Monday, June 22, 2009

Quiet week(s)

This is a post of kind of old stuff. I managed to finish up the portfolio thingys for A's party, without much trouble, actually. There are a few changes I would make if I did them again (mostly with the spacing), but on the whole they turned out well. The kids seemed to like them fairly well.

I also made A her froggy cake:
And some froggy cupcakes (which were my favorites):

They remind me of Keropi. :)

The cake was a round cake with cupcake eyes and legs cut out of a sheet cake. (I think the leg pattern came from the Wilton site, and then I just enlarged it.) And the cupcakes have marshmallow eyes, which I saw somewhere online.

The party was fun - lots of splashing around in pools, etc. Unfortunately, I had started into a rather bad case of bronchitis (probably allergy related, possibly even asthma. Joy.) So I've been sick and not sewing anything lately. I'm finally mostly better, I think - still coughing some, but I feel okay - so hopefully I can return to my machine. I have a lot of things I want to make - now I just need some time and energy to actually make them!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

I'm a nut.

Or possibly just a glutton for punishment, I'm not sure. ;)

The background: as previously mentioned, A's birthday is coming up this week, which means that A's birthday *party* is also coming right up. We tend to have pretty big parties around here - just at our house, and nothing crazy, but generally a bunch of kids are running around. Which means, at least in these parts, that I have to provide a bunch of "goody bags". I have sort of an aversion to goody bags, but my kids like them, so I provide them, more or less. The thing is, I know *I'm* neurotic about how much candy the girls have, so I don't want to give a ton of candy out at parties. And we have SO MANY little plastic toys, so I don't really want to give those out, either. And my kids are also convinced that no birthday party is complete without a pinata, so really, I do give out candy and little plastic crap already at the party, and I hate to add more with the goody bag. So. Generally I try to find something a little nicer (although still cheapish) and use that instead. Last year, we tie-dyed shirts at the party, and the kids took them home. One year we did bubble guns, and another year was Schleich animals. Or maybe that was with the shirts. They all blend together in my head at this point.

Anyway.... This year A's party has a frog theme. She has a great love of frogs. So I've been pondering the goody bag issue, without really having any fabulous ideas. Then we were at Joann's earlier in the week, and we found some cute frog fabric, and I bought a couple of yards with the idea that I could make something for the goody bags. Not actual bags, probably, because I wasn't sure how all the 6 year old boys who were coming would feel about that. After some thought, I had an idea! Little portfolio-things! Sort of like an older version of a crayon roll, with space for paper and pencils, maybe some scissors or a ruler. (I drew some inspiration from pictures of Craft Apple's patchfolio, although that's much fancier than I had in mind. Also, all the various crayon rolls and knitting needle holders floating around.)

Here's a sample of what I came up with - closed:

And open:


What fun, especially since A is very into art! Except that now I have to make up to 15 of them.... Gack! Actually, what's worse is that I really don't know how many I have to make, because I'm still waiting on SVPs. I'm working on them in an assembly line fashion. I've got 12 in progress (actually, 5 completed, yay!) And I have enough materials to make more if I need to. That's just going to have to do!

Despite feeling a little crazy, it's not actually that bad - kind of time-consuming, but I'd probably be sewing *something* during that time, so it's not such a big deal, really. But it would be much easier if I knew exactly how many to make!