar. Unfortunately, it was almost 9:00 pm before they started, so we had to leave. Madelyn had to be dragged away kicking and screaming. So fun!!! I love having two kids that get hysterical about stuff!

The next day, the fam met up to go to Toquerville Falls, which involved a very long, bumpy ride in a Jeep (even Mark got car sick), lots of playing in the water and finding polliwogs, followed by hanging out back at the house playing Hearts and eating pizza for the rest of the day, but Luke and I didn't go. We were completely exhausted, he appeared to be getting a runny nose (and because of his reactive airway disease I didn't want it getting any worse), so we stayed home and cleaned the house all day. And as crazy as it sounds, it was a good day for me because I actually got stuff DONE instead of having to come home to ornery kids/house a disaster/laundry pile of Mount Doom.

Geezer, I know. I have turned into a crusty. old. geezer.