Something Old on Something New

[Welcome to another addition of "What I'm Working on Wednesday" ---curteousy of Cute2Carry!]


School starts early here in our district....August 3rd, to be exact. And our household is ready. My kids love to play together, but I think we are reaching some kind of "maximum togetherness" threshold. They are starting to tattle on each other for things they "almost" did or that so-and-so was "thinking of doing." I mean, really. Regular tattling is annoying enough, but tattling in advance? That I can't have.

This is a big year in our house. This is the first year that both of our kids will be in elementary school. Our son will be in 2nd grade and our daughter is going to kindergarten. And even better: our district has free all-day kindergarten. So my children will be at school from 7:55 am until 2:40 pm Monday through Friday. What will I do with myself! :)

So far, I have one day planned. On Monday, August 3rd, I am going to sit on the couch at approximately 8:30am and not move until about 2:30 pm, and I am going to watch some uninterrupted television.

But before the first day gets here, we have to do all the usual back to school things, like shopping for school supplies. And you know me....I have to make something for them for school!

Last year I made some of these great reusable sandwich wraps. I decided to revisit them, making a few changes. First of all, I'm no longer using the vinyl tablecloth. Why? Simply because I found something that I think is easier to work with....ripstop nylon. It's waterproof, it's very easy to sew, and it comes it a ton of great colors.

The other change came from a recommendation of a friend: a name tag. I'm now including a fabric name tag so I can write the kids' names on them with a laundry pen. That way if the sandwich wrap makes it to the Lost & Found, hopefully it will make it back to my child.

But first I had to choose fabrics. And I managed to find two that my kids love.

For my animal-lover daughter:

And for my son, the Cub Scout:

In my quest to create less trash, I also thought they needed some kind of reusable snack bag....something to hold their carrots, pretzels, etc. So I whipped up a little snack bag to go along with the sandwich wrap.

The sandwich wraps are a 12" by 12" square, and the snack bags measure 5" wide and 6" deep. The snack bags have a Velcro closure all the way across the top and are lined with the waterproof ripstop nylon.

You can see on my son's set how I added the name tags to both the wrap and the bag. I used Heat N' Bond to put them in place, then stitched them down. I used a permanent marker for fabrics to write his name.

My favorite thing about this project: the name labels I used on my daughter's set. My mother-in-law had some old labels that my father-in-law's mother had used to label his things when he was a boy. Well, my father-in-law and my daughter have the same initials, so she gave them to me.

They are in the original box and came from J&J Cash Ltd. in Coventry, UK.

They are small, woven labels with "B. Coffey" printed on them. I have no idea how old they are, but I'm guessing they are probably over years old.

So of course I will be using these on everything I can! I just love that I am labeling her things with the same labels that her great-grandmother used to label her grandfather's things.





Now that their lunches are taken care of, they need something for school supplies. How about a pencil case?





For my daughter's case, I just happened to have some leftover "dog bone" fabric from another project that I could use for the lining.






For my son's, I used a nice royal blue that matched the blue Cub Scout emblem on the fabric.

These cases are big enough to hold quite a few pencils, as well as a pair of scissors and maybe an eraser or two. So much cuter than those cheap plastic pencil boxes.

I've still got some of the fabrics left, so I think I might make another wrap and one more snack bag. I hope my kids enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!

And if you like the pencil case, I have one for sale here!