Matching Moving Memorabilia

Because we are moving to another state, and we had loads of things to get done all week (packing, cleaning, contacting utilities, finding lost library books, etc) I decided that a better use of my time would be to make family t-shirts.  I'm not sure if this is a Holman thing (my maiden family name) or just a woman born in the 70's thing, or a Mormon thing, or a Lindsey thing, but I simply love matching family t-shirts.  I think the idea of having all of us in the same shirt, even though our oldest won't be joining us on our move, is somehow comforting. For years I've thought how fab it would be to have a shirt with all of our names on it, linked together through a shared letter, but everyone gets their own color; everything about it screamed winner, winner chicken dinner.  Yes, being June, it is Pride month and rainbow flags are often flown in support of our LGBT brothers and sisters, but that's just a happy coincidence for the Smith Family 2018 T-Shirts since I think this design has been in my heart for at least a decade. Once I let Ryan in on my plan, he questioned the timing, the method, the priority status and the success of my t-shirts. "Don't you want to help me realize my vision?"* I queried... In the end, the house still got packed up, the utilities still got called, and I even found one of the missing library books. But more importantly, we all have matching moving memorabilia. Clearly, my mother priorities are in the right place.

In all our glory! I like that Owen's name is red and he's wearing red.

Unintentionally perfect.

I accidentally bought Ryan a shirt that was a little snug. Look at those muscles!

The boys. I think it is so fun to see My oldest son next to my youngest son.

6 boys in my family.

And just 2 girls. And one of us is crazy. Guess which one isn't!

I didn't want to printer iron on bc they don't look that great after being washed. And I didn't want to do iron on letters bc it's expensive and I couldn't get the variety of colors I wanted. A friend printed out a pattern which helped me figure out my plan of attack. I eventually decided on mixing my own fabric paint, making a grid, and using individual stencil letters to whip up 8 t-shirts with 9 words. It took forever, but I am very happy with the results. (and by "happy" I mean it was a solid 5 hours where I wasn't crying about leaving my friends and neighborhood and schools and grocery stores and congregation in Utah.)

*10 points if you can name the movie.