Sewing for Science... and Kids

There is no way to catch up on the past year and half. I'm a procrastinator as it is. So let's just start from now. I made a dress recently for Eveli. It's cute. She's cute. I used this website as a guide, with a few changes of my own.

So here is a post of some sewing projects; recent and otherwise.

Eveli is such a girl. She loves necklaces. This morning she sat and dug through my unused jewelry looking for one she wanted to wear. Most of the ones she chose were too big, or didn't match in the slightest. This is what was compromised on.

The sad face is because she wanted to see the camera pictures. Most of the photos I took are blurred because she kept running around to see the camera screen. I finally laid on the ground and she felt she had been bested. Hence the face.

When Tommy was 18 months old I made him some pj pants. He has long since grown out of them and Eveli is wearing them now. They were the first clothes I ever made on a sewing machine. First time's a charm. I then proceeded to make some pants for myself. They didn't turn out nearly as well. Probably why I didn't take any pictures.

I've also made two quilts and am in the middle of a third. Over-ambitious is the word to describe my quilting projects. My very first quilt was a periodic table quilt. Each square has hand embroidered letters for the element symbols and atomic mass. It took forever! But my nerdy self says it was well worth it. 

Here it is pieced together on a sheet.

Sewn and tied together. 

This is the legend.

I used a blue sheet for the back.

Notice the purple zig-zag line. It is the boundary between metals and non metals.

I don't have pictures of the other two quilts. The second is warm but not pretty. The third is the most ambitious yet. It is huge. I am free motion machine quilting a queen sized quilt on my normal machine. What a chore. To add to the difficulty, I decided to machine quilt a leaf design onto each square and then loop-de-loops all around it. Hopefully it's beautiful when it is finished, but right now my procrastinator self is kicked in full throttle and it is on a table behind a closed door. Yikes, I really set myself up!

That's all for today. Maybe I'll get better at this blog thing.

The First Post: A Catch Up Review

I have finally done it. Ammon and I have been talking a while about the possibility of a blog. Just to get pictures to family and friends and to fill them in on our life. There is no way we can play catch up with all of the things that have been going on this past year, so we'll just start with this month.
Lets start with Tommy. He has been crawling, walking, and climbing all over the place. It would be fair to say that he gets that third one from me. Here he is after a couple seconds of me turning my back.

Now he cries every time I close the dishwasher. It is so unfair not to be able to climb up on the dishwasher. We also have to move the silverware container onto the counter when it is open. Can't have him playing with knives!
Here he is in his new pjs. We got him a couple of cute pairs for his one year old birthday. He was such a stinkin' cutie that I pulled out the camera.

 As you can tell he is more than ready for bed. The train is also a birthday gift. He thinks it is the coolest thing. It makes noise, and most importantly it comes with little colorful balls! What a treat!

For Tommy's first birthday we decided to have a party and invite all of his little baby friend. He loves to be around other kids. He rarely fusses when there is someone to watch play.
So here are some pictures from the party. The theme of the party was hydrogen. For those scratching your head, hydrogens atomic number is one. In honor of the theme, I made decorated some cupcakes. If you are curious how these are related to hydrogen you can call me. I'll gladly tell you all about it.

 These next pictures are of the cake walk/crawl. We played the periodic table of the elements song and when the  music stopped the babies got a square quick (each square was from the periodic table) and I drew from a hat the winning square. I'm pretty sure the parents enjoyed the game more than the babies, though they weren't complaining about the cupcake afterwards.

Some other mischief and helping that have been going on around here. Tommy loves to play with the shoes on the shoe rack. It is not infrequent that you find a ball in your shoe as you put it on. He looks innocent, but don't let him fool you.

This is what I caught him at today. He would drag it across the living room, stop to sit and pat the bag to make sure it was ok, then start off again in another direction.

 Laundry has been a very fun time for us as of late. Ever since he could crawl he has wanted to sit on the pile of laundry, or rush over to the folded laundry to inspect it. Now with his new climbing skills, he also likes to help me unload the basket. So thoughtful!

This is the beginning of Tommy's first haircut. A friend suggested giving him a sucker to keep him occupied. It's the first sucker he has had, so it took some figuring out.

 That is one big sucker, but boy did he fit it all in his mouth.

This is the second part of the hair cut. He was totally freaked out by the buzzer. I tried to put the sucker back in, but he would have none of it. It took some rocking and soothing to calm him down.

Here's the last bit of fun for today. He likes to fit in tight places. He has climbed into the stroller pocket underneath the seat and then cries until I come and rescue him. In this picture he is on the bottom shelf of our coffee table. He likes to climb through there.

Well, this has been a long blog post. And it looks like the blog is going to be only about our cute little boy. Oh well, who can complain?

Ode to OChem

Oh the glassware, shiny clean,
Even better found, when with benzene.
KBr plates, scratched and dull,
Solids, nujol, in a mull.
How the tranquil sodium sulfate doth lay,
To form the decahydrate, it's known to play.
But forget not, into a flask bestowing,
How else can we know, if it's free-flowing?
Now watch yourself, for Mrs. Hinshaws shout,
The times run down, we're done, get out!

I wrote this poem while taking organic chemistry at BYU. It is a post simply to be a post.