vacation: all i ever wanted.

well, it’s over.

weeks of preparation: packing, sewing, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, organizing, cooking, shopping…all done.

if you follow me on instagram you’ll know what we’ve been up to. back-to-back trips-- two weeks ago we left for our annual family trip to cape cod. saturday to thursday spent in a lakeside house with grandparents and uncles and aunt and friends.

this is SOOC—no filters at all. amazing, right?

all the usual fun—huge meals, lobster dinners, gorgeous sunsets, fishing off the dock, mini golf and batting cages. it’s quality family time snuggling up with our babies. and laughing. lots and lots of laughing.

and then one night at dinner our kiddos surprised us with an early anniversary gift. they went online (storybird) and wrote a book for us. they ordered it with help from the grandparents and paid for it with their allowances.

we had absolutely no idea.

so when we opened the little package that they had wrapped up and started reading this “Story of US”, well…it was a serious ugly cry.

i honestly can’t remember the last time i cried like that. it seems like maybe? possibly? we’re doing something right? i hope. i do know that this will be something that’s treasured forever.

i can’t even write this now without tearing up. 

::deep breath::

okay so…we came home on thursday and spent friday and saturday in a mad dash of repacking, food shopping, dinner freezing, and yes—last minute sewing. because that next sunday we left for our 15th ANNIVERSARY CRUISE! three other couples joined us in celebrating anniversaries. between all of us there was 57 years of marriage and  14 children left behind with grandparents and aunts and uncles—for pretty much the first time.

jeremy + i haven’t left our kids for more than one night since we had them. and considering guinevere was born after 1.5 years of marriage…well, i’d say it was long overdue.

a one week cruise from bayonne, NJ to sunny bermuda and back again—just what the doctor ordered for all of us.

warwick bay beach

it was gorgeous. we snorkled and swam and relaxed. there was an incredible amount of food eaten. and i laughed so hard i think it counted as an ab workout.

tobacco bay beach – awesome snorkeling. until i came face to face with a moray eel. (insert mental image of me frantically splashing and screaming “EEEEEEEL” through my snorkel)

we had goals for this trip, and i think we checked off every one.

formal night. some hot mommas and handsome fellas ;) who were made to put roses in their mouths by the photographer.

1) to refer to each other as “shannon” and “jeremy”, not “mommy” and “daddy”.
2) to not cut up anyone’s food but our own at the dinner table.
3) in line with #2, to not wipe anyone’s bottom but our own in the bathroom.
4) to not worry about the time or look at a clock, except as far as to determine when the next onboard show was.
5) to sleep whenever we wanted, for however long we wanted.
6) to not wear the “mom uniform”, but to fix my hair and put on my makeup and wear cute stuff—even to breakfast.

check mark on all of those. they were 100% accomplished. and yesterday morning we were excited to see our babies, but very very very sad it was over.

all four couples have been instagramming and texting back and forth things along the lines of “i ordered a coffee and ice water, and no one brought it to me!” or “would you believe there’s no chocolate sensation in my refrigerator!?!?”

it’s been a rough return to reality. if my stinking house would just stop swaying back and forth i may be able to accomplish something. ;) now if you’ll excuse me, i’m off to snuggle my googies a little more.

pattern review: {free} toddler blazer

if there’s one thing i love it’s a free pattern. okay, so i don’t love patterns in general, but an independent pattern? from a talented blogger? who’s going to be giving it away for FREE on her blog?

yeah. that i love.

magda of house of estrela asked if i would sew up this soon-to-be-released adorable little girls’ size 2T blazer. because she’s offering it for free, and because she hates math nearly as much as i do, she’s only offering the size 2T.
BUT—if you have any size 2 little girl near you, i highly recommend you hop on over there and snag this ASAP (after it’s release, obviously)!

i did a quick muslin before cutting into my real fabric, and the instant i slipped it on elliot i emailed magda and told her what an awesome pattern this is!

the fit is spectacular, and the design is adorable. it flares out just enough in the back, and it’s roomy enough that even my rather chunkalicious 2 year old can move quite comfortably. seriously, i can’t praise this thing enough.

so the fabric…well this is a remnant jeremy brought me home from work one day. it looks like seersucker, but it’s not. it’s a heavier upholstery weight fabric that i thought would be perfect for this project—to make it more of a fall jacket. i had just enough to make the jacket and piece together a coordinating skirt.

because once i saw the jacket i knew it needed a matching skirt. i mean, srsly? like the most adorable toddler schoolgirl. you know, in a non-creepy COMPLETELY NOT BRITNEY way.

i bit the bullet and used some of my precious little apples fabric to line the jacket. it looked so adorable, and i know i can’t just hoard it forever. but i only had a 1/2 yard, so i left out the sleeve lining and just bound the sleeve edges in bias tape (which is made from the lining fabric, but it mainly looks white so it’s a little hard to tell!)

i did make a couple other adjustments to the pattern:
+ i did the lapels in the lining fabric also, so a bit more of it would show
+ i added a second button to the closure
+ and the pockets—the pattern calls for 2 eyelets in each pocket, with a ribbon cinching it tight and tied in a bow. i love the look of that, but i simply could not find my little eyelet punch. so i improvised with a little reverse box pleat and piped the edge in the same navy piping i used on the skirt. i definitely want to try a pocket magda’s way though (yes, i found my eyelet punch).

the skirt was self drafted. just a flat front and elasticized back with a pleated skirt. i put 2 buttons on the front—kind of like a little sailor look, and i would love to do 2 more underneath the first 2. but i only had 4 of these in my stash, so the other 2 will have to wait until the next time i manage to drag myself to the fabric store (ha.)

so, to sum up:

blazer pattern: 2T FREE pattern by house of estrela (to be released soon!)
blazer fabric: outside—upholstery remnant. sorry ;)
                      inside-----little apples by aneela hoy for moda
skirt pattern: self drafted
skirt fabric: upholstery remnant again. still sorry. :)

uh oh mommy, ders a car comin’!

this post brought to you by: gravity.

good morning, boys and girls. i’m writing this post with the last vestiges of the 3am adrenaline rush that comes with being woken by the sounds of crashing and glass shattering.

i was out of bed and flying down the hallway before i was even really awake, i think. and just as i rounded the corner to the kitchen i had a brief moment of maybe running out here like a maniac isn’t the brightest idea followed quickly by a glance at the clock (3:12) and well, jeremy’s still home so he’ll back me up if it’s a masked murderer.

spoiler alert: it wasn’t. turns out the old “glue a soda tab top to the back of xxxx and hang it on the wall” idea doesn’t work so well for plates. one of the three i had above the kitchen counter fell to it’s splintery death, taking my little glass straw dispenser along for the grisly ride. :(

you know what’s not awesome?  teeny, tiny shards of glass covering your kitchen counter, sink and floor at 3 in the morning.

but at least we get to spend some time together, because there’s no way i’m going back to sleep anytime soon. although i certainly hope this isn’t what it takes for me to get a blog post up nowadays, because i just don’t have that many plates to spare.

moving on--this dress was one of the last things we photographed on our Massive Handmade Fashion Show, so probably we were a little punch drunk. we were having great fun coming up with some of the typical “fashion blogger” poses for guinevere to copy, e.g.:

‘carefree and fun’ aka ‘hey look i have pockets’

‘bashful’ aka ‘did i step in something?’

my personal favorite: the ‘bashful’ combined with the ‘pigeon toe stance’

we thought we were very funny. what can i say? it was a lot of dress modeling all at once.

anyway, about the dress. this bad boy was a straight up mess. guinevere wanted a dress she’d seen on e-shakti, and while i love their stuff i simply won’t spend that kind of money on a still growing girl. so we came up with a design together using a couple yards of this dark blue fabric i was gifted from someone’s stash cleansing. the only thing i bought for this dress was 2 packages of white piping, because i was too lazy to make my own. and at only $1.47/package at walmart i consider it good time management plus still thrifty—basically the dress cost less than $3. #winning

the only problem is it turned into sort of a hot mess. the first bodice i drafted turned out terribly. it didn’t fit at all and wasn’t even salvageable. katy posted a pic today on instagram of her mess of fabric clippings and remarked that she sometimes wished she could gather it up and roll it out again like dough. yeah. it was like that. i had one more shot to get it right, otherwise i wouldn’t have enough fabric. and the second bodice was giving me fits too.

this bodice is made of four separate pieces (not counting the collar). each piece has white piping sewn into the seam. it’s not quite princess seaming (i still had to put some darts in the sides which are too high grrrr), but there is a definite curve to the pieces to allow the piping to remain fairly straight. i think my issue was somewhere in the additional seam allowance needed for all three pieces going across, plus extra for piping, plus extra for the waistband portion…the first time i shorted myself (this piece can’t possibly need to be that big! uhhh…yeah, it is.) and the second time i overcompensated. but it worked because i ended up draping and pinning the thing right on her. she’s a good kid—quite patient. she earns her dresses.

i also shirred the back of the dress to keep it snug and eliminate the need for a zipper.

a full skirt (with pockets!), white collar and some buttons completed the look.

she was happy, i was happy, we were all happy happy. it’s a sweet dress—vintage and cute and modest and trendy in all the right ways. so despite the trouble it gave me i’m glad it worked out in the end. it was worth the $3.

now if you’ll excuse me…i’m off to 1) find that dress and clip that infuriating stray thread on the second button from the bottom and then 2) go to bed. night night.