Dinosaurs on Film!

It's only 2:30 and so far:

1. Since the little kid now has the high fever that tormented the big kid this weekend, we didn't go to storytime at the local library this morning, and so while the little kid napped fitfully in the other room, the big kid and I worked on the dinosaur quilt for her mid-July birthday. This consists mostly of looking at all the dino T-shirt panels and dino fabric we've collected, re-stacking and re-sorting them--she's not even four years old yet, and the big kid already knows the best part of sewing. We did make a plan, however. Here is the big kid's concept sketch of the plan:

It really is a pretty accurate sketch: basically, we decided that each T-shirt panel would be surrounded by a wide border of printed fabric. I'd like the border to have the pattern match perfectly on all sides and to be pretty seamless, like a picture frame, so a log cabin quilt it is!

2. After the little kid wakes up howling and we nurse, have snacks, read books, have more snacks, spill some milk, do some laundry, eat watermelon outside, read another book, and I bully the big kid into getting dressed (I may have raised my voice just a smidge, but honestly--what did she do with her toothbrush? We never did find it!) so my partner can come get her, he takes her to school and then puts the little kid down for a nap while I eat some Minute Rice and read some more of this awesome blog I discovered the other day. The author takes beautiful photographs, makes awesome recycled sweater creatures like I'm learning how to do, and is a self-taught sewist, as well. Her blog entry on the Simplicity 3835 shirt pattern actually sent me to ebay to bid on one for myself. If I win it, it will be my very first pattern ever, so don't snipe me, y'all, because I swear I always get sniped.

3. After I finish my lunch (it was actually pretty gross, so yay, calorie deficit!), I spend an episode of Friday Night Lights finishing up a super-large item for my Craft for My Kids swap on Craftster. I'm almost finished, with maybe one or two smallish-mediums or large-ish smalls to make for my partner's little girlie.

4. I go in to nurse the little kid back to sleep (Matt has gotten me into Superman, oddly enough, so I'm working my way through the Superman in the Sixties collection. It is so weird), then creeeep out, holding my breath, and actually have time to finish tweaking and printing the dino photos I'm going to put in the kids' downstairs bathroom. This is Sue, from the Chicago Field Museum:

These are some of the kids' dino toys. One night the big kid and I got down her Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals (Smithsonian Handbooks) (gift alert: the kids totally need all these Smithsonian Handbooks) and she actually found the right picture for each of these dinosaurs and spelled their names for me so I could label their bellies with a Sharpie. This here is a velociraptor up front, and possibly a pachycephalosaurus behind it:

4. And now it's 3:00, the little kid is now sitting on my lap pestering me while I finish up, and we're about to go get the big kid from school. We can't go to the YMCA like we usually do because of the little kid's fever, we can't go to Sam's even though we need cookie dough for my last day of class tomorrow because my wallet is MIA, so if we're lucky we'll get invited to hang out with another mom and gossip while the kids run around and get dirty, and if not we'll come home and rock the neighborhood playground, and if those are our choices for spending the afternoon, then that probably just makes us pretty lucky in general.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, handmade homeschool high school studies, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!