Seriously, I've been working hard to not just fritter away my summer. This is my third summer since I started substitute teaching. I've never had this much time off before and the past two summers I mostly didn't do anything. I was kind of paralyzed by the amount of time I had on my hands, so I just didn't do anything.
One of the things that took a huge chunk of my time was a scrapbook I made for my daughter-in-law, Marie. I started it five years ago and gave it to her for Christmas. When I gave it to her it only had about eight pages completed, so I included a note promising her many more pages. It was one of those things that felt like it was just hanging over my head and nagging in the back of my mind. Last Spring, I had Nick sneak it out of the house and back to me so I could finish it. I spent every single day for more than two weeks putting it together. I didn't count the pages, but I'd bet it's around 35-40 pages. It is a scrapbook of Nick's life from birth right up to their wedding day. It was a bigger job than I expected, but I'm delighted to have it finished.
I'll be writing posts about a few of the things I've done including the all-important "Grams Camp" and reporting the progress on my sewing room remodel, which is very slow going.
I've also been doing a bit of sewing. I made beautiful new dresses for our princesses as a test of a new pattern I wanted to try before adding it to my Etsy shop. Here are photos of Princess J and Princess E when they tried them on for the first time. I apologize for the quality of the center picture below. I included it because I wanted you to see that I left them long, slightly below the knees.
The pattern for this dress was downloaded from Craftiness is not Optional. She has both a sew-along and a downloadable pattern with a very good tutorial. I altered her pattern to make them sleeveless. Her original pattern has a little puff sleeve. You should look around her blog, she has some good tutorials and interesting crafts and patterns.
I will be back with more blogging soon. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the last few days of the Olympics. I'll be busy the next few days with that. Don't forget that Amy Acuff, our local Olympian, will be high jumping for Team USA on Thursday and Friday. I'm hoping she finally gets her Olympic medal. Go Amy! Go Team USA!
