Holiday Wrap Up Day 2

After an interesting return to the computer yesterday, I am beginning to wonder how I ever functioned with one screen. Having all this room seemed kinda like overkill when Dan showed it to me, but now it is so nice, and I believe there is no going back. I got some cleaning done including the most dreaded thing for me, the shower. It is not like I leave the thing to get too grungy, but once I start in on a shower, I am almost obsessive about scrubbing every single inch of the thing. Even Dan, a child of an admitted cleaning addict, came in to tell me to stop cleaning the thing last night. I made a killer dinner last night, getting rid of some more of the Christmas Eve ham left overs. I even found something to do with the sage I cut from the window box. I know that you need to cut herbs periodically to keep them growing and producing, but I always find it hard to throw the stuff out. I always want to only cut when I need things, but that leads to some bad results in the past incarnations of the herb garden. I am trying to learn my lesson. I also got a lot of computer organization done for the shop. There is more to be done in the coming days and some website redesign issues to be tackled, but I think that will come after my trip. If you have stopped by the Etsy Shop lately and read the shop announcement, I have said I will be out of town for a week in January. I will be flying out to Delaware to visit my sister and her family. It has been two full years and lots of change since we have seen each other, and I am really looking forward to getting to see all the family but especially the kids. On the note of the kids, I figure I should jump into a holiday wrap up posting to show one of the projects I did while taking a month off from the blogs and pants.

After getting Brenna's felt board done, I decided to start on her Christmas present next. This present was a tag team effort, and I tweeted about it once in a while on my twitter stream. I decided to make her a tipi, or tepee for your less formal types. I asked my sister what Brenna's favorite color was, and it turned out to be green. So, my search began for enough green fabric to make the tipi. It turns out that even though it was the Christmas crafting season, green fabric is kind of hard to come by. I ended up settling on some lime green fabric with different colored green polka dots. When I measured out the yardage, there was not enough of it to make the tipi. Only enough to make half was in the store. I decided to not hunt all over the Bay Area for more, so I looked for a solid lime green counterpart. Here is what I ended up with:




It was a pretty quick sew seeing as there were mostly just straight seams to make. The hardest part was dealing with the unwieldy amount of fabric I was having to sew. It ended up using around 10 yards of fabric. I did also have to make some adjustments. I did not have quite enough width on the lime green solid fabric after prewashing it, so I added some polka dot fabric strips in to cover the seam allowance and act like seam binding.





Once I got it all sewn up, I boxed it and sent it off to my Dad to have him build the PVC pole components for the tipi frame. I think it went pretty well. The top is gathered with a ribbon through the poles and wooden beads as spacers.



It ended up being overall way taller and bigger than I had originally thought it would be. I guess once totally set up, an average height adult could almost stand up in the center. During the family Christmas call, I found out that it was a hit. Kids were in the tipi, adults were in the tipi, kids and adults were in the tipi. We were running around, in, and out of the thing.



I guess this also could not have come at a better time since Brenna was out growing another tent that my sister had bought for her. She was just getting too tall for it. I cannot wait to see it in action when I visit them in a couple of weeks.

Well since this is a late posting, there is not a lot left on the slate for today. I was debating making English muffins today, but I think that will wait for tomorrow. I will finish all the cleaning that needs to still be done, and I am going to at least cut out the next tutorial project I will post for the blog after my trip. There is still some major work to do on Da's present still. Yikes more than I thought now that I am reading that over. I guess I should get down to it.