New pre-school backpack

Well, today was the 1st day of Gavin's 3yr old pre-school class!

I was so excited to use the adorable pre-school Pottery Barn backpacks the boys received from Sue-Sue but his school asked that we bring standard size backpacks, as art projects and papers don't fit well in the pre-school sized one. I agree, I cannot fit a standard size paper or coloring book in there without folding over the corners and shoving it in, but I'm still pretty bummed he couldn't use it for school! But at least they now have great church and 'going to Grandmas' bags, thanks again Sue-Sue!

So over the weekend Mom-Mom T. had given him a freebie backpack that she got from her work and it was pretty plane-jane to me so of course I had to spruce it up a bit!

I took him to the fabric store to choose his own material to decorate his backpack with. I know without a doubt that he would have chosen cars/truck or construction things but of course we got there and there were only 3 bolts of fabrics geared towards boys and 2 shelves worth of fun prints for girls, always how it is, poor boys get the short end of deal when it comes to clothing and now even fabric!

I'm sure if I scoured fabric stores all over MD or even the Internet I'd find something interesting, but I didn't have that kind of time and wasn't going to ruin the experience of him picking out his own fun thing by dragging him from store to store, that's no fun no even if you're not 3 yrs old! But even the lady who cut the fabric for us said that's what she wants to do when she retires, design material for boys b/c there isn't enough cute stuff out there for them- AMEN to that!

Gavin did go with a puppy dog print he liked, he called them 'choc-choc dogs' because some of their spots look like chocolate chip cookies :) I have to agree, they are cute!

So 2 hrs of gluing and sewing by hand was well worth the end result of a pre-school worthy backpack. Just hope it lasts the whole school year! If not, no biggie, at least it only cost me $8 total for the material and super sharp 'glove' needles that worked like a charm.

I even got to spruce up the name tag inside :)