I found it!!

It has been quite some time since I have posted and life has been very busy since my motivation was hiding from me. First I will let you know that it came one night in the end of March at about...8 p.m. when I was least expecting it. For some odd reason I decided it was time to paint my laundry room. Yes, that is right; on a weeknight after the kids were in bed and my main squeeze was doing his ironing I decided that it was time to crack open that "Lemon Curd" paint I bought in the fall and get to work painting oven the very drab sage green that I stare at way too often these days. I began this paint job from hell and I am close to being finished which is a good thing. Since I have to cover up the green it has taken me a lot longer than I anticipated, but I am hoping to finish it over the weekend. Aside from the fact that I do numerous loads of laundry every week, my primary motivation is the fact that I have set up my sewing station in the laundry room and right now I have a pretty intimate relationship with this machine.


This machine was given to me by a dear friend last year who had no need for it and wasn't quite sure if it worked and if so, exactly how to thread this crazy ol' beast. I took it in to have serviced last winter and even though I was told it was in "mint condition for it's age" and that this was "a keeper" I still had no idea how the hell to thread the needle, or the bobbin or set the tensions and then actually use it. So it sat in my basement all of last year yearning for attention, but with the garden I couldn't help but to ignore it and promise that I would put it to work in the fall and winter. In December I started messing around with it, but I didn't have a manual and I couldn't find this machine anywhere on the net after numerous hours of searching. With the holidays in full swing I had little time or patience to devote to this overwhelming task.

After the new year I decided it was time and so with the help of You Tube I found a tutorial on how to thread needles and bobbins on vintage machines and then with a couple of books and fabric designer's blogs I have been going from one sewing project to the next. My first was this pin cushion.
Then I did this apron for a friend

And then I decided to take it up a level and do these baby pajamas for one of my daugher's teachers who is due with her first baby in the next couple of weeks. The pattern is from a company called Oliver and S and they have very cute patterns for children's clothes.

Right now I am working on matching dresses for my daughter and her cousin since they both are turning five this spring. Here is one of them that is done and I am working on the other.

So yeah...I found my motivation and a new hobby that I LOVE~

I'm looking for my motivation....

It seems to be lost and can't be found.

Has anyone seen it?

The boy is 2!

I can't believe that as I sit here and watch this little dude run around this morning that he was born two years ago! I can still remember the details of his early and extremely fast birth (woke up at 3:20 a.m. because my water broke as I rolled over in bed; he was born on the bathroom floor at 4:59 a.m.). The call to the midwife; the anxiety about the pace of the birth; the sun rising as we took our first bath; the excitement of his sister and his dad as they held him for the first time; the beautiful, little details of this boy that were now physically present: tiny fingers and toes, a head full of dark hair, big eyes, tiny perfect pink lips. Now he is two and I am just as in awe of him today as I was then. How time flies, eh?

Yesterday was an interesting day. It didn't go as I had hoped or planned, but he did not seem to mind. He was very happy and content with the events of the day even if I was not. His sister has been having a very hard time this last week and yesterday definitely was the day that the rest of the week was building up to for one HUGE day of meltdowns. Wednesday night was a full moon and we are well aware that when the moon is full it has some type of pull on this child. She is usually really squirrely or really emotional; but yesterday she was not only emotional and squirrely, but also mean and whiny which made the day emotionally exhausting for me.

While the kids napped I finished sewing up Keegan's birthday crown and was going to make his honey cake until I realized I didn't have enough eggs. So I scrapped that idea and I will make the cake today and we will have two days of celebrating. Here is a picture of the crown. It wasn't as easy as the blog made it out to be, but I think it was worth it. I am pleased with the way it looks and so is he. This morning he has been riding around his "horse" with his crown and it is simply adorable!


I also stole some time to myself while they napped and looked through birth photos and wrote in his special journal that I started the day he was born. I am so amazed that these two little people were in my belly at one point and now are such amazing and beautiful little people with such STRONG personalities. Every time I look at the photos of my children's "birth day" I get so weepy. Today was no different, but due to the emotional aspects of the morning I didn't just cry; I sobbed. It was at that point that I knew I needed a nap as well; so I crashed on the couch and 30 minutes later the kids were up and ready to play and we all felt much better.

The birthday evening ended with the boy's favorite meal; pasta with homemade pesto, a salad (which he surprised us by actually eating) and then more presents and yogurt covered pretzels for dessert.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Today it was almost 70 degrees here in Detroit and I can't even touch on how elated we all (MI folks) are that the temps are slowly rising and that the sun has been shining all week! What a difference a little sun will make in a person's life; it must be the vitamin D.

I have had a wonderful week full of days of doing nothing but playing with the boy, sewing and planning out the gardens (mine and the school gardens). I made it a point of doing a lot of what I wanted to do in the early part of the week because I knew yesterday would be non-stop from sun-up until the moment I would crash into bed late at night. My daughter's school is in the process of becoming a Michigan green school and with that process comes many requirements and tasks that they must complete. One of which is having an assembly with a guest speaker who is working to make the earth more sustainable. I decided to take this task on and help the school with this part of the application and so I organized a nun from the IHM Motherhouse in Monroe to come speak to the kids about ways to be environmentally responsible. For those who are not aware of what the IHM nuns have done at the Motherhouse I put the link on here so you can check it out because it is truly amazing what they are doing to make their entire property and facilities environmentally friendly and sustainable. The nun did two presentations, one for the younger children (Jr-K through 2) and then another for 3rd through 5th grades. The presentations were excellent as was the reception from the kids. The nun talked to them about the importance of the 3 R's (reduce, reuse and recycle) and showed ways in which this is possible. With the older children she also discussed the more complex aspects of what has been done at the Motherhouse such as the geothermal heating and cooling system, gray-water recycling, wind and solar energy. But what impressed me the most was her encouragement of exploring the sciences as they get older and her charge to them to take responsibility over their lives and the impact they can make our earth.

As I ate lunch with this womun who was a force of energy, love and life, I myself was inspired to take my commitments to mother earth to a new level and I am now making a commitment to step it up. It is easy to get lazy and use plastic and paper bags, disposable diapers or paper napkins, and that laziness is filling our landfills at outrageous rates. Think about how many diapers a baby goes through in just one day. Here are some disposable diaper facts:

• 18 BILLION disposable diapers are thrown in landfills each year.
• It takes several hundreds of years for one disposable diaper to break down.
• It takes over 80,000 pounds of plastic and over 200,000 trees a year to produce the amount of diapers that are used in America alone.

So my cloth diapers are back out and I am now making wool soakers from recycled wool sweaters this weekend and if I get enough energy I might try making some cloth napkins out of some funky material I have.

After my inspiring lunch I had to attend a meeting at the gurl's school about the garden project that the school has to start as part of the MI Green School application and I came to a fast realization that since I run garden club this project is being dumped on me, which I really don't mind, but would have appreciated someone asking me to include this in what I have started doing with the garden club and not assume that I would be okay adding this extra responsibility. This is exciting though because it does open up a lot of opportunity to bring over high-school kids to connect with the kids on the lower campus as well gives me a need to push for parent volunteers and donations. It also might open the possibility of some grants for the school for these projects. SO....this spring is going to keep me very busy between my gardens, the schools gardens and the family.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in my car (which I pretended was a hybrid) driving from Pontiac to the eastside to get the boy from the grandparent's house and then back home to Detroit to do baths and make a very quick dinner so that I could fly out of the house to the health food store and then on to my first kickboxing class. The day was beyond busy and as I crashed in bed last night I offered up a prayer of thanks for the inspiration and renewal of spirit that today offered.

On a side note: This morning as I was unloading a plastic grocery bag that I had reused for items from the health food store and my gurl went into a lecture of why I should NEVER use plastic bags and reprimanded me for not using one of our cloth grocery bags. I tried to explain I had dad's car and there were no cloth bags in that car so I reused a plastic bag I found in his trunk, but it didn't matter to her; it was still plastic. How proud I was at that moment, that my four year old daughter knows so much about being environmentally responsible and was able to bring something from that assembly home to teach her family; I hope many other kids were able to do the same.