A very productive day…

Today was one in which I was able to get a lot done. It started at 7 am with laundry and didn’t end until 8 pm with two loaves of bread coming from the oven. And even though today was extremely busy, and I’m tired, I’m proud of my accomplishments.

The yellow rose bush from Lowe’s (the pink bush is not shown)

After getting a load of laundry going at 7 am, I organized my craft container while I waited for my hubby to wake up so we could go to Lowe’s for rose bushes and tomato stakes. He finally got up at 8:30 and we spent an hour-and-a-half going from Home Depot to Lowe’s to exchange some plumbing pieces he didn’t need and to get the flowers and stakes. We also stopped at Wal-Mart because my Cheergirl needed a white tee shirt and black gym shorts for cheer tryouts this week. I found both for $4 each, but I was in the mood to do some sewing.

Once home, hubby staked the tomatoes while I transplanted the peace lily we brought home from my mother-in-law’s funeral. It sits on our porch as a reminder of her love for her family and her love of gardening. Then hubby helped me plant the two rose bushes we got at Lowe’s. They are in our rose garden (which is really just a five by ten foot area in front of our home that also houses our strawberries’ raised bed).

With the outside work done, I went to my studio to work on the shorts for my Cheergirl. I

The tee-shirt Soffees

took two no-longer-needed black tee shirts and an old pattern that was thrifted three years ago for $.45 and turned them into a cute little pair of homemade Soffees. It took me a few hours to complete the shorts, but they look pretty good if I do say so myself. I used tracing paper to outline the pattern on the black tees and followed the pattern directions to sew the front pieces together and the back pieces together, then the front to the back. After they started resembling shorts, I sort of freestyled from there.

I did a one-inch hem using my machine’s zigzag stitch and fought with that stupid machine because it got stuck on zigzag. Once that issue was worked out, I did a tiny 1/4 inch zigzag hem around waist’s rough edge and attached the waistband elastic. The one lesson I learned from making these shorts is to move the elastic higher on the serged waist hem. The shorts, however, were so comfortable that my Cheergirl didn’t want to take them off for me to get a good picture of them.

Hubby removing fresh bread from the pans.

While hubby was grilling hamburgers, I got dough going in my bread machine to make bread for the girls to use in their lunches this week. When I first got my machine I let it do all the work – the mixing, the kneading, and the baking. Now I make the bread dough and roll two loaves to put in bread pans to cook in the oven. I found the directions for this method at sewmuch2luv.blogspot.com. Check it out under Karen’s recipes. The loaves end up being the size of store-bought bread but with a better taste. It takes more time to make bread this way, but I make enough for the whole week. Hubby was considerate and took the hot loaves from the oven for me. After the dough for the white bread was done, I put in ingredients for cinnamon raisin bread. I’ll let it cook in there and have it for snack or breakfast this week.

I’m tired, and not really looking forward to work tomorrow, because I’d much rather spend my days doing what I did today: planting flowers, sewing, organizing, baking bread, and spending time with my family. But there’s always next weekend and summer vacation is just a month-and-a-half away.