CHRISTEPHI

I rarely make clothes for myself.  Mostly because patterns don't fit me well and it takes too much time to get them to fit right.  I wear my clothes to death and then buy what I need on sale from a local outlet store.  Last weekend I convinced hubby to let me buy a piece of fabric from JoAnn's specifically to make myself a sundress.  I came away with a yard and a half of linen for just under $9 with tax.  I was originally going to use this tutorial*, but decided this pattern would be more suitable for the material I had purchased. It turns out I made the dress just in time.  This past weekend was my 10 year high school reunion and, boy, was it hot!  It was about  97 degrees and humid !  There are a bunch of pictures of me wearing the dress at the zoo, but only one really bad one of the front of the dress.  I was under some sort of walkway with windows to see the otters which did something really strange to the light, so I apologize for the quality of this shot. I

I have very fond memories of the cursive letter banner that was posted around the top of the walls in my fifth grade classroom.  I thought it would be fun to make something similar for our homeschool classroom (a.k.a. our kitchen). I decided to include a Bible verse for each letter.  At this point it's mostly for my own benefit since Miss M doesn't read yet.  They serve as great reminders to help her memorize these important bits of Scripture while her little mind is still a sponge.  (It saddens me that my memorization skills are not what they were when I was a kid!)   The fun part is I saved my work in a pdf file for you to use too! Just click the image above to download the file.  I laminated mine before sticking them around my kitchen walls with ticky tacky.  (The laminator is a new toy!)  Enjoy!

This weekend we visited the Patee House Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri .  I remember going there once as a kid, but I didn't remember it being so expansive!  We will definitely be going there again when the kids are a bit older.  Little Guy fell asleep partway through, so we only got pictures of the first half or so of our visit. Here's a quick photo dump. We didn't visit Jesse Jame's house a block away because the kids were tired and we were all hungry, but they say you can see the bullet hole in the wall from when Jesse James was killed.  We had a great time together and look forward to going back when the kids can apreciate the history of it better.

In addition to the quilt I've been mending ( here and here ) which isn't done, but will be eventually, I sewed on some buttons and put in some snaps.

There are twelve squares on the quilt I'm mending.  I have so far finished repairing three of them.  At this rate, I certainly won't finish by the end of the week.  I'm not very fast at hand-sewing.  Still, I'm glad to be making progress! The Pig: there's obviously a piece missing where his ear should be.  I'm going to have to figure out the proper pig ear shape to replace it. Any ideas what that shape should be? The Cat: In addition to re-stitching the applique to the quilt square, I replaced the embroidery on the legs and eyes. You could see where it had been 'cause the fabric was less faded there.  Sadly, my embroidery skills just aren't as marvelous as Grandma's! The Chick: All the embroidered bits were still intact for this one.  I just had to stitch down the applique piece again. I also sewed buttons on two sweaters that I knitted last year (while pregnant) and put snaps on a little dress that used to have buttons.  I'll ta