Good, old-fashioned fun

OK, not old-fashioned, old-fashioned, but old-fashioned meaning the way we used to have fun.

Last fall, we uncovered a box sealed and labeled that had been through four moves with us.  Its contents were purchased shortly after we graduated from MSU for an afternoon of fun and packed up and moved with us as I headed to South Bend for grad school, we took full-time "real" jobs, had a baby, moved to Grand Rapids, had another baby, moved to our current home, and had two more babies.  I suppose we were distracted.  We moved on to other sorts of fun, forgetting about the box.  

Last October, we cleaned out our garage.  It was, really, the first REAL cleaning done since we moved in five years prior.  We threw out some of the original owners' trash stashed up in the rafters and around the garage.  We pulled out boxes we had not seen since we moved in and stashed them about the garage.  

It was kind of interesting,  much of the stuff was of our lives prior to children.  Stuff we've had no need for since our lives became child-centered.  Music, incense burners, books...and one box full of white cotton t-shirts wrapped in rubber bands and twine and three packs of Dylon cold-water dye (Indian red, yellow, and navy blue).  I'm pretty sure sometime between South Bend and Grand Rapids, I traded off another that was in the bag--green.  And, a size 6 one-piece outfit made from white sweatshirt material had been added to the box.  There was also a hand-cranked meat grinder in there, but, anyway....That was just something I'd picked up that I thought we might want someday, and it happened to fit in the box.  We opened it up, noting that we had wrapped marbles into the t-shirts.  I don't know whether we had heard of this technique, or just thought it up on our own and were intending to try it out, but some 10 years later, here was the unfinished project.  We set it on the shelf in the garage, open, noting that we should use this stuff soon.

So, a year later, we finally pulled it out.  I also pulled a few white t-shirts from the kids' drawers and a size 3T white one-piece sweatsuit blank from Reagan's stash.  Ben went to Ace Hardware and picked up a bag of rubber bands, and we tied up what wasn't already done.

So, the next day (Sunday) we did our dying.  As it turns out, after all is said and done, the results were, well, less than spectacular.  The kids were less than enthused except for a few brief minutes in the activity.  But, there are a few funky-looking nightshirts for the kids to wear for the next few years and a story to tell behind them.  I suspect we won't be doing it again until our kids are teens, and maybe not even then, depending on the fashion trends.  My favorite tiedie source (The Color Farm) needn't worry about losing me as a customer anytime soon.  Her stuff is art, anyway, so it's in a totally different league.

At least there's no longer an undone project sitting in our garage.  :)