Author: Sarah

Well, I’m Awake Now!

Sarah General

I just drove home from work, feeling rather tired and thinking I’d go to bed relatively early tonight.  As I passed the back entrance to the school campus, I had my eyes peeled since I’d seen deer on my way into work along this road.  Just before I reached the top of the hill, though, I heard sirens coming towards me on the other side of the road, and I pulled over immediately.

Up over the hill comes not one, not two, but three emergency vehicles, lights flashing, sirens wailing, horns blaring, and I thought perhaps Armageddon was starting.

Then came a school bus.

And another fire truck.

And dozens of cars flashing lights and honking horns.

Apparently, one of the high school sports team just won a major event tonight.  I’ve heard these escorts from afar (well, I live like two streets over from the school, so maybe not so far) but never actually seen one in progress.  It was overwhelming.

And so now I’m really wide awake.  Adrenalin sucks.  (And I didn’t see any deer, which is good, because I felt like a deer in headlights myself.)  Guess I’ll go find something good on TV and knit for a while…

Something’s Missing!

Sarah Carolyn, Milestones

I had this feeling, this morning, that Carolyn’s tooth that had started being very slightly wiggly an entire year ago might not be around too much longer – it had become very, very wiggly in the past few weeks.  It even had an adult tooth coming up behind it already, because it was being so very stubborn about coming out!  So I took a picture, one last picture, of Carolyn’s adorable baby-toothed grin.

All 20 baby teeth, present and accounted for...

And sure enough, she got off the bus wearing a look of panic, because her tooth suddenly felt funny…

Such a tiny little thing!

And now there’s something missing!

There's a hole in that grin...and she suddenly looks older!

 

Raking Leaves

Sarah Anna, Carolyn

It’s pretty easy to get the girls on board with raking leaves when there’s a promise of jumping in the big pile at the end!

And now the payoff:

Anna in the leaves.
A shower of leaves!
Leaves in her hair...
Leaves, leaves, everywhere!

Brownie the Bear

Sarah Carolyn

Carolyn recently joined Girl Scouts – as a second grader, she’s a Brownie.  At her very first meeting, her name was drawn to bring Brownie the Bear home for a two-week visit.  Brownie leaves to visit someone else’s house tonight, so we thought we’d take a couple of pictures so we could remember her!

Brownie the Bear
Carolyn and Brownie

Happy Halloween!

Sarah Anna, Carolyn, Holidays

We had a fun and busy day today!  I didn’t realize that the Primary school parade would be going on right as I arrived to deliver treats for the class party, so Anna and I wound up being able to watch all the kids in their fabulous costumes.  Turns out there were two mummies in Carolyn’s class, but she was pretty easy to pick out!

Which mummy is mine? The cute one!

Then we dashed home, went for a quick piano lesson, and dashed back home to await pizza and friends for trick-or-treating!  We had a good time walking around the neighborhood with Joey & Nikki, and got much farther than we’ve ever gone by ourselves…which translated to a lot of candy!

Don't all mummies wear pink mary janes?!?

Carving Pumpkins

Sarah Holidays ,

My brother Michael and I took the girls to the Strong Museum today while Denis got some outdoor work done.  (And thank you again, Michael – I could never have kept track of the girls in that zoo by myself!)

After that, we managed to carve out a bit of time to carve our pumpkins!

Peeking in the hollowed-out pumpkin.
We "cheated" and used templates - with spooky eyes!

(There were lots of steps in between these photos, but I didn’t want to goop up my camera with pumpkin guts!)

A skull and a ghost. Boo!

The Making of a Mummy Costume, Part 4

Sarah Sewing ,

I finished up Carolyn’s Mummy costume today! (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

A finished mummy mask.

The hardest part of this entire costume was the mask.  Luckily Carolyn had today off from school for teacher conferences – I needed her to model this pretty frequently.  This time, instead of only sewing strips from the bottom up, I also sewed them from the neck, over the top of the head, and back down – like you would if you were wrapping your head with bandages.  This was kind of tricky and I’m not 100% thrilled with how it came out, but I think overall it’s a reasonable facsimile of a mummy mask.

The thumb hole and hand wrappings.

Finally, I had Carolyn try on the shirt so I could figure out the end of sleeves/hands part.  I cut a slit between the cuff and shirt for her thumb to stick out, then wrapped strips around the cuff and hand-stitched them down.  It takes up the excess sleeve material and acts almost like gloves – hopefully I won’t have a chilly mummy for Halloween!

Hanging bandages on the shirt.

This costume seemed so simple on the surface, but it’s all in the details: I let bits of strips hang down while I sewed them on, and shredded the ends so there weren’t finished selvedge edges of the fabric showing.

Finished mummy pants!

I also took a rather big tuck in the back of the pants – the downside of buying pants a couple of sizes to big is that they have a tendency to fall off as the mummy walks!

Mummy, er, "sitting" on the bench.

With all the details done, it’s time for a “beauty” shot.  That’s one good-looking mummy costume!  Total, I spent $26.  I probably could have spent a little less on one of the awful store-bought costumes we saw, but this is much, much better.  Carolyn is super happy with how it turned out, too!

The Making of a Mummy Costume, Part 3

Sarah Sewing ,

I worked on the mummy mask today.  This is turning out to be a longer project than I planned – the downside of being a bit of a perfectionist, I suppose!  (Part 1, Part 2.)

Not so scary yet!

This is going to be a mummy mask when it grows up: a super cheap hat ($1) from Target!  I had to go out and buy another yard of muslin and tea-dye it.  (I know I don’t need a whole yard more just for the mask, but I’d rather have too much than have to go run back out to the quilt shop again.  They already think I’m crazy there.)

Yes, I cut something knitted. Scary indeed!

The hat was a double layer knit hat, so to make it longer I cut around the inside layer only near where they were sewn together at the crown decreases.  This left a really messy edge that will roll and potentially run, but I intend to neaten that up when I’m finished.

Extra long butchered hat, ready to become a mask!

Next I cut out the area where Carolyn’s eyes and mouth will be.  I purposely made those holes larger than necessary so she has good visibility and doesn’t suffocate!

Are you frightened yet?

Finally I hand-stitched a thin strip across the nose piece (mostly because I was afraid it would unravel while I machine stitched it!)  The rest will have to wait until tomorrow!