Patches, Patches, Patches

If it's one thing I can rely on my kidlets for, it's their ability to make a liar out of me, it's their ability to blow the knees out of any given pair of pants.

I'm lucky if we get six months out of a pair of hole-less school pants before they need to be relegated to the play clothes drawer.

This means I absolutely refuse to pay full price for jeans (because we'd lose our house). In fact, what is new for my kids is usually only new to them.

Yep. The majority of their name brand (Levi's, Gap, Old Navy, Children's Place, and Osh Kosh) clothes come from second hand stores. Local small businesses or, when I travel to the nearby metropolis, second hand chains like Value Village and Once Upon A Child.

Experience has told me the best place to find gently-used-can't-tell-them-from-new (and sometimes brand spanking new, original tags still on them) jeans is Value Village. For $20 after 13% tax I walked out one day with four pairs of perfect condition jeans for the boys, and a toque (WTF is it with toques in our house?!).

And when Mr Lannis went hunting I went on a rampage, I whipped through this house getting things done and came upon the mending basket which prompted me to dig through the boys' play clothes drawers for pants in need of help, and heaped them all together in the kitchen.

Lo and behold, the pile was huge.

About a dozen pairs of pants, some with both knees blown out, some clearly unsalvageable (that's fine, someone needs to be the sacrificial meat to save the herd). Three pairs were Mr Lannis' too.

Hm. None of them were mine.

Weird...

Anyhow.

I patched. And patched, and patched, and pricked my hands with pins desperate to keep denim in place, drove myself crazy scrunching up pant legs so my sewing machine could properly zip those squares (or circles, as the case may be) into place.

I'm not saying it was easy--there's an art to sewing thick denim within the confines of a pant leg, but I'm saying it can be done.

And as they are bored with their monster patches, I opted for something a touch different this time. Easier, too, believe it or not--or at the very least less prep work overall.

Remember folks, sometimes the key to pulling it off is to veer away from perfection, artsy and fun, that's the way to go. If they look like they were never meant to be identical, it'll never look like you missed the mark.

Or at least that's what I tell myself... ::snort::