life and puppies

Feel free to take note of the sewing reference book open, as well as the iPad on top of it. I had to teach myself a few new skillz. The idea behind all of this? Well, I waned to buy Mollybear one of these:

But, at $159, and $199 with the cushion, I didn’t really feel like it. I mean, come on, it’s just a bunch of fabric, right? I’ll show Land of Nod a thing or two, I thought. They’ll come crawling to me, asking me to whip up new models for them. I seriously had delusions of a new career. Tee to the hee on me.

I bought this pattern from Etsy for about $7 with shipping. Score! Then I bought a boatload of super cheap pink fabric from Joann’s because Bear insisted on a pink tent and I wasn’t going to buy expensive fabric for my first go-round at this thing. The fabric for the main part of the tent cost me $30. I decided that to save money, and to offset the wow-factor of the hot pink, I’d use some corduroy aqua blue fabric that I already had for the top. And then I splurged on this super duper cute fabric for the cushion and the back pockets.

I mean, what? Could that get any cuter? At first Bear pretended she didn’t like it, but come on. She’s not fooling me. So, two weekends ago I finally dove into the project. About four hours in, I realized that I had cut my pieces all wrong. And I hadn’t even begun sewing yet. Last weekend, I started sewing. About an hour in, I realized that not only had I cut the fabric incorrectly, I hadn’t even cut enough of it. Although I had spent over four hours cutting out the pattern and then the fabric, I still hadn’t cut enough. Wonderful! My thoughts of a second career were starting to subside. When I reached hour six of sewing and recutting and resewing and recutting I realized that $200 for that Land of Nod tent was a steal!

Our dining room table still looks pretty much like the above picture. Yesterday I managed to buy one yard of the supposed five-plus yards of Velcro the project demands (it’s all Walgreens had and I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to get more). I still need to buy an S-hook and a few other things, and to sew the top. And the cushion. And figure out how to open the doors. I think I may have sewn them shut. And poor Bear. She keeps asking when her pink tent will be ready. In the meantime, AO has fastened a very nifty tent out of two chairs, some painters’ tape and a blanket. It didn’t cost us an additional dime and he was done with it in about two minutes. Though I did hear him complain once that the blanket fell down on his first attempt.

In the summer at Molly’s school, the classes walk over to the Goodman Pool and have a swimming lesson. They ask parents to volunteer to come with them because, as we learned today, it’s a bit of a chaotic process. Very un-Montessori. And super fun and impressive. The best part for me, though, was how excited she was to have us there. I know this probably sounds dumb, but I really wasn’t expecting that. She wanted me to be her partner on the walk there and back! And even though she generally refuses to hold my hand, she willingly held on tight the whole way. It was dreamy. It made me feel like the most important person on the planet. [And side note: holy cow is that pool nice!] Anyway, while the whole ordeal – getting the kids to the pool, in the pool, out of the pool, changed, back to school – took about one hundred hours for an under-thirty-minute lesson, I pretty much loved every minute of it. Happy summer!

One of several sad-looking patches in our backyard. And my shadow.

And then Molly doing something.

And a little bit of color. I’m hoping they last the week.