Goodbye Susan!!

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My cute little sister, who is not so little, is finally going abroad! She is going to go to Italy with UVU study abroad! We are soooooooo jealous. We have the travel bug so badly right now. (PS isn't this a cool picture? Yes. I took it!!)
I made her a little stash before she goes. I hope she doesn't see this post before I get this to her via snail mail.
A laundry bag. Always handy. She loves to decorate T-shirts, so maybe she can do something to spice up this bag. As for me, I like it plain.
I made this cute little zipper bag with waterproof lining. I originally got one from a friend when I had Madeline was born. It's handy for wet baby clothes, but I use it for everything including packing contact solution and things that leak. And isn't this fabric to die for? She will love it!
A necessity. A cute little luggage tag that matches the zipper bag. You can get the tutorial at the skip to my lou blog.

Then I had to make some puppets for our trip to Oregon today.
Felt paper doll, she has lots of outfits and different hair! It was so fun and so easy!

These are supposed to be the 5 little monkeys. haha! I am not talented in making things look like people/animals. can you tell? Well, they will work for a 2 year old!
This is what MJ did while I sewed all day! Painting bobble heads!! They were $2 at JoAnn's and so much fun!

New Dress for Madeline!

Since my girl is obsessed with dolls I thought it was high time her mama made her a doll dress. It should get a lot of use! I wasn't sure about using this fabric for a dress, but I love the colors. Don't you think it turned out well?

I bought a pattern (I know I know, I hate patterns, but I actually bought one this time!) called the village frock , which comes in size 2T -6T, so I will get a lot of use out of it.

Helen, do you recognize the red material??? (I took some of my mother-in-law's old shirts from her stash she was going to DI at Christmas... came in handy!)
You can tell the neckline was tricky, hopefully it comes out better next time. Next time I want to make it out of grey linen. I think that will be really cute and village frock-y.

I changed the sleeves about 4 times, until I came up with something I liked. This little fluted edge seemed to fit the material of the dress a little better.

Every girl needs a little Russian doll to go with her Russian doll dress! Good thing I had a little extra!

(PS does anybody know the name of this fabric? I bought it from Michael Levine's in LA, but I didn't look at the name or maker.)

PS> See those pillows in the background. Yup, made those this week too! And they're fold over in the back! ok ok, you twisted my arm, here's a real picture...

My flute concert

For those who don't know, I play the flute. I have not played my flute actively since high school, I play in church sometimes, but that doesn't count as active playing. I decided to start taking lessons here at Christmas, because honestly, what else do you do in Pocatello? I am LOVING it! I take lessons from the principal floutist in the Civic Symphony and we are the same age, she is tons of fun and Madeline loves her because, of course, her name is Molly, like Molly McIntyre, the American Girl doll...duh!

She suggested that I join the Pocatello Flute Choir, and so I talked to the lady in charge, Patricia George. She asked me what my music credentials were and I about started to laugh! Does high school and church count? But to my complete shock, she not only knows my high school band teacher, the notorious Mr. Dinkins, but flies out to Bowie High School (his new high school) to teach master classes for his flutes every 3 months or so. She knows him so well that she is going to his daughters Bat mitzvah and eats at his house regularly! "Have I entered the twilight zone?" is completely what I was thinking. How can a woman from Pocatello know my band teacher from South Carolina? So she let me join their flute choir.

After 12 years of not really playing Pat hits me with the first flute part on a 16 page baroque piece!!! I have been practicing like crazy this past month and Madeline has had to "suffer" watching much more TV than I usually allow.

Tonight was the concert and not only did I make it through all the music (Boismortier's Concerito, A Newfoundland Folktale, and The Sound of Music) but I also played a smashing duet with my teacher, Molly. You can watch it below. I have not played in a concert since 1998 and boy, it feels good. I feel just like our high school has won the championship football game (not that I cared in the least about my high school football team) but you know the feeling! I almost turned to Adam and said "Let's go to Denny's!" afterward. But better than that, my wonderful husband gave me a dozen white roses at the end, to top it all off. What a sweetie!

(sorry our camera only records in 30 second intervals so there is a lot of breaks in this video because I spliced all of the shorter videos together--which kind of makes me sound bad, but just imagine I sound perfect;))..and yes, I have bangs now.

The Mysterious Ticking Noise

This video was shown to me by my sister Susan, and I have to admit it makes me laugh. And it gets in your head... I think my favorite is Ron, whose yours?

Let's do the Hoe down throw down

Yes we learned the hoe-down throw down for family home evening tonight, you think that counts? (Don't tell Adam I told you he did this too!) hehe;)

Skeletons in the Closet

One of my best kept secrets is that I was the chairwoman of the college republicans at BYU. It's not a secret because I am not necessarily a republican, but because it reveals the true nature of the nerdy depths to which I have fallen in my life. And also because I hardly know anything about politics, which makes it even funnier. No really, I met a lot of great people and had a lot of fun while being in CR's at BYU, so I can't be too ashamed. But one of my most embarrassing stories comes from that time (actually many do, but anyway...). Adam thinks this story is priceless, and maybe it can't fully be explained over a blog, but I'll try.

When I was the CR president, I worked on a BYU presidential campaign for two girls, Rachel and Aubrey (or Audrey? Anyway, she was the granddaughter of Elder Perry). Me and about 15 other students all worked really hard on their campaign for weeks. I always felt like they were suspicious of my loyalty because I couldn't endorse them as candidates in the CR Club (those were just the rules, I didn't make them), and also I crushed one of their main ideas, which I don't think went over well, anyway, there was kind of a weird vibe there from day 1.

When the final day of the campaign arrived, the whole campaign team, went up on stage to hear the results...we lost! Of course we were all disappointed. We were all hugging and some were crying. In a completely awkward moment, I had meant to say "good job" or "you did your best" or something, anything like that, but instead I leaned in close and whispered... "Congratulations..."

Am I a total idiot? Congratulations for what? Losing?! "Congratulations for LOSING" is basically what I said, and not immediately catching my mistake (until years later) I pulled back and smiled and Rachel/Aubrey both pulled back and gave me this awkward half-grin with this "thanks?"/ "way to rub it in, jerk!" Look on their faces. And then what do you say? I never followed it up, I just walked away.

We have since all graduated and I have never spoken to them since, but I have relived this moment sooooooo many times! Gosh- why couldn't I have just said "good try" or "you guys should have won"? When I told Adam this story the first time, I think he was almost cried from laughing so hard, and every now and then when the moment is right we'll lean over and whisper in the other's ear... "Congratulations..."

Madeline and her dolls!

An inseperable union of a girl and her dolls. Madeline has always loved dolls, she got her first doll when she was 6 months old, and tried to give it her binki! See that Samantha girl she's holding? That was mine from when I was young. I gave it to her for Christmas and now she is hooked! She loves American girl dolls, and I love them too, so it's a perfect. She has all their names memorized and all their friends' names too. It'll be a good incentive for her too, since it takes so long to save up for a doll! We found out from a lady in our ward that my Samantha is an original American girl doll from West Germany, so I've been trying to take it away from Madeline to keep her in a little bit better condition, but it is so hard to take from her! She just loves her and how can I say no to that?