The End of an Era

Or, more accurately, of a season.

Today officially marks the end of summer for me, as tomorrow I finally go back to work after a super long vacation.  Tomorrow morning, Courtney and I will drop Gavin off for his first day of preschool.  Not going to lie, part of me is a little sad.  I had to re-make his magnet calendar to reflect our new schedule, and I realized that we won't have the freedom to go to the Columbus Museum whenever we want anymore, or declare Fridays "Pajama Day," or go to the library for preschool story time on Tuesday mornings. 

The other part of me is all "heck yes, I get to sleep in!"  And I am excited for Gavin.  It's going to be so great for him to be around kids his own age.  I see lots of playdates and birthday parties in our future.  So change is good... But Courtney and I will probably both cry when we drop him off tomorrow.

Anyways, I'm trying to focus on the positive.  So I'm going to do a few fun back to school things for him.  I just calculated that Gavin should graduate from high school in 2027 (good God, will I be old!), so I think I'm going to make him one of these tee-shirts:



Basically, you print the child's graduation year on a shirt, (or in my case, freehand it with fabric markers) and take a picture of them in it every year on the first day of school to watch them grow into it. 

The one I made was fairly simple.  I bought an extra large white tee shirt and this set of Crayola fabric markers from The Happiest Place On Earth (or Hobby Lobby, as some people more mundanely like to call it). 

The directions say to put something between the layers of fabric so the colors don't bleed through, so I just grabbed a big document envelope I had lying around the house and stuck it between the front and back.  Then I laid everything out on my butcher block and got started!

First I freehanded lightly with a pen, just to make sure I had everything centered right.  Then I got to work with the fabric marker.  I have to tell you, this was pretty slow going.  Fabric moves, guys.  It doesn't sit still the way paper does when you try to write on it.  It probably took me a solid fifteen minutes to finish the lettering.

It probably would have been easier to get some iron-on appliques and just do it that way, only I don't actually own an iron, or know anyone near enough to borrow from that does.  So I had to do it this way.

Which I discover also calls for an iron.  You have to use heat to "lock in" the ink.  However, there was a caveat at the bottom of the directions that said you could also just pop the finished shirt in the dryer on high heat for half an hour.  Just to be on the super safe side, I did it twice.

This is how the writing turned out.  Not perfect, but as I said, it was a last minute freehand project, and it gets the point across. I'll post the picture of Gavin wearing it tomorrow. But for now, I'm going to revel in my last night off, relax on the couch, and maybe catch another episode of Mad Men.