Busted!

It has been been SUPER hot here so when leaving Sam's club I decided to quickly turn the engine on while loading my car. About 3 seconds after I turned the engine on and ran to the back to load groceries... "Bet on it" (High School Musical 2) started BLASTING out the hatch back of my mini van (still sporting pink princess dice). There were no children with me, I was alone. There where several people around me (loading their food too), some just stared, a couple started totally laughing. I was busted!

Please help serve those who serve us!

I heard about a great opportunity for us to serve and teach our kids about service and I want to share with everyone.



Linda is a woman in the DC area that makes flag quilts each year for the wounded solders at Walter Reed Hospital. She along with other volunteers make about 100 quilts a year and then deliver 23-30 quilts at a time to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed for Christmas, Memorial Day, July 4th and Veteran's Day. The quilts are backed in muslin so that those who made it can write notes to the solder.

Before I go on I have to say that when my husband spent 6 weeks at Walter Reed (taking a class) he commented many times about how many young solders he saw with their families and how seriously injured they were. These young men literally sacrificed their health and limbs for our country and their lives are forever changed. This is just a small way to tell them and their family that we appreciate their sacrifice and service.


What a great opportunity to make one of these flags as a family and teach your kids about our America, service and of course sewing. If you are a teacher you could take the flag to your class and have all the kids sign it. If you are LDS, this is a great project for the Young Women or Activity days. You could do this as a service project with your quilt group.


Once you have completed your flag(s), please email me a photo (mysplendidchaos@yahoo.com) of it and I will email you Linda's address to mail the quilt to. Please attach a paper with your name and address to each quilt so she can mail you a photo of the solder that received your quilt along with any other information. FYI- I will be posting the photos of quilts I receive.

If you do not have any sewing material and need to purchase everything (fabric, thread, batting ect) and nothing is on sale, it will cost about $22.00 to make. Joanns and Handcocks always have sales and coupons so it will probably be less then $22.




Directions for American Flag Quilt for Wounded Soldiers, finished size approx. 41" x 57"

Fabric requirements:

Red 1/2 yard Cut 7 - 2 inch strips

White 1/2 yard Cut 6 - 2 inch strips

Dark Blue Stars 1/3 yard Cut one rectangle 11" x 15 3/4"

Inner Border (Brown) 1/2 yard Cut 3 - 3 1/2" strips

Corner Posts (Gold) 1/4 yard Cut 4 - 3 1/2" squares

Outer Border (Blue) 1 yard Cut 4 - 8" strips
(a yard is 36" long and quilting fabric is usually 45" wide. Make sure you cut your fabric so that the stripes are approx. 45"long)

Binding (Gold) 1/3 yard Cut 6 - 2" strips

Backing One piece of muslin washed and cut to 44" x 60"

Batting Warm and natural cotton cut to approx. 44" x 60" or at least 2" larger on each

side of the finished quilt top.

Piecing

Sew 3 red 2" strips and 3 white 2"strips to each other, alternating colors and press. Cut this strip set to be 36 3/4" wide. Sew remaining 7 white and red strips together, beginning with red and alternating white and ending with red. Press. Sew dark blue star rectangle to this strip set and press. Cut the extra red and white strips so the blue stars and red and white stripes measures 36 3/4" wide. Sew this strip set to the top of the striped set and press. Flag should measure 19 1/2" high x 36 3/4" wide.

Measure your flag quilt and then trim 2 of your inner border strips to be 1/2" longer than the width of your flag and then cut 2 pieces each measuring 1/2" longer than the height of your flag. Sew 2 or your corner posts to each end of your shorter inner border strips and press. Sew longer inner border strips to top and bottom of flag and press. Then sew 2 shorter border strips with posts to the sides of the quilt and press.

Measure your flag with the inner border and strips and use the same process to cut and attach the wider outer border strips to the quilt.

Layer the backing, batting and top together and machine or hand quilt. Sew binding strips together and sew binding to quilt.



November 11th is Veteran day, It would be great if we could all have our quilts mailed to Linda by November 1st. If that's too fast for you then try to get it to her by December 15th so they can deliver them for Christmas.

If you can piece the top, but have no idea how to hand or machine quilt, send it to me with the batting and backing and I will quilt it for you and mail it to Linda with your info.

Good mail, Great weekend!

Ruby was very excited to receive her own good mail. She got the September "fashion issue" of Elle from her Grandma Bonnie with a note that said "here's some fashion research for you!" That was super thoughtful Mom, she loved it and has been studying it a lot. Fyi-I went through it and tore out all the photos of naked and half naked models.


We got to spend Friday and Saturday at the beach with Melissa and John. Melissa is one of my favorite people, and her husband and kids are pretty cool too. While sitting on the beach, my friend Jackie came walking by with the Young Women from her ward. Such a small world.


Ruby took us to her little restaurant on the Pier for shakes.

Ruby and Lucy both flew kites for the 1st time ever. They had a blast. Luckily no one was seriously injured that was sitting near us.



Haley spent the day in the water. Except for the walk to the pier, she was body surfing and boogie boarding the entire day. She did not even get out for lunch or smores.

In other non-beach related news...
Lucy has finally figured out how to pump her legs on a swing! It boggles my mind how a 4 year old could swim down to get dive rings off the bottom of the deep end and yet could not swing herself on a swing. All is well now.

If you were a fly on our wall...

"Going to the hospital and seeing your Dad with blood on his hands...totally unexpected". Haley 7/1/07

"I have to admit, frosted flakes with orange juice as the milk...pretty satisfying." Haley 7/16/07

"Why do old ladies bum bums melt when they get older?" Ruby 7/16/07

Talking to Ruby in as snotty a voice as 4 year old is capable of " I know, do you think I don't have eyeballs." Lucy 6/30/07

Haley "What cool present do you guys want me to bring back for you from Maine? Do you want a big stuffed puffin?" Ruby replies "Look for a fashion dress that only has one strap and then goes around under my other arm. If you can't find that fashion dress, just get me some make up" 7/17/07

I asked Lucy to stop chanting "bum bum" to which she replied "bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum... It makes Heavenly Father happy". 7/20/07

8/12 "Who's going to dunk her?" Lucy, on the way to a baptism.

8/11 "Our poop is going to be ice cream and nuts" Lucy while eating a hot fudge sunday at Mc Donalds...with nuts.

Oh what a week.

This week was the start of school for all three of my girls.

Lucy- Preschool

Ruby- 1st grade

Haley 4th grade

My sister Tiffany was visiting with her family of 6 and new puppy that they purchased while here (in Newport).


our newest cousin "Emma"

Eric had the week off from work decided to scrape the popcorn off our ceiling in the living room. I wanted this done so bad and am thrilled that we did it, but it was an unbelievably huge mess to have with 7 kids, a dog and a puppy around.



Need I say more?

Organizing art & papers

My girls all start school this Wednesday so I have been busy getting all the school supplies. Most stores are having back to school sales so I want to share what I started about 4 years ago when I was bombarded with papers and art projects from Haley in kindergarden and Ruby in preschool. I wanted to keep all their papers and art, but quickly realized that was not going to be possible.


I purchased 3 plastic file folders from Walmart, the kind that are not connected at the bottom so they can expand a ton. I have each section labeled Preschool, Kindergarden so on and there are enough tabs to go to 10th grade. My rule is that what I save from each year has to fit in it’s section. I make sure that I have report cards, and samples of how their handwriting changed through the year and plenty of art projects from school and church. I do not include photos, those are all in their scrap book thanks to my Mom. I have really been able to fit a lot in for each year. Some art I fold and put in the section but large pieces of art that I want to save unfolded I keep on a large zippered plastic bag.


These have worked out so well that last year I bought 2 for Eric and I (the red and green ones) from Target. I do not like these as well as the ones from Walmart because they do not expand that much. Eric’s has Cards that he has received, awards, artwork from when he was a kid etc. Mine has sections labeled Family, Decorating/house ideas, organizing/cleaning, B-day party ideas, Holiday ideas, Travel, Lesson/talk ideas, Holiday ideas, cool cards and gift ideas. I have loved this because it allows me to pull out ideas that I like from magazines, blogs etc and organize them in a way that I can quickly reference them.



If you want to do this, I cannot stress enough that the bottom needs to be able to open like an accordion and not have something that limits how large it can open.

The beach with a few friends

Saturday our Ward had a beach party at Huntington beach.
Lucy was like Goldilocks walking around trying out all the kids beach chairs.

Haley and Ruby spent most of the time boogi boarding.

This is Haley boogie boarding with her Primary President (for over an hour). Driving home and the next day both girls were asking when they can go to the beach with Sister Lovell.

Lots of sand castle building.

We all tried smores for the 1st time with CRUNCHY PEANUT BUTTER. Oh it's so good.

I was so glad that Eric had the day off. There is no way I could have done it without him. I took pajamas and woobies in the car for them to crash on the way home, but they were still so wound up that they talked about the day the whole way home. Everyone had a great time.

Today at the Getty

We had an amazing day at the Getty Center's Family Festival. The day's theme was inspired by Oudry's Painted Menagerie so everything was animal oriented.

The girls made feather hats

And faux animal skin frames

They played in the fountains

There is a long travertine wall where the tiles make different tones when you hit them. It's like a huge xylophone.
My kids do not do well at museums so these outside festivals are the perfect bait to get them to go. We did get to see Clara the rhinoceros and Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergere before they started begging to go back outside.

My favorite part of the day was seeing the Gamelan Burat Wangi perform. They did a Balinese music and dance performance that was incredible. We all sat in the hot sun for an hour mesmerized by them. The music was like nothing I have ever heard. The musicians used a metal hammer to hit metal drums and metal tiles. It was very loud but really cool. The dancers made very small jerky movements, even their eyes would go back and forth to the beat. Haley was concerned that their costumes were immodest.


My girls LOVED the dragon. He too had very jerky movements to the music, but was playful and funny and ended up coming out into the audience right by us right after I put my camera away.

We came home totally exhausted and kind of sick from eating snack food all day, but it was so much fun.

Sewing and surfing lessons

I had a phone message from my Sister asking me to please update my blog so here's what we have been up to:

Ruby's sewing teacher hasn't been able to come by for a while so I asked her what she wanted to make. She went through all my fabric and pulled out some gold fabric with little sequin mirrors and some purple striped fabric. She was so excited and said these were perfect for the skirt she wanted to make. She explained what she wanted several times and when I repeated it back she would say "No, no you don't understand" so I had her draw it for me.


She was very exact about how wide she wanted the stripes to be and was upset when I cut them 1/2 in wider. Once I explained the 1/4 in seam thing, she relaxed. She has been sewing the stripes together for a couple of days...this is going to be a very interesting skirt.

Shawna- you commented on the last post that "someday we will all be clamoring for a Ruby design". I will not be surprised if there are Ruby designs, but I'm pretty sure that you and I (30ish Moms) would never wear them.

I love to watch her convert my machine for her. She stacks up the boxes and grabs the pillows and gets to work.



In other nonrelated news our die hard surfing neighbor gave my girls surfing lessons in the pool. They had a blast and can't wait to try it at the beach.