Elsa, Elsa, Elsa…

 
After seeing Frozen, my 9 year old granddaughter made this pic of the dress she wanted me to sew her for Halloween.  

 It’s been on my fridge since then.  So, the end of September, I gathered her up and we went to JoAnn’s to purchase the fabric and pattern, Simplicity1233 .

She chose all of it—and decided to go with white organza for the sleeves and cape thing.  It looked so much better against skin than the blue… I also checked with the other grand girls to see if anyone else needed a dress, so I was making three of them.  And Addie wanted to modify the pattern to have sleeve wrist points and the cape to drag the floor.  *See her pic*

The pattern went together fairly easily, there doesn’t seem to be as many construction hints as in the regular patterns, so it helps if you know basic construction.  I find on costumes, that is usually the case.  When making more than one of each dress, I always mark each piece with the initial of the kid, so I don’t have to figure out by size which one goes with which.  This has the bonus benefit of marking right sides for the organza.  

 Md is for Maddie and Mk is for Makinley. When you sew one seam, then you do the same seam for all.  I decided to serge around the hem for the organza.  I bought those snowflake ornaments from Walmart  for the cape—they come 20 for about $2.00 and beats appliqueing each piece—that’s what the pattern wanted.

 I figure they can always be replaced for that price as they get torn up.  And they are so sparkly!  As I was sewing these dresses, I came to the realization that they were really gowns—Miss America would be proud to wear this!

I LOVE the way they turned out!

Easter 2014: The year of Navy

For some reason, we decided that Easter would be navy and a pop of color.  Each family got to choose their own color.  This was not well thought out—it’s hard to get navy this year.  Within those parameters, the girls chose their own fabric. The green dresses were going to be navy with green accent, but we couldn’t find the right navy, so we switched them out.  Then to choose the pattern… the little girls had this pattern, Butterick 5743. I especially liked the v-back, which none of the girls wanted.  There was also a different capped sleeve pattern, which I loved.  The older girls this one, Simplicity 1927 . This Simplicity pattern has a homely dress for the cover dress, but view C is real cute.  It gives the tweens a shape. Jocie wanted a maxi dress, so I modified the pattern. The baby had Butterick 3782, but instead of pleats, I gathered the skirt, and made the same capped sleeves as the girls'. Some of the moms’ got in on the action,   

 

 

 

Word of advice, don’t pick out the theme without going to the fabric store first. 

Tweens Sew!

I had my older granddaughters come over to sew maxi skirts.  A couple of them wanted maxi skirts for Easter, but were over ruled.   These were super easy for them to do- we used this blog and drafted a pattern.  I want them to be able to read and use patterns.  Then we pinned it on 

 and they cut it out.  

 

 

 It’s so nice that they have developed the skills to cut and sew. 

I hang around, trying to figure out what I want to organize the fabric that keeps multiplying.  I forgot to get a pic of Jocie cutting or sewing, because we were watching “Dance Moms”,  but I got her modeling her skirt. 

They go together so easily, and the girls learned to put in a stretchy waistband.  This project just takes maybe an hour start to finish.

PS—Don’t use striped material for a 9 year old to sew—it takes forever to match the stripes! 

A few days later, my niece came over to sew her skirt… It really does take an hour!  And I bought another bin and some more comic book boards to finally finish organizing my fabric.  More on that later!

Grandma Day Camp 2014 Bama Bound

Right at the end of Day Camp, My daughter and family went to Alabama to visit my son and family.  They took a few day camp things with them.  They started with the flag ceremony.  

Then went on a big hike. 

 

Michael seems to be among the missing in pics…

By a rock—Whale Rock… 

And somehow they tired Addie completely out!

There were paracord bracelets made, but no pics…

 

Grandma Day Camp Day 3 -- Mountain Man

We didn’t have enough kids around, so we invited more.  Another brother came and brought his 4 kids for this.  Of course we started with the flag ceremony and just 5 songs. Here we are singing 'Alice the Camel'

 Then a quick knife safety for my brother’s kids and away to the woods we go!

Here are the activities:

                          ·         Stump pull -- you stand on small stumps and pull your partner off his using a rope... or for team, you stand on a big stump and pull the other team off... these big stumps came clear from Texas. 

 

 

·         Leather work

 

    ·         Fire building  -- the kids used flint and steel to light the cotton ball, then added the tender, kindling and on to the big wood. 

                            ·         Camp fire lunch

·         Knife throwing  -- Yes, you read that right!  They had rules for all these activities...

 

·         Ax throwing -- Everyone still has all body parts!

                          ·         BB gun shooting -- no one lost an eye!

·         Colter Run

The Colter Run is: the kids were divided into teams, with three on each team- one to shoot the BB gun, one to throw the ax and one to throw the knife.  These were a distance apart, so there was also running involved.  You got points for speed, accuracy and had to do it safely.  They loved this, then divided themselves into other teams, and ran it again.  We need a photographer-- Kate left and no one took pics...

Sometime thru it all, Bigfoot was sighted in the woods.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was great, but most of the kids took off to kill him with their walking sticks! 

One ran back to the adults, saying, ‘I almost peed my pants’.

 

 

 

The untold story is that my oldest grand kid has a gorilla suit and she turned around and saw him, and knew he wasn’t down in the woods,  so she was getting out of there. 

 

 

 

This was tons of fun.  Time to go home, now!

 

 

Grandma Day Camp 2014 Day Two—the most fun day ever!

 

We were up at Kim’s house and drove up in time to milk goats.  Jocie the kid milked Joc the Goat.  Yes, the goat is named after her. 

 

 

 

  

  Then on to the flag ceremony- they had to put up a temporary flag pole for camp. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Then the singing.  On down to the woods to get some walking sticks. 

 My brother was in charge of finding these, and came across a whole bunch that he cut.  Back up to the house to sit in the yard and whittle.  Everyone got matched up with the right size stick to whittle.  And go over the rules-- the blood circle. 

 

 The kids LOVED being turned loose with the knives and whittling.  They were very safe with their blood circle—you can’t get within their arm reach when they have a knife.  Even with a 1 year old toddling thru, they were very safe.  They wanted to whittle the whole morning, so we got way behind.

 

We had lunch with the lunch committee cooking hamburgers, pork and beans, and green beans on the buddy burners.  They produce quite the fire! 

The hamburgers were declared ‘better than daddy’s on the grill’. I can’t believe that I let my children cook on these with not much supervision when they were younger.  There was a lot of flame, and putting them out wasn’t easy.  We were going to cook pie crust sprinkled with cinnamon sugar on the buddy burners for snack, but ran out of time.  We cooked it in the oven.

 

 

 

We then went down to collect water samples to filter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pond, stream and spring.  We looked in microscopes to see which was cleanest and then made water filters out of 2 liter bottles. 

After filtering the water with the filters that we made out of a 2 litre bottle, rocks, sand activated charcoal and a coffee filter, then using chlorine bleach to purify the water, some of the kids drank it.  They are all alive and well. 

We painted our picture frames, and ran out of time for the Dream Catchers, God’s Eyes and pony beads. We were also going to make some kind of bee house.

 

I don’t even know if we took down the flag.  We're supposed to be looking tough...

 

Bonus pic!!  Here is #lydibug wearing her shirt...  representing on the west coast!