Snowbound and down. And then up. And then down.

I've been feeling a bit blah lately.

I don't feel like I have anything to say or any desire to create something out of a few words and thoughts.  I think I've said it all.

I mean, I know.  When did I ever have anything super important to say?  A lot of it was drivel, and I was okay with that.  I need to be okay with it again because it was fun and entertaining and we all need a little fun and entertaining drivel in our lives.

I especially needed it last week during snowpocaplyse or snowmageddon or whatever we are calling the ridiculous amount of snow my area received last week.  Of course, it was probably pretty light by Maine standards, but for Kentucky it was enough to close everything down.

It meant that my work was closed and my children were home with me all day every day and we couldn't drive anywhere the cabin fever set in pretty early so every day was filled with disagreements and whining and fighting and would you two please just separate so I don't have to listen to this?

So I let them watch entirely too much television and play games on tablets and I hid behind my sewing machine in order to pretend that I was alone and not currently in the midst of random outbreaks of sibling war.

I sewed a lot.  Like a lot a lot.

I made Adele three dresses.  The first one was Anya from Green Bee patterns.  I did not enjoy sewing this dress.  The set-in sleeves had wonky corner seams and it was frustrating and all I wanted was something easy.  But I think that had more to do with the person sewing the dress than any actual problems with the pattern.  Adele loves the dress, which she calls her 'cheetah dress' and I love the skull and crossbones buttons.

The second dress I sewed for Adele (McCall's 6728) is out of material from an old dress that Chris' grandmother gave me.  The material is fantastic and I thought it would be nice for Adele to have something from Uri (great-grandma in German).  Plus she loves that it's twirly:

No really.  She LOVES it:

I bribed her with candy to get her to stand still for this photo:

The pattern for the third one is Butterick 5019.  She doesn't like it all that much so I don't have a photo but one day I will either bribe her again or force her to put it on.  For now you can look at this picture and imagine that it's Adele wearing the dress.  Her's also has pink flowers on it.

If you sort of squint you can see me sewing the dress in this lovely photo that Adele took when she stole my phone as I was otherwise occupied.  That green thing on the table is a bottle of beer that is making me sad to look at because I gave up alcohol for lent.

I made myself two dresses.  This white one that I plan on dying red as soon as the dye I ordered gets to my house.  I'll share more about that later.  The pattern is Tiramisu from Cake patterns.

The second dress was another version of the Trapeze Sundress from Weekend Sewing that I cut out right after I completed that one and never sewed together.  It's been living in pieces in my closet since then.  This one is a sort of minty-teal.  Once it warms up enough for me to be able to wear the dress without catching frostbite I'll photograph it.  For now you can see the fabric underneath this jar of homemade face cream my sister whipped together.  If you're interested, she has an Etsy shop called Dixie Daisy Naturals and I highly, highly recommend this stuff.

And lest you think I forgot about the boys in the family, I'll put your minds at ease to tell you that I hemmed my husband's pants for him.  The same pants I have been promising to hem for months.

Sebastian got a whole new pair of pants - knit pants from Oliver and S patterns.  These were super easy and sewed right up out of a thin, light gray jersey material.  He loves them and I'm guessing I'll be making more of them.

I attempted to make a pair for Adele out of khaki because she's outgrown all of her school uniform pants, but unfortunately I didn't take into account that khaki isn't nearly as stretchy as jersey and so the pants have no give and are too small and it makes me sad because they are actually really nice pants.  That she won't wear.

I also made myself a pair of warm pajama pants, but the material was a weird polyester that I thought would be warm but in actuality was ridiculously hot and I can't bear to wear them.  Plus they're too big and fall down, even with a drawstring because the material stretches.  Those will probably be scrapped.

I sewed myself a bag using this tutorial from See Kate Sew:

It's huge!  I love it.  I've been using it as a purse because I like it and want to be near it but I think it would actually work more as a tote bag.

In addition to sewing I also finished knitting a sweater for Sebastian and worked more on a sweater I started last year for Chris.

(Apparently Chris gets pushed aside sometimes.  Woops!)

And I made homemade poptarts from smitten kitchen that were so, so good and homemade blueberry pancakes that tasted horribly and dinner every night and muffins and homemade paleo granola that I can't stop eating with milk and chocolate chips and I occasionally cleaned the house and we put chocolate in our oatmeal because we needed it.  And Adele learned how to write her name, which was super exciting for us all.  Also there was pantsless drawing.

I was so ready to go back to work.

I wasn't at all ready to go back to work.

I'm a better mother when I go to work.

I'm a better mother when I'm at home with the kids.

Such is life, right?