Tag: soccer

Movies, murals, sewing

I have a few little things I want to blog about, so I guess I should do that before too much time passes!

Last Friday, George and I went to go see the documentary Three Identical Strangers that was briefly playing at a local movie theater here. I had been hearing about it for a while, ever since it was making the rounds of film festivals earlier this year, thanks to the Google notifications I get for “identical triplets.”

onesheet.jpg

In a nutshell, the movie is about a set of identical triplets that were separated at birth and reunited, just by sheer happenstance, 19 years later. It’s heart-wrenching and emotional and funny and sad and tears rolled down my face for the first thirty minutes and then I pulled myself together. It was just so good and so thought-provoking and if you can see it, you should. If only I could have worn a shirt that said “Mom of Identical Triplets” so I could have gotten free popcorn or something. Or a free daiquiri. The movie theater had daiquiris. I could have used one.

Later that day, I went to the first day of a sewing class at a local store, which was so amazing and exhausting. The goal was to make a box-pleated skirt. By the end of the weekend I had spent 11 hours in the store, and I still didn’t have a finished skirt. I still don’t. Still have some work to do on it. Heh. But it’s going to be amazing. And I learned so much! I will have an in-depth blog post about it later, once the skirt is all finished, but I have about 20 feet of hem to hand-sew so it might be a little bit.

Sneak peek:

And then the other day, my friend Jenn told me about a mural that a local artist painted last month on the side of a building of a French soccer star. Well, obviously I had to take the boys, so we went yesterday on the way to soccer. It was pretty cool! Oliver was less than thrilled, as this guy, Paul Pogba plays for Manchester United (when he’s not playing for the French national team) and Oliver is a Manchester City fan. Kids.

 

Sewing and soccer

I started to make this just about sewing, but there’s more to life than sewing, you know.

There’s soccer, of course.

img_9786

Speaking of, my latest post for NOMB came out today.

helpsoccer

Generally tongue in cheek, as I am wont to do. Check it out!

Okay, this is probably really, really wrong of me. But I was videoing some of the soccer game because I knew the boys would want to watch it, and I just happened to get a video of this kid on the other team getting knocked over by a ball. He was FINE. But the video is VERY FUNNY. SO I can’t decide if I should share it or not. Hmm. How about I won’t embed it, but I’ll put a link here so you can click on it if you want to be as evil as me and watch a little kid get conked in the head with a soccer ball? Fair enough. (And yes. I slowed it down so you could see it even better.)

Last weekend, some long-lost (not really) cousins were in town and we had lunch with them. I wish I had some pictures. We were half an hour late because the French Quarter was packed so it took us forever to park so I was too frazzled to take pictures. Except of my barbecue oyster poboy. Mmmmmm.

Oh, and my Uncle Lee was here and he showed me a photo of my Aunt Nancy from when she was younger. She was my dad’s big sister, and of course I only knew her when she was older so it was lovely to see this.

Oh, look at these adorable sailors in the FQ for Navy Week!

Sewing-wise, I made this dress and this dress and both were fails (one was WAY too big, and I don’t feel like going back and reprinting and taping the pattern in a smaller size, the other was just…meh) and then I decided I needed to try the Cashmerette Springfield top again because by golly I wasn’t going to give up on it, and I was much more successful the second time. Except the bust darts were too high and the arm holes a smidge tight.

Try three was a winner! My friend Jessica sews kid’s clothes for a living and had two full boxes of adorable fabrics that she gave me and I am in HEAVEN. I made both of those Springfield tops out of fabric she gave me. I love the plaid!

Not bad.
Much better!
SO MUCH FABRIC!

And then last night I decided to try the Cashmerette Washington dress and as seems to be the case with these patterns, they don’t fit right the first time so I am going to re-make the bodice in a different fabric tonight and see if it works better. I hope so!

I also am excited about trying out this dress pattern and this skirt pattern. This weekend, I hope I can get to at least one of them!

Dress
or dress
or skirt

Oh, but my nieces’ birthdays are coming up and I want to make them things too. So much to sew, so little time!

Ooh, and look at my cute shoes!

img_9916

Also I’ve been to Orangetheory five times in a row now because I want to get this stupid t-shirt that you have to earn by completing “a marathon” in April. Which normally, fine, 26.2 miles over the course of a month’s worth of workouts wouldn’t be so difficult except that I was out for about 10 days of the month because of travel and a funeral last week. So I might fall apart by the end of the month but BY GOD I WILL HAVE A SHIRT THAT IS PROBABLY TOO SMALL.

Some nice things

I have a longer post coming soon, but for now I wanted to highlight these two nice things people said to me on Saturday.

IMG_9717

Nice thing #1:

Scene: The boys’ soccer game had just ended. Their team lost (barely) but they played really well. 

Coach: Pam, can I talk to you over here?

Me (thinking): Uh oh, what’d I do? I’m in trouble.

Coach: I just wanted to tell you that your boys are a delight to coach. They’re so well-behaved and are really supportive to their teammates. They just have great attitudes, unlike some of the other players on the team. I just wanted to let you know.

Me (is it dusty here or what?): Thank you, that’s so kind!

END SCENE

IMG_9773

Nice thing #2:

Scene: Cute little sewing store.  I went in “real quick” to pick up some fabric since they were having a sale that ended that day. Miles came in with me, the rest of the fam was in the van outside, frothing at the mouth because I was “taking so long.” Pleeeeease. But look at the pretty fabric I got!

Fancy Uptown older lady: Did you make that shirt?

Me: This old thing? (Not really, I didn’t say that.)
Me: Yes!

FUOL: That’s really nice! What pattern is it?

I tell her. She looks carefully at the seams and admires the bias binding. I self-deprecatingly say it’s not perfect, and I only started sewing recently. She says some more complimentary things, and some of my imposter syndrome around sewing fades. (Some, not all.)

END SCENE

Not totally about sewing

I’m going to try to blog about other stuff for once. I will probably fail.

Let’s see.

Okay, well, how about I get the sewing stuff out of the way first, and then I will talk about other stuff? Okay.

I currently have a wealth of fabric. Definitely not complaining! I don’t have plans for most of it, I’m just going to wait for the right project to come along. I am going to make another Akita shirt out of some teal linen for my upcoming trip to Singapore, though, and I want to make a dress as well out of another linen I got. (Okay, since I started this post, I made the Akita shirt, and I even made my own bias tape for it and NEVER AGAIN at least not until I forget what a pain THAT was.)

But the dreamiest is this gorgeous Art Deco rose gold sequined fabric. I don’t have the skills to use it yet, but I will one day. It will need to be lined in satin or something, and zippers might need to be involved. So it will have to wait until my skills have caught up. But it’s going to be amazing. And I’m going to wear it every day.

I had a pretty bad fail this weekend. I have been dreaming of this Charlie Caftan for a while and finally bought the pattern and made it with some fabric that I was given and liked but wouldn’t be devastated if it didn’t work out, and guess what, It didn’t work out. It looked like a hospital gown. Probably partially down to the fabric, but also the fit just isn’t great, and I think the pattern just isn’t for me and I just need to accept it and get over it and deal with it. Probably because I’m so cheap the hardest part to swallow is the $14 loss on the pattern – since it’s a PDF pattern it’s not like I can just give it to someone like I could if it was a paper pattern. But it’s a lovely dress on plenty of people. Just not for me.

Read More

Random stuff (and I made another thing!)

Okay, I’m deep into this sewing obsession (it won’t last forever, don’t worry) but I don’t want to only blog about things I sew, so I’ll combine it with other stuff I need to blog about.

The boys are now playing soccer, and aren’t taking guitar lessons any longer. Deja vu to two years ago – Linus wanted to sign up for soccer, so I did, happy that he wanted to do it by himself. And the other two went to a game and of course then wanted to play as well. So now all three are playing soccer again. Linus had his first game on Saturday and they won. I took a bunch of pictures, of course.

A while back, Linus and I were on a very short segment on the morning news about a toy (on behalf of the moms blog) and I never blogged about it because there’s no clip of it online (thank god), only terrible photos of the screen my brother posted on social media. Sigh. One such gem:

27164426_10159849628990623_3078555402411496709_o

OKAY NOW CAN I SHOW YOU?

Very simple pajama pants for Oliver (whales again!) and I can tell you now, my next project is two more pairs (in other fabrics.) He was ecstatic. 🙂

IMG_7724

It’s mid-February but I think spring is here now. Sigh. I hate spring. Except for this.

That 366 project

No, I’m not giving up on it like I did last year. But I am definitely being lazy about it. Here are a bunch of pics in gallery format to make catching up easier.

The 9th through 15th are covered in my Austin recap post. I mean, I’m pretty positive I posted at least one picture from each day I was there. Let’s just say I did, mmkay?

So now for the 16th – 25th:

Okay, yes, I missed a day in there. Whatever. I’m being nice to myself and not obsessing over it.

We had a nice weekend in Baton Rouge. My mom and Larry hadn’t seen all three of them in a while. (Miles and I had seen them after his second day of filming.) There was hula-hooping and playing on a playground and going out to dinner for pizza. Sunday I was able to sneak off for a bit to buy some new workout clothes which was nice. We also made some more homemade cupcakes – lemon cupcakes with strawberry buttercream this time, but I don’t know if we should be making a habit of Sunday cupcakes. Well, we still have to make chocolate, so this isn’t the right time to be making a decision.

Speaking of my new workout, I’m really liking it. I am sore, but not like so much that I’m debilitated. It’s more like the “oh right, I have muscles there!” kind of sore. I’ll admit a big part of my motivation is the trip to Europe I have in June where I’ll be up on stage with my beautiful colleague Erica. There will be video of our talk. Need I say more?

Okay, on with the week!

 

The last soccer game

Soccer is over! It was fine – not a huge time commitment, and the boys loved it. Well, unless they were losing. But whatever. I’m just glad it’s over because the mosquitoes were getting seriously dangerous and huge at practice. Stupid global warming.

Anyhoo, they did great! Well, Oliver wasn’t feeling well, so he didn’t play too much. But Miles and Linus both scored! More than once! So that was fun.

They got medals at the end.

Team pic!

IMG_9103

and Grandee and Larry came to watch!

IMG_9105

Until Spring, maybe? Only if they can still play in the recreational league. We’ll see.

Soccer, week 3: Crushing defeat

Well, we warned them that not all games were going to be 22-1 victories.

The game started out somewhat unbalanced. The boys were playing against a team of all girls – and not that I’m sexist, blah blah blah, but these girls were tiny compared to the boys.

IMG_8489

This girl was throwing Miles some major side-eye. Look how much taller he is than her!

IMG_8522

IMG_8491

So yeah, they’re feeling pretty good about themselves.

IMG_8548-2

But then after the first quarter, the coaches decided to make things fairer for everyone, and shuffled all the kids around. They ended up playing against other kids on their own team instead of the other team.

IMG_8551
Oh, this is fun, we’re playing against our teammates!

But it quickly became obvious that this time, they were on the weaker side.

IMG_8581

This pretty much summed it up:

IMG_8585

But they were still having fun, so it’s all good. For the last quarter, they were re-teamed with the identical twins.

IMG_8604

Look, two sets of DNA out of five kids!

IMG_8607

IMG_8616

Miles was doing pretty well going after the ball, but as the game went on, Linus and Oliver just seemed to wilt under the crushing defeat. Sigh.

It wasn’t pretty, and we had to have a serious talk about sportsmanship, and losing, and trying hard, and practicing, etc etc.

So. Hopefully next week, we’ll see an improvement in attitudes, if not skills.

Soccer, week 2

IMG_8310
Before the game. All three finally healthy! I think Oliver was trying to look tough here.
IMG_8435
And then this happened…Linus got sold to the other team.
IMG_8440
Awkward!

There wasn’t a complete rout of the other team like there was last week (because they switched things up halfway through, we weren’t sure what the score was anyway) which I was happy about because I think the boys learned a bit of humility this week. And also they saw that some of the other players weren’t displaying good sportsmanship, so I think they kind of are getting the point now. But they had fun, and played well, and that’s the key.

I’m much happier with my photos this week. Last week was so sunny and I had a lot of issues with focus and color. I got tips from some of my coworkers who are fantastically talented and it helped a lot. Of course, it also helped that it was overcast. I hope next weekend is sunny again so I can keep working on my skillz.

First soccer game of the season!

Miles and Oliver had their first soccer game of the season.

Each team is divided into two teams of four or five and they play the other team on two fields that are side by side. At one point, Miles and Oliver’s team included the two of them and a set of identical twins. It was pretty funny to see.

Their team won by a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I was trying to explain that yelling out the number every time their team got a goal wasn’t exactly sportsmanlike. George wasn’t helping, as he cackled every time their team scored. Sigh.

Linus enjoyed watching the game, but of course, as I could have predicted, said he wanted to play now. OF COURSE. After asking him a million times. So next week, expect to see him in similar photos.