Thursday, June 23, 2011

Miriam and dad camping trip

This last weekend it was Miriam's turn to go boat camping with me. Saturday's weather report showed some passing storms on Saturday, but fair weather expected between. So we headed up to Detroit lake on Friday evening, anchoring in the same little cover Abby and I had visited the weekend before. When we went to bed on Friday night the sky was warm and clear, the stars were beautiful. We woke up to rain, and it rained all day. So we were cooped up in the tiny boat cabin, but Miriam did great and never complained. We worked on a puzzle, played a few games, colored, and snacked our way through the day. We even roasted some "smarshmellows" (as Miriam calls them) over the gas stove and popped some popcorn.



(Note the blue "boom tent" outside of the windows, which allowed us to keep the cabin a bit more open during the day while it rained.)





Finally Sunday morning came around the weather cleared up, we were able to venture out for some fishing and goofing around.







Cloudy, but not raining!









Yes, this one's going to be trouble in about ten years...



At about 3pm the sun finally came out, the breeze picked up, and we sailed our way back to the dock. The tiller in one arm, and my blonde in the other.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The 80's Mardi Gras Ruffle Dress

As I was making this dress I kept thinking about how to describe it.  Last night I decided that it is really like a psycho 80's Mardi Gras Ruffle bonanza.  Yep, that about sums it up.  Oh yes friend, you are right. That last tier really is 480 inches long.  Ohmygoodness, I will not be making another on of these anytime  soon (to Miriam's great chagrin).  It turns out that I prefer those two hour refashion jobs that give near instant gratification. I did learn a lot though and my beautiful girl is thrilled; so who can argue with that?  Not I.




Miriam sounds like Fancy Nancy when she pronounces the dress "gorgeous, gorgeous!"  We love Fancy Nancy books because they are so vocabulary building.  I'm sure the glitter on the pages has nothing to do with it.


Oh the twirliness!


I made button holes!  Ok, that's not a big deal to most of you, but the last time I made a button hole I was twelve.  So it's been a while, but I am very pleased with the way these came out.  After my house recovers from a nearly solid four days of sewing, my next project will be Mim's Independence day dress.  

~Christina 

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Grandpa Dress

I made this Summer dress from an old shirt that was my father-in-law's.  Since this is Oregon and being the middle of June has no bearing on the amount of cloudiness ...... we paired it with a tank top and some cute stretch pants.


What a cutie!
There are many online tutorials on different ways to turn a men's shirt into a girl's dress but most, ok all, give measurements for little ones.  The biggest I have seen is a 4T size. The concepts are the same though and since Grandpa was quite tall this worked out to fit my Abigail just fine
Are we done yet Mom?





Here you can see some of the detail.  The front of the shirt became the back of the dress.  I kept the original shirt pocket because it's just so cute that way.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Boat Camping with Abigail

Abigail and I spent Saturday evening and Sunday on Detroit Lake. We found our own little private cove, complete with waterfall and pet duck, and spent the night there. With plenty of sunshine and glassy water it was a perfectly relaxing weekend on the water. (Apparently the fish were taking it easy too, so we didn't come home with any of those, but it was fun trying). The wind picked up just in time for us to head into the Marina, so we had fun sailing on the way back in.





A small waterfall at the end of the creek that flowed into "our" little cove...



Abby's "pet" duck... We didn't feed this duck, but it followed her around in the Kayak for a good hour, and then when she was back on the sailboat it would just circle us endlessly. When I made noises at it I only received a very clear hissing in response, so Abby has something special on this duck.



Waking up...



Fishing in pajamas...







Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Classic 18' Daysailer, Beautifully Restored - For Sale

We are selling our 18' Interlake sailboat. You've read about her on our blog over the last few years, both as we restored her in 2007-2008 and as we learned to sail. We love this boat, but we must make room for the Catalina 22 we purchased last fall. If you know anyone who would be interested, please pass this link along...

Details and pictures can be found at http://www.adrielhenderson.com/interlake.







Sunday, June 05, 2011

Tree to Tree Adventure Park - Videos

A few videos of David working his way through the double black diamond course at Tree to Tree Adventure Park.



Saturday, June 04, 2011

10 min. to new PJ's


Miriam Just loves her soft, pink-flowered jammies.  They are the cuddly, light weight cotton kind with plenty of stretch.  Unfortunately the knees got torn and after a while ended up looking rather sad.  If forgot to take actual before pictures but you can see that they are pretty torn up.  The long sleeves on the top didn't look much better so a bit of trimming was in order.

From this

to this!

In about 10 min. my girl was ready for bed.

David Graduates!

David graduated from 8th grade this week. So to celebrate I (Adriel) took him to Tree to Tree Adventure Park for an afternoon of climbing around the high ropes course and gliding down the zip lines. The weather was perfect and we both had a fabulous time - especially on the double black diamond course. Congratulations David!









I'll post some videos later...

Friday, June 03, 2011

Only the Best Big Brother could pull this off

Fabric, Fabric Everywhere

There are two Jo-Ann Fabric stores here.  They are being consolidated into a mall location, so the two current locations are having moving sales, great moving sales. I so rarely buy fabric but at %50 off I couldn't resist these cute patterns.  I dove into it with a few classic circle skirts, which every girl knows is the best kind for twirling.

Here is Miriam with her best neighbor buddy Autumn in their new circle skirts.

Every girl needs a good twirling skirt, no matter how big or small.

 
The other thing I have been up to is remaking some of the girl's clothes to get more life out of them.  Used clothing is where I get most of my material in general (because of my aversion to paying for fabric), but these were "tweaks" rather than real remakes.  My kids tend to grow up, but not so much out.  So, high water pants become capri's with a few stitches and some cute buttons.  Look for them next Fall when I take out those few stitches and add length for year-round versatility.




 These are a pair of Abigail's pants that were getting a bit too short.  She loves purple and it makes up a good 75% of her wardrobe so I was pretty safe in choosing this fabric to embellish with.  The embroidery didn't come out exactly as it was in my head, but she is happy with her "new" pants so that works for me.


Now for some more purple!

 I decided to try my hand at shirring.  I had picked up the elastic thread over a year ago and just never got the courage to try it.  I tossed off my fear of failure (and serious dislike of ripping out seams....) and went for it.  I did all of the hemming first, which is oh-so-easy on a straight, flat piece of fabric. Shirred it and added the straps.  Not too bad for my first go and it wasn't hard at all.  Abbie is enjoying the fact that Mama's hobby means she has some new (or updated)  thing to wear every couple of days.  Summer can come now, the Henderson girls have new outfits ready!

~Christina