{Pretty}
This little miss may be the subject of all my pretties from now on. I'm sure one day we'll say she's smart and strong and clever and capable and we won't define her solely by her level of prettiness but for now I'm just basking in the pretty. I suppose I'm not entirely unbiased but she is awfully pretty isn't she?
{Happy}
I have recently come into possession of my grandmother's old quilt tops. She had them in a trunk in her room for as long as I can remember but she never talked about them. I don't know their story--if she made them herself, or perhaps with her mother, or even if she just found them in some antique store--but they are hand pieced and much of the fabric is repeated in the different tops so I'm sure they were done by the same person.
**You may want to just skip ahead to the next section now if you are very particular about what happens to vintage quilt tops. Consider yourself warned.**
I horrified a lovely woman in a big box fabric store when I was getting supplies for a different project and decided to bring along one of the quilt tops just to see what fabric options might be there to back it with. Instead of fabric I received a forty-five minute lecture about what I should do instead, which involved me driving up to Lancaster, PA for an expert opinion from a professional Amish hand-quilter.
Because I have lots of spare time for out-of-state day trips....and unlimited funds for buying huge amounts of the highest quality reproduction 30's fabrics.....
In the end I decided to just back the quilt with a sheet. It's big enough to not have to be seamed and only cost ten dollars. I can't imagine that the woman who patiently saved and cut and sewed all the leftover bits and pieces of fabric she had to make this quilt top would begrudge me the thriftiness of my choices. And in the end I don't want an expensive show piece. I just want to turn this thing my grandmother carefully saved into a real quilt we can all enjoy.
Anyway after what seemed like forever repairing all the torn seams, cutting loose threads and then pressing everything I was finally able to start quilting and that makes me very happy.
{funny}
I love watching the boys play. The surprise Christmas hit this year was a bucket of army men that Saint Nick cleverly thought to split up and dump into each boy's stocking. It's a WWII set so there are four countries represented (US, England, Germany and Japan) but there is always a hubbub over who gets to be the United States which technically belong to Henry. And no one ever wants to be Japan who are the only ones that depict men surrendering--which seems like an odd choice right? Wouldn't they have been the least likely to actually surrender? These army men are super sturdy which is great because finding the mangled pieces of our old drug store army men all over the house was not my favorite. Of course I'm still not allowed to throw them away as now they've been relegated to playing the part of war casualties.
The boys have been incorporating their "war men" into pretty much every aspect of their play. Wooden castle? Covered with army men. Train tracks? Nobody's chugging through this battle scene. Crafted styrofoam boats? It's Battle of the Atlantic time in the bathtub. Okay they probably weren't actually reenacting WWII sea battles but they were seeing how many army men it takes to sink a styrofoam boat.
Spoiler--styrofoam is really buoyant.
{real}
You may have seen John's Miley Cyrus hairdo from last week which was begging to be spiked up into a mohawk to spite his father for allowing the barber to give him such a ridiculous cut. Here's a tip, all natural hair gel is not the best thing for creating impressive children's hairstyles. Apparently they are lacking in some magical ingredient that actually cements the hair into gravity defying shapes. I'm betting it's the parabens.
Well, I let Aunt Kate take the clippers to him and now he's got official big boy hair which makes me want to cry and makes him want to puke. Of course in his case it may have been all the hairs he kept getting in his mouth and gagging on.......
Make sure to check over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for more, possibly less long-winded, capturing of contentment.