Beach Wedding

Our kids’ school finishes at 2pm, till that time there is a little time for myself but afterwards the driving around starts: after school sport activities, visiting friends, going to the dentist,…

Thursdays –for us the last day of the schoolweek, as our weekend is the Friday and the Saturday- are especially busy for ‘driver mummy’.

Thursday afternoons I have to drive 3 times to the gymnastics club. The first time I drop our four year old and one of the boys. As they are under 7 years of age I am expected to stick around during the class. So usually I take some needlework that needs to be finished: attaching buttons, repairing a seam, attaching darts by hand,…

Not last Thursday! I allowed myself to relax with a book. Just before starting to read I consulted my Iphone todo list and I got a small panick attack when I realised I did not yet start making the dress for the wedding planned the day after at 3.30pm.

The cover of the book I planned to read, was instantly transformed to a piece of drawing paper and the dress was designed during my kids’ gymnastics class.

After two more trips to the gymnastics club driving and dropping the rest of our tribe I drew the pattern and cut the fabric. The Friday morning I started the needlework on the darts and pleats by hand, while I was watching my daughter play a rugby game. Returning home I assembled the dress in about 2 hours. Nevertheless there was no time left before the ceremony to finish the arm openings, nobody really noticed as I covered up the unfinished parts with a vest. 

I finished the inside of the collar and arm openings between the ceremony and the dance party!

The sleeves I initially planned to attach were eliminated after I calculated how much time there was left to assemble the dress. The finishing was minimal (no liner, but biais binding to hide the borders!) nevertheless I was happy with the result.

The kids enjoyed, especially as they loved the little parasols they got, as well as the ‘pull-a-little-brother’ game they played just before driving off to the wedding.

The newlyweds, well they were only looking at each other!

Any attempts to take a picture of our whole tribe ends up being catastrophic! At least one person always looks the wrong way.

In February we have another Beach Wedding, remind me that I do have to start a little earlier on the making of the dress, so I might actually be able to add some sleeves.

Five sets of milk teeth

Our eldest already has a couple of ‘big people teeth’, recently also Omar started to get his big teeth. Twin brother Elias got a little jealous of his brother; but yesterday his patience got rewarded. He could also finally put his first milk tooth in a jar we made earlier this year. How such a small thing as a milk tooth can make a boy proud!

We got inspired by pinterest to make our kids teeth jars. This summer our collection of empty glass jars was set out on the table and small plastic animals were glued on the lid.

Consequently we spray painted the lids.

We made one jar for every Curl Up kid, decorated with their preferred animal.

Meanwhile we also made some jars for mummy her collection of buttons. 

We even made one with glow-in-the-dark paint. A scary jar!

Dolphin spotting in Musandam

Locally, Eid al Adha, is a religious festive period, so dad does not have to work, the kids have no school and well also the sewing machine needed a break.

Ideal timing for a two day excursion to Musandam, also called the Northern Omani Peninsula.

We embarked on a dhow, an old wooden boat.

We went boating through the Musandam fjords – once and a while the captain got some assistance.

We ate.

We lounged.

We read.

We saw dolphins.

We collected coral – meanwhile our garden is decorated all over with coral.

We slept – by means of precautionary measure we slept in a tent, as one of the kids is a sleepwalker.

We swam.

We snorkelled.

We worked.

We argued.

We sang, shouted, and ran.

We acted tough.

We daydreamed.

We spotted ‘authentic’ rock-carvings – camels that were gouged out centuries ago.

And we gained plenty of solar energy, so we are ready to face daily life.

Candy Shop Bubble dress

Guess what Jade is wearing today…

A Candy Shop bubble dress!

Definitely my new favorite pattern, super easy to assemble, although I doubt I will still like the dress while ironing it, as that seems to be less obvious then making the actual dress!

The pattern was drawn based on the patterns of these dresses. So the basis was an A-line dress. Some adjustments were made to bodice and skirt. The bodice was enlarged at the waistline but only with about a single cm. So the lining of the skirt part was made 1 cm wider as well. De outside fabric was made 6 cm wider at the waist and 11 cm underneath. The outside fabric is about 1.5 cm longer than the lining to avoid the lining from peeping out.

Firstly I finished the skirt, by attaching the lining to the outside fabric. Secondly I stitched the bodice, special attention went to making sure the design of the print was continuous on both sides of the blind zipper.

Lastly skirt and bodice were attached to each other.

I promise to publish some tutorials in November, this dress will be one of them as well as a pattern for the MacLaren liner, keep an eye on this blog.

I bought this Michael Miller fabric @ Vermiljoenshop.

Retro Rocket Rascals

I am lucky. I live in a sunny country and … there are several numerous fabric and haberdashery shops. Unluckily these shops mostly offer silk, synthetic fabrics and disappointingly small amounts of cotton. The available cotton is very thin and suits merely as liner for clothes, besides retro prints are nowhere to be found locally.

Nevertheless sometimes my endless fabric searches are worthwhile, as once and a while a roll of fabric falls of a container on its way from China to America or Europe.

Recently I when shopping at Tahir in Satwa, I found a roll of Michael Miller his Retro Rocket Rascals.

I once bought 1.5 meters of this fabric online, and I economized the use as I considered it pretty precious. The local shop owner –not realizing the real value of this roll- was selling the fabric way undervalued. Which made me back then (and most probably you now) think the fabric most be a copy of the real stuff. The shop owner sold me 1 meter and promised me to keep the roll aside for a couple of hours. The fabric was washed together with the previously online bought scrap, result: NO DIFFERENCE!

I wisely decided to buy the whole roll and started producing various retro rocket rascals items.

A couple of weeks later the proud shop owner calls me in, telling me he has found another roll of the same fabric and that he kept it aside especially for me because: “I know Madame this is your favorite fabric!”

Too much of ought is good for nought! In the meantime both rolls (I could not tell the man I wasn’t interested in the second roll!) are gathering dust.

I am sure there are people among you that wouldn’t mind helping me reducing my Retro Rocket Rascals stock, so once this blog has 97 followers (I do not like round numbers), we will raffle 2.5 meters among the followers of this blog.

The winners of the previous give away were Dirk Van Landeghem and Delphie de Leyn, thank you for sending us an email with your address details so we can send you your pencil case.