Spring celebrations

I finally found a picture worthy of being the new spring banner.

My wonderful grandma turned 90 last week and this is the cake she ordered for her celebrations.

Almost too pretty to eat but not quite ;-)

Short and sweet

Is complained about a sore throat this morning so I kept her home from school and we had a nice quiet day just her and me.

I had to get my laptop from work, just in case and then we went to get fresh cheese rolls for a second breakfast.
We ate them while watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I fetched S at 1 pm and then we've just lounged the whole afternoon. It's been great.

R gets home tonight, probably after bedtime. We've all missed him.

Bannermen

Warning: This post contains CAPS LOCK because I am just so frustrated!

I really should change my banner from a winter 12/13 one .. it's April for crying out loud.

But SEEING AS IT IS STILL ALMOST WINTER HERE!! I won't.

Today was the first day in weeks that I didn't have to scrape ice off the wind shield because IT WAS ACTUALLY ABOVE FREEZING for once.

If the rest of the week is the same I will consider a change.

Is it the weekend yet?

This has been a weird week - and it's only half over.

R flew to Stockholm early Monday morning and I took the girls to school and daycare like I usually do.
Monday nights Is plays the recorder and S has dance class in town. Normally Is goes home after her class and is home alone for about half an hour before R gets home. I arrive with S another 15 minutes or so later.

This Monday Is had to be home alone for a while longer since R was away.

I drove to town and parked the car in the check-in parking garage and we went to the dance studio. Sometimes I take a walk around the city blocks but this day I chose to sit outside the studio and read my book. Once S was done she changed and we headed back to the car and I started looking for my wallet so I could take out the credit card and pay the parking fee so we could get out.

I think you can tell where this is going.

The wallet was of course left at home and I had no ID, no cash and no cash/credit card.

I'm usually so good about making sure I have everything with me as I leave the house but I had taken the wallet out of my bag over the weekend and forgotten to put it back and when we left on Monday morning I was so focused on the girls not forgetting anything vital.

In the end I asked the father of S's dance friends who had parked next to us to help me out. He paid our fee (it was only $3) and I have to (HAVE TO) remember to bring cash on Monday so I can pay him back.

Tuesday I picked up Is from school and went over the evening plans with her, Pick S up from daycare, drive to the grocery store to buy dinner, go home, home work, shower, dinner, tv, bed.
Then we drove to the grocery store and was half way into the parking lot when I realised we had forgotten the first item on the list, pick S up from daycare!

So we had to swing back and fetch her.

Good thing we hadn't already started shopping.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful by comparison and I hope it continues that way. R will be home late on Friday night.

Is it Friday yet?

Perfect pouch

Today Isabel asked to make something and we settled on a zippered pouch. It turned out to be too advanced and I helped her a little with pretty much everything.

I used a pattern from Oh Fransson for a Perfect Zippered pouch and it turned out very well. She plans to use it when she goes on camp this summer but I think it will see use before that as a pencil case in school.

I think I will have to try and convince her to make tote bags before she starts to make anything more advanced. She wants too much too soon.

I did however set up my old Pfaff sewing machine on my sewing desk so I think I will cut up some pieces of fabric and let her try on that - maybe she can put together some charms for a doll's quilt or something ... we'll see.

Dressmaking part 1/?

I finished yet another dress for Sofia today before we headed off to celebrate Easter eve at my parents'.



The new Pinwheel pattern from Oliver + S looks like a dress with two flounces but is really a slip dress with one flounce layered with a tunic with another flounce.

I really want to try and make the tunic with two flounces but that's a project for another day.

This one is a bit of a mishmash fabric wise. The flounce on both dress and tunic is a poly cotton blend eyelet that I used to make a ruffle halter dress for Isabel last year for graduation.
The dress is a rather sheer cotton batiste in an off-white colour, too sheer to use on its own unless as nightwear.
The tunic is a white cotton sateen that I bought a huge length of a few months ago. I plan to make one or two Music Class blouses from it as well.

It's not as soft as the unbleached cotton sateen I used for a Class Picnic dress for Sofia.



That dress has been claimed as a nightie and the only thing I would have liked to do differently on it is the sleeves. They would do well to have been a few inches longer.
But she likes it.

New decor

For some reason we have a house filled with furniture from IKEA. It wasn't a conscious choice, it just sort of happened that way.

The only piece of furniture we own that isn't IKEA is our dining room table which we bought when we moved into our big flat in town in '98.

When we moved into our house we used it for a dining room table for a while before we did a huge switch in 2009 and put our kitchen table into storage and started using the dining table for every day meals.

We needed new chairs and ended up buying a set of 4 at a flea market. They have served us well, but they were old and scuffed and one was broken after it fell over. Rickard mended it but  it didn't look as nice any more.

So when I found a new black rug online in February I decided to get us some new chairs as well.

So on Wednesday with snow dumping all over me I went and got a new set of four chairs at a furniture store in town. Actually *not* IKEA this time.
I love how bright they are and I think they go well with our birch table even if that isn't painted white.

The rug was larger than I had thought - it's so hard imagining it just using the measurements I think - but it fit well anyway.