Showing a Little School Spirit - Bronco Nation Style

Okay...so I am going to tell you right now...I'm exhausted. Collin had his gallbladder removed on Thursday so we've been playing medicated surgery patient for the past three days. Who knew that having Collin have surgery would make ME so worn out?!

Before...in his cozy little air warmed paper gown.

After...in his morphine haze.

I promised to show you the projects I finished for our BSU game this week, so that's the plan for today. I'll be honest...I originally planned on posting this on Thursday. That obviously did not happen. Instead I spent seven hours at the hospital followed by hours of making jello and sitting on the couch with a rather stoned Collin. He's been a moderately cooperative patient.

Now, back to the matter at hand.

Last weekend we went with Carole, Krista and Abigail to the BSU game. Those of you who are familiar with the area are well aware that it gets quite chilly here. Well...unfortunately we were only able to get tickets to the December 3rd BSU game...which meant sitting in an outside stadium on metal bleachers in the dead of winter. On this particularly lovely day I think we topped out at 35. Brr. (For those of you curious, yes...we're furious about the outcome of the BCS bowl decisions. But I'll save my venomous tirade for another day.)

We've done this whole winter game thing before so we knew to plan ahead. The three of us were layered with underarmour, t-shirts, sweatshirts and then winter coats. Nice and toasty. We unfortunately forgot to bring a blanket so our butts got nice and frosty from the metal seating. However, our heads stayed nice and warm due to my planning ahead.

You might remember when I made Darian's Halloween costume and showed you the video on how to make Finn's hat. Well...while Darian and I were in the fabric store picking up some fabric for his Jake bag, there happened to be a roll of BSU fleece in the cutting area. I hatched a plan in my little head and decided that I had to to have it. So...I purchased 5 yards. The lady looked at me like I was crazy. I think her exact response was something along the lines of "you'll never use all of that". Ha! Wanna bet lady?! There is only a small pile of scraps left on the table.

So...in preparation for our chilly day at the game, I made these to show our Bronco Nation school spirit on senior day.

My apologies for the limited photos. I managed to forget my camera that day (left it on the scrapbook desk after downloading some other photos) so Collin's cell phone was our only hope. He has gotten a little rusty at the camera phone family photos. Sadly, this one is the best one of all three of us. Oh well, at least Darian looks cute.

They just look a little cooler with the shades.

Unlike the one I made for Darian at Halloween, I used the original Finn pattern for these. Each one is secured with velcro at the chin and has the ears at the top. (The ears are the hardest. Attaching them did result in some cursing.) These ones were much quicker to make, but Darian says that his other one fits better and is warmer. I'd like to say that this is due to my awesome pattern making skills, but I think it's just because it was about 20 degrees colder on the day he wore this one than it was on Halloween. Either way, these kept our heads and ears nice and warm. We also got some good compliments, so that was nice. And yes, ALL of us wore them. I'm not sure how Carole managed to go without getting her picture taken, but all six of us were sporting these babies.

Abigail definitely wore it the best.

So now my evil plan is to devise a way to add a mane on to them - thus making them true "bronco" hats. I'm thinking that I may find some angel hair yarn in blue and orange and sew it down the back in some sort of knitted pattern, but we'll see...that will be undertaken sometime before next season.

As for my other projects, I'm moving right along. I'm doing things in a slightly different order than I had planned simply because I'm spending more time on the couch with Collin, but I should still have a good batch to account for tomorrow evening...fingers crossed. I finished helping Katherine with her quilt yesterday (it's a photo rag quilt), so now it's just my projects remaining.

I'm almost finished with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I say bah to those who didn't like it. They may be just a little overly sensitive to a few things in the plot. I like it. And I'm only 30 pages from the end, so I don't think my opinion will change.

Now, back to cutting squares. I'm hoping that tomorrow will prove to be a productive day...time will tell!