Reveal: Wedding Clothes

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I've been super busy during this month.  My two oldest sons both started school, Anakin is in first grade, and Buzz started preschool. We made a quick weekend trip to Utah for our nephew's blessing the first Sunday of August.  We also made a weeklong trip to Houston for my youngest sister's wedding on August 19th.  I've been home for just over a week now, but I've been spending my time CLEANING.  With the whirlwind called summer vacation continuing with 2 trips after school started,  I've been busy packing, unpacking, doing laundry, repeat!  Housework has been hit or miss.  I had really only done the absolutely necessary things.   Until this past week.  Now my house feels clean, I have caught my breath, and I am recharged and ready to get back into a routine (including frequent blog posts!).
As far as sewing and crafting, again,  I really haven't been able to do much except the absolutely necessary things.  I do consider sewing my boys matching outfits for my sister's wedding an absolutely necessary project.  Her color was coral, so naturally the boys needed to dress up in the color just like the grown men.  I sewed their little outfits.  Because of the extreme heat, we opted for button-down short-sleeved shirts and dress shorts rather than suits.  Suit coats would just be too hot.  I have to say, I think the boys look rather adorable!   The coral fabric is a nice lightweight pique.  It is very breathable.  Also, it hides wrinkles really well, so it's perfect for rambunctious little men. The shorts are classic dress shorts: pleats at the waist, with ironed creases down the center of each leg, cuffs at the bottom, hitting each boy at the top of the knees.

Humanitarian Center School Kit Service Project

The past few days I have been very busy working on getting ready for and completing a service activity with the women of my church. All the women in my faith (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are members of a womens' organization called the Relief Society. True to our name and motto, "Charity Never Faileth"  my ward's (local congregation) Relief Society tries to have at least one major service activity each year where everyone can come and be involved.  The past few years we have done a major project at Christmas time ,and it has usually involved some type of Sub-for-Santa program.   This year, we decided to try something different.  On the activity board, we decided to work on a project for the LDS Humanitarian Center.  They have numerous kits that you can put together that will be shipped around to world to people in need.  Some of these kits include a hygiene kit, a newborn layette, orphanage module, medical kits and a school tote kit.  To see and learn more, check out their Service Project Guidelines.
The LDS Humanitarian Center is my church's welfare headquarters.  The center gathers supplies. "The emergency relief supplies required by the Church include clothing, personal care kits, and medical supplies. Once donated, these items are processed and prepared for shipment to where they are needed most. In a typical year, the Latter-day Saint Humanitarian Center will ship about 12 million pounds of shoes and clothing, 1 million hygiene kits, and 1 million pounds of medical supplies to relieve suffering in more than 100 countries."
12 million pounds of clothes?  1 million hygiene kits? A million pounds of medical supplies? We are shipping out supplies in the MILLIONS!  Wow.  Numbers that high slightly boggle the mind.  I took a tour of the warehouse building when I was in nursing school and remember being astounded at the size.   
In my ward, we decided that we would work on making school kits for our Relief Society project since its August and school supplies are all on sale right now.  These school kits will be shipped to kids in orphanages and relief areas all over the world.  Our goal was to sew 50 tote bags and stuff them with the needed supplies. We asked the women to make donations of fabric for the totes and sign up for the specific items required such as scissors, notebooks and pencils.  For the actual day of the activity, last Thursday, we planned to sew the totes and then stuff them.  
Well, the women in RS with me are amazing.  We had enough women sign up to bring all the supplies needed for the 50 totes.  Plenty of fabric was donated for the bags well ahead of time.  We had the fabric cut and ready to sew for the activity, but enough women wanted to help out early that 43 bags were already sewn when we arrived at the church on Thursday night.   In a matter of minutes all the totebags were stuffed with supplies and then loaded up into boxes.   I was able to deliver the boxes on Saturday. 
This ended up being a great project.  We all worked together to create something wonderful for kids who wouldn't even have pencils or paper.  I'm so glad that I belong to a church that is so focused on serving others.

Matthew 25:40

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

To learn more, visit http://www.mormon.org/

Coral Wedding Shirts

My youngest sister is getting married in 17 days!  We will be traveling down to Houston for the wedding in just 2 weeks, so it's time I start sewing the boys' outfits.  I'm actually quite excited to be sewing something for them.  I haven't really sewn my kids anything in a very long time. 

My sister's color is coral and her theme is garden party.  With the wedding in Houston in August, it is simply too hot for the boys to wear full suits.  So instead, they will be wearing dress shirts sewn out this coral and white plaid pique fabric with dressy khaki shorts and white ties. 

I just finished cutting out all three shirts.  I'm itching to get started with the sewing.  However, I worked last night and only took a short cat nap this afternoon while Mr. Bean and Buzz Lightyear napped.  Anakin was at school (can you believe that school starts on August 1 here in Colorado?)
Sleepy sewing = sloppy sewing, so it really wouldn't be a good idea for me to try and start them tonight.  I'm not really in the mood to use my seam ripper, and I don't have enough extra fabric to be able to afford making any mistakes. So, I will be to better off if I go to bed now and wait until tomorrow to start this project.  So, TTFN.