I was tracing and cutting, and tracing and cutting, and I think I traced and cut too much. I thought I’d take it easy with this summertime KCW–a shirt or two, maybe a quick pair of shorts. Well, that turned into a shirt and pair of shorts for all 3 kids, make that two of each for everyone. And then, ooo that dress is cute, maybe I’ll make that too. Oh and I have those other projects I should probably finish. Which is why his large pile is staring at me.

In reality, this week I’d like to finish these four tee shirts for sure and….

and these four pairs of shorts. We’ll see…

Go check out my post on the kcw blog to see who got featured on day one. And keep up with all the kcw sewers on the new kcw community website!  Happy KCW!

Now that it’s officially summer, elsie marley is officially in summer mode. Like last year, I’m going to keep a simple summer journal. Post will be a bit shorter, a bit slap dash, just a peek into our summer days really.

If you like the idea of a simple, summertime blog I would love it if you played along! If you have a blog, use summer journal as your title. If you are more of an instgramer/twitterer/tumblrer type use the #summmerjournal hashtag. Leave a comment if you’d like to play along, so I can follow your summer journal!

The other afternoon, we played a game of Simon Says, Draw! Jean from the Artful Parent, posted about this game years ago and I’ve been meaning to try it ever since.  It’s just like the Simon Says game you played when you were little only with drawing instead. So Simon says things like:

• draw a dot
• use a blue crayon
• draw a squiggle
• pass your marker to the left
• draw three eyes
• draw seven legs
• color something purple
• color with two markers at the same time (this one was a bit hit)

You can say Simon says at the beginning of the sentence or not. That part of the game got lost and we just had fun telling each other what to draw. Everyone’s picture ends up completely different. And it’s a great game to wake up your creativity on a hot summer afternoon.

I mentioned last week that I was thinking about making a summer passport. And would you look at that: I did! It was super easy and I’m going to tell you how to do it.

diy summer passport

materials:

• a small moleskine plain journal with a kraft paper cover. They are called Cahiers and are sold in sets of three (for 7 bucks).
• crayons, markers, pencils, whatever
• a list of activities (see below)
• stickers, or a date stamper

directions:

1. Make your cover. We went with the basic, Summer Passport 2013. You could get a little more exciting, like THIS IS GOING TO BE THE JONES’ BEST SUMMER EVAR!

2. Write something fun to do on every right hand page. This ends up being about 30 activities, which I think is doable for summer. It also leaves the left page open for writing about when you did that activity (optional, obviously).

3. Draw a box under the activity. This is where you will put the stickers (or stamp the date) when you do that activity. If you plan to do something often, make sure to draw a big box. My daughter seems to think we will be going to the pool a lot this summer. :)

4. Go do something! Here’s a list of 40 things to get you started:

list of summer activities

1. run through the sprinkler
2. blow bubbles (last year, we made super big bubbles!)
3. eat watermelon (in star form maybe?)
4. make a giant fort
5. make grape sculptures
6. eat corn on the cob (and make your own awesome holders!)
7. buy a treat from the ice cream truck
8. go to the farmer’s market
9. sign up for your library’s summer reading program
10. play in the rain
11. write a letter to Grandma
12. make your own gummy treats
13. wash the car
14. find a new park in your town
15. go swimming!
16. make paper airplanes
17. learn cats cradle
18. paint with chalk paint
19. build a fairy house
20. feed the ducks
21. get your face painted
22. watch fireworks
23. play sidewalk simon
24. catch fireflies
25. play badmiton
26. sail boats down a tin foil river
27. water balloon fight!
28. be a super spy–make invisible ink
29. make ice cream or popsicles
30. make your own stickers
31. exploding paint bombs!
32. go to a local fair
33. have a magic potion lab
34. make saltwater taffy
35. have a lemonade stand (or a tattoo stand!)
36. camp in the backyard
37. go fishing
38. go bowling
39. see a concert in the park
40. pick strawberries

What are you doing this summer? Add your ideas in the comments!

I took this picture last year right before the kids got home. They were so excited to bust through the finish line! Woo Hoo! Summertime!

We also made a GIANT list of all the fun things we wanted to do that summer. I’m happy to say we checked off almost every one (I don’t think there were any pony rides, but hey! they’re expensive).

This summer, I’m inspired by this post about getting summer right.  Having a schedule–albeit a loosey goosey summer one–is key to keeping my sanity in the summer. I really like the idea of having a set amount of time everyday dedicated to a specific task: say 20 minutes reading, 20 minutes writing, 30 minutes chores, 20 minutes working toward their summer goal.

My idea is to make a summer passport–inspired by the restaurant passport above (hmm, that link seems to be broken, but you get the idea). We’ll make some little books together and write down all the tasks we want/need to accomplish all summer in them. Then I’m going to go out and purchase one of those handy dandy date stampers–you know, the ones the librarians used to stamp your book?  And I’ll stamp their passport when they finish the tasks.

Does this sound too complicated? Last year our summer was filled with fun stuff and my kids’ definitely learned some things too. But this summer I want them to see how a little time each day adds up to awesome things.  Oh my, I think KCW has taken over my brain!

Today I am over at You & Mie for her series on Japanese Sewing Books. The series walks you through all the steps you need to know  from Japanese pattern books. They can be a bit intimidating, but they also can be a lot of fun. My post is all about finding your pattern and tracing it. Sounds easy, but there are some tricks you need to know. Hop on over to Cherie’s lovely blog for my post, and all the guest posts this week!

In honor of Japanese Sewing Books week, I sewed up this sundress from my favorite Japanese sewing book, Happy Homemade Vol. 2. Well, to be honest, I dug up this dress that I sewed most of last spring, then hemmed it and added buttons (in honor of Japanese Sewing Books week). Why I sew 90% of something and then abandon it is beyond me.

But anyway, it’s done and (still) fits! I’m going to do a form style report on this one, because 3 days into spring break and the children have run me ragged already. My brain is not functioning at full capcity.

the fabric: oh, the fabric is lovely. It is 100% cotton shirting I got from the good fabric store in my neighborhood. They have a lot of beautiful fabrics, but mostly in ugly prints. This tiny blue stripe was perfect, though. It’s a good weight too, just right for when (if?) summer comes. I went with polka dot buttons because it’s stripes + polka dots up in here, all the time.

the pattern: the pattern is from Happy Homemade Vol. 2. I sew from this book a lot; I talk about it a lot too.  I think it’s a great 1st Japanese sewing book. I’d love to do some sort of sew-along thing-a-bob with the patterns in the book. Anyone up for it? Maybe after KCW? Anyway, the pattern. The pattern was pretty simple, because, well the dress is pretty simple. I do remember the armholes being super fussy and weird.

the sewing: There was a little swearing, but there alway is, isn’t there? The fabric was dreamy. The striped bias tape turned out really nice, as did the bias cut bodice piece. I’d say not bad for a dress half done, abandoned, and (because it’s almost Easter, I’m just going to go for it and say…) resurrected. Ha!