I used to be a t-shirt, now I'm a...

pair of PANTS!

Check it out...I learned how to make ratty old t-shirts into these super-easy, fully functional pants for Abner.

Here's a quick tutorial so you can make your own. Seriously...these are easy. You can do it!

Step one: Pick out a pair of pants that fit your child well and fold them in half as shown below.
Step two: Select an appropriately hideous t-shirt and fold it in half as shown below.
Step three: Place the pants on the outside edge of the t-shirt as shown below. Be sure the bottom hem of the pants line up with the bottom hem of the t-shirt.

Step four: Using the pants as a guide, cut out the pieces of the new pants.

IMPORTANT: Don't forget to leave a suitable buffer for a seam allowance as well as about 2 inches at the top for an elastic waistband.

You should now have two separate pant legs (as shown below).

Step five: Lay the pieces, right sides together, as shown below.
Step six: Sew up the two crotch seams (indicated with pins in the image below).

Step seven: Re-orient your fabric so it looks like an inside out pair of pants and sew up the inseam.

Depending on the size of pants you are trying to make and the size of t-shirt you started with, you may have had to cut into the sleeve to get the necessary length. If that's the case, just sew up the openings (as indicated with the pin below) before sewing in the waistband.

Step eight: Fold the top edge over twice and pin it in place to make a channel for an elastic waistband.
Step nine: Sew the channel in place by stitching along the bottom edge of the fold as well as about one millimeter from the top edge - this will prevent the elastic from twisting. Be sure to leave an opening to thread your elastic in.
Step ten: Once you've threaded the elastic in and secured the ends, close up the waistband channel.
Step eleven: Wait a minute...there is no "Step eleven" 'cause you're done! That's it! See...I told you it was easy.

More art for Abner's walls

When I was pregnant I kept a journal of my experiences. It was written as letters to "baby". One day I'll print it out to give to Abner, but in the meantime, I would like to find a way to remind myself of that special time. Of course I have pictures to remind me of how insanely huge I was, but no one wants to dwell on that aspect of pregnancy too much.

I discovered a fun little website a few weeks ago called Wordle that turned my journal into art. Below is the Wordle I created when I pasted the text from my journal into the site. I tweaked the colours to match Abner's room and played around with a few of the settings until I was happy with the results. I think it's an absolutely lovely way to remember my pregnancy story and it will look so cute in Abner's room!

P.S. If you look on the right below the word "dad" you'll see the word "ting". It's not a real word. When I first input the journal text, "get" came up as an absolutely huge word that dominated the cluster. I wasn't fond of how that looked so I did find and replace in WORD and eliminated "get" from the journal. Of course, that meant I also eliminated "get" from all instances of "getting", hence, "ting" appears in my Wordle.

P.P.S. TDSH even did a wordle of his entire PhD thesis...all 270 pages of it.

An artsy fartsy blog post

This past weekend was the Portobello West Christmas fair. Once again, I joined Miranda to help sell her wares to flocks of frantic Christmas shoppers. Overall the weekend was a great success and we had a blast chatting with our lovely neighbours, playing with random babies and drooling over some wonderful treats (and some not so wonderful burgers and hot dogs - yuck!)

One of the best things about helping out at a craft fair is the opportunity to discover some super-talented local artists...like Liz Clay, the amazing artist behind CiCi Art Factory. I fell in love with her work from the moment I watched it being unpacked. I'm thrilled to have picked up this little print for Abner's room! It's called "Who Who Owl" and is part of her Wit & Whimsy collection.

I hope to build up a bit of an art collection for Abner's room one day. It's a slow process, but an enjoyable one. So far, her room is a mix of art that I have created and a few pieces that TDSH picked up on his last trip to South Africa and a cross-stitch made by my grandma.

Abner is turning into a bit of an artist herself! Her daycare sends home a new piece of art every few days or so which we have dutifully stuck on the fridge. Most are obviously just scribbles at this point but occasionally they come up with a very sweet project for the kids to make for their parents.

In honour of Christmas, Abner came home with this little guy made out of her foot- and hand-prints! We probably don't want to have it up year-round in her bedroom, but I think it might be fun to have one frame set aside to feature her special art pieces. We can admire them for a while before either storing them as a keepsake or getting rid of them.

What really amazes me about this particular piece of art is not my daughter's amazing artistic talent, but the coordination that went into making these with 7 or 8 kids! It apparently took several days and not once did she come home with a spec of paint on her! I am in awe of daycare lady.