Pants to Shorts

My girl REFUSES to wear pants. Dresses only. So, I have some hand me down pants that are idle and my girl is tumbling about showing her panties to the world. So why not cut them down and make them "bloomers"? I'm sure you could make fancy elasticized bloomers, but I don't sew well enough, so here are simple undershorts for girls that like to tumble for the sewing impaired.

Take some cotton stretchy pants and capris. (Good for stained knees.) Grab a pair of shorts for the same size kiddo as you want to make your shorts.

Line up the crotches so that your length will be what you want and cut them off.

Then zigzag sew around the bottom cut off (If you pull on the fabric as you sew, like I did the purple one, the more scalloped/ruffled the edge becomes). And now I have new no-show the underwear bloomers.

And then she tried them out for us:

Reusable Prewriting Worksheets

My three year old drew faces, rather intricate ones, all of a sudden, demonstrating she could control her writing utensil. So, I grabbed a few of those preschool readiness workbooks that I had picked up somewhere and she blew through all the pages that didn't require her to make letters. (She made the number "1" but anything more complicated than that was not within her grasp.) A few hours later, she brought the workbook back to me and asked to do more "school" and made sure she showed off her "school" to Daddy when he got home.

She needs more practice to be able to do the letter practice in the books. She needs some prewriting practice.

The only books I thought would work for us this is this series of Kumon books, but I have a feeling I'd spend $8 for an hour of her working and then she'd ask for more school. Now if it were a laminated/dry erase book, I'd be all over it.

So here are a group of sites that have plenty of printable worksheets to choose from (print on draft ink setting!) so we can do more school.
{You can google, "Line tracing worksheets," "Fine motor skill worksheets" or "prewriting worksheets" to find sites such as these}

Our Homeschooling Expedition Page of Links to Prewriting Worksheets

Handwriting 1

Ed Helper Visual Perception Skills

Tracing Lines Kids Learning station

Pre-printing Practice

Tls Fine Motor skills worksheets

And a nice Activities booklet for Prewriters

Now, how to make them reusable? Slip them into a page protector for a 3 ring binder and have the child write on it with a dry erase marker. Then you can easily switch out pages and save the old ones for re-rotation or the next child.

If you know of any other good sites that have many options for prewriters, let us know in the comment section!

Broken Lamp Closet Light

There were no bathrooms when we moved into the house (long story), but one of the upstairs bathroom rooms was ginormous, bigger than my childhood bedroom, so when we put in a bathroom, we walled off a section to make a storage closet. A storage closet is not high on our priority list of things to fix in this house, so it just sits there unfinished. I had a curtain on a tension rod covering the door hole.

Our church bulldozed its parsonage and prior to its demise, we were allowed in to strip things. So we took the tall doors off the pantry. They'd fit that closet! So Hubby installed them last week. (Kinda feel like Alice in Wonderland in that hallway with the three different sized doors)

But now I needed a light, but as I said, this is low priority, none of the house has overhead lighting and so the other rooms are needing that attention first. So, my toddler had broken a lamp by being a monkey, and I had kept the light portion in thoughts that one day, I'd make a hole through a stack of books and have a book lamp base. But, aha! I could string it up from one of the outlets already in the closet for now. So, I took the lamp and an extension cord and some big staples that you have to hammer in and strung it up.

This portable wardrobe was also for the taking at the parsonage, so now there's a closet in the storage closet.

One day we'll finish the drywall, put in a real light, put in carpet and shelving, but for now, the storage closet is usable.

Making Patterns from Store Bought Clothing

There have been times where I wished I had bought more than one of a particular clothing item. And I wear it even past the point of stains that won't go away because they are so flattering. I would have loved to been able to make another one, and now with instructions from Donna on Homemaking Made Easy I might be able to do that with the next shirt or skirt that so inspires me.

Make Patterns from Store Bought Clothes Tutorial

Sweater turned Draped Cardigan

Ok, I bought a sweater ($1) to do the refashion posted on these two blogs, but it didn't turn out so well, it was nice, but not big enough. I would suggest at least two sizes bigger than you, not just one. So, who knows when I'll find another since it took me awhile to find the last one. So, in case you got a sweater with box cut (non surged or a non-knit sweater) sleeves, I thought I'd post the tutorials anyway.

Flowery Skirt Tutorial and Absinthe and Orange Tutorial (I found using both of these for different aspects of the construction useful) And be really careful when picking out the seams of a knit sweater (whoops!)

Denim Headband

Ok, who says the frugal gene can't be inherited?

My 3 year old loves to put a big rubber band around her head as a headband. (Mommy and Daddy keep trying to gather up and hide all the rubber bands, but she's like a rubber band detector) We may have gotten them all because she slipped into the sewing room where Daddy had been sewing up a gun rest from a pant leg. He left the pant leg cuff he'd cut off on the floor and that is now the new headband.

I've cut off the ragged ends to make it nicer, but I'm rather proud of my 3 year old Making Do-er.

Then she insisted that she wanted to read my unabridged dictionary as soon as I took the above picture and she did read it for a whole 20 minutes! I just thought this was a great picture for my blogging profile! I've got three blogs, 1) My kid blog is for my family and replaces my need for scrapbooking 2)This blog all about frugal making do aka using pants' scrap as a headband and 3)My Fiction Reading/Writing Blog - What says Reading and Writing more than an unabridged dictionary! :)