Diary of a Mad Fabri-Holic: Has It Really Been a Decade Already?

Today Annie is 10. If you've been around for a while, you know that she arrived in the world very dramatically, and that it wasn't much fun for either of us. We've been working together to figure it out ever since... The last 10 years have been quite an experience. Motherhood is nothing like I imagined- cliched to say, but, totally true. I'll leave it at that!

We celebrated last week, as we didn't want her party to compete with family Easter or Passover celebrations. With the help of the amazing Miss Traci, who used to teach at Annie and Henry's preschool and who now has a crafty side business (with no website for me to link to), we helped the 6 little girls create their own one of a kind Ts. I had visions of adorable stencils- we had a cupcake!- and fun applique- we had a bunch of yo yo makers!- but I let the girls lead the way. And so we had an awful lot of fun with the fabric paint- at one point all 6 girls worked on one T shirt and squeezed all of the 20 colors of paint onto it at once...

While the finished products looked nothing like *my* vision, it was awesome to watch all the girls explore the materials. I raided my stash for anything that might be fun, and found some beaded trims I bought years ago during my very very brief lived handbag sewing stint. Annie and I went to JoAnn's and Michael's and made good use of their weekly 40% off coupons to buy paints and stencils.

We also found a huge bin of ribbons on clearance at Michael's- so we picked out many spools, and the girls had a blast getting Miss Traci to sew it onto their shirts.

The girls had a total blast and were so proud of their creations... I'm not totally certain the paint will ever dry on a few of them, they laid it on so thick!