Alana is 11 Today!

Well, my youngest finally is growing up.  It seems like just a minute ago that we brought her home from the hospital (on Valentine's Day), with a pit stop at PC World - her first out of the hospital experience would be a computer store!  She is so grown up now and alternately driving us crazy and delighting us with her fun personality.  

This school year, at her new charter school, she has had the opportunity to be in the drama club.  This has been good and bad for us.  Good because she gets to exercise her dramatic talents and bad because there is alot more work for mom.  I am not the world's fastest or most confident seamstress.  Her drama instructor sent out notices that all costumes were going to be provided for their production of Beauty and the Beast, so I wasn't worried.  Then, with the state of the economy being what it is, I got a note about 10 days ago asking all parents of the non-principal parts to provide their costumes.  Alana's was not so bad, I thought.  As a Village Girl, she was required to wear a sort of medieval inspired peasant blouse and long skirt in a brighter color but not too bright - in other words, not black.  This didn't seem to be a huge problem until I started looking at patterns.  There are NO junior size patterns these days, especially in the costumes!!  

I found a nice pattern at McCall's (no. 5582) but had to go with a size 4 and hope for the best.  I'm going to make the little basque as well, even though it isn't required, but this thing has driven me nuts!  Why is it when something looks straightforward it never is??  The pattern was easy to cut out and I had my skirt going and almost finished by Saturday.  However, when I came to the waistband, it was fastened by pulling 1/2" twill tape through a casing and tying in the front.  That is a no-go as far as a 6th grade play is concerned.  How easily could you untie a girl's skirt and have it drop to the floor?  Of course, this wasn't obvious from the initial pattern instructions, so I had to go and get some wider elastic and redo the waist.  Then the hem was a bite because it was an A-line skirt.  

The blouse was fun to make until I looked at the neck.  All of this (sleeves, neckline) was elasticized and when I put in the elastic night before last, well, even thought it was a size four, that neck would have fallen off Andre the Giant!  I had to wait until yesterday afternoon to have Alana try it on and then, like Mammy in Gone With the Wind, I had to pull that elastic (like stays on a corset) another foot through the neckline in order to get it to fit like it showed on the pattern.  I finally finished this beast last night -- and it is due for rehearsal today!  I have to say, despite my reticence about sewing, I did a good job.  I just wish I was faster.  It would help if I didn't have to move my sewing machine for each meal.  Oh, well.

There are times when I think I have had most of the challenges of motherhood figured out.  Of course, my oldest (27 year old son) never had to have a Beauty and the Beast costume made on short notice - ha ha!  Life makes you laugh at yourself.   Now, off to the store to get things ready for the Birthday Dinner tonight!  Have a great day, folks!

Gaiman's Button Trailer - Brilliant!

Check it out!  And get a little creeped out.  For those who like this guy, you may be interested to know that his portions of the trailer were shot at his home in Minnesota.  Cool house.

Bod Triumphant!

It's been a few days since I last looked at my library news.  I usually keep up quite well, but for some reason, the announcements of the Caldecott and Newbery Medals from ALA quite escaped me this year.  I had voted on a librarian's poll for my fav for the Newbery and got quite distracted so didn't check the final outcome.  Wonder of wonders, my author won!!!!!  Congrats to Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book.  This is a well deserved honor.  Gaiman's (pronounced like Cayman) work is brilliantly funny, wonderfully creepy and charming.  I can't recommend it enough.  Every child over the age of say, 7 years old, would love to hear about Bod and his adventures in the graveyard.  This is a brilliant read-aloud book.  It is as much fun for the reader as their audience.

I will attach a great YouTube trailer for Gaiman's movie Coraline.  Another charming work, the movie will be out this Friday and ought to be very good.  My daughter (age 10) is not best pleased because Coraline seems too American in the trailers she has seen.  That's a critic for you.  She wanted it to be like the Coraline her father read her in his lovely British accent (not unlike NG's) and to have funny old ladies who sound like French and Saunders. 

For those adults who are still wondering who the heck this guy is, if you saw Stardust, then you know his work.  He has had a longstanding following among the illustrated novel and fantasy/sci-fi fans.  Do yourself a favor and BUY the new book.  Don't wait for it at the library - the waiting list will be out the door!!  This is a classic and should be as much a part of a child's library as Kipling's Jungle Book.  

Back in the USA

It's gratifying to wake up and find that the Rocky Mountains aren't the only place to get heaps of snow.  Listening to the BBC news this morning, I heard that my old stomping grounds in southeastern England (as well as just about all the rest of the country) were covered in snow and nearly everything had ground to a halt.  It made me laugh to think of how many times I had driven in snow this winter and had to dig out of a couple of feet in the morning just to get the kids to school.  My daughter is going to be so miffed when she finds out that her old friends are having a snow day off school.  That's how it is in the Rockies - no one gets the day off unless they have at least six feet blocking their door.   For a great look at the snowy British mess, click here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7865370.stm 

We're enjoying unusually warm weather this week.  The weatherman actually predicted about 50 degrees Fahrenheit by Thursday.  My niece in Alaska is cross with us and says we shouldn't get that kind of warmth, but I reminded her that we will probably be back in the deep freeze before too long.  That's what you get here.

This blog is about living between the US and the UK and other topics that come to mind.  We have an interesting mixed "half and hoff" (say it with a british accent) family and have spent more than eight years of our married life in the UK.  We now reside here in the crossroads of the west, the Utah Rockies, and enjoy the various benefits of US life, too.  We miss many of our British friends and family, although most of our British family is in western Canada now. As this is MY blog, it will be devoted to literature, cross cultural interests, history, and even food, as I have enjoyed learning about differences in American and English cooking.  Let me know how you like it.