This Week

I've been busy.  We're all busy, so that's not an excuse, but as I've mentioned in the past, I am not doing a very good job of balancing it all.  I'm working on it.  I promise.

In any event, I have a lot of stuff to catch you all up on, and I have to sit down and carve out some time -- and upload some pictures -- and included in that, of course, is all our Halloween scoop!

But in the meantime, I wanted to pause, take a deep breath, and share CAM's costume.

Keep in mind that I made it without any plans or pattern.  On October 30.  When I should have been in bed.  Also, in related news:  I want a serger for Christmas, if you feel like shopping for me.  (Hint, hint.  Also a steamer.  My beloved steamer died a terrible death a few months ago.  We didn't buy a new one because it would have been "one more thing to move," but I miss it terribly.)

Okay, so who cares.  I know, I know.  I'm with you.  I still want the serger and steamer, though.  But I know that's not why you're here.  So, here's the scoop:

Tuesdays are baton days.  CAM and I go over to Bates for her lesson and about half the time we stop at Taco Bell/KFC for a yummy-unhealthy-but-so-good-and-not-to-be-undervalued-fast dinner on our way home.  This Tuesday was no exception, except that I had yet to sew a single stitch on our costumes.  So, after dinner the kids went promptly to bed.  (No, really.  Monday night had been a late one so they didn't even fight me on the early bedtime.  It's the small blessings, right?!)  Shortly after 7:00 pm I was able to start planning, cutting, and sewing.

By 8:30-ish I had the bodice cut and pinned and one of these ready (and also realized I had not purchased enough of the lace to cuff the sleeves.  Whoops.  Such are the perils of last-minute late-night sewing!  I will fix that this weekend.):

By 11, I had this:

Not bad for making it up as I went along, right?  I would totally change some stuff next time, but I don't think it's half bad!

Of course, I was wiiiide awake at 11 -- and I still had three costumes to make (albeit much, MUCH simpler ones).  But my alarm goes off at 5:20.  So I called it a night.  I'll write more about the other costumes in another post.

In the meantime, here's our little Merida. 

This was completely spontaneous.  I promise.

This one, on the other hand, was supposedly posed. 

I'm not exactly ready for the custom-costume business as a career.  In reality there are a million little things I'd change (like puffing out the elbow parts and fixing the collar -- which you can't really see here because the dress is twisted the way CAM is standing -- it matches the "real" one but I ran low on the lace and had to be less generous than I'd intended).  But I'm still pretty pleased, and even the best designers do test runs, right?  And best of all, now CAM has a new dress-up dress, too!

 --Jen

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