Mindy Carlson

Well. Summer is here. The boys are enormously excited. I am looking forward to a summer full of fun and some learning activities for the boys.  (H is desperate to learn how to read and E needs to keep up on his Math.) We are all looking forward to having mornings that don’t include shouting about the speed of breakfast-eating, the brushing of teeth, and the finding of lost shoes before rushing out the door to overtake the day.

Currently, the boys are downstairs playing with their Legos and watching Wild Kratts.  I am sipping coffee and checking Facebook.

But before school was over, E (who is 7 & 3/4 now) wanted to make his teacher an end-of-year thank you gift.  He wanted to make a bag.  He let me know this about 3 weeks before the end of school so, theoretically, I had time to make it with him. But, of course, the end of school also include a sudden whirlwind of activity – playdates, beginning of swim team, guitar juries, copious amounts of baking for small celebrations, and running procrastinated-on errands.  The bag?  Became a last-minute project.

But! E and I had taken time right away to sketch ideas for the bag. E came up with some GREAT ideas.  And he filled me in on what she would like in a bag. She needed a lot of pockets, she loved rubber ducks, and purple is one of her favorite colors.  I should have him help me design all the time.  And after that I  slowly began buying the fabric we needed and sketching out the pattern from the design.  And regardless of all this planning we still ended up sewing this bad boy together the night before the last day of school.  I will never learn.

E sewed the appliqued ducks onto the pockets. He also sewed some of the squares together.  I was very proud.

The quilted squares are pockets! The WHOLE thing. One big pocket.  Side one’s pocket is divided into 3 separate pockets, while side two is one big pocket with a magnetic snap to hold it shut.

As you can see we also put a pocket on the inside and divided it into three. It will fit pencils, wallets, phones, etc. AND there is a magnetic snap on the top that is very similar to The Ingrid’s snap closure. It allows the bag to hold more, but still keep everything safe inside.

Mrs. A-O *loved* the bag.  She told me that she was going to use it as her Math bag. All the math books that need to be checked are going to go into that bag so she can haul it with her and check problems on the go. I am so happy that E designed such a useful gift.  Yay!

And I think more of those bags will be in the works.