How to Be Awesome at Quarantine with Kids Part 3

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

Previously, we talked about eight ingredients that we can use to help fill our days while we are social distancing at home.  Here are some specific activities for most of those categories to help get you started.  I tried to find easy, no or low prep options that you can do with whatever supplies you have at home.

Academics

• Flash Cards
• Sudoku
• Crossword Puzzles
• Workbooks
• Rhyming/Matching/Opposites Games
• Board Games like Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Solitare, Scrabble, etc.  My kids especially love the Richard Scary Busytown Game.

• Pick an animal, sport, historical figure, country, etc. that they are interested in and research it together
• Spelling Games
• Keep a Journal or Video Diary
• If you have a chalkboard, write spelling words or letters on there and let your child "paint" them off with a paintbrush and water.

Reading

As I mentioned before, reading with your child or setting aside time for them to read independently is probably the most important thing you could do during these next few weeks.  You can find free audiobooks on podcast apps or rent them from your library through Libby or Hoopla if available.  There are also some on Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube.  See my last post for some recommendations.

Gross Motor

• Masking/Painter's tape works well on hard floors.  Make shapes or lines and have them try to walk along the tape without "falling" off.
• Tape crepe paper streamers at angles through a hallway and have kids bob and weave their way through the "laser field."
• Simple songs like the Hokey Pokey or Father Abraham can get kids moving.  Or put on some music and have a dance party!
• Obstacle courses can be made indoor or outside.  Masking tape, pillows, and pool noodles can be used in surprising ways to create obstacles inside!
• "Heavy Work" chores can be a surprising source of gross motor activities.  Have small children pull all the cushions off the couch and help you vacuum it, then replace the cushions.  Help (and supervise) them climb on a step stool to dust the top of a shelf or table.  For older kids, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, etc. double as housework and gross motor!

Fine Motor for Young Children

• Have children paint some sticks from your yard and then when they dry, tie some ribbons on them.  Put them in a vase for a colorful centerpiece.
• Put different kinds of paper, TP tubes, ribbon, etc. in a box with a pair of scissors and let them practice cutting!  (Stay close and make sure to supervise this one!)
• Put sticker dots (or just draw them) on a page and have your child connect the dots with a pencil, crayon, or marker.  
• Lacing cards are available to print online, or you might have some from Target.
• Give them strips of fabric or ribbon to thread through the holes of a laundry basket, chain link fence, chicken wire, or anything else with holes big enough.  
• Playdough!  Have them roll snakes and then cut them with scissors, roll different size balls, make shapes or letters, etc.
• I have a whole Pinterest board full of more great ideas for fine motor activities here.
• Coloring books and mazes like this one are a hit with my four year old

• Both of my kids have really enjoyed these foam mosaic craft kits

Fine Motor for Older Children

• Rainbow looms and weaving looms are great for more advanced fine motor practice.

• Paracord bracelets, macrame, and friendship bracelets

• Simple cross stitch or sewing projects

• Adult coloring books or printable pages

• Spirographs

• Finger knitting

Art

• The more open ended the art, the better.  Put a bunch of supplies on the table and see where they go with it.
• Mirror painting or bathtub painting are fun alternatives to the usual.
• Magazine collages
• Stamps, foam stickers, or stencils
• Directed drawing activities give step by step instructions.  Do one with your child and hang them up together when you finish!
• Watercolor pencils are a fun and less messy way to paint.  You draw with them like regular colored pencils and then paint over them with water.  Or dip them in water and see how different they write!

• Kwik Stix are tempera paint sticks that make painting less messy and easier for young children to control.

Music

This one is easy to incorporate into other activities simultaneously.  

• Play classical music during art time or while coloring and knitting.  There are plenty of playlists on Pandora, Spotify, or YouTube.
• Play upbeat music for a dance party or while doing an obstacle course.
• Play name that tune with Disney songs or whatever your family listens to.
• Let your kids do their own cover of their favorite song and make a video.  
• Pull out some pots and pans, your old recorder, or whatever else you can turn into instruments and have a jam session.

Sensory

This wasn't one of my eight categories but it's worth listing because a lot of food items typically used for sensory boxes aren't available right now.  So here is a list of common sensory box fillers that aren't food.  I'm not saying go buy any of this specifically, but maybe it will give you new ideas. (Use caution and supervise young children to prevent eating or choking, of course.)

• Shredded paper (even better if you have a shredder and they can watch you make it)
• Marbles
• Bingo Dots
• Pompoms
• Buttons
• Flower petals or other nature items from your yard
• Cotton Balls
• Cut Up Straws (let them cut up the straws first!)
• Easter Grass
• Cut Up Foam
• Bird Seed
• Fake Snow
• Glass Gems (used as vase fillers in hobby stores and Dollar Tree)
• Aquarium Rocks
• Water Beads
• Soapy Water
• Poker Chips
• Rainbow Loom Bands
• Yarn, Ribbon, and Fabric Strips
• Feathers
• Beads

Housework

I know, I know.  Sometimes it's more work to get them to "help" than to just do the work itself.  Think of it more as an activity than actually helping. I'm pretty sure if you have older kids, you know what they can do, but here are some ideas for young children.

• Wash doorknobs and baseboards with baby wipes.
• Sweep with a small broom
• Dust with a feather duster or a dry washcloth
• Wipe down bathroom counters with a baby wipe
• Put toys on shelves
• Fold washcloths and match socks
• Set the table with help
• Wipe the table before or after a meal
• Put bib/pj's/clothes in hamper

I hope this gives you some ideas to get you started!  Please don't see this is as a list to work through from beginning to end.  I am just throwing out a whole bunch of ideas so that hopefully a few of them click with someone.

Next post, I will describe my themes for our "Spring Break Quarantine Camp."

How to Be Awesome at Making Unpaper Towels

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience.

I've seen this idea floating around Pinterest for a while, and it's always been on my "Maybe Do List."  They are paper towels that you don't have to keep buying!  All the convenience of having something you can grab off a roll in a hurry, but without all the waste of paper or money!   Sounds great!

I looked at just buying some, and there are some cute ones on Etsy, but they were pretty pricey, and rightly so for all the work it takes, but just not something I wanted to spend money on.  For a while, we just mainly used dish towels, because I have approximately seventy-three of them, and they work just as well.  And that's fine, but that means that my towel drawer is always jammed full, I never have enough places to hang towels, and it's still not as convenient as just tearing something off a roll.  Plus, it would be super cute to have a roll of unpaper towels that matched my kitchen colors!  Let's just be honest here.  That was the selling point.

Ok, so here's my walk-through on making unpaper towels.  For a much more professional and easy to follow tutorial, go to this blog, which is what I used.

Step 1:  Find your Fabric

You will need two yards of regular cotton fabric and two yards of terry cloth.  My kitchen colors are black and red, so I was excited to find two yards of an awesome black and red material in my stash!  I think I got it on sale at a craft store.

Finding the terry cloth was a little harder.  I really wanted black because it went really well with my colors, but also because I figured it would hide stains and messes the best.  This proved easier said than found, and I ended up ordering it online.

Step 2:  Prepare your Fabric

You have to wash and dry your fabrics, especially your terry cloth, or this will all end in disaster.

Trust. Me.

Step 3:  Assemble Your Supplies

In addition to your fabrics, you will also need scissors and/or a rotary cutter and mat (not necessary but very handy), a ruler or template for your squares, thread to match your fabric, and something to sew with.  (The tutorial I used just said to hand sew them, but I used my machine.)

     

You will also need snaps.  That's what makes these unpaper towels so cool.  They snap together to form a roll!  I thought about using velcro because it would be cheaper and easier, but it would be a mess in the washer/dryer and would probably ruin your terry cloth.  So snaps it is.  I went ahead and got a big pack of different colors so I'll have options for future projects.  You'll need something to put the snaps on with, too.  I got my stuff online.

     

Step 4:  Cut Your Fabric

If you've ever read my series about making my quilt, you know that I am the certified worst at cutting fabric.  Like, I have an actual certificate of worstness.

I'm terrible.

Anyway, so this was difficult for me.  I decided early on that the super easy "use a 12 inch square to draw on your fabric" idea in the tutorial was not ok.  I can't even remember why.  Maybe I thought it would mess up my fabric, or maybe I was afraid I wouldn't be able to see it well.  For whatever reason, though, I decided that I was going to very carefully measure each 12 inch square with a ruler and cut it with my rotary cutter.  

This was not at all easy.  The fabric kept moving, and I was on the floor so I was crawling all around trying to cut it from different angles.  I tried folding it so I could cut out several at once, but I couldn't ever get it just right, and it was taking forever, so finally I just gave up and cut out fifteen squares individually.  

All of this took about two hours.  I'm sure there is a better, much faster way, but like I said.  I'm terrible.

Then I had to cut out the terry cloth, which took another bajillion hours, and made a huge mess, because that stuff sheds like a tiny black dog and makes it look like your house is infested with really lazy ants.

Step 5:  Sew Them Together

The sewing part isn't hard at all.  Just sew one square of fabric to one square of terry cloth, right sides together, and leave a 4 inch gap so you can turn it right side out.  Then sew around the whole thing again.

You will probably forget to leave that gap at least once, so have the seam ripper handy.

Since there were fifteen unpaper towels, this just took forever.  I would get three or four done on a good day, and then I'd get busy and put everything away for a week before taking it all out again.  

My kingdom for a sound-proof crafting room.

Step 6:  Add Snaps

I was terrified of this part.  I was convinced it would be super hard and I would make a mess of it.

Much to my surprise, it was actually really easy!  You just stab the sharp end through the back of the fabric and then put the other end over it, pinch really hard with the special pliers, and that's it!  It's like magic!  They said to make a hole in the fabric first with the awl in the kit, but I only did that once and decided it was more trouble than it was worth.  The snaps are plenty sharp enough to go through terry cloth.

I did have a little trouble lining them up, and I ended up doing better just eyeballing it instead of trying to measure.  I just kept telling myself it didn't have to be perfect.  These are just for me, and they will be all rolled up, so no one will  know if they are a little imperfect.

You can barely see the black snaps in the corners.

Step 7:  Make Your Center

You need something at the core of your roll of unpaper towels, or it won't come off the dispenser easily.  (Ask me how I know.)  You can use a cardboard tube from an empty paper towel roll, or for something more permanent, you can get a piece of PVC pipe.  Eventually I might get Brian to make me a PVC one, but for now, I just used a leftover cardboard tube and poked the snaps right through without a problem.

Here's the finished product!

As a whole, I give this project a C+.  It took just really forever to do from start to finish.  Like, to the point where I kept giving up and putting it away for months at a time, and then coming back and trying it again and then giving up again in a horrible cycle for an entire year.  In the end, it took a motivational seminar to give me the resolve I needed to suck it up and finish these stupid things.  Also, because I am (see certificate above) terrible at the measuring and cutting aspect of this, the pieces don't line up perfectly when you snap them together, which bothers me as a perfectionist.

Oh, and I made way too many.  If you decide to make these, start with like, ten.  Or maybe like, five.  See how it goes first before committing to so many.

So the moral of the story is, if you find yourself wanting to make something like this, BUY THEM OFF ETSY, or stick some snaps on your dish towels and save yourself literally a year of having this project hanging over your head.

But, yay unpaper towels!

Random Pinterest Awesomeness

Here are some things I found on Pinterest that either save money, help me organize, or save time.  It's kind of a random assortment, but it's stuff I've been wanting to share, so here you go.

1)  Make Your Own Foaming Handsoap

This is an awesome trick to learn.  Basically, the only thing special about foaming handsoap is the pump.  Inside, it's just diluted soap.  So you can refill the bottles you have or go buy one at the Dollar Tree and then just put in 1 part Castille soap or dish soap and 3 parts water.  I put a couple of drops of tea tree essential oil in there, too, for disinfecting.

2)  Dry Erase Menu Board

This was one of my first Pinterest projects ever, and I still use it.  Just get a cheap frame, put a piece of scrapbook paper or whatever else goes with your decoration in the frame, and use the glass as a whiteboard.  I started off using it as a memo board like in the picture, but now I use it as a weekly menu board so Brian and anyone coming over can see what's for dinner!

3)  Sticky Note Goal List

This is a cool idea, and very cheap to make.  It's just boxes drawn on a piece of cardstock that you can use to put goals or a check list or phone numbers or whatever.  It's really cute, and I added the checkmarks underneath so that when I finished something, I had a bigger sense of accomplishment.

4)  Italian Dressing Mix

I've made other mixes and condiments and talked about them before, but this was a new one.  It's powdered Italian dressing mix, that you can either add oil and a few other ingredients to if you want to actually make the dressing or, more likely, use as a seasoning blend for chicken in the crock pot or in any recipe that calls for dry Italian dressing mix.  Works great!

5)  Homemade Deoderizing Disks

This is a super easy way to make little cubes of baking soda that you can use in your drains, diaper pails, or any other place you need odor control.  You basically just make a paste of water and baking soda, as thick as possible, and then put it in ice cube trays or molds and leave it until it's completely dried out.  Then you put the cubes in a jar or bag and use them as needed.  They're awesome!

6)  Bib Storage

The original pin said to put a 3M hook on the back of the high chair to store bibs, but that only held a few, so we tied a piece of cord across the back and it holds all of them!  Very convenient!

7)  Plate Holders for Picture Albums

This is one of my favorite Pinterest ideas ever.  I love my Shutterfly albums, and this is a way I can display them where people can see them instead of on a shelf somewhere out of sight!  I even found a couple of multi-level ones at a flea market recently for just a few dollars!

8)  DIY Car Organizer

9)  Plastic Hanger Chip Clips

This is one of those "duh" ideas that I'm sad I didn't think of.  We never had enough clips for bags of chips, pretzels, or whatever else, but I refused to go pay actual money for something so simple.  Now, I just get Brian to cut up a couple of cheap Walmart skirt hangers and we have all the chip clips we need!

10) Orange Candle

This idea does not save me money or help me organize in any way, but it is super cool.  It took a couple of tries to get it right, but if you peel a clementine orange with enough of the white part sticking up in the middle and add just a little bit of olive oil, it really will burn like a candle for quite a while.  Very neat.


Anyway, this was just a random list of things I've been wanting to talk about but haven't found a great place to put them yet.  Pinterest is a never ending wealth of ideas, so I'm sure there will be more soon!

How to Be Awesome at Sewing: A Reusable Sandwich Wrap

I was bored this week, so I decided to go through my "Stuff to Try" Pinterest board and find a new project.

I found three.

Million.

I did this one first, because I was able to get all the supplies for it easily.  The others, not so much.

Brian takes his lunch to work every day, so I thought it would be awesome if he had a reusable sandwich wrap.  It would save some money on plastic wrap and it would be an easy project.

I went through my box of fabrics and found a small piece of green fabric with leaves on it that I thought he would like.  I had to drive a million miles to the nearest Hancock's Fabrics to get green ripstop nylon, thread, and beige Velcro.  That's all the supplies you need, though!

(And yes, I realize that the greens don't really match well.  I'm colorblind.  Stop making fun of a disabled person.)

Just cut a 12 inch square of fabric and nylon, and a 3 inch piece of Velcro.

You want to sew your Velcro on first, so pin one piece on the corner of the fabric and one piece on the corner of the nylon.  I didn't pay attention to which side to do where, but when I do another one, I will put the rough Velcro piece on the nylon so it will be the one on top.  That just seems correct to me.

Using your machine, sew around all four sides of each piece of Velcro.  Then, as above, put the two pieces of material right sides together and sew around all four sides.  Just leave a gap in one side so you can turn it right side out.

Oh, and clip your corners before you turn it out.  I always forget that part.

Once you turn it right side out, sew around the edge again to make a nice decorative seam that also reinforces it.

That's it!  That's all there is to it!  It's just a square!  You just set your sandwich in the middle,

fold the two non-Velcro sides over it,

and then Velcro it together!

Tada!

Brian tried it out and said that it worked great.  I was a little worried that the seal wouldn't be airtight enough and the bread would get stale, but he said it was fine.  The bonus is that this doubles as a place mat which is great since he usually eats at a park or in the car, and the nylon is waterproof, so you can just wipe it down with a damp cloth.  You can also throw it in the washing machine if it gets too dirty.

Yay for awesome easy projects!  I think I'm going to make some more of these.  They would be great gifts, especially with Back to School around the corner!

How to Be Awesome at Making Tutus

I do not consider myself an overly girly girl.  I mean, I like to be feminine and whatever, but I don't really like the color pink or super high heels or gender stereotyping in general.  Cricket's nursery colors are yellow and blue, and most of her toys are gender neutral.

However.

I cannot resist the fluff and puff of a tutu on a baby.  I just cannot resist it.

I spent a lot of time drooling over tutus at the baby stores, but I never bought one because they were so expensive!  I mean, it's just tulle and elastic, and it's tiny!  Why does it have to cost $20?

So I decided to make one.

I got a pattern from the fabric store, because I'm type-A.

You don't really need a pattern, though, unless you just really want one.  You're basically just cutting rectangles of tulle.  A bunch of them.  I think for the 6 month size, you need about 75 or so strips.  I prefer using the tulle that you buy from the bolts, even though it means a little more work, because it's a little heavier to me, and it makes a fuller tutu.  I've done it with the tulle on the spools though, and it was fine.  Definitely easier.

The first one I made was for Halloween.

Cricket wore it to the pumpkin patch last year, and it turned out exactly like I wanted it to.  I was thrilled!

I made that one using a circle of elastic that I sewed together.  I used black and orange tulle, and alternated, two of each color at a time.  I folded the strips of tulle in half, slid the loop under the elastic, and then pulled the "tails" of tulle through the loop.  Over and over and over and over.  You can make one tutu in about the time it takes to watch a movie.  So easy and so cute!

The next one I made was for Christmas.

I made this one a little differently.  I used a white crocheted baby headband, but you could use any color.

For this one, I just pulled the strips of tulle through the holes of the headband (which was actually the waistband) and tied them.  I didn't like this style as well, because it wasn't as full, and the colors were harder to see.  I did like that you could tie ribbons on the band as well, though.  That was really cute, and it still turned out fine.  I just prefer the other style better.

So for her birthday, I went back to the first style.

Photography by Hannah Taylor

Isn't it awesome?!  I just loved all the bright colors.  In fact, you might remember that I used that same tulle for a lot of the decorations for her birthday party.

I'm not sure what kind of tutu I'll do next.  Now that she's older and more aware of her surroundings, she isn't always as open to wearing a big, fluffy, tickly skirt.  Still, there's just something about seeing a baby floating in a sea of tulle that just screams adorable to me.  

How to Be Awesome at Making a Doll

I went to a craft store the other day to look at their clearance section because I heard there were some cool things there.  Among other things, I got a Make Your Own Doll kit. 

You know how I love kits. 

This was another, "fun happy joy easy" kit, where everything was printed on the material, and all you had to do was cut it out and the thing practically sewed itself together!  BLAM!  Instant awesome doll.

It was $4.48 on clearance, which I figured was cheaper than I could buy a decent doll, so I thought I'd give it a try.  And it came with material to make a reversible dress and two hair ribbons. Awesome!  (The kit didn't include stuffing, but I had some left over from some project a while back, so I figured I could use that.)

I cut out all the pieces while I was watching TV, and yeah, that was pretty easy. 

Am I the only one reminded of a crime scene?

Putting the doll together wasn't difficult at all.  Just sew right sides together and leave a hole in the middle for stuffing.  I can do that.

Try not to concentrate on the dead eyes.

Stuffing it wasn't hard either.  The stuffing I had was actually quilt batting, but not from this last quilt.  From a different one.  Anyway, so I had to tear it up to make it fluffy stuffing.  It was fun, and it made me feel like I was back in Colonial days, carding wool from the sheep!

Pictured: Polyester Sheep

Then came the hard part.  The dress turned out to be way more difficult that the doll, which doesn't make sense to me, but it was.  First of all, the directions were very vague, and I had trouble figuring out what they were talking about.  Not a lot of pictures to help either.

I finally got the inside and outside of the dress pieced together separately and sewn on the sides of each.  Then I had to sew the two sides together.  Which I did.

Inside out.

The end result was something that only a deformed alien baby doll could have worn.  One without a head.

So I got out my seam ripper and took out all the seams.  By the time I was finished, I was covered in little tiny pieces of thread and not in a very good mood.

I then re-pieced the inside and outside together, right side out this time, and managed to sew a dress that a human baby doll could wear.

Mostly human

One problem I had was that the dress pieces weren't all the same size when I cut them out, and I cut them out carefully, so I think they were just printed wrong.  I had to trim the pieces quite a bit, making the "dress" more like a "shirt" or "dress they wore on The Brady Bunch, when apparently, bending over was out of style."

I did have to go buy more stuffing, because I ran out after I stuffed the arms, legs, and pigtails.  Also, in a couple of places, the seam wasn't strong I guess, so I had to patch that up when I sewed up the stuffing hole.  The directions said to use a blanket stitch, and I really should have looked that up, because mine came out looking very unlike a blanket stitch.  In fact, it looked kind of like the doll tried to sew itself up with it's little, barely opposable thumbs. 

Ok, let's grade doll making.

Time: A-
Difficulty: A-
Expense:  A-
Fun: A-
Relaxing: B+

It took a weekend of working on it a little at a time, but really, it didn't take more than a couple of hours from start to finish.  Total cost was like $8, which is still less than some dolls, but not as cheap as it could have been.  And it was fun and relaxing up until I  had to redo the stupid dress.

All in all, I don't think I'll be giving this as a gift, like I'd hoped.  I'll keep it for when I have kids.  They'll be used to crappy, homemade toys.

How to be Awesome at Punch Needle

I know what you're thinking.  What the heck is a punch needle??  I didn't know either until I happened to find these little punch needle kits in the craft store one day.  It's another of those "easy fun happy joy" kits that by now you know I'm a sucker for.  Look, it even says so on the box.

"Fun and relaxing. A quick way to a smile!"

Now usually when I think of the word "relaxing," I think of a massage, or lying my hammock, or a bubble bath or something like that, but whatever.  This craft is not only going to be fun, it is going to actively take stress away from me as I do it!  That's quite an improvement on my usual hand craft of choice, cross stitch, which I love, but which usually at some point requires me to throw my craft hoop across the room and swear that I'm going to finish the rest with Sharpie x's.

Ok, so punch needle uses different tools than most sewing-type crafts (i.e. different than a needle).  There's this hollow tube with a point on the end, almost like a fountain pen, and you have to thread it a certain way with this little threader thingy.  It looks like this:

And once you get it threaded, you look at your little paper that tells you where to put the different colors, and then you look at your fabric and find that area.  Oh, and the printed stuff that shows you the shapes you're going to make--it's printed on the back of the fabric, backwards.  Weird.

And it's not like cross stitch, which is like, "Put an X here, in this exact spot,  or the entire project is ruined forever!"  It's more like, "Well, this area needs to be green, so however you feel like going about that is fine."  You like lots of loops close together?  Great.  You like a few spread out?  Great too.  Whatevs.  It's like, the laid-back, beach bum cousin of the uptight cross stitching family.

So then you just start stabbing it.  I'm not kidding, this is like, a voodoo hand craft.  You take your pointy punch needle and you stab it repeatedly in the fabric.  Each time you pull, it makes a little loop in the other side, and when you do it a lot, it fills in the shapes and it ends up being this kind of three dimensional, soft picture.  It's got a neat texture to it.  I finally finished mine.

Somebody's getting this as a gift.  Just sayin'.

I still have to find a frame for it, but yeah, finished.  I worked on it off and on for several weeks, but if I had been serious about finishing it, I think it could be done in a weekend.  Now I will grade it.

Time:  A-
Difficulty:  A
Expense:  A+
Fun:  B+
Relaxing:  C-

It was pretty good overall.  It was cheap, and not hard.  I don't think I would call it relaxing, any more than I would call most crafts relaxing.  It was pretty fun, but after the novelty wore off, it got a little repetitive.  I don't think I've found my new life's passion or anything, but it was interesting and different.  Definitely therapeutic though, stabbing with a sharp object over and over again.  Maybe that's what they mean by relaxing.  Hmm...

How to be Awesome at Sewing

I decided to try a project yesterday.  A sewing project.  Not my quilt--that's coming soon.  This is supposed to be an "easy 2 hour fun happy joy kit."  At least, it said something like that on the box. 

I got this kit on clearance at Hobby Lobby, and it looked super cute.  It's for an apron, and I thought it would make a good gift.  So yesterday, I decided to do it.

(This also coincides with the moment when I discovered Pandora Radio, which made the entire event much more pleasant.)

So I get the stuff out of the box. 

It really is designed to be easy.  They have all the pieces stamped on one piece of fabric, and I just needed to cut them out and put them together. 

No prob!

Well, ok, slight prob.  I really hate cutting.  It makes me wish I could go back to kindergarten and take better notes, because I never seem to be awesome at it.  This particular pattern was more difficult to cut out because large portions of it were white and the background was beige.  And see, I'm kinda color blind, so that was pretty difficult.  I mean, I can see most colors, but distinguishing between two colors that are very similar is really hard.  (That's one of the reasons I like really bright colors.)

But, I did it, and it went ok. 

The first thing I had to do was figure out how to sew the "flounce" on, which I finally decided was that ruffle on the bottom.  Since it was supposed to be ruffly (flouncy?) it was actually longer than the bottom of the apron, so it took forever for me to pin it and re-pin it, until it matched.  I finally got it sewn on, and I was ecstatic with the results.

Look at that, all sewn together and stuff!  Awesome!

That was only the beginning of course, and I ended up having to get out my iron and ironing board, which I did not know was part of the bargain.  And although I know the basics of how to work a sewing machine, I tried to push myself to new levels of awesome by doing things like, pivoting on the needle instead of starting over when I got to a corner.  I also tried really hard to sew the entire length of one side without stopping and starting every five stitches, 'cause that's what I've seen them do in the videos about sweatshop workers, and I figure they probably know how to do it really well.

My biggest problem that I had was that they kept going back and forth in the directions between "1/4 seam allowance" and "3/8 seam allowance."  Really, people?  The difference between 1/4 and 3/8 is exactly 1/8 of an inch, which is like, a fuzz width.  How does that make a difference?  And I didn't want to go looking for a have a tape measure, nor was I about to spend millions of hours drawing lines to tell  myself where to sew ('cause I probably couldn't have stayed on the line anyway) so I just estimated.  Which means, I just made all the seams the same, which could probably have averaged out to about 3/8 of an inch, 'cause they weren't exactly straight.

In the end, it turned out alright, so take that, varied seam allowance! 

That ruffle at the top was kind of a pain.  I don't really do gathering...

It came with a couple of cute accessories, although the beads did not have a loop on each end as pictured in the instructions, so I wasn't really sure how to attach them, and in the end, I just sewed them to the top of the apron.  And they instructions had this part where I was supposed to gather the material horizontally in the middle and then put the pin on vertically, which made no sense to me, so I just put it on without gathering.  Seemed logical.  So here's the finished product:

Ta Da!  Now I have a nice gift for someone, and I hope they don't read this blog. 

By the way, the "two hour project" took me a little over four hours.  Yeah.  Unfortunately, it's not like I saved myself a lot of money by doing it myself, 'cause I'm pretty sure I could have gotten an apron for the price of the kit.  But maybe once I get really awesome at sewing, I will be able to buy cheap fabric and turn it into cute stuff like this for much less than it would normally cost.  That's the idea anyway.