So have I mentioned that I’m on the board for Handmade Holidays 2010 over at Sew, Mama, Sew? It has been great fun scouring the interwebs for new tutorials. I can’t take credit for this one because someone else found this, but it is the most adorable thing ever.

The Sweet Pea Pilot Cap Pattern by Sew Liberated.

It is a tad bit big on him, but room to grow is never a bad thing.

For unrelated reasons, I had to measure both his head and Juliet’s head today (she’s 3). It turns out his head is bigger than hers. Yeah. So just for giggles, I put his hat on her.

Look, mom it fits! I think I’ll make her one, too. But in pink.

The reason I fell in love with it in the first place is because it looks SO much like one that Hanna Andersson (seen here) has that I’ve been wanting for years. It turns out it is only $10 (on sale for $6 right now . . .what the cuss? We must have been super-poor to not buy that). Anyhoo, now I can make them for free with scraps of knit that I have piles of. You can too! Just a hint, though. I did not use the stabilizer stuff she recommends. I don’t like going to the fabric store . .

Also I made these shoes for him for the winter (b/c I’m tired of tracking down socks for five kids. These can go without socks.)

The pattern is from I Think Sew. It is in PDF format (sound familiar?) and is only $4. The pattern is great; the instructions – not so much. But she has a lot of cute shoe patterns. If you’ve made shoes before, I say go for it.

Eli thinks they’re more fun to play with. I might have to staple them instead of the velcro.

So I finally got my hands on The Hunger Games! Truth be told, my husband bought it for me on Amazon because he knew I would never get to the front of that awful queue at the library. I devoured it the day it arrived. Which means I didn’t even start reading it until after lunch because of school in the mornings. And I even fed the kids dinner. I haven’t loved a book so much in such a long, long time. It isn’t complex writing, by any means, but it is YA fiction. Her style takes a bit to get used to because it is all in present tense and the main character says a LOT of things in her head, so you have to be paying attention to know what she’s saying out loud.

But I loved it. I actually could not put it down because there are no lulls in the plot. There wasn’t a chance to take a breather! So then came Catching Fire, the second book in the trilogy. I also read it the day it came. Loved it. It gets significantly darker, which is expected considering it is a dystopia/resistance type book.

And then I read Mockingjay, the final book in the trilogy. And I can’t even tell you how unprepared I was for this book. I can’t imagine why. My favorite genre is dystopia. But boy, it stuck with me. I didn’t like it, but I devoured it nonetheless. And I spent an entire day in a complete stupor. Depression. I’m still licking my wounds and it has been several days since I read it! It is incredible, really, that Collins could write the characters so WELL that I am still reeling over what she does to them in the end.

And I get it. Rowling did it too, but not nearly as violently. It was a statement on war, revolution, conflict, etc. And she’s right. We haven’t had a revolution or civil war in so long that we are clueless about what happens to real people in real families during those times of conflict. And it is hard to know who the good guys are after a while. But did she have to be so brutal about it?

My husband actually liked the final book. So maybe everyone else loved it and I’m just a wimp, but boy howdy. Don’t get too attached to anyone, that’s all I’m saying.

In celebration of finishing our first week of homeschool, I have a handy-dandy printable for those of you who homeschool as well. Just click on each door hanger to go to the full-size PDF.

We have a neighbor kid who is very persistant and apparently has no sense of time because she used to knock on our door every 20 minutes when she got home from school last year. We were doing school in the afternoons, so it was a problem.

This year, I’m ready.

And since we haven’t decided if we’re doing school in the morning or afternoon, I made two.

So, feel free to print these babies out to keep unwanted knockers at your door. I printed mine on cardstock and covered it with clear contact paper. Just cut the circle and the dotted line and hang it on your door!