If you are anything like me you have finally let out that breath you’ve been holding all summer. The first week of school get-togethers and half days and general first week freak-outs is behind you. Things are slowly settling down into a routine and you are breathing again. Actually starting–and possibly even finishing!–a project is in the realm of possibility.

If that project were, say, a pattern by Zonen 09. And if you sewed it up by next Sunday and added it to their flickr group (all totally possible). Well, you could win heaps of amazing prizes.

What, what? You haven’t heard of Zonen 09? They are a small Belgian pattern company that makes sewing patterns for boys (and only boys!) clothes. How amazing is that? And the patterns are so stinkin’ cute! I read a few Dutch blogs and I see the Jacob pants pop up again and again on them. The pants are always awesome. I mean just look:

1. yellow jacob pants by Griet 2.plaid jacob pants by Ik ben Vink 3. stamped jacob pants by huisje boompje boefjes 4. pink jacob pants by Enid Vandecan

I’m happy to say that the Jacob pants pattern is now available in English! The Charlie shirt is too. I have a few pairs of Jacob pants on my to do list this weekend, but sadly I cannot enter them in the contest because I am a judge. But you can!

Is this the first you’ve heard of Zonen 09? Have I convinced you of their awesomeness? Are you already eyeing your sewing machine?

I haven’t taught my children to sew. It’s horrible I know. I cook with my kids and make art with my kids all the time, but sewing I’ve always kept for myself. When sew mama sew sent me the book, A Kid’s Guide to Sewing, I figured it was high time I started  sewing with my kids too.

My daughter picked the backpack charm project in the book. You could choose between making a flower or an ice cream cone. Even though I tried to get her to think of something else (kitty? donut? bike?) she was dead set on the ice cream cone.

All the templates in the book are very sweet and hand drawn, but I urged my daughter to create her own pattern.  The book is actually written by an 11-year old (well, her parents helped a lot), which makes all the projects feel much more approachable for a kid–and doable!

Then she cut the pattern out, traced it on felt, and cut out all the felt pieces.

To make the cone look more like a cone, I showed her how to do a simple running stitch. She immediately ran off and came back with a piece of chalk. She wanted to draw lines on the cone to guide her stitching.  Turns out that I have been teaching her to sew, if only by sewing when she is around. They pay attention to us much more than we think.

Sitting next to my daughter, watching her embroider an ice cream cone, I realized sewing isn’t all that hard. A running stitch is up, down, up, down. A whip stitch is around and around, around and around. The thing I was teaching her was patience. Sewing takes time. It took me a long time to learn that, but when I did–when I really started to love taking my time–then my sewing got better, much better.

I noticed another thing about sewing while we were working on this project together: sewing is quiet. Cooking with kids can be frantic (the cookies are burning!!!), making art can be messy (who poured glitter on the baby’s head?!), but sewing is slow and contained and practically silent.

We sat at the dining room table, my daughter and I, talking about the day, stopping now and then so I could tie a knot or show her a stitch, and just having a quietly wonderful time.  Thanks to sew mama sew, and their fantastic FunStitch Studio Summer Camp, I taught my daughter a bit about sewing and learned a lot myself!

I posted over at the Kid’s Clothes Week blog, but in case you didn’t see it I wanted to tell all of you that we have fall sponsorship opportunities on the KCW site and blog. Sponsorship runs for 3 months at a time and there are 3 sizes to choose from as well (please see this post for more info).  They are filling up fast, but there are plenty of small spots available–and I know there are lots of amazing small shops and blogs out there! Sponsorship isn’t scary :) Drop us a line at kidsclothesweek@gmail.com !

I’m also excited to announce a new option for sponsorship on elsie marley: the little spot! It’s a small 125 pixel square spot that is just right for your growing business. It’s a super affordable way for elsie marley readers to discover your shop or blog. Please check out my sponsorship page to purchase the little sponsor spot or any other option. Now go have a lovely weekend!

My youngest turned 4 last week and we had a little birthday party to celebrate. He is very heavily into two things at the moment: cheetahs and bananas. Deciding between a cheetah party and a banana party was difficult, but bananas won out in the end. There aren’t a whole lot of banana themed party goods out there, so we had to make up our own.

For a craft, we made a bunch of banana phones–you know the banana phone song don’t you? They are just tin can phones that we made with yellow cups and string. I thought they would be a little tricky for 4 year olds to make, so I made one for everyone ahead of time. We put them out with markers and stickers, and the kids decorated their own phones. I have to admit I was surprised they worked–and so well!

For favors we gave out bunches of bananas! What else?! I scratched the message on with a toothpick. I’m kicking myself for not writing “thanks a bunch!” How did I miss such a perfect pun? Oh well.

I was going to write banana jokes on the bananas too, but ended up putting them on the bags for the pinata candy. Here are a few more, because I know you need some bad banana jokes today:

• Q: What kind of  key opens a banana? A: a monkey!
• Q: Why are bananas never lonely? A: Because they hang around in bunches.
• Q: How do monkeys get down the stairs? A: They slide down the banana-ster!
• Q: What did the banana say to the monkey? A: Nothing, bananas can’t talk!

The candy bags were for a banana pinata, of course! And really, the pinata stole the show. The kids helped me make it. It might look super involved, but pinatas are actually super easy and super fun to make. Oh Happy Day has a ton of tutorials on pinatas if you are curious how to make them.

Mine is just cardboard and masking tape. Next time I will double the amount of masking tape because the pinata broke before everyone got a whack at it. The kids are getting bigger and stronger. They were too busy frantically gathering candy to be upset, though.

The birthday boy got a few good hits in and that’s all that matters.

The party was in the afternoon, so we just put out a few snacks. They were all yellow: yellow peppers, yellow watermelon (which the kids were afraid of, but was actually totally delicious), yellow tomatoes, banana chips, and lemonade.

Instead of a birthday cake for dessert we had banana splits! There were bananas (of course), three kinds of ice cream, whipped cream, and real cherries for the top. The birthday boy was in heaven!

And here is the banana birthday party aftermath:

It was a banana blast!

Pinterest made me do it. Seems popcorn cereal is an old timey, pioneer treat. It’s also a dead easy breakfast if you have some leftover popcorn from movie night. Sadly only one of my kids liked it, but he liked it so much he ate everyone else’s!