The strawberries keep coming! Yippee! If you read my post from earlier about the bugs eating our strawberries, you would have thought we would not be pulling in the crop that we are. Our bug juice worked! Doug gathers a bowl every morning and today I went out during my gardening time and saw the beautiful little ruby red jewels peaking through the green in the patch – what a lovely sight!
I love the imperfections of growing your own food. The “perfect” fruits and veggies you find in the store seem (to me) to be nuclear looking. Like they’ve been pumped with chemicals, given a shot of steroids and then dipped in wax. I do find some “picture perfect” fruits and veggies in our yard but I love to find all the funky ones, the teeny tiny berries, the gnarled looking pepper – the “imperfect” ones – those are my favorites!
We headed back to the midwest for a week and during that time our lettuce bolted and got bitter, so I had to tear out that crop and sowed more seeds today (arugula, bibb, romain, and salad bowl). I feel like I’ve been so crazy with other things that I haven’t been focusing on the garden so it was fun to play out there today. I love to work in the garden with all the bees buzzing around me, the sun shining down on me, the kids playing in the dirt – it’s therapy.
Here’s what I saw today….
What’s going on in your garden?
So I have been collecting Doug’s old shirts and mine – that have fun patterns or good pockets. You ask why? Well, I have been saving them to make pants for the kids. Soulemama has a technique she wrote about in her book The Creative Family. I thought – what a great idea! I love to re purpose something and give it new life.
So I busted into my collection and began my project. Amazingly it is super quick. I think in total it may have taken 15 to 20 minutes – not too bad and in the end you get a cool new pair of pants.
Here’s how it goes….. take your shirt, lay out a pair of pants that is the kids current size, trace around it (I actually just cut with the pant laying on the shirt – another way to save a step). Add a little around the pant to allow for seam allowance, cut a piece of elastic to size, sew it up and you got yourself a new pair of pants. You can read in detail in her book.
I place the pants so that the pocket of the shirt becomes the back pocket of the pants. I recently made Ryder a pair out of an old Ben Davis shirt of Doug’s (they are adorable) and also a pair of linen pants out of an old linen shirt (perfect for spring/summer).
My shirts don’t work so well b/c of pleating (something to watch for). I have some jersey shirts I will be using for shorts and leggings. I did make a skirt out of an old shirt of mine for Saige – it’s now one of my favorite skirts for her.
(and her shirt is a new one I made yesterday – my little Peace baby!)
I love to see the little ones in their handmade garb – and they seem to like it too! Nothing better than when your 4 1/2 year old says “mama, will you make me another pair of pants”. I just LOVE it!!!!
