Love this pattern...well, not really. I like the end result from the idea of this pattern. It's Simplicity 2306 if you care. But after all was said and done, I totally threw the pattern out the window. It's terrible! They normally are. Why I bothered with it in the first place is beyond me...it's so simple I've made oodles of dresses just like this by free hand cutting.
The size 6 I cut the first dress at was way too big and the skirt...I could have cried about its lack of fullness. I pilfered the buttons from it to finish this dress since I made this one a few hours before church on Sunday. I ended up cutting the bodice way down from the pattern. I took out literally about 3", doubled the skirt width at least (which is hard to tell in the photos how full it really is since it's windy) and lengthened the sleeves. I also flared the sleeve ends a little which made them bell shaped a bit. The pattern called for elastic at the wrist, I liked it much better without for this particular fabric.
This dress was for the children's church program this past Saturday and I made it from start to finish (cutting to sewing the last button on) in exactly two hours with approx. 15-20 minutes thrown in to go out and feed the goats. The bodice is lined, all seems are sewn and serged. It's a quick quick pattern and come summer (since this dress' sleeves will be too short for her next winter more than likely) I'll cut the sleeves to make them short and she can wear it for summer.
I love little girls in dresses and she doesn't mind them either but she especially likes the skirts full so it makes it fun to twirl in. I'd like to take a stab at making one with buttons all down the front which won't be difficult, I just need to buy enough buttons!!
This evening, it's 31 degrees. This evening my children were asked to go bring in 3 pieces of wood each. They did said job and a conversation insued as Drew came into the kitchen where I am slaving away over dinner and 18 billion cookies for 4-H tonight.
Drew: "Mama, why do we have to get the wood?"
Mama: "Who do you think should get the wood?"
Drew: "You, because it's cold."
Mama: "Okay then, you go ahead and finish dinner, cook the rest of these 17 bazillion cookies, dish up dinner, do the dishes, sweep the kitchen, go in and start a load of laundry, fold the dry laundry, start a fire and then drive yourself and your sister to 4-H."
To date I've come down into the basement more times that I'd like to admit and nearly frozen to death since fall began! We've yet to leave the fan (connected to the AC and furnace) on all night to circulate the air throughout the entire house so it winds up COLD down here all the time. I (almost) dread coming down and have to go up about once an hour to warm up.
Yesterday I got the house up to a toasty 70 degrees and had the fan on to circulate all that warm air, had a fire going all night last night and this morning? SUCCESS! It's WARM down here. I don't know what the actual air temperature is but the concrete floor is 68 and that's sayin' something if the concrete is 68! That, to us, feels warm and I am thrilled.
The stove is rated for about 1400 sq. feet. The house with the basement is about 1700 sq. feet. so it's workin' it's little heart out! We've been brainstorming ideas to get the heat from the living room into the hallway so the central fan can pick it up and disperse it. So far we're just using a box fan at the doorway to direct the heat into the hall. The blower does a pretty good job at propelling the inferno into the center of the room and the ceiling fan throws it down to the floor where the box fan picks it up and heaves it into the hallway...it's a whole network we've got workin' here!
Our first thought was to put a vent in the ceiling with HVAC piping going to the intake but Jeremiah's afraid, even with insulated HVAC pipe, it will loose a lot of heat in the short distance it has to travel in the attic which, no doubt, is freezing! We've considered doorway fans and that's an option but I've also seen "through the wall fans", for lack of a better term, that are vents with built in little fans you install in walls up near the ceiling in two adjoining rooms.They're a possibility. Once the air is into the hallway the central fan picks it up just fine.
For now, our little stove that could certainly is doing a tremendous job. We just have the hot water heater running off the propane and in the almost 4 months we've been here we've only gone through such a small amount. It was at 70% full when we moved in August 13 and it's hovering around 56% full to date. We've been burning wood like crazy for about the past month but that's something we have plenty of! And it's free...sort of. I mean, short of the 3rd chainsaw we had to buy because of the others disappearing from school, the gasoline and the back breaking loving & satisfying labor we've needed to do get this "free" fuel, I'd say it's a fair trade.
Course, I mentioned to Jeremiah the other night that it's strangely peculiar that whenever he gets home from work to tend to the fire until bedtime there is always more wood waiting in the house to feed it. Yet, when I wake up in the morning, oddly enough, there isn't a scrap left and I have to go out into the cold in my pajamas no less, well, sometimes less but that's probably way too much information, anyway...go out into the cold and get more wood! Why is that? This morning, finally, there was extra wood inside. So,I guess, my little bit of prodding was fruitful.
The other day we were out cutting wood by the road and there he is with the chainsaw felling the trees and cutting them into manageable sections and there I am splitting the wood. By afternoon I had a very generous pile started. With just a few more legs, I mean, logs to split, here he comes to take over so I could go feed the goats and I am walking away thinking, "Now, wait a minute...everyone that passes is going to think "big strong man chop wood" and yet I am sure no one thinks, behind every good man there is an equal (ahem::or better::ahem) woman who split all that dang wood in the first place!" On top of that...there he was running the chainsaw for about 2 hours, seemingly not as labor intensive work as manually splitting with an axe, and all the people driving by are probably thinking, "good grief, what kinda man allows his wife to be out there doing all the heavy work!?". My man, that's who, lazy good for nothin'! Just kidding, I like manually splitting wood and if you know us, you know that we work side by side...there's something oddly satisfying about it! Chopping wood that is. Well, working side by side is too but anyway. My shoulder doesn't think chopping wood manually is at all oddly satisfying the next day of course, but my motto while chopping is live in the moment forget about tomorrow. HA!
But back to the stove...I almost feel like naming our stove. In fact, I think I will. I dub thee Thomas, the little stove that could! Thomas keeps me, er, us, warm. I light Thomas' fire. But then, so does Jeremiah so maybe Thomas should be called something more gender neutral in nature...Nah! He burns with um, wood. The spark within our relationship is breath taking. Yes, Thomas you are built so strong. You may not be tall, but you are dark and handsome. You abound with radiant heat and are always right there when I we need you to warm our buns on and steam up the place with boiling...water in the kettle. Even in the middle of the night I we are willing to feed the inferno burning within you, and you feeds my our souls with incandescent flames. The tender tinder required for your glow is so small but the embers that remain long after the blazing explosion has died down is heart hearth warming. Thomas, I know our relationship your flames will no longer be needed when the warmth of spring returns. Please don't think of me us as fair weather friends. You will always be a prominent figure within our home. I we know you will be there for us when we beckon your combustion once again and we will always be there to light your fire. What would we do without you Thomas? You're a hunka hunka burning heavy piece of cast iron!
Here are a couple of videos from last night's program. It was K through 3rd so Drew wasn't in it. The quality isn't great. We got there early but not early enough to snag front row seats so sitting in the bleachers was the next best option to get video without seeing the back of someone's head and nothing else. Rachel is in the blue dress itching her nose.Press the triangle to see them. If it's keeps cutting out, hit the "pause" button and let it stream in and then you should be able to watch it without it stopping while it catches up.
All the kids on the stage are in 3rd grade, everyone on the bleachers is grade K, 1 and 2. It's a small school, 1 class per grade.
Jeremiah and the kids by the frozen pond on Thanksgiving Day. The spring and summer it's filled up to the point they couldn't stand in there like that. In fact, where I am taking this photo at would be about the edge. It is frozen over now though.
What I'm "pouring" off the bucks water every morning.
I keep saying, "It's getting cold." People look at me funny which tells me this is nothin'. So I ask, "Well then, what's cold?" The answers, oh the answers...
It's always, "This has been a mild fall" and "It's not cold yet." "Oh really?", I say, but I never get a straight answer as to what's really cold. I want to know, specifically, as in temperature. What's considered cold, what's average, and what have we gotten ourselves into?
I've started being more specific since "cold" is different to each person. Cold to Drew's bus driver is 0, as in ZERO degrees...during the day...for days! As in, one less degree than 1 and one more than negative one, WHILE THE SUN'S SUPPOSED TO BE OUT! I'd say that's COLD (!!!!!!!!!!!) and not just cold. As in, there should be some offensive profane words, as in not just one would do, before COLD.
Saturday there was a ribbon cutting ceremony at Hutch High. I was talking to a gal and again the old stand by question came up since it was SUCH a lovely day out..."It's a lovely day out but I am bracing for the winter." I say. She says something to the affect that Kansas does not get winter, she grew up in Iowa and there's a winter. Well, count me out of Iowa...there's one less Californian they'll have to worry about! Though I am sure they don't see too many of them anyway (since I am sure most Californian's think Iowa is probably near Peru or somewhere) and if they did, they wouldn't consider them long term residents since one winter there, if they made it that long, would see them driving their hippy tree huggin',SUV drivin', sun lovin' think they know what a cold winter is asses selves back to the West Coast and not living in the middle of nowherePeru Iowa.
"Average December, January and February temps are in the 30's", and that's mild to Andrew's teacher who's lived here her whole life. "OH GOD..." I think to myself, "...that's a high day time temp???" "Yeah,..." Drew's teacher goes on to say, "...last year it was like 10 degrees for a month straight [HIGH day time temp.] It was so cold it just made you sick when you went outside." I think, "It made you sick when you went outside??? I'm sick just contemplating the thought!" I'm so sick, in fact, that I think I'll have to go home and shove as much wood into the wood burning stove and keep it that full whilst it burns until July of next year just because it's going to take a few weeks to get it a decent temperature enough to survive and I'll need at least a month to recover...and it's only 50 degrees out right now!
So, I'm compiling a mental list of what the average winter here is like and scaring myself into thinking we're going to freeze to death! The sane part of knows we won't, well, at least I HOPE not, but good God, seriously...a blizzard in April? St. Patrick's Day in California Rachel is was wearing a sleeveless dress and the grass is was green and we have had nothing but the hot dry summer ahead! Forget about April [rain] showers bringing May flowers here, we may be looking forward to April white out conditions, shoveling snow to get out of the driveway, wearing wool socks to bed and dreaming about hot chocolate!
Oh dear, we're done for! See you next summer....maybe.
Halloween photos for your viewing pleasure. Rachel went as Tinkerbell and Drew went as Cpt. Hook before he met up with the crocodile.
We took the children to the Zoo here in town actually. It's a quint little zoo and from 4-6 PM they handed out candy and had some of their animals out of their enclosures for the kids to pet.
The kids had a lot of fun. All in all I am Halloween-ed out as our festivities started on Friday with the kids parties at school.
We went to the Salthawk's football game on Friday night. It was COLD! Salthawks won but it was a close game. I think they tried as hard as they could to loose but managed to hang on through every fumble and interception. Fortunately for "us", the other team liked having additional players on the field who couldn't get off fast enough before the flags from the refs started flying, that was "our"saving grace for part of it.
The kids fell asleep shortly after half time so at least we got to watch part of the game in peace. The whole first half their candy induced spastic behavior had us saying "settle down" every second and a half! Fortunately for us there were young children all around so no one noticed our heathens hyper children too much except for the poor guy in front of us who got kicked in the back I don't know how many times! Fortunately, he was a dad too with a boy of about 12 with him so it hadn't been that long ago he was in our same predicament position. I told him he could turn around and slap the perps who kick him, I just hoped it wouldn't accidentally be me!
The second half of the game was peaceful, uncomfortable with kids laying up against our shoulders drooling and spewing hot nacho cheese, salty pretzel and pepsi breath in our face when we looked down to smile at our sleeping angels, but peaceful nonetheless. I don't know which was the better trade off.
Speaking of heathens, I mean angels, here they are now...
P.S. Yes, I made their costumes...on Thursday no less! Both of them were patterns I did freehand so I'm pretty impressed and proud! ::taking a bow:: Pats on the back are appreciated, thank you thank you.
Drew just wore brown pants. I had wanted to make Bermuda style pants with elastic at the knee so he could wear white knee socks and felt boot looking socks over his real shoes and really look the part but I doubt he woulda gone for all that. As it was, I had to try to coerce him into not wanting to be Cpt. hook and just be a plain pirate since I wasn't up for actually making a hook but it wouldn't fly. We settled for being Cpt. Hook BEFORE he lost his hand. It works.
Getting used to a new cold seems to the be the name of the game today. I've have weather on my mind since we moved here and have somewhat dreaded thinking about the impending cold weather.
All I keep hearing is that so far it's been a mild fall. One year they had so much snow on Halloween they had to cancel it! Am I making it up to be a bigger deal than it is??? God knows I haven't seen a real winter in like...well, ever! In a land where 40's is a high during the day in the winter, that's cold for me! Sure, I've been to the snow but I can't help but brace myself for this impending doomsday season that inevitably is coming ::Jaws theme music::.
It's November 1. They* say it's going to make it up to 63 today. I highly doubt that! I went out this morning to feed the goats in a cotton t-shirt and a light sweatshirt over that. I told myself that if it was anything more than 45 I would be really really upset! If it was in the 30's though, I'd be relieved knowing it was cold but that it wasn't so cold that it was unmanageable for me. As it was, it was like 43 but with the windchill it felt like 34 so I was pretty ecstatic knowing that it wasn't actually a silly temperature like 55 and there I was thinking it had to have been 32!
*Whoever they are.
The goats are fluffing up, green grass is all but gone. Kids are bundling up to head off to school and I've got soups and homemade bread on the brain!
