Happy Halloween



Happy Halloween!  This year after some extensive costume and prop production we went to the Trunk-or-Treat at the church.  The kids had a great time with their friends and I had a fun time decorating the car.  We have attended this event for several years, but this is the first time we have actually decorated the car and passed out candy.  My Girl got in on the candy passing with her friends after she had collected a fair share of her own of course.

 

 For costumes we had a My Little Pony Rainbow Dash Equestria girl.  A lot of work went in to this one.  It's amazing what you can come up with out of craft store t-shirts and felt.  We even painted the shoes blue when we couldn't find the right shoes in the right color.  This is the look we were going for and I think we did really well.

 

Buddy Boy was a Terrarian, a character from one of his favorite games.  It was and easy costume to do once we found the coat online.  Hooray for military surplus!  He wasn't very recognizable because the characters are customizable.  So not many people knew who he was, but he liked it anyway.  He absolutely loves the coat.  He may just wear it all winter long. 

The props were the tricky bit.  He wanted a minishark, but a big one.  When you play the game the props are huge relative to the characters and he wanted to have that look, so we made a really big minishark out of foam board and painted it.  He wanted it to look a little more realistic rather than pixilated.  It looks good.

 

 

 

The kids who came around had to reach in to the monster's mouth to get their candy.  Some of the smaller kids weren't so sure about that.  I told them that if they tickled his nose he wouldn't bite.  I really like how it turned out.  I may just have to save it to use next year.

 

The Penguin Project

Every once in awhile I take on something that ends up being a much bigger project than I anticipated.  I just don't always think it through.  This is what happened with the penguin project.

 

In first grade they do a big weeks long project studying penguins.  In the past they have made life sized penguins out of paper for their final project.  This year My Girl's teacher thought it would be fun to make them out of fabric.  She doesn't sew.  I said I would help because I like making stuffies out of fleece.  I wasn't thinking about how much work it would be to make 22 of them.

 

 

The class was divided into expert groups and each group came up with a drawing.  There were emperor penguins, king penguins, gentoo penguins, little blue penguins, and chin strap penguins.  For patterns I used drawings the kids had done.  I simplified and modified them just a bit in some areas, but it was basically the kids drawing.

Grandma and Grandpa were here during Penguin Week so Grandma came to school to help us help the kids cut out the front and back of their penguins.  Most of them did an OK job with this.  It was a lot of cutting for the bigger penguins.  I cut out the details for the front, sewed them onto the white front part then sewed the front to the black (or blue) back.

We then took them to school for the kids to stuff.  They got to watch me sew the bottom up and dew on the button eye.  Most of them had never seen a sewing machine before.

All I can say is that it was a good project to have finished.  I don't regret doing it, but it isn't something that needs to be repeated.  I told the teacher that the value for the amount of work was low.  I felt a little sorry for some of the parents.  A lot of us live in places that aren't that big and these birds take up a lot of room.  My husband even saw one emperor penguin being carried home by a parent on a bicycle.  That would have been quite the sight.

The kids loved them and made me some lovely thank you notes.  They told me what they named them and that they sleep with them.  One even went on vacation with its new family.

Thanks for the help Grandma!

"Anna"

My Girl was invited to a Frozen birthday party.  The girls in her class are obsessed with the movie and especially the music. (Let it go... Let it go...) 

So I wasn't surprised when I got a request for a costume.  I'm just glad it was Anna instead of Elsa.  My Girl is much more Anna anyway.

I'm quite pleased with it.  The vest was made from an adult XL t-shirt, gold ric rac and felt cut outs.  The skirt is a wide A-line that I painted using a freezer paper stencil I drew and cut out.  We had the turquoise long sleeve T. 

This was really fun to make and My Girl loved it, so did her friends and their moms.  I'm just hoping the Anna love lasts through Halloween.

New dress

Here are photos of the new dress and the girl who didn't want her picture taken.  Keep in mind that this all took place in about a minute and a half.

My Girl picked the fabric and requested ruffles and fluttery sleeves, even though the pattern had neither of these things to begin with.  I also added buttons to the front instead of a zipper in the back so that she can get in and out of it herself.  That's the theory anyway.  I like the bright colors and big flowers.  It suits her and she's five.  You can pull off a lot of color when you are a five year old with a big personality.  Dad saw it and said, "That's one she'll be embarrassed by in 20 years."  Yup.  Or not.  I like the photos of the daisy bell bottoms I had as a preschooler.

Happy Birthday Buddy Boy

Buddy Boy is 8!  We celebrated with a family party with the Santa Cruz cousins and Grammie and GrandDad.  I think everyone had a great time.  Buddy Boy wanted a Minecraft party.  Minecraft is one of his favorite games.  We usually only let him play the single-player version, but tonight for his party his cousin set it up so that they could all play the multi-player version together, just the three of them.  He loved it.  Unfortunately, his computer pooped out part way through the evening.  I hope it isn't fatal.

 

 

In Minecraft you spend a lot of time collecting supplies and building things.  One of the things you can make is cake.  So we made Buddy Boy a Minecraft cake birthday cake.

 

He also requested a pinata... in the shape of a ghast.  What is a ghast you ask?  It's a mob that lives in the Nether of course.  You can check the Minecraft wiki if you have any more questions about the game.  Ther is more there than a person needs to know.  We went the easy way and used a cereal box covered with paper plus a little duct tape for the grey squares.  The big boys made quick work of it.

 

 

Buddy Boy's one request for presents was a stuffed creeper, another type of Minecraft mob.  I didn't have enough time to order one online so I made one instead.  Fortunately, it's just squares and rectangles.  I was feeling a little bad because it wasn't the "real thing" that he had seen online, but I shouldn't have worried.  He loved it and now Teddy Panda has a little green friend.  I also stenciled a creeper head on a shirt.  He's growing so fast that the shirt doesn't have much grow room in it.  Oh, well.  I'll just make another one the next size up pretty soon.  It also looks like I'll be making one a size down for My Girl. 

 

 

Happy Birthday Big Boy!

A little cozy sewing

In spite of what some may think it really does get cold here, especially at night when I forget to turn the heater back on because it's been off while I had the windows open on sunny afternoons.  So I made fuzzy pajamas for the kids.  They each got to choose their own fabric.  My Girl went with the ballerina slippers, Buddy Boy went with a dinosaur camo print.  I don't have a picture of the dinosaurs since Buddy Boy has been sleeping in them every time I've thought about it.  Here are the ballerina jammies.  My Girl refuses to believe that long sleeves are necessary.  I thought that this might convince her, but I was wrong.  She happily wears the bottoms with a t-shirt to bed.

She refuses to wear long sleeves most of the time, but I don't like the idea of her freezing so here we go, fuzzy vests.  I hope you appreciate the buttons.  We spent a good twenty minutes picking them out.  It was a tough decision for a very opinionated little girl and her mother.  She also has a vest that matches her pajamas.  Maybe I could get her to wear it to bed.  Maybe not.

This isn't cozy, but it was fun.  Buddy Boy's class mascot is the Lightning Lizards.  One Friday was dress-as-your-class-name day so we came up with this t-shirt.  Buddy Boy drew the design and I helped him put it on a shirt with freezer paper stenciling.  I really liked the skeleton inside the lizard.  It looks great and it glows in the dark.  What more could you ask for.

Indy and the Dolphin

 

The costumes...  Buddy Boy was pretty definite and unwavering when it came to what he wanted to be for Halloween, Indiana Jones.  We looked for leather jackets on e-bay, but didn't find anything for a reasonable price.  So I made one.  It isn't leather, but it is a pretty good polyester that I found in the upholstery section.  I found a pattern that worked, but it wasn't quite the right size so I had to completely rework the pattern.  I wasn't sure that it would work.  I was afraid that it would be too small, but it ended up a little big.  Oh well.  It's great for a costume.

 

Here is my indecisive little dolphin.  She wanted to be a dolphin or a mermaid so I started by making a reversible dolphin/mermaid tail.  I wanted to reduce the chance of last minute meltdowns.  The tail is basically a skirt with a big fin hanging off the front.  The flukes have some super stiff Pelon to hold their shape.  My original idea was that the fin would go in back, but she had other ideas.

 



The back fin is pinned to a shirt we already had.

 

Here's the fabric for the mermaid look.  I love the shiny green scales.

 

 

And the whole thing.  Wouldn't you know, she never wore it out of the house.  I would have taken a picture of my little mermaid, but I couldn't get her in to the costume again.

 

On Halloween there were multiple costume parades.  Indy looked great.  He loved having a whip and holster as well as the all important over the shoulder bag.  I made the whip by braiding some very long strips of the jacket fabric.  Thank you YouTube for the demo on braiding a four strand round braid.  He loved being Indy.  It was fun for me to see him get a lot of positive feedback on his costume.

 

At Buddy Boy's school the teachers all dressed as Waldo.  It was funny to see them all together.

 

 

 

At preschool the kids trick-or-treated through the office then met all of the parents and all of their cameras to sing a few songs.  They really outdo themselves with the Halloween carols.

 

My Girl's best friend ever that she has known for her whole life was dressed as Izzy the pirate.  That caused a few problems that night when My Girl wanted to be Jake the pirate to trick-or-treat.  After a few unsuccessful attempts to convince her that the pirate stuff we had would work, I told her that Jake was friends with mermaids and dolphins so she could choose one of those things.  That worked.  Once we turned her coat inside out so that the grey lining showed and pinned the fin to the coat, she happily roamed the neighborhood as a dolphin with her trick or treating buddy.  They were the tooth fairy princess and the tooth dolphin.

Sweatshirt and a scarf

So, I've done a bit of sewing.  It isn't a very exciting looking sweatshirt, but did you see the sleeves?  Did you notice how long they are?  Just to give some perspective, that's a 26 inch zipper.  The sleeves come half way down the palms of my hands.  It's wonderful.  They are too long, really, but after years of a sweat shirt that looked like it had 3/4 length sleeves I'm enjoying it.  I may bring them up a bit later, or maybe not.

 

It took awhile to get to this point.  First, finding the fabric was tough.  I wanted cotton sweatshirt fleece in something other than light heathered grey.  I couldn't find it in our local stores in any color so I bought it online in grey and dyed it this mushroom brown.  It isn't quite what I was going for.  I would have like something a little richer, but it works.  Then I was almost finished and realized that the fit was really pretty bad, so I took it mostly all apart and made it fit better.  It isn't perfect, but it looks a lot less like I'm borrowing my husband's clothing.

By the way, if your husband likes colored cotton socks like mine does, white sport socks dye up nicely.  The scout socks that carried him through the first many years of our marriage have gone the way after many years of faithful service.  They have now been replace by brown socks that exactly match my sweatshirt.

Here is my latest scarf.  The calendar says fall and although it is still warm it is definitely feeling fallish.  So it's time to think of scarves and leaves and rich warm colors.  The main colors are called brick and brass, very autumnal.

The large areas aren't very even, but I like it better that way.  If this were a watercolor painting class I'd fail basic washes, but I think it makes it more interesting.

After washing out the resist I twisted it up like you used to do with broomstick skirts in the '80s.  It is easier to wear with the crinkled texture rather than smooth.  I have more ideas but I'm out of white scarves.  Time to place another order.

 

Summer wrap up

School is starting Monday so it's time for a summer wrap up.  My posts have been a little sparse since we have been out and about having a good time so here it all is in one giant post. 

We've spent a lot of time at Grammie and GranDad's pool.  Buddy Boy's swimming has really taken off.  He is a little, or not so little, fish.  He loves it.  It's good to see him enjoy it so much after a few false starts with other sports, (gymnastics, soccer, basketball...).  He enjoyed watching bits of the Olympic swimming.  He liked the races and they both liked the synchronized swimming.  My Girl's favorite event of the Games was gymnastics, especially the rhythmic gymnastics with the ribbon.

We took a day to go to the City and visited the Aquarium by the Bay on Pier 39.  It isn't a big place, but it was just right for our little day trip.  The aquarium in Monterey is great, but almost more than you can really take in in a day.  The kids loved the jelly fish and the moving walkway through the tank tunnel where sharks swim over your head and sea stars stick to the sides.



They also enjoyed getting up close and personal with the octopus.  If you aren't very big, you can climb under the tank and poke your head up into the bubble inside.

Here is photographic proof that I was there too.  I was the only one who wanted to touch the ray in the touch pool.  It was a strange little animal.  I swear it was poking it's head out of the water to get a better look at the people.

One day instead of vacuuming the living room as I had planned, we made teddy bears.  Buddy Boy had seen the pattern in a kid's craft book and really wanted one.  I had left over brown cotton fleece from a jacket I made for myself.  We used the wrong side so it would be a bit softer and fuzzier.  They each helped with the sewing by sitting in front of me and pushing the pedal while I guided the fabric around the curves.  They got better at the stop and go as we went along.  Fortunately my machine has a half speed setting.  My Girl has a bit of a lead foot.  The bears are named Cocoa and Strawberry Shortcake.  Cocoa and Teddy Panda are great friends, but Cocoa tends to get lost a little more easily.  That's not good.

Our friends from Israel were in town for their annual visit to Grandma and Grandpa so we got to spend time swimming and playing games together.  One afternoon we even tie dyed shirts.  They turned out great.

My Girl has announced that she is only going to wear white t-shirts that are either plain or that have designs on the front.  No colored shirts and nothing pretty or fancy, only coool clothes allowed.  One morning after being awake for all of about 3 minutes she said she wanted to make a rock star t-shirt.  Fortunately we had a several old white t-shirts from when Buddy Boy was that size, freezer paper, and paint.  By 8:00 am she had her rock star shirt.  Depending on the context she also looks like one of Dr. Seuss's Sneetches, or a Dallas Cowboys fan.  Later she informed me that she IS a rock star and needed a guitar shirt.  So we made one of those as well.  We even stitched little guitar strings with silver thread.  One of these days we may even make concert t-shirts for her band, the Fireflies.

 The garden is gaining steam.  The green beans are doing fantastic and the tomatoes are starting.  I planted four different varieties, sun gold, early girl, better boy, and Amish paste.  The sun gold are a prolific super delicious golden orange cherry tomato.  The Amish paste are an indeterminate cousin to a Roma.  Yummy yum.  Since I'm the only one who really likes fresh tomatoes there is a lot of marinara in our future.  That is the reason for the paste tomatoes.  While Grammie and GranDad are out of town we have been watching their garden.  I'm not sure what variety this monster is, but it is HUGE.  It isn't quite the two and a half pounds you see on the scale.  The head and bunny ear arm are adding a bit of weight.  I didn't notice that when I snapped the picture, but it clears the two pound mark at 2.015 pounds.  We also have it's smaller relative that weighs in at a pound and a half. 

Perhaps Buddy Boy caught wind of the Curiosity space mission to Mars or maybe not, but he decided that he needed to go to Mars.  My Girl said she didn't want to go, but he told her that she didn't get to because he was taking Teddy Panda.  Here he is taking pictures of a martian.  Strangely, Mars looks a lot like our back yard, only redder and slightly out of focus.

We spent our last day of vacation at the beach.  It was finally a beautiful sunny day.  Summers there can be cold and foggy.  The real beach season is just starting.  We build the lost city of Atlantis and played in the surf.  The water was unusually warm, which means it wasn't freezing cold.  Sadly, I forgot to take my sunglasses off when I went in a little deeper and I lost them when I got knocked over by a very sea weedy wave.  Oh well, that's the way it goes some times.  It's been years since I've done much more than sit in the sand with a wee one.  For some reason this just confirms to me that I need more sea water in my life, not less.

I started off the summer rather apprehensively, but it has been good overall.  It was better when I let go of the idea that a lot of academic stuff ought to happen.  We went on field trips and visited Happy Hollow.  There was plenty of reading.  Buddy Boy loves to read.  My Girl is reading on her own now as well.  We did a little math by playing Black Jack and doing Bedtime Math.  There wasn't much writing except what happened during play.  So there were some secret spy notes and party invitations.  Buddy Boy did complete writing a game in Scratch.  It is pretty basic, but I'll brag and say it is great for a self taught 7 year old.  He also spent a fair amount of time immersed in Minecraft.  I don't mind.  As far as games go it is a good one and he respects the limits we put on it.  He knows that he has to keep up his bike riding or he won't be able to play. 

There were a few bumps of varying size along the way, but overall we had some really good times.  I almost, but not quite, wish there was more.