Sewing Fail

Does this ever happen to you?

Find inspiration for something cute on Pinterest. Think, "I HAVE to make this!" Click through to the tutorial. Super, super easy! Go to the store and buy fabric. Promise yourself you won't start til later in the week once you are caught up on _____. Pull out your scissors as soon as you get home, hoping to have a new shirt/skirt/dress to wear by the end of the afternoon.

And then.

Your sewing machine does crazy things like pucker the fabric, making it appear that your tension is WAY too tight, even though it is on the lowest setting, you have changed the needle and are indeed using the correct one, and re-threaded the top thread and the bobbin numerous times. With a normal cotton broadcloth - it's not like we're sewing taffeta here or something! You curse at the machine (in your head) and vow to move your "new treadmill" money into a "new sewing machine" account.

And then the puckering magically stops long enough for you to get a few stitches in. You look at the tutorial you found on Pinterest again to make sure you are doing the "ruffling/gathering" thing right. She makes it look so easy. "Now, sew two rows of basting stitches and gather!" She didn't mention that it might take 15 minutes, and that you will worry the whole time that you will break the thread because you are pulling SO HARD.

They you pin the "gathered fabric" to the waistband. You pat yourself on the back and even take a picture because this is the FIRST project you have ever pinned, because you are so incredibly lazy. But because you are actually pinning, the sewing angels must descend upon your project and make it turn out fabulously. You deserve it.

 

And then you sew it. And it just does. not. turn. out. Gold star for effort! But no gold star for getting other fabric stitched up in it accidentally. You rip out your work and try again, rolling your eyes and grumbling about how you knew pinning was a waste of time. You flip it inside out. It looks GREAT! Except that you didn't match the fabric up correctly that time, so the waistband is right-side-out and the rest of the skirt is inside-out.

You tear it out again and give up the idea of a different-colored waistband. A simple piece of elastic will do, you just need this skirt DONE, dang it! And then, your machine stops catching the bobbin thread again, and no amount of re-threading will fix it.

You come to the sad realization that you wasted your entire afternoon and got about 15 minutes worth of actual sewing done. And you still have to do that homework you ignored. You could cry, or eat too much chocolate, and you are thinking about how satisfying beating the sewing machine with a metal baseball bat would be right about now...

And then you see this Hey Girl meme.

 

And feel completely justified in your righteous anger. So glad he understands.

So, this happened to me yesterday.

7 Quick Takes - in which I reveal a SUPER BIG secret

1.  Okay, so if you are Facebook friends with me, you saw this the other day, and it wasn't really even a BIG SECRET before that. I just neglected to explicitly mention it here. ;) Supposedly August 3rd is the big day. If past history is an indicator, it will probably be more like August 10th with a forced eviction.

2. I find myself more worried about things going "differently" this time than I have before. You'd think by #4 I'd be a pro and anything that comes at me, I can handle... maybe? But as much as I'd love to go into labor spontaneously, since I've never done it, the thought of it kind of freaks me out! And the fact that I have pretty much NEVER had a *real* contraction until I'm in the hospital means that I know I'll be obsessing over every twinge. Oh, and the fact that my labors are fast & furious. I spent a lot of time agonizing over it with Andrew, too, and ended up being induced anyway. So I need to try to not stress over it and forget about the fact that my friend Martina delivered HER #4 in the front seat of her car. Cuz that will never happen to me!

Also, what in the world would I do with a baby girl!? (Not planning on finding out the gender til birth.)

3.

 

This was my favorite skirt. My blue skirt. I mentioned here that I wear it 6 or 7 days a week. It matches everything and is pretty much a substitute for jeans, since it's blue - if the shirt would match jeans, it would match this so-very-comfortable-and-forgiving skirt!... and, yeah. It got a giant tear in it, not on the seam, and a few other random little holes above it. I have NO idea how it happened, or when or where, I just noticed it when I took it off at night a few days ago, so now I'm obsessed with checking for tears in my clothing. I had been to the doctor's office and the store earlier that day, so hopefully it wasn't there then? I feel like it needs a funeral.

4. This is just a symptom of my larger problem. I need some clothes. I told myself that we would do no clothes-buying in February, and I would go on a spring shopping spree in March (both for me and the boys). I have my eye on some tops in super cute colors from Old Navy, and maybe a couple solid-colored knee-length jersey skirts for warmer days? I'm ALL about the daily uniform, and Hallie's post makes it look way cuter than "I have nothing to wear so I wear dark bottoms and a bright shirt every day."
(Side note, why are so many maternity tops SO super low? I usually wear a tank underneath, but it would be nice to have the option NOT to wear a tank without exposing way too much. Even a lot of the crew-necks sit too low for me.)

5. I just finished Little Women for the hundredth time last night. sigh. I know a lot of people don't like it, and think it's too sappy and the girls are too perfect, but it has always been one of my favorites - maybe because if you can see past the slightly loud moral message, they ARE real and relatable, I think. They aren't always happy with the hand they have been dealt, complain a lot, have tempers, argue with their husbands, get angry... but they are always trying to improve. I find myself relating to their struggles more than, oh, those of a girl who got picked to kill other people in a "game" in order to survive? :P

6. After some shenanigans at the grocery store today, I ordered some Hold-On Handles. I jokingly said I needed a leash, but this seems like a good compromise. I have a sweet, darling child who is totally absentminded and "hold on to the cart" means "hold on to the cart for 37 seconds and then get distracted by something delicious-looking", BUT he is a pretty good listener with constant reminders, and I think this being a tangible reminder rather than mom nagging will help. So I have high hopes for these.

7. No one is napping at our house today. That's cool, guys. It will be a fun party tonight that we're going to at 6, which means we won't be home til probably 9. Go ahead, just stay awake, and we can all melt down at the same time (I'll give them til 7?)

Time is Weird.

Today, we went back to our pre-holiday, pre-sickness routine. Just an ordinary morning, with no TV, no going anywhere. Just breakfast, playtime, books, "school", a few chores.

It was a good morning. A peaceful morning. But a slow morning.

Meanwhile, someone learned the art of climbing up on boxes.

Isn't it weird how some days seem to fly by? Afternoons fly. In general, time whizzes. It's February? Didn't we JUST have Christmas? Ash Wednesday is next week. How? I am already reaching my hand out to catch the first drops of spring. There is no more beautiful sight than sun streaming through the windows. We are hoping to be in a house by the summer - it's not set in stone, but the thought of having our own yard and my own little garden makes me giddy. A few more months of plugging along and hopefully it will become a reality.

The idea of this was to find the first letter of each word. Nate kept saying "g-g-grown-up drink!" Which is what we call anything in a can.

But sometimes, the day-to-day drags. Checking the clock and WOW, it's only 9:15... I dislike wanting to rush time. But sometimes, oh man, nap time is quite appealing.

I have this crazy thought that being able to spend some outside time every day would help on slow mornings. We could put on some jackets and run around for a little bit. There is something about being outside that makes time pass a little quicker. But on a 30* day, the thought of bundling everyone up and driving to the park is just a little exhausting. We could always go hang out on the deck, but the grass is greener in our own backyard that we don't have, I guess. (We do have a patch of grass in the front, but they are putting in Google Fiber and dug... the entire front yard up. A few weeks ago. Still a tunnel to China out there!)

I read a book last year called Fifteen Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Out of the House and Connect With Your Kids. It was good. Thought-provoking. Reasons to take your kids outside EVERY day. I am really feeling drawn towards trying something like that. I am becoming more and more of a firm believer in outdoor, unstructured play.

 

We are phasing out the morning nap, so this was post-lunch.

I love the routine of today. It's nice to be back into a normal, quiet morning without one of us having a fever, feeling like we're going to throw up, or being totally exhausted and not wanting to do anything. 

Also, I take a million pictures with my new phone and probably post too many of them on Facebook! Oh well.

What a rambling, slightly incoherent post. I just want to remember the sweetness of the day, and the feeling of "normal" again. :)

The Monday Review v. 2 - Pizza is my favorite food. ever.

What a week it has been in our house. When mom is sick, things are no fun. But I am slowly on the upswing. I would write blog posts in my head but didn't have the energy to actually type anything coherent. To be honest, there is NOT a lot I want to remember about last week, except the fact that I felt so awful so that I can appreciate good health when it is here! Amazing what you take for granted.

I decided to do a review of something we have had for dinner 3x in the past week, including tonight. It's not really a new product to us, but it deserves a blog post, I think.

See that buffet table in the top left corner? PILED HIGH with papers and kajunk for weeks and weeks now. I got it mostly cleaned off, finally, except for a few random things that belong upstairs. That's about the extent of "stuff I accomplished" recently.

Back to the pizza. We discovered this little box of deliciousness about a year ago, in the freezer section at Target. I am kind of a pizza purist - meaning, the sauce must be marinara and it really should only have meat & mozzarella, and maybe veggies, otherwise, it's not REALLY pizza. But I took the plunge here and I am so glad I did.

This stuff is AMAZING. The sauce is BBQ, and it has chicken, onions, cheese, and some spices. When Brian and I first tried it, we were hooked. Neither of us are the kind to gush over food incessantly, and we kind of gushed over this pizza. It's a little more spendy than some ($5-6 depending on the store), and it's not as filling as something like DiGiorno because the crust is thin, but so worth it. They also come in personal pan sizes now. In the picture, that's one of our regular dinner plates (which is stoneware from Target, and admittedly slightly bigger than a "standard" plate.) So, the pizza is not huge - I think 12". And it only takes 11 minutes to bake.

A few weeks ago, Brian surprised me with a date to the California Pizza Kitchen restaurant. We had to order the REAL BBQ chicken pizza, and it was even better than the frozen kind (obviously!). The crust was more of a hand-tossed/regular, not thin. So, so good.

This is probably something that can easily be recreated from scratch but we haven't tried it yet. Usually we keep one or two of these in the freezer for "crazy nights", but to be honest, they never last more than a week in there. I always seem to find an excuse not to cook when we have them on back-up. Oh, and Ben loves it! On a night like tonight, he has a piece and Nate just has yogurt and a banana (he doesn't really like pizza, sometimes I wonder if he's really my child.)

Check out the linky party here at The Champ Life - thanks, Andrea, for hosting!

Now I'm off to write a paper on epidemiology for my medical sociology class that I've been putting off and that's due in 3 hours, hooray! My instructions say "pick one of the listed health problems" (in another place it uses the word "disease"), and pregnancy is an option. Funny disease there... I think I'm going to write about that since that's what I have the most experience with (over lung cancer, HIV, obesity...)

The Monday Review v. 1 - Chocolate, mmm.

So Andrea @ The Champ Life does Monday reviews of products she has tried and loved (or not loved), and I thought it would be fun to do a review of a product I love! She usually reviews beauty products, and I... don't buy many of those lately. (I am planning a trip in my head to Sephora but, hasn't happened yet.) So I thought, I like food... I'll review a food product! I've seen a lot of bloggers try a recipe to review, but I haven't been cooking a lot lately, and besides, wouldn't it be fun to review a prepackaged processed product that probably isn't very good for you? Okay.

These are a new product that our grocery store is carrying. Actually, this is Brian's department. He went to a General Merchandise show for the company last year, where all the vendors peddle their new products, and ordered a bunch of these at the show (they get case discounts if they order them there.) He also brought home a BUNCH of samples and random stuff from the show (for his wife, of course!) which included a package of these. I love chocolate and caramel, so, perfect for me. I devoured them. This was several months ago. The other night we stopped by the store and they were stocked on the endcap. I got very excited and bought a box. Impulse shopper I am!

One package has 120 calories, and usually 6 little pieces (I had already eaten one before I took the picture.) There are 6 packages in a box. No, I'm not doing Weight Watchers, BUT I like the fact that they are portioned out and I feel guilty if I open a second package. Usually. Unlike the Milano cookies where they are all just stuffed into one bag and you could mindlessly consume the entire bag in one sitting (never done that. I just mean, you PROBABLY could...)

These are good. Quite delicious. Are they the best chocolate you will ever eat? No. Did I eat a whole package for breakfast? Yes. They are KIND of like Rolos but not as rich. If you like candy bars like I do, I would rate them a 7 on a 1-10 scale. Some people don't like candy bars and prefer richer, fancier chocolate (Ghirardelli or Godiva or something like that). If that's you, you probably won't care for these.

They are not 100% natural or anything close, but they are pretty low in sugar for candy (9g) and high in fiber (6g). The main sweetener is sugar, but they do have a tiny bit of sucralose, which I DON'T like, but I really could not taste it at all (and usually I can tell immediately and it ruins the food for me). They are good for if you are counting calories and struggle with impulse control. They are 3 WW points - I don't do WW, when I am trying to lose weight I use My Fitness Pal, but I'm pretty sure 3 points is not terrible for a dessert. And you could just eat one at a time instead of the whole package. If you were self-disciplined.

I also like that they look like something that could be considered "bon bons." So I can sit on the couch and eat them in front of the laptop and feel like I'm living a real life of luxury. When Brian calls and asks what I'm up to... "eating bon bons while the kids nap." yeah!

In short - I like them. :)

Check out the linky party here. I am kind of fascinated by her review today because my hairdresser suggested I try [that product] and I haven't yet.