in school, home ec was not my strong suit. i have a crooked pillow, an unfinished pair of pajamas and an embarrasing C grade to show for it. anyone who has seen me peel a potato understands my lack of manual dexterity. so when i decided to sew 4 buttons back onto my duvet today, it was pretty big stuff. i am tired of my down comforter falling out of my duvet every single night, and me squishing it back together in the morning when i make my bed. i was going to just buy a new one (i'm the girl who throws a pan away if the noodles are burnt) but decided that in light of the upcoming holiday season, i would pinch my pennies and...sew some buttons back on.

so i got out the handy dandy sewing kit my grandma so hopefully bought for me 9 years ago when i became a wife. little does she know that i find no shame in sending my husband's ripped pants straight over to his mom's house. and if a shirt loses a button, well...it's a burned pan in my book. it's a pathetic thing to admit, my lack of homemaker skills. but today, i changed all that. today i became a seamstress. it's really not that hard. all you need is a 3-year-old, a needle, some thread (does the color really matter that much?) and a little creativity.

i spent the first 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get the needle out of this little round case. the lid did not come off. i was thinking of getting the pliers, but then my son turned this little dial, and a clump of needles came pouring out all over my carpet. after we cleaned all that up ( we both wore thimbles on all our fingers for safety, which made picking them out of carpet a little tricky) the real sewing began. i let my son thread the needle, and he got it after the 125th try. then i sewed my first button on, just the way they taught me in home ec. it's a little floppy, and the back side looks like a highway map, but it worked. we were proud.

i let me son sew the next one on. he did a great job, and even showed me how to pull the thread really really really tight. the material around his button looks all poochy and bunchy, but his button is not floppy like mine. together, we finished the project and we're pretty proud of our patch job. seems my little roughhouser has some martha stewart in him. in fact, he's just as handy in the kitchen as he is with a needle. the last time we peeled potatoes, he showed me how to hold the peeler just the right way. with both hands, while you chase the potato across the kitchen counter as you peel. he's right. it's way more fun.