Birthday Unwrapping ...

Well, Monkey Girl's party is over and done with and mostly cleaned up. We'll leave the presents out until the Pilot and Hamster Boy come home from their camping trip tomorrow afternoon. The 7 invited girls had fun and cooled off at the end in the sprinkler. After all left, she and I snuggled on the sofa and watched Bugs Bunny, what is not to love about that?

The only part I didn't like was having to disassemble all the toys from their packages. Not only are they sealed in plastic, each piece is wired to the backing board and sometimes even elastic bound on top of that. Then all is taped on the back. Then the whole assembly is in another plastic package. That was the almost tiring part of the whole day!

I kept the girls occupied by tracing off a picture onto pillowcases which they painted with fabric paints. A whole 30 minutes of fun and minimal mess, I was very impressed! Now they all have a special pillowcase to take with them on vacations/car trips, etc. I like doing useful things at parties like this rather than spending $ on dollar store toys that last a day and lots of candy (not that they all didn't get a balloon and a few chocolates in their pillowcases!).

No sewing tonight, I am beat. Having a party without the guys here was great for Hamster Boy, but tiring on me and I know the Pilot was torn between the two events, but I think Hamster Boy needed him more. This past year has been really hard on my son and he really misses his father. He also got short changed on me a bit this year as I still have afternoons with Monkey Girl, but he is at school, so he has little to no solo Mommy time. I think we will go camping for a long weekend once this whole thing is done. That way he and I can get together again without him having to compete with his little sister.

I just finished watching Last of the Mohicans on TV. We saw it on the big screen on our honeymoon. We were in the Rockies at the time, it was the Fall rut, so the elk were in fine form. As we drove through the woods to get back to our little cabin, we had to stop to allow a herd to cross the road. We opened the windows and heard the antlers hitting tree branches and hooves on the road. Very eerie in the dark after seeing a movie like that ... we laughed about that for a while after! I also love the music of that movie. It is great for running to!

I have the muslin lining for the Bollywood dress cut out and ready to go. I will fit that and then go onto the actual bodice. There will be changes coming to the BollyBodice (thanks MB for that term!) now that I see the pattern piece. It appears that the bodice started as a regular block, then was slashed and spread, starting from the armscye, giving the fullness in the design. My initial feeling is that I don't need to have that much fullness. The plan is to gather in one side and then to convert the gathers to tucks to take out the fullness on the other to see which is more flattering to my shape. The only reviews I have seen are of ladies that are less endowed than I am, so I can't really use their photos as a comparison. Maybe I will just fill it out better? Finally a use for the Twins? LOL! I am off to bed after checking on the Rodent while his Boy is away. He's been kicking bedding out of his cage lately as he makes a new nest in the corner rather than in his little side room. Very messy ... naughty Rodent!