Homemade

Being home with kids definitely has its rewards and satisfactions but sometimes at the end of the day there is not much to show for it. Ryan leaves for work and the house is more or less in order. For the next 8 hours chaos reigns. Great railroad empires are constructed in the living room (by Oliver) and destroyed (by Elliot). Games and toys and puzzles are both played with and randomly redistributed around the house by the boys. Meals are prepared and served (and more often than not rejected by Oliver and thrown on the floor by Elliot). The mess that is created and cleaned up everyday is exhausting to think about even now. I try to reign in that chaos before Ryan gets home, but some days I don't even try to clean up the games/toys/play-doh/art projects etc. just so Ryan can see that SOMETHING happened while he was gone. It's kind of a sisyphean experience, but rather than even making elusive forward progress, I'm just trying to get back to the baseline.

Anyway, what I am leading up to is that I think that because there isn't often a tangible product to show for my days' activities I have become really interested in sewing and crafting and generally MAKING things in my spare time. It is enormously satisfying to create something and be able to say to yourself, "Ah, look what a cool/pretty/useful/delicious thing I made with my own hands." and "It is finished. I did it. That was fun. And now I am done and it can't be undone!"

Today I made this:   

 

I found a drawing of an elephant on the Internet and printed it out and traced it with an Exacto knife on some scrap fabric. Then I just stitched around the edges and viola! a cute little semi-homemade onesie for Elliot. I was pretty excited about how it turned out so now I think I am going to go a little bit nuts making applique baby gifts.

Here are some other sewing projects that I have been meaning to put on here for a while (some of these are pretty old). And looking at them now, really, they are pretty modest, but I'm proud of them and I made them and they are finished and they can't be undone!