My Pretty Panda

If you’ve checked the photo gallery today, you see that we (finally) added photos from Halloween and I thought I should write a bit about Olivia’s costume. I’ve been wanting to get back into sewing for a couple years now and just never found the time while I was working. Then I had a newborn and time was not on my side again. However, this fall I decided I would make Olivia’s Halloween costume as a fun way to refresh my sewing skills. I hadn’t sewn anything since 4-H my senior year, even though JR & my parents had gone together to get me a nice sewing machine when I got my Masters Degree. I had a stack of Halloween costume patterns that I had picked up one year when they were on sale for $1 and laid them out to decide what Olivia should be for her first Halloween. The panda costume was an obvious choice. First of all, it was absolutely darling and second, we have a thing for pandas around here. Not really sure why, but we seem to have a little collection. At any rate, I took my pattern to the fabric store and purchased all the necessities and came home to get started. First things first – I washed the fabric (black and white furry fleece) according to the care instructions and started cutting out the pattern pieces - all 26 of them!! That was the first realization that I may be in over my head (there were many to come). Slowly, but surely though, it did start to come along. I have to thank my mom (and long-time sewing instructor) for her patience with my seemingly unending questions about the simplest tasks and JR for pitching in so that I could spend time sewing. With the reassurance I got from JR & Mom and my natural determined (stubborn) attitude, I managed to complete the costume at about 1am on Oct. 31st! All in all, I think I spent about 40 hours on the project. A lot of that was because I hadn’t sewn in so long and the rest was due to the challenging fabric & complicated pattern. It was quite a bit more time than I had expected to spend (and didn’t end up being any cheaper than what was at the store), but I was really happy with the final product and excited (nervous) to see if Olivia would actually wear it! She was asleep when it was finished, so I decided to use a model to get an idea of how it was going to look. 

National Instruments (NI) had a Halloween costume contest so JR dressed as a zookeeper and I brought his cub for the photo contest. They made a super cute pair. On Halloween night, I took Olivia up and down our block trick or treating. It was a bit anticlimactic as Olivia did not understand the point of trick or treating and the costume was not as big of a hit as I thought it might be. However, watching her sit in the living room sorting through her bucket of candy (all in the wrappers) made it all worth it. We let her open a chocolate Tootsie pop and she thoroughly enjoyed her first piece of candy! She kept licking it and laughing and putting it in her mouth and pulling it out to show us as if to say, "Do you know how good this is?" Later in the week, she wore her costume to Kindermusik class where she was a big hit during "The Bear Went over the Mountain" and then to the nursing home we’ve been visiting once a week (more on that in a future post) where we were met with ooos and ahhhs at every turn. She tried the costume on again while Mom & Zach were here over Thanksgiving and we got some cute photos of the Pretty Panda in the grass. In the end, I decided that Halloween costumes are probably more of a Decorate Your Duds project than a Challenging Fabrics & Patterns project. It’s a bit much to spend so much time on something to be worn for one evening, especially by someone with no enthusiasm for the event! But at least I got back into sewing and I know I’ve still got it!  

Ever had one of those days? (or weeks?)

Last week wasn’t so good for me. On Sunday after a "nice" lunch, we stopped at Lowe’s and they had a pretty ceiling fan at a reduced price. It would fit perfertly in Livy’s room (picture) where the old fan was almost dangerous at high speed. So that afternoon I started to install it. Her room is the only room in the house which doesn’t have an X10 switch. (X10 lets me remotely control the light via a remote control or the computer.) Since I was working on it I decided to add an X10 switch in her room which would give the added bonus of also being able to dim for storytime before bed. Well, X10 switches can only handle incandecent lights and not motors so I had to run the hot wire from the switch junction box in the wall to the fan box in the ceiling. I’ve done it before and it isn’t fun since you have to run it down through the cap studs to the switch box. Long story short it didn’t go so well and didn’t get done before her bed time so I just left that breaker off and capped the wires. Then the suffering began . . .

So after a week of not having a light or fan in Livy’s room, I was excited to get it finished on Saturday morning. But before I could even get started, Jenny called me at work on Friday to let me know that the window of her car was half open and stopped working. So I started on the car on Sat. morning. After disassembling the door panel I found that it was the power window regulator which is the slide that it runs up and down on. I called the dealership and they had one in stock. Great, right? Not for $350. So I called around to a few auto parts stores and nobody had one, so I ordered one on-line for $80. Not bad. Could things be that easy?

Not here. While battling the car, Jenny came out and told me that the washing machine was full of water and wouldn’t drain. Just what I needed. So I took on the washing machine next. I could hear the motor kick in but no pump so I figured it was a problem with the pump. After siphoning out the water I investigated how to get into it. Before popping the top off and taking the front three sides off I decided to tip it on it’s front to gain access from the bottom. The pump was right there so there was easy access. First I removed the inlet line; nothing there. I figured I’d have to take the pump out now but on a whim I decided to check the outlet side. What do you know, there was something in there. Using my needle nose pliers I pulled out a sock with a little pink bow. Yep, that is were those socks go when they disappear, I guess. It was one of Livy’s and it almost made it all the way through the pump. Originally it was 3 inches long but now it was more like 12. Glad I checked that side of the pump before really tearing things apart. Got the washer back together in time for the Husker v. TX A&M game, and what a game it was winning on a last minute drive! The new west coast offense comes in handy in that situation.

So today (Sunday) I was able to back to the ceiling fan. Everything went smoothly and I got the new wiring run and the fan up with no problems. I got everything cleaned up just in time for Jenny to go out to a bachelorette party leaving Livy and I to finish watching the NASCAR race where Jimmie Johnson took second and has a comfortable lead in the championship with only 1 race left. 

At the end of a long week, I tried out the new dimmer for stories before bed and it worked really nicely. I hope that is a sign that this will be a better week.

Agony from the Garden

We had a good day last Sunday. After Mass, we decided to have a treat and go out for a nice lunch. Jenny picked one of her favorite places - The Olive Garden. Jenny likes the soup & salad, which is what we usually get (she especially likes that you can get a deal on the combo for lunch). I like the soup, but I’m not much of a fan of the salad. Since we were treating ourselves, Jenny suggested that I get the steak & pasta to share with her. That way she would get soup & salad and steak & pasta. Sounded like a win/win situation to me.

When the food came, the steak and pasta looked good. The menu describes it as "Steak Gorgonzola-Alfredo: Grilled beef medallions drizzled with balsamic glaze, served over fettuccine tossed with spinach and gorgonzola-alfredo sauce. Steak prepared medium unless otherwise requested." Note at the end that it says prepared medium unless otherwise requested. I usually order mine medium-well, but I figured medium sounded good and they ought to be good at it right? Not so much. The first piece I cut into was more like rare, but it had taken a long time for it to come and Livy wasn’t interested in staying any longer than she had to, so I figured it would be ok. So I had eaten 2-3 bites of meat when Jenny decided to try some. She cut into a different piece and it looked like it hadn’t even been cooked. Our waitress happened to be walking by and saw it and immediately took the plate away. Since Livy was getting restless we told her we couldn’t wait for another one and she said they’d just take it off our bill. Then when the bill came out, the manager took it and said he would take care of the whole thing. Sweet, a free meal. Since the steak & pasta took a while we had already filled up on soup and breadsticks anyway. By the way, Livy really likes breadsticks!

And now… the rest of the story. About midnight I became violently ill. That’s as graphic as I’ll get, but I was up ALL night. It was pretty clear with how sudden it came on that it wasn’t the flu. After little improvement and a temperature of 101, Jenny took me to the doctor after lunch. He confirmed that it was due to "improperly prepared food", aka food poisoning. He prescribed the antibotic Cipro, which is the same thing that’s used to treat inhalation Anthrax. It seemed to work well, but I was still out from work for 2.5 days. After a week, I am finally almost back to normal. But that was just the start of my shall we say "challenging" week. I will have to tell you about that in another post.