crazy pants

last night i sewed 80 pairs of pants.

yup, 80. EIGHT-OH.

it didn’t take nearly as long as you might think—actually, i timed it. every five pairs took just about 2 minutes and 30 seconds, give or take a few seconds. so every 5 minutes i finished 10 pairs of pants.

granted, they were only about 3 inches big. but still…80.

today marks the start of PSSA testing for my older 2 kiddos. it’s standardized testing done every year, basically to check on how worked up and stressed out they can get a bunch of elementary school children.

what, no?

annnyway…i decided to whip up a little treat for them to take in and share with their classmates:

the “smartie pants”. i’d seen these around in one form or another all over blogland. one of those cute ideas you go “huh. that’s cute.” and file it away in your mental pinterest board.

so--no biggie, right? 80 pairs of “pants” made from navy felt sewn with yellow thread for that authentic levi’s look.

3 bags of smarties

(of which i’m happy to report i ate NONE. now those big giant smarties—have you seen them? yum.) 

80 tags.

ava’s class is too young for PSSA’s, so they got “have a great day at school!” smartie-pants. didn’t want to leave them out…and being the one to have something to pass out to all the other kids pretty which makes you da bomb amongst the school yard set…or so i hear.

as a brief aside…when guinevere was in kindergarten i sent her in one march day with 20 “lamb” and 20 “lion” cupcakes. letter of the week was “L”, it was march, it all fit. they were insanely adorable, the recipe chopped from family fun magazine, i think. it was a hit.
ditto for first grade.
when she hit second grade, harrison was also in kindergarten. no biggie—30 lions, 30 lambs—not quite so many extras.
by the time guinevere hit 4th, harrison was in 2nd and ava started kindergarten, i was looking at making close to 100 fairly labor intensive little cupcakes.

once. i did it that one year, and i called it quits.

but i clearly don’t learn from my past. moving on…

so, 2 1/2 yards of felt, left folded in half and cut into approximately 3” wide strips. then i sewed them like this:

 

honest—i was gonna make a pattern and everything. but i didn’t find anything that easily made a mark on the dark blue felt in the 3.2 seconds i spent looking. weird, huh? so i just wung it. and yes, ‘wung’ would obviously be the past tense of ‘winged’…as in “i winged it”. but that was last night. so now, in using proper english—i wung it.

anyway, by not measuring i feel they’re more authentic—some straight leg, some more boot cut, some skinny jeans, and some that ended up pretty flare legged.

i trimmed the edges, then cut them apart and cut between the legs.

that crotch is insane! hey ya--can i get a michael kors shout out??!?

we’re not talking rocket science here—just straight up garden variety time-consuming and insanely tedious work. i’m not gonna lie though—a sick part of my OCD brain derived great joy from seeing all those tiny dungarees piling up one by one. but round about pair 60 i started thinking about adding a pencil into each pair of pants…and something on the tags about having #2 in your pants.

yup. i went there. yeah i’m a 32 year old mother of 5—what of it?

apparently shannon’s tired brain is much the same as the brain of 9 year old boy.

and making this stupid picture = 20 minutes of my life i’ll never get back. so please tell me you at least got a little chuckle out of it.

so there you have it: sew, cut, stuff a pack of smarties in each pant leg, and attach the tag. and you better believe at 1:00 am i was stapling them bad boys on with a stapler—tag to pants, done.

send your kids off to school with gifts for their friends.

80 pairs of “smartie pants”—about $15, give or take.

staying up until 2AM to make them—meh. sleep is for the weak.

perpetuating the myth that you’re the coolest mom ever for even just a tiny bit longer?—priceless.