First Easter Dress, New Best Friend & Other Random Stuff!

I finished the first Easter Dress!!!!   Here's a sneak peek!  I am dying to post photos of the whole dress, but I don't have the slip made yet, and I kind of want to wait till I send it to Emory before I put photos up.  I may not have that much patience, though.  We'll see.  I'm going to make her slip today and start on Riley's dress.  I'm excited about hers, too.  Actually, I'm excited about all of them.  I just get so impatient wanting to be working on all of them at one time.

Yes, I know this is pitiful, but my new best friend is this new heating pad.  Remember I said that my sciatica is acting up?  I got the shot of cortisone, do my stretches every day, take my ibuprophen, and now I have my first appointment with a chiropractor on Monday.  In the meantime, I am using this new heating pad.  I really like that it is so long; it hits all parts from the hips up.  I also like that it is electric and stays hot, well, it does cut itself off, but I don't have to keep heating it up.  And, I like that it is flat, so when I lay on the floor to do my stretches, I can lay on it.  I really love my old heating pad that I heat in the microwave, too, though.  It smells great and fits across my neck and fits in the small of my back.  I sometimes tuck it down in the back of my pants and do whatever I've got to do.  It looks really weird, but who cares.

Several years ago, my cousin started making these really cute purses from place mats.  Have you seen them?  I will post some photos of one soon.  I decided that I need a new purse, so I'm going to make one, but not until all Easter garments are made.  Anyway, I got the idea to make these organizers from place mats.  I use one all the time.  The green one is mine.  I have made them several ways.  For the green one, I folded the placemat long ways, as we say at school - hot dog style.  Then I folded the sides up to meet the fold.  I then sewed through all thicknesses in 

several different places so that a check book, cell phone, credit cards, and pens, etc..   would fit in  their own special sections.  It will fold in several ways so that it will fit in almost any purse.  I cannot imagine not having this in my purse now.  I just made the red one for a lady I met at the beauty shop the other day.  She was complaining because she can never find her cell phone. Her purse is a pretty red floral design and much deeper than mine.  So, I found this red place mat that is solid on one side and checked on the other.  I folded hers hamburger style, as we say at school, with the short ends together.  I then folded the sides up to meet the edges.  I made one side deeper than the other so her smaller things won't get lost.   Hers is not as wide as mine, but that's what she wanted because the top opening of her purse isn't very wide.  I hope she likes it.  

This is a photo of the "CLASSROOM" I am using this year.  I was so used to a really BIG room, but, I am retired, and I'm only teaching 6 kids at a time 3 days a week, so I don't need much space.  This does get rather cramped at times, though.  I'm also claustrophobic, so I have to leave the door open all the time.  The hall noise can be a pain, and the door to the outside is straight across the hall from my door so we get cold, but, oh well.  When I first started this job, I was using two different rooms.  One of them was fine, but it is really the speech teacher's room, so on the days she is at school, I was to use the music room, which is a portable room that has steps into both doors.  My stuff was on a portable rolling cart; steps didn't work. I asked if this storage (nurse's) room could be cleaned out, and it was.  The nurse was very happy that her room finally got cleaned out, and she and I are there on different days, so it really works out well. 

 Is this not gorgeous!?!  When I pulled out of my driveway the other morning, I looked back toward our house, and this is what I saw.  I pulled over to the side of the road and snapped this picture.  What a sunrise!!  See the mountains in the background? This is what we can see from the deck on the back of our house when we get up early enough to get out there and look.  I love living here.  

Gotta go sew!!!