A slice of my Florida life
The other night I was reading to my kids when my daughter yelled at her youngest brother. When I turned to see what he was doing (he was being very quiet), this is what I saw.
Fortunately these jammie pants were too short so it was no big deal, but we did have a short conversation about asking Mommy before cutting clothing.
I’ve been working on updating my kids wardrobes. Like I said here, a lot of their clothes were too wintery, but some of them can be modified to fit our warmer Florida climate.
My kids love the cotton knit jammies like these.
They’re great when they’re new, but they seem to shrink up after several washings (not that my kids mind!). I decided that it would be very easy to turn them into shortie jammies.
First, cut off the legs. I just eyeballed how long I wanted them, but you could also use a pair of shorts as a pattern.
Use the leg you cut off to measure the other one.
For this pair, I just serged the legs (I did a rolled hem, you could also zig zag stitch it).
I followed the same process for the second pair – cutting off the arms and legs (and just eyeballing the length). But instead of serging the hems, I turned the edges under and sewed them with a regular sewing machine.
Now my boys each have a “new” pair of jammies that are perfect for our new warmer climate.
Since we’ve moved to Southwestern Florida, we’ve been going through our winter clothes and deciding what to keep (it gets chilly here for a couple weeks) and what to pass on (yard sale, thrift store, re-purpose). Over the next few weeks I’m going to show you some simple ways to remake kids clothing.
Since we are from Western Pennsylvania, most of our shirts are long sleeved. Some of them are ones they really like and would really like to keep. For instance, this shirt – pink & sparkly. What girl wouldn’t love it?
My daughter is saying, “Mom is annoying.” She was not thrilled with having to model.
There are two ways to make this short sleeved. The easy way and the way I did it. The easy way is to just cut off the dark pink sleeve where it’s attached to the light pink shirt. Simple, no sewing, and presto, short sleeves.
The other way is to rip out the stitches and carefully cut where the two sleeves are joined.
Then re-hem the short sleeves which is easy – they’re already pressed so you don’t need to worry about making sure they’re even.
Short sleeves – much more appropriate for SWFL life.
“For I know the plans I have for you,†declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
Sunday Verse includes a simple verse, perfect for memorizing.
We went camping between Christmas and New Year’s – our first time camping since we moved to Florida and our first time to camp during the winter. We’re searching for our new favorite campground. Myakka River State Park just might fit the bill. In PA, our favorite campground had to have a pool and playground. Here in FL, we’re more likely to camp in the cooler months, so we’re looking for things to do – hiking, geocaching, maybe a playground, probably not a pool. While this camping trip was nothing like we had planned, it was still good to get away.
I spent the weeks leading up to our trip stalking the website waiting for a campsite to open up. I was sure that someone would cancel and I would be able to snag a full hook-up site. Sure enough, one opened up the week before and I pounced on it! Everyone was thrilled to finally be going camping again (it’s been over a year!). Because we don’t have room on our property to store our camper, it lives at my parent’s house (so greatful we don’t have to pay to store it!). We had almost totally emptied it before closing it up over a year ago. So, we loaded everything into the van and then unloaded it into the camper. We managed to remember everything that we had to have, but we forgot our marshmallow roasters (they were in our shed…as soon as we got home I took them over to the camper!). We made do and still roasted marshmallows (can’t camp without s’mores!).
As glad as we were to be camping again, it was nothing like we had planned! Our three kids took turns being sick. I’ve never done wash on a weekend trip – this time I did two loads! I was very thankful that the bath house wasn’t far away and for kids that try to make it to the garbage can! There was no geocaching or hiking and we didn’t even get to check out the playground. I think it rained a little each day too. But, we were camping and it was relaxing and we were mostly media free (no wi-fi at the sites). We did decide that we need to be better prepared for the unexpected – I had medicine for the kids, but we had very limited things to entertain them in the camper.
It couldn’t have been too bad – we’re planning to go again (even the kids can’t wait)! What about you? Ever have a trip that just doesn’t go as planned?