For many months now I have wanted to sew the girls matching duvet covers. Getting to a fabric store is an extremely time consuming task here however, so we have waited for a school break to make a day of it. It just so happens that during this current school break there has been a political situation in the city, and we've been advised to stay put unless absolutely necessary.
So, because I don't see myself trekking across town to choose fabric to sew covers with at the moment, or in the near future, we decided on a smaller outing to a nearby store. This store is notorious for selling broken (or nearly broken) new items. Not on purpose... it's just really junky stuff. It wasn't until our family moved to Madagascar and experienced this store that I truly understood what poor quality is. Needless to say, sometimes one can find helpful items here, so we find ourselves returning to this store every couple of months to check out its wares. They have a small bedding department, and I happened to notice they had decent looking duvet covers for single sized beds and on promotion. :)
The first thing was deciding on which colour both girls liked. The second was figuring out if the store had two of the same one.
Once we found two, I opened both packages to make sure they were truly the same, and that there weren't any holes, and to check on the size. The duvet covers have zipper closures at the bottoms, so I checked the one zip. Yep, works.
After looking for a few other items, we left feeling quite good about this purchase, and the girls were eager to get their new duvet covers on their beds.
Washed and ready to put on.... we discovered the other zipper that I neglected to check was indeed broken!
I just so happened to have a few spare meters of zipper in my sewing drawer, so removing and installing a new zipper occupied the remaining hours of my afternoon. Since I've never actually sewn a zipper into a project, I was figuring it out as I went. Ah..... it seems back up plans are always required. It would be nice to run out to Walmart, choose from an outrageously large selection of colors and sizes, come home, and even if on the off chance the item had a flaw, I could easily drive back to the store and exchange it for a new one, likely of the same colour. :)
Some things, like how to put in a zipper, would never be learned without these types of experiences.
This book has been recommended on Read Aloud Revival before. The author was even on the show as a guest. It was a really good podcast, one where they talked a lot about writing your first book, and how this book was the product of a Write-A-Novel-In-A-Month challenge. And, the author and I even share names! :)
I wanted to like this book badly. But I ended up returning the audible version after getting through the first nine chapters. Here is a mixed race family of four children and two pets. They find out that the lease on their apartment hasn't been renewed. So they will have to move, much to everyone's disapointment. The story focuses on the children scheming to figure out a way to convince the landlord to renew their lease.
Firstly, the kids go about their plan behind their parents' backs. Any story where the main characters are blatantly hiding things from their parents, I get a little concerned about. I couldn't really understand why it had to be a secret anyways. There are some pretty strong attitudes throughout the first half of the book, and at one point one of the children is muttering "fudge! fudge! fudge!" in frustration. Not exactly a phrase we would encourage in our household.
The Good and The Beautiful was offering their book recommendations list for free last week, so I quickly downloaded that. There are some great suggestions on there. My only concern with that particular list is, there are quite a few difficult-to-find or even out-of-print books as recommendations.
My oldest has really enjoyed a few books by Enid Blyton, and I saw The Secret Seven Adventure on the Good and The Beautiful book list. I'm eager to get started on this one while I'm making dinner!
So, because I don't see myself trekking across town to choose fabric to sew covers with at the moment, or in the near future, we decided on a smaller outing to a nearby store. This store is notorious for selling broken (or nearly broken) new items. Not on purpose... it's just really junky stuff. It wasn't until our family moved to Madagascar and experienced this store that I truly understood what poor quality is. Needless to say, sometimes one can find helpful items here, so we find ourselves returning to this store every couple of months to check out its wares. They have a small bedding department, and I happened to notice they had decent looking duvet covers for single sized beds and on promotion. :)
The first thing was deciding on which colour both girls liked. The second was figuring out if the store had two of the same one.
Once we found two, I opened both packages to make sure they were truly the same, and that there weren't any holes, and to check on the size. The duvet covers have zipper closures at the bottoms, so I checked the one zip. Yep, works.
After looking for a few other items, we left feeling quite good about this purchase, and the girls were eager to get their new duvet covers on their beds.
Washed and ready to put on.... we discovered the other zipper that I neglected to check was indeed broken!
 |
| Original broken zipper |
 |
| New zipper installed |
Matching girl beds!
On My Side Table
This book has been recommended on Read Aloud Revival before. The author was even on the show as a guest. It was a really good podcast, one where they talked a lot about writing your first book, and how this book was the product of a Write-A-Novel-In-A-Month challenge. And, the author and I even share names! :)I wanted to like this book badly. But I ended up returning the audible version after getting through the first nine chapters. Here is a mixed race family of four children and two pets. They find out that the lease on their apartment hasn't been renewed. So they will have to move, much to everyone's disapointment. The story focuses on the children scheming to figure out a way to convince the landlord to renew their lease.
Firstly, the kids go about their plan behind their parents' backs. Any story where the main characters are blatantly hiding things from their parents, I get a little concerned about. I couldn't really understand why it had to be a secret anyways. There are some pretty strong attitudes throughout the first half of the book, and at one point one of the children is muttering "fudge! fudge! fudge!" in frustration. Not exactly a phrase we would encourage in our household.
The Good and The Beautiful was offering their book recommendations list for free last week, so I quickly downloaded that. There are some great suggestions on there. My only concern with that particular list is, there are quite a few difficult-to-find or even out-of-print books as recommendations.My oldest has really enjoyed a few books by Enid Blyton, and I saw The Secret Seven Adventure on the Good and The Beautiful book list. I'm eager to get started on this one while I'm making dinner!
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