Summer Day and Sun!

Before I begin...I just found out some sad news as I was assembling this blog update. Could you all keep our Wish child, Noah, and his beautiful family in your prayers. Noah went to be with Jesus today after a three year battle with many health concerns....he and his family are such an inspiration of life and love and family. Fly... Noah into the arms of Jesus and be free and whole and healthy, sweet boy!!! http://noahgrantjohn.blogspot.com/2009/07/wings.html

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Wow...its been a week or so since I updated! We've been doing all kinds of summer fun things...you know...swimming and going to the beach and boardwalk. A few birthday parties thrown in....such fun!!!

The girls are big enough now to try out this bike pathway....Sarah and I walked and Devon and Brook rode around on their bikes. It was a bit warm and muggy so we stopped after 2 miles....

Sarah wore on of her tees for Disney!

I thought I would show you its not all fun and games!!! I got some pics of the girls doing some chores...setting the table and helping out with dinner.....

Oh and our garden is growing!!! Look at those cucumbers!!!



And some yummy tomatoes!!!

More help....there's the water glasses...

And plates...

And silverware....

Meanwhile...dad is grilling yummy london broil...

And we had some delicious corn and mashed potatoes!!! Dig in everyone!!!

OK the look on Brooklyn's face means only one thing....thunderstorm is on its way! It was rumbling in the distance during dinner. We kept reassuring her it would fine.....

and a few moments later....here she was.....

hahahahahaha !!!!!

And now onto the latest sewing update. My friend Marlo (MINNIE 2) is meeting up with us in Disney. She was talking about different outfits to make and mentioned finding some zebra and cheeta fabric at Walmart. I had given up finding both of those. She offered to get me some and sent it off to me!!! Wha hoooo! Thanks Marlo! So I decided to make a tee and twirl skirt with appliques I had gotten. The appliques are pretty big (5x7) so my idea of doing a stripwork skirt wouldnt exactly work. What I decided to do was double the width of each strip to 8" and then add a layer underneath. The appliques took 5 days to do. Some of the designs take hours and entail 40-45 thread changes and steps!!!! By day 4, I told my hubby that if someone wants me to make these for them, my starting price would be $500. Seriously.

Any takers??? LOL!

Once I was done with the appliques, I put everything together to make the first twirl skirt. I wasn't really using a pattern since its just panels and strips. I did add some Euro ruffles and rick-rac and one hidden mickey button! I put bias tape on the hem of the panels and a zebra ruffle on the bottom of the white underskirt. The waistband is simply elastic gathers. I still need to sew the second skirt for Brooklyn. I am considering doing a sew-along tutorial...I would take pics as I do it and explain what I am doing! I will post it on the blog...probably in a week or two!

Enough explaining...here are many many Devon's! She didn't want to take this off!!!!

So how many of you know if this is Chip or Dale????? (hint...his nose is red...though it didnt show up red here...on the real thing is looks red)

Minnie has a compass in her hand!

So here is my tee (Daisy Duck) and Sarah's tee (Donald Duck) and Brooklyn's tee (Chip/Dale) and Devon's again. If Edmund joins us for our AK day, I have an AK Goofy for his shirt...hahahaha!

So I know many of you are following along and I know I promised some big announcement. It will be forthcoming!!!! Probably next week!!! So keep reading!!!

P. S.

Did you pick Dale? He has two teeth and a red nose!!!

Friends and Fun!!!

I can't believe we are half way through July already!!! Wow! Hope you have been enjoying your summer and this nice weather!!!

We just got back from a cute magic show in Cape May tonight. The magician was actually the same one who came to the campground when we were camping. Afterwards, we took a stroll down the Cape May Mall....it was fun and crowded! We even landed ice cream cones which were sooo messy but yummy!

OK who has a picture like this????

Here is Sarah up front at the Magician Show...she really wanted to get picked to help out with some tricks but I think he mostly picked young kiddos....sorry Sarah :( He was really entertaining and explained he didn't do magic but more illusions and slight-of-hand tricks....and it was really kid friendly!

I gave the girls money to throw in the fountain...they just put in these fountains and pretty brick walkways! (Well now its a year old...but it seems new). Edmund and I kept reminicing and saying remember this was here and that was there....lol...and when we were young....yada yada yada.

And look who we found...Hello Kitty and Elmo! Can you believe it?? Me neither! Brooklyn was very happy, Sarah felt too old but with some encouragement she agreed to a pic. Hmmmm...Devon? Well she just hid behind daddy as usual.....hahahahah!

It was a fun night!

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So what else have we been up to? Sarah had a friend over and we went to the boardwalk last week! Here we are at Mack's Pizza! It was yummy too!

Dig in everyone!!!

Everyone went on a few rides and we got a family pic too!

Brooklyn just washed her hands and put her wet hands all over my shirt....do I look like a paper towel??? hehehhe

Awww Sarah and her friend! They are so cute!

Edmund took pics while we were all on the bumper cars....it was so much fun!

Then we went to the arcade...and entered the skee ball tournament...it was really a party in there! We had some dessert and refreshments too!

The girls had a big sleep-over and I snuck in and took a pic while they were playing the next morning...I think they were doing some singing and dancing routine or something...hahaha...gotcha!

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A bunch of friends and I got together last week to meet Clifford the Big Red Dog at the library but somehow we mixed up the locations and he was actually at a different branch. Oh well... we will try another time. They did have a book sale instead...and we got a few books, of course. Then the plan was to meet at McDonald's for lunch and go back to my friend's house to swim. She had just had a baby a month or so ago....here he is with daddy...they are so precious at this age!

Here we are swimming...

The pool was great!!!

And at McDonald's: There were about 17 or 18 of us!!! It was funny cause we are all on Facebook together and I think we were all teachers/librarians/vice principals etc so I called it a Facebook School Meet! Here is my friend holding my other friend's baby!

Enjoying lunch! We took up the whole corner of Mc D's!


My girls!

My friend and her new daughter who is just adorable!

Hi little sweetie!

I made her some embroidered onesies....here is the first of five! I really like these! I did find out that I can't hoop anything smaller than 6/9 month size.

Thanks Karen for organizing and hosting a great get-together. It was great seeing everyone and the kids really enjoyed playing and swimming!!! (((hugs)))

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Another big project, now that I have gotten down the embroidering thing, was to make tees for our Disney Trip. I am going to Magic Kingdom with the girls and my friend (Hi Leanne!!!) and her girls. Since there will be seven of us, we decided to do group matching shirts. I made the Minnie Tees already...I posted them in an earlier blog. But we are having lunch that day at Crystal Palace. They have the Pooh characters there who walk around to the tables during your meal. We decided to do Pooh character tees! My friend (Hi Heather!) digitizes designs (here is her store....http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6005616 ) and she made a set of embroidery designs for us to wear. She does an outstanding job of setting up these designs so the embroidery machine can stitch them out for you. Here is my first one in the process of being made...

And here it is all finished. Its a cutie piglet!!!

Last year I had made "Pooh and Friends" dresses for the girls. The top was too small this year so I turned the dresses into skirts and then they can wear the tees with them. Please excuse Devon's less than happy face here. I took her away from playing with friends for a couple of quick pics and she was not happy about it....lol....bless her heart!

So over the course of the weekend, I stitched out the rest of the tees. Each design takes about 45 minutes to stitch plus you have to get it stablized, hoop it, cut fabric and change thread so I usually double the time, which makes it about 90 minutes per tee. I would really like the thank Heather again for the fabulous designs and how well they came out!

The girls are really getting excited about our Disney Trip. They keep asking about rides and what we are doing and the house we are staying at, and who will be there. It's actually going to be a family/friend reunion trip! I love to plan and make lists and organize things so pretty soon I will be including that kind of info here on the blog. I will also do a trip report after we get back...so you can see what actually happened...hahaha...the plan always gets "updated" during the trip! OK so have a great week...be back later!!! :)

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I would love to hear from any of you who have gone to Disney what your favorite memory is (or one of your favorites... I am sure you have many!) or your favorite meal/restaurant or your favorite attraction/park and why! Thanks for reading and posting if you can!!!