Our friends Bethany and Bill are expecting their first baby (a girl!  yippee!), and I scoured our Scholastic catalogs for my usual first baby gift: a basket of books.  I received a basket of Scholastic books when I was pregnant with Sara and I have cherished that gift for years.  I like to give the books that make you fall in love with childrens literature all over again: If You Take a Mouse To School, Chysanthemum, The Little House, Raindrop Plop, I Love You Little One, I Love You Stinky Face, Oh My Gosh Mrs. McNosh, Catalina Magdalena Hoopensteiner Wallendiner Hogan Logan Bogan Was Her Name…oh yes, I can go on.  I loved books as a kid, and I love them even more now that I can READ.

But I also wanted to add something useful to the baby’s gift.  Having fewer pesos these days, I was thinking, thinking, when Greg said, “Hey, why don’t you make Bethany a diaper bag like yours?”  YES!  Having given away the over-sized diaper bag years ago, I have long carried diaper changing supplies in a Vera Bradley ditty bag.  I keep diapers, wipes, a changing pad, and the greatest invention of Motherhood: tiny diaper trash bags that can seal up the STANK in one quick knot.  It easily transports from purse to purse, and when it’s time for an on-the-go change, I can whip out all supplies with one hand.

And wouldn’t you know, I had Amy Butler Lotus fabric!  I love this fabric and I’m glad I bought too much for Amanda’s pants.  I probably only had 1/2 yard too much, but it’s now been sewn into gift #4.  I had just enough of the coordinating stripe left to make the drawstring.  Greg helped me engineer the drawstrings to cinch the bag neatly into the middle, just like mine.  Um, well, he had to, because while I won’t make toast without a recipe, I conversely won’t sew with a pattern.  I do use patterns for bigger projects, but smaller patterns seem to be needlessly complicated.  4 pages of instruction seems a bit much for one drawstring bag, but thank you Simplicity Patterns, for teaching me self-reliance.  I was really happy with the final bag.  It is identical to my Vera Bradley ditty bag, only far less expensive than Vera, and about 100x prettier.  And probably sturdier and definitely (although I love Vera) a much better fabric than Vera.  Man!  Homemade is the way to go!

I was excited to pull out the sewing machine again.  Bethany, knowing how excited I get about making things, was kind enough to email me to let me know it had arrived.  She knew I was itching to blog about it and couldn’t ruin her surprise before it arrived via snailmail.  Congrats guys!  On the new baby, the new house, and the next step in your grand adventure.  You two are going to be outstanding parents!