Little sewing club

What are the odds that four Finnish ladies move to California, meet first through Facebook and soon after that in a nice little park with their nine little children. They start meeting in that same little park every Tuesday with their children because they soon realize that they enjoy each others' company very much. When they get to know each other a little better they realize that they all enjoy sewing and all kinds of crafty projects. They get a great idea! Let's start meeting once a week and do all those crafty sewing projects together. -And that's how our sewing club started.

 Usually when we meet everybody makes their own projects and give useful hints to each other. Sometimes we find great ideas we want to try to execute together. Once we found a tutorial for a cute little suitcase and got very excited about it. The tutorial promised that suitcase making would be easy but it was everything but trivial. But even that time we had fun, we laughed a lot and our lovely little daughters liked their new customized suitcases. What could be better than do the thing you love most in the greatest company. Our sewing club is very special. <3

Here are few things I've made in our sewing club.

I love love LOVE hiking in the Bay Area

One of my favorite things to do here in the Bay Area is hiking. There seems to be never ending opportunities to find great hiking places around San Francisco. Usually you don't have to worry about the weather when you are planning your hiking trips; the Sun is shining most of the days and that makes the weather warm and gentle. Sometimes in addition to great views you can also see animals like deer, lizards, rabbits, raccoons or even skunks. Wildlife here in California can be pretty awesome and different from Finland.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to get company for our hiking trips. Kids can easily walk 12km without even noticing when they are talking and playing with their friends. I have to say that our children have grown up to be pretty good hikers and I'm happy about that!

Now I'm saying no more. Let the pictures speak for themselves. 

Those two little spots in this picture are me and my sister.

Happy birthday Dude!

This time I try to write my blog text in English. Please be gracious...

Our Dude turned nine this weekend. He's used to celebrating his birthday in cold weather so it's really awesome for him to enjoy his special day here in California. It's like having birthday in the summer time.

This year he wanted to have Minecraft-Lego birthday party and I felt that it would be pretty easy to plan and execute.   

He wanted to invite all the boys from his class, one neighbor and several Finnish friends. All together it was 20 children. We knew that we wouldn't all fit in to our apartment so we decided to rent our Party Room for the event. 

There we had plenty of room to set up five stations that children would rotate in groups. My awesome Finnish friends agreed to help me with the stations so I got that part covered. 

The stations were:

1. "Guess how many Lego bricks there are in the jar?"

2. Bean bag target throwing

3. Attach diamond sword to Steve

4. Nerf gun target shooting

5. Completing and coloring Lego paper figure

Kids spent about seven minutes in one station and it seemed that they were having fun!

After completing all stations every child got a bag of random Lego bricks and they were instructed to use their imagination to build their own Lego vehicle. In the end of the party they got to take their vehicles home with them.

The final culmination of his party were the Minecraft cakes that my good friend Sanni baked for the party. Sanni is really talented and creative baker. I just told her that the party theme would be Minecraft and she created those awesome cakes. Cakes didn't  just look great but they tasted awesome as well!

I had the feeling that party was successful and that feeling got stronger when the dude, right before going to bed, told me that he had an awesome birthday party. :)

Btw he got too many and too gorgeous presents but guess how happy he was because he is a boy who usually newer wants to have anything and I'm used to not buying him anything.