Review of Goals

2007 is almost over, time to move on to 2008! Let's review my goals from last year and see how I did.

~ Put Ms. Belinda on a crash diet. (she's my body double, in case you don't know) I weighed 142 pounds when I made her, and I've managed to maintain my weight at 125-130 for 18 months now. She can go on her diet now. :) -- I failed at this, and to boot, I've gained 16 pounds, averaging 140 now. :(

~ Sew some nice clothes for my boys, at least 1 dress shirt/pants for each one. It's hard finding nice church clothes that aren't made like crap! -- again, failure!

~ Sew at least 1 garment per month for myself, and keep it. -- Not quite. I made 7 items for myself, kept 6. However, the 6 I kept get worn a lot.

~ Do at least 1 charity project. -- I made preemie sleepers, made/donated an I-Spy quilt for a church raffle, and made 3 bags for a village raffle.


~ Get the window treatments done for the downstairs (living room, dining room, kitchen). -- HA! I'm pathetic, no progress at all.

~ Stay on top of gift sewing. -- did OK on this, could be better.

~ Keep my sewing room somewhat clean, i.e. stop letting everyone use it as a dumping ground (including myself). This might involve some re-organization. -- not so great. Sometimes I do ok, sometimes (most of the time) not. Got rid of a big desk, so I have more room now.

Man, I sucked, big time! Let's see if I can do better this next year. I've been thinking of ways to help implement goals and stay on track. I'll post my new goals and year-end wrap up later.

Happy Christmas!

We had a nice Christmas --
We've had lots of family time.

We've played games.

Calvin and I went to see The Nutcracker (per his request).

We ate lots of good food.

We visited with family.

Secret Project

Christmas is only 5 days away! ACK!!! Connor is over the moon about Thomas the Tank Engine. I've been trying to make a quilt for him:
This is as far as I am. Everthing is cut, and sitting there. I have to work on it in secret, and that's been pretty hard to do. It shouldn't take long to do, it's getting the time to do it! (I can't even let him see me working on this post, as he'll get obsessed with the photo) I may have to do some late night sewing, and I don't like to sew at night.

Cookies, Cookies, Cookies

Beth came over today, and we had a Christmas cookie baking marathon. Caleb is off on a Boy Scout campout, so it was just Calvin and Connor as our helpers. We made 5 different kinds, for a total of about 300 cookies.

The boys fought over using the mixer, but settled down after we threatened to kick them out of the kitchen. We might have threatened other things as well.

Connor was a pretty good helper.

The boys had fun with the sprinkles. Can you guess which trees Connor decorated?

It was really really hard to resist playing in the powdered sugar, and finally, he just gave in. It does look like snow, after all.

My half of the cookies. We made gingersnaps (11th recipe), spritz (trees, dogs, and wreaths), mexican wedding cakes, double chocolate kiss cookies (2nd recipe), and chocolate chip (yeah, all these neat holiday cookies, and David wants plain chocolate chip cookies).

Think these will last until Epiphany? Yeah, I don't either.

Orchestra Concert

Wow, a post every day this week!

I need to show some love to Caleb now, and last night he had his orchestra concert. He's been playing great, and is first chair for the cellos! Considering that he started playing a little over a year ago, he's done very well. I recorded 3 of the 5 songs they played. First, Sword Dance:



Sailor's Song (my favorite):


They closed with Bow-town Blues. I have heard and watched him practice constantly, but he purposely did not let me see the cellos twirl their instruments. He wanted it to be a surprise:


Regarding school/student productions, the Yarn Harlot wrote a lovely piece about them yesterday. Do go and read it. Right now I need to get in the shower and get over to Calvin's winter concert this morning. Hopefully I won't have the bootlicking kid today.

By the way -- I just LOVED his teacher's jacket, as did my friend Beth. We were considering if we could roll her for it. :) It looked dynamite with her hair.

The Last Meet

Last night, Calvin had his last gymnastics meet of the year. He did well, winning 4 medals. Check it out - he is his normal silly self during gymnastics sometimes!

Ok, on to what the grandparents and friends really want: the videos! You know the drill:

His floor routine, earning a score of 9.35, and second place:


Next, his beam routine, earning a score of 9.5, and first place (and a sloppy dismount, IMO):


Third, his bar routine, earning a score of 8.8. He had some trouble, but you can sure get an idea of how strong he is:


Lastly, his vault, placing first with a score of 9.85:


He won the gold All Around medal with a total score of 37.50. Four medals! He had a good time, though I am glad the meets are over for this year. They make a long long day for him (he needs to be there at 5:30 for stretching and warm-ups [which means eating supper at 4:30], march-in starts at 6:25, and the meet usually ends around 8:15). Of course, it's exciting, so bedtime doesn't really happen when it should, and it's a struggle getting up the next morning.



His total medal count this season: 16, plus one trophy!
We'll find out on Monday if he moves up to the next level.

Job Finished

I finished that job for the Suzuki Academy. Over the course of 3-4 weeks, I went to two practices to do fittings/mark hems, hemmed 8 black palazzo pant jumpsuits, removed sleeves from 3 of them, altered 3 burgundy boy's vests, hemmed 10 burgundy dresses, hemmed the sleeves on 1 dress, and made one new uniform from scratch (I had a uniform to copy, and traced it off and made it a size larger).

Phew! Actually, I really enjoyed this job. Normally I don't like doing alterations, but this was really nice. I could just go in my sewing room and do 1 hem, or do 6, depending on the time I had. The academy was very happy with my work, and would like me to do it again next year. Yay!

Now I really need to get going on some Christmas sewing....

Snow Day

(big fluffy snowflakes across the street)

No school today! We found out when Caleb started out to school and a friend told him it was cancelled. That's usually what happens, as it never occurs to us to check (it's not much snow! I think there is a bad ice storm coming later). Anyway, the kids are outside playing in it now, and they'll eat the lunches I had already packed at the kitchen table. :) (hot potato soup! yum!)

Baby Socks

I finished these baby socks for a friend (had started them here in september). The baby shower was on Saturday, and baby is due mid-January. I used a leftover yarn that I can't remember the name of, but I'm pretty sure it's cotton. These will be perfect for spring/summer. It's probably hard to tell, but the foot is about 4.5" long.

If you have a Ravelry account, you can see my project page here. Otherwise, the details are that I used the On Your Toes sock pattern by Ann Budd, from the Summer 2007 IK magazine. Unknown yarn, size 1 bamboo needles, 40st count for foot and calf. Very fast socks, and I'm happy with the pattern, except for the sewn bind off at the top. Any other sock-knitters have a better method?