More doll sewing

Now that the kids are back in school, I can spend a lot more time in my oh-so-messy basement sewing area. Mainly what I've been sewing is doll clothes - I'm trying to get my Etsy shop stocked up before the holiday buying season hits. Of course, since I like to bite off more than I chew, I have probably 93657 projects in various states of completion. I'll go on a bender and cut out probably ten different dresses (and bear in mind that I sew almost everything in duplicate or triplicate) and then it's a matter of getting them sewn. And once they're sewn I have to put in snaps and/or buttons, which for some reason takes me FOREVER. I think I need to come up with a system less haphazard than "I'll just sew whatever I feel like sewing today."

Here's my most recent project. My most favorite time period to sew for is the 1930s, because I love love LOVE the fabrics. Betsy's Kit is always happy to model.

So, that's an epically bad photo because I had to use my cell phone - we are fresh out of Double A's. Here's another dress I made a while back from that pattern, and MAN do I wish I had some more of this fabric. (I think both of these are Henry Glass "Posies from the Thirties.' Yum!)

I used the BunnyBear 'Princess Seams' pattern for that one - it's probably the pattern I use the most (aside from the Route 66 one) because it's just so darn cute. I also like that it doesn't use a ton of fabric - only 1/3 of a yard if I do the collar and cuffs contrasting, and I do - which I suppose is appropriate for the time period. (The austerity of the Thirties, followed by rationing of the Forties, goes a long way in explaining the 'New Look' of the Fifties, don't you think?) I love BunnyBear patterns and have quite a few of them - I'm constantly stalking her site to see if she's put out that Colonial era dress yet.

I've also been on a big Civil War kick lately.

I think I like it for the same reason as I like the 1930s: really great fabric prints. (Now is when I link you to Nauvoo Quilt Co. - she has the BEST stuff.) I made up some dresses that included little straw bonnets (they weren't anything fancy, I just got them from a craft supplier and trimmed them) and they sold like hotcakes. I'd also like to attempt a hoopskirt, I think it would be pretty easy with some corset boning.

Did I say I've been on a big Civil War kick lately? I meant to say I've been on a big Revolutionary War kick lately.

Yes, we got an Elizabeth. I already had a Felicity that I'm saving for Amy when she's bigger. When F and E's retirement was announced, I debated getting an Elizabeth before she gets crazy expensive on eBay. I wasn't going to (because Elizabeth has brown hair, darnit! Now get off my lawn!), but what convinced me was how much she actually resembles Amy, with the blue eyes and blond curly hair. Sigh. So I used that as an excuse to sew little matching 'best friend' dresses for them. I hope they sell as a pair, because I don't really want to split them up.

So that's what I've been up to. Anyone have any interesting projects to share? I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been crafting up a storm.

Too hot to blog.

Holy cow, I don't think this summer is EVER going to end. (Of course, give it another six months and I will be whining about winter.) Here's what we've been up to...

• My little sister Laura came for a week-long visit, which was filled with fun, sunscreen, and pancake mix. People, I have the BEST sisters. I didn't take enough pictures, though.
• We went to the State Fair. It was the hottest day in recorded history, and we all basically died of the sweats.
  
  
  
  It took milkshakes from the Dairy Barn to restore the natural balance (and chocolateyness) of the universe.
• The kids started school on, consecutively, the two hottest days in recorded history. Porter actually began kindergarten the day after Betsy commenced second grade, so I didn't get to take an official 'first day of school' pic of them together. They are both pretty cute, though. The year is still new enough that they are actually excited about school. And Porter shocked the heck out of me at his 'kindergarten orientation' that I went to with him... his teacher asked him to write his name on a piece of paper and draw a picture of himself, and he actually did it. (This is the kid who usually throws a fit if you get him within ten feet of a crayon.)
• Then, on the hottest day in recorded history, we went to Conner Prairie. Laura and I each brought an American Girl doll in historical garb, and we had lots of fun setting them up for photos.
• I've been to the pool a LOT - we went four times in a week while Laura was visiting. I've actually gotten a tan line, something I usually avoid by deploying the SPF A Zillion.
• I'm completely earwormed with this song. Curse you, Amazon and your free MPS downloads! It's just a gateway drug!
• I've watched a lot of TV miniseries/movies this summer. I went through all of Band of Brothers again, then Lost in Austen (it wasn't good, but they managed to make Wickham really sexy), then Little Dorrit (it was so cute), plus Matt and I watched the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition, of course).
• I wrote some fanfiction, too.
• I've been doing a lot of sewing, down in the basement to avoid the highest temperatures in recorded history, although I would do it anyway. I actually made a dress for myself: Seen here against the lovely backdrop of my shower curtain. But look at that fabric! It's all sewing notions! And it's Alexander Henry, of course.
• I'm sewing a lot of doll clothes, too. Actually,August has been a really good month for me, sales-wise. I've been selling them on both eBay (woo hoo free listing fees) and Etsy, and I think I have shipped like ten dresses this month. I made this one for a summer-themed sewing swap on American Girl Playthings, and as soon as the recipient posted pictures (her photographs are much better than mine) I had like three more people contact me and ask me to make them one. So I've been working on that.
• My little girl's hair went curly this summer. I'm not sure if it's due to the hottest summer in recorded history - we'll see if it stays that way when autumn hits - but boy is it cute. Amy's completely fixated on baby dolls, and she's also been practicing her animal noises. This video was taken when a bunch of Blinns were here for the day (watch to the end for bonus Miles!)
• It's been an exciting summer for my side of the family. One of my sisters got engaged, another one found out she's having girls (plural), my sister-in-law is having a baby pretty much any day now, and after thirty-one years Dad got the fat envelope from Kodak. As for us, we are working on getting Betsy prepared for her baptism in December, and planning our trip to Disney at the end of October. I'm sure this heat will end soon!

Up

What have I been doing since last time? Let's see. After returning from the New Kids on the Block, I had to watch Band of Brothers (ten episodes) to get my Donnie fix. Of course I ended up watching most of the episodes twice (or six times cough'Bastogne'cough) and then writing a story about it, so yeah, that ate up about two weeks. Then I got hooked on the BBC adaptation of Dickens' 'Little Dorrit' (sixteen episodes, but they're only 30 minutes apiece) and just finished watching that yesterday. I've also been sewing doll clothes like a fiend - I'm linking you all to this but it's really only the tip of the iceberg. Fortunately, this means spending a lot of time in the basement, which is the coolest part of the house (also the spideriest).

Betsy has had a bunch of week-long sport camps (they are offered free through the school district, yay!) - this week is bowling. The kids are also on their last week of four weeks of swimming lessons (not free, boo). Porter has been doing really well with the swimming lessons - I think if we keep at it, one of my children may actually be able to swim. Betsy, not so much. But that's all right - she's good at a lot of other things. We've also been cooking out a lot (and because this is Indiana, eating a lot of corn) and swimming in the neighborhood pool. And I just made zucchini muffins from the bounty of our garden. The really crazy thing is, the kids only have a month left of summer before they go back to school!

I think I mentioned in a previous post that we had gotten a membership to Conner Prairie, the local living history museum. I honestly can't understand why we hadn't gotten a membership - it's about ten minutes from our house (unlike the zoo which is allll the way downtown) and it's only $65 a year (roughly half the cost of the Children's Museum). I think we were thinking we had to wait until the kids were school aged so that they would appreciate it. Which is clearly crazy because two-year-old Amy loves it as much as anyone. She now shouts "Connerpwaiwie!" every time we drive by on our way to church. She's a little afraid of the animals in the barn, though (even the baby sheep, it was funny how she was hanging on to me for dear life).

One of the things they have added recently is this balloon ride attraction (it's tethered so you just go straight up and down, but it is really a balloon). Now, normally I am skeptical of the obvious attempts at adding revenue (I'm looking at you Indianapolis Zoo) but this is based on something that actually happened in Indiana in the 1850s, so I give them a pass. Back in the spring we got a thing in the mail for free balloon tickets with the purchase of a membership. And the balloon ride tickets are normally like $12 a person, so we wouldn't have done it if it wasn't free. We actually tried several times before we managed to go up - it's very weather dependent, the skies have to be perfectly clear with only a hint of wind. (Perhaps this is why hot air balloons didn't revolutionize travel the way they were all predicting it would back in the 19th century.) But we finally got our free balloon ride during Fourth of July weekend.

Look out, kids! You're going to fall out!

Just kidding, that wasn't the real thing. This is the real thing:

It's a pretty smooth ride, and even though I am nervous about heights, it didn't bother me at all. The balloon gets to a maximum height of 300-something feet. You can see all the way to downtown (granted, this is Central Indiana, so that's not that impressive) and we probably could have spotted our house if it doesn't have the exact same roof as every other house in our neighborhood.

Amy was a lot less frightened of the balloon ride than she was of that vicious, vicious baby sheep. "I go up in the sky," she said, and continues to say every time we drive past.

And here's me! Matt laid down on the bottom of the basket to get that shot. We've been back to Conner Prairie a few times - I thought the kids would be clamoring to go in the balloon again, but we explained to them it was a one time deal, and they seemed to accept that.

So, that's our summer. Pretty soon my sister Laura will be coming for a visit, and we will go to the State Fair, and then the kids are in school and the fun time is over (for them. For me, fun time is just beginning). How is everyone's summer going?

The Right Stuff.

So, remember these guys?

Danny, Donnie, Jon, Jordan, and Joey. That's right, before we had all of those other boy bands, we had the New Kids on the Block. They released their first album in 1986 (when I was Betsy's age!!) but didn't really hit it big until a couple of years later. I remember being on the bus in fourth grade when I first heard about them. I actually held out for a while out of stubbornness (if everyone else likes something, I have to hate it, just to be different) but eventually I succumbed to the mania as well. Of course, on my limited budget (this was before I started babysitting to earn the big bucks) that obsession amounted to owning one single cassette tape, which I wore out on my Walkman. I think eventually I did get a hand me down T-shirt from our babysitter Tricia. I didn't have all the shirts or the giant buttons or the dolls or the Tiger Beat magazines or the posters, I didn't watch the cartoon series (in our house we watched PBS on Saturday mornings. I'm probably the only person I know who grew up watching The Victory Garden instead of Thundercats) and of course, I never went to one of their concerts.

All things good or otherwise must come to an end, and the New Kids' reign in the spotlight only lasted a couple of years. They changed their name to NKOTB and released another album but by then we were all listening to grunge. The New Kids and their cheerful songs and brightly colored Hammer-pants were so over.

But, nostalgia is a big business these days. The New Kids actually released a new album in 2008 and have been touring off and on since it came out. When their dates for this year's Casi-NO tour were announced, Mandy made it her personal business to get me to go. Now, Mandy went to town with the obsession back in the day. (Like this.) She's already been to several of their concerts, whereas I haven't been to ANY concerts, EVER (unless you count Vertical Horizon at Clowes Hall my junior year at Butler, which I don't because I left after like half an hour, which is another story). Fortunately, I wasn't too hard to persuade. An evening away from my kids? And it's up on the north side of Indiana so we will have to stay the night in a hotel? Done and done!

I have to admit, I was a little bit of a slacker. I didn't prepare for the concert by listening to their music, mainly because I didn't have any. I've been on a big indie kick lately, thanks to Amazon and their free MP3 sampler downloads, and I thought nineties bubblegum pop might be a tad incongruous with Minus the Bear and Spoon and whatever. I only had my memories to go on - that and the fact that Donnie Wahlberg was awesome in Band of Brothers. Fortunately Mandy has like every track that they have ever recorded, either as a group or solo, and she'd made a giant playlist. We left on Friday afternoon - me, Mandy, and Mandy's friend Michael (not to be confused with her husband Michael. Wow, it's like that was a really popular boys' name in the late seventies, or something.) So I had the whole drive up to Hammond - including a super awesome fun and totally unnecessary detour through Gary - to get pumped up. Funny how it all started to come back. By the time we got there I was ready to tight-roll my jeans (only I had on a dress).

Here's my ticket:

Yes, the concert was at a casino, which meant I got carded on the way in - something else I've never done before. The slot machines are all digitized so they don't have a lever any more (and they don't look like robot amputees waving hello). The concert venue at the Horseshoe Casino is actually called The Venue, which meant that every time we talked about it I felt like I was speaking in code. And hey, any day I can feel like a spy or some sort of operative is a good day in my book.

We had dinner at the casino, since the food there is really cheap (I gather it's not exactly their profit center). Have you ever had fried pickles? You should. (Mandy being pregnant and all, I think she achieved nirvana with that first bite.) As the concert got closer and closer, I did start to get really excited. And it was really funny to see the other people who were there - you could tell who was there to gamble and who was there to see the concert. The venue (or I should say The Venue) was 21-and-up but I don't think there was anyone under about 29 or so. Almost entirely women with a few male fans or long-suffering husbands. Lots of women could still fit into their New Kids T-shirts from back in the day (we wore our T-shirts huge in 1991, preferably with a knot tied in one side, or if you were really cool one of those plastic slider things.) But a lot of the women were pregnant, too. We had pretty decent seats, right smack in the middle.

You should have heard the insane screaming when the curtain went up. Mandy had warned me that she has no dignity where the New Kids are concerned. Turns out I don't, either. Yes, we paid for the entire seat but we didn't even use the edge. I was on my feet from beginning to end. There wasn't an opening act (unless you count the fried pickles), it was just us and them. Truly awesome. Here's some pictures:

Two of my friends from college were at the concert too, although they were in a different section so I didn't find them until the show was over. And you're probably thinking, Ooh, a boy band twenty years later, I bet THAT will be fun! But it really, really was. If they were washed-up has-beens phoning it in, well, I didn't notice. (I mean, I don't have a lot to compare it to since I've never been to any other concerts, but I don't live in a cave, either.) They played a lot of their new songs, which I liked so much I bought the CD off Amazon pretty much the minute I got home, and some of the older stuff that I remember from when I was in fifth grade. And I really had a hard time believing that these guys are ten years (give or take) older than me. Because they were dancing all over the place and climbing the scenery and whatnot. And they are ripped... yes, there was shirtlessness, it was only for a minute or so but I am not saying I didn't enjoy it.

Oh, and we totally saw Donnie up close and personal when all of the guys went up the aisles. It was pretty funny, because I've only watched Band of Brothers a million times (or at least three, since I always see it when I have a baby). Mandy wore her Boston Red Sox shirt in honor of the New Kids being from Boston, and I think that Donnie liked it. We were so excited, we were squealing like a couple of teenage girls.

It was truly awesome. I absolutely killed my voice - even a delicious Mint Cookies & Cream shake at Steak-n-Shake didn't prevent me from being completely hoarse the next day. I had a ball hanging out with my sister-in-law and her hilarious friend, AND I got away from the kids for a good twenty-four hours. I'm sad that the concert is over, but since this is 2010, I can always look up the videos on YouTube. And if they come around again next summer... I will so be there.

The happenings around here

School is almost out, so I had better get a blog post up before summer hits and I spend all my days driving my kids around. Why did nobody tell me before I had school aged kids that planning out their summers is practically a full time job? It's not that I think they are overscheduled, it's just that with a different thing going on every week, I have to figure when to fit everything in and still have some time to play and go to the pool and whatnot. I think it'll be fun, but I know I will be relieved when it is over.

Anyway. Here's what is going on around here.

• Garage sale season is in full swing. After several disappointing outings, I found some really good stuff last weekend.
• After driving past it on the way to church every Sunday for nearly four years, we finally got a membership to our local living history museum. We actually got a coupon in the mail for free balloon tickets with purchase of a membership, only by the time we got there the wind had kicked up & they cancelled the ride. But they gave us rain checks so I guess we will have to go back another time!
• I'm keeping really busy (but having fun) making stuff for my Etsy.
• I've been kind of obsessed with The Dodos lately, especially this song.
• Speaking of obsessed, Amy gets really mad if we don't let her wear a dress. She is all about the baby dolls lately, but they have to be naked. She's also figured out how to jump, which is really funny since she barely clears the ground.
• Betsy keeps telling me she is going to be an author when she grows up. She loves to write little stories and then illustrate them. She is really loving first grade (they hatched baby chicks!) and she's been doing well with her spelling. Betsy is all about compound words right now. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining to her when a word isn't.
• And Porter is almost done with preschool. I took him to the kindergarten orientation at his school last week... I needn't have bothered, he already knows his way around the building and has been riding a bus for the last two years. I think he's really ready, since he's already reading and everything. Plus, in kindergarten they do a unit about dinosaurs.
• Oh yeah, we booked our next vacation to Disneyworld. We'll be going at the end of October when the kids are on fall break. Woo hoo! By then it will have been more than three years since our last visit, which I think is a decent interval. The kids are getting hyped up for it already.
• Betsy's dance recital is this Saturday. Be watching this space, I'll post video. She likes to put on her costume (it's purple) and practice the dance, so I can verify that it is, in fact, wicked adorable.