Wednesday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp

That's if Halloween even happens this year. I figured I'd let the girls dress up and play in their costumes since it's supposed to be raining, raining, raining for the next 4 days.  Just hoping the hurricane becomes a tropical storm and isn't as bad as they're saying it's going to be!

My 3 year old is so excited about Halloween.  She has finally hit the age where she remembers and is excited about trick-or-treating, jack-o-lanterns, and the costume.  She has also been talking about Christmas for the past week - oh boy.  Anyways, back to Halloween.  We've known what she and her sister were going to be since August.  Really, I'm not usually this on top of things.  A friend of mine posted an awesome tutorial for dinosaur tails (thanks, Melissa :) ) and I thought they were so cute that I decided to make them.  And then, I couldn't let them go to waste!  I had to use them as a costume and what is a more perfect time for a costume than Halloween?  For some reason, I really thought my daughter would have a problem with being a dinosaur.  Nope. No problem.  As you can see, she turned it into the girliest, pinkest dinosaur that you've ever seen.  She even has sparkle shoes on.  The tutu and the shoes are all her.  Her sister is blue. I was thinking purple originally, but then someone gave me a plain, blue, hooded sweatshirt.  Much prefer the free sweatshirt than having to buy something.  So blue it is.  I think the tail is girly enough. Plus the sparkle spikes and the ruffles on the pockets of her pants.  Good enough.

So, like I said, the tails were from a tutorial.  Here is the website: projectsbyjess.blogspot.com
The spines on the sweatshirts were super easy.  Since the felt was sparkle on one side only, I used some  awesome FabriTack to glue 2 pieces together (sparkles out, obviously).  I left about 1/2" unglued at the bottom.  I then just spread the two pieces apart and sewed a straight seam on either side.  This helped the spines stick straight up.  Also, I decided not to back stitch at the beginning and end of the seams so that I could easily take them out (it is a perfectly good sweatshirt, after all). But she looks so dang cute in it, I don't know if I want to take the spines off now.  Decisions, decisions.

Here's praying that Halloween happens so I don't have a very disappointed daughter.  Missing 2 years in a row is more than a 3-year old can take!  Soon it will become "the myth of Halloween". :)

Up next: all my homemade Christmas gifts.  I know, I know.  I'm with you.  I LOVE Thanksgiving and, honestly, I don't usually think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving is over.  BUT, this year I've decided to make as many gifts as I can. That takes time, folks. So, I will post one project a week.  And hopefully finish them all (I mean the projects, not just the posts!) before Christmas.

Happy Halloween!

Stay safe if you're on the East Coast -  pray for power and no water in the basement!

No Use Crying Over Spilt Soap

CRASH!! Long pause.

"Uh oh."

I hear my daughter slowly trudge up the stairs.  She walks over to me and pats my leg very gently.

"I'm sorry, Mama.  So sorry."

She then walks back down stairs and gets back to playing.  I follow because, well, I have to know what she is sorry about.  And there it is.  All over the bathroom floor.  Liquid hand soap. Well, and the soap pump which is broken in two pretty even pieces.  I guess I should be mad. But I'm not.

Ok, it stinks that now I have to clean up liquid soap which is pretty impossible.  My floor is STILL slippery, by the way, and this was at least 2 weeks ago now.  But, 1. ever since making a new shower curtain I've been looking for a reason to replace everything else, and 2. I know how slippery that thing can get when wet and I know it truly was an accident.  Maybe I was in a good mood, too. Who knows?  Point is, about 2 seconds after that soap was cleaned up and the dispenser tossed out, my brain was working on what I could replace it with.

I was walking through the Dollar Store about a week ago and saw this:

SCORE.

I had painted some mugs for my mom as a Christmas present last year and still had the ceramic paints at home.  Plus, I had some brown and green which would be perfect for what I was picturing.  

Now, before I go any further, let it be known that I am NOT an artist.  In fact, I can't even believe I'm letting you all see what I did to this poor soap pump.  It's not high fashion, but it looks nice and works.  I think.

Also, it's made of ceramic.  I know, I'm crazy.  My daughter broke a soap pump that was at least 1/2 inch of solid plastic.  I'm not kidding.  That thing was THICK.  Yes, Becca, replace it with something CERAMIC.  That makes sense.  Well, I figure it was all of $1.  I think we can afford another one if I screw this one up or if it gets broken again.  If she starts breaking one a week, I'll look for something a bit sturdier.

Since this piece was already fired, some people would suggest giving it a good wash and sanding the surface to make it rougher and to help the paint adhere better.  I'm sure that works great, but I'm lazy (or maybe I was chasing my girls and got distracted). I didn't do it.  I washed the thing, but not the sanding.  I had about 15 minutes to spare and the sanding took up too much precious time.  I didn't sand the mugs I had painted and they turned out fine and the paint is still on them after being washed and used several times.

Moving on.  Washed.  Dried.  Now it's time to paint.  As I said, I'm not an artist.  I did a very simple design. I had seen something like this once at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and liked it, so I tried to make it look a LITTLE like what I envisioned it.

After painting, I let it dry for a good 24 hours.  The next day, I heated up my oven to 200 degrees, placed the soap dispenser (plastic pump removed) on a cookie sheet and popped it in the oven.  I then reduced the heat of the oven to 170 degrees (as low as it would go) and "baked" it for an hour.  This "re-fires" the ceramic and really helps the paint bond to it so that it can be washed without removing paint.  When the hour was up, I removed the dispenser and allowed it to cool all the way down.

Now it's ready for use!

Hope it lasts for at least a couple of weeks. :)

Movies in the Car

We do not have an in-car DVD player.  We bought both of our cars before kids.  I don't think a DVD player was even available for my car when I bought it, but even if it was, I wouldn't have gotten it.  I was NEVER going to show movies in the car.  Yeah right.  So she said when there weren't two exhausted, bored children in the backseat who are refusing to sleep on principal and have decided to torment their parents for hours with loud whining and even louder crying.  Sometimes, I think movies must be magic.  Anyways, let's just say, I've gotten a little more lenient than I thought I would be on the idea of showing a video or two in the car.  We try to have our children enjoy the view, read, color, sleep, etc. and most of the time it works, but sometimes...well, if you have children, I'm sure you know.

Anyways, to the project.  Last year, I bought a Kindle Fire.  I love that thing.  I am constantly reading on it and I love checking my email without leaving the couch (ah, one more step toward total laziness as the computer is about 10 feet away).  I also love putting children's books on it and, yes, videos for the girls. The problem is the only places I really have them watch videos on it are 1. plane rides and 2. long trips in the car.  The plane is ok because we can prop it up on the tray table and it stays put.  But the car is another story.  A while ago I made my 3 year old a lap tray/activity table to bring in the car so that her crayons and snacks would stay put and not end up all over the seat and floor (with my husband and I searching for them constantly, of course).  I tried propping the Kindle on top of the activity table on her lap, but one slight bump in the road (or if she moved her legs) and the thing would fall down. The last long trip that we took, I ended up holding the thing from the front seat so that she could watch uninterrupted.  Not fun.  That, plus the fact that my younger daughter is starting to want to watch too made me start throwing around ideas of how to fix the problem.  I knew that what I really needed was something to hold the Kindle between the seats - a sling of some sort.

So, after thinking about logistics and drawing out a rough idea of what I wanted, I grabbed some scraps and got to sewing.  The first picture is what I started with.  I cut a backing piece of fabric for the main "holder" part, two squares for corner pockets, some elastic to make the pockets more secure, and a long narrow strip (about 2 1/2" x 100") for the straps. Time to go to the machine!

Things went as planned until I tested a movie to make sure that the corners wouldn't cover the screen too much. I had originally planned to have the flap of my cover slide through a slot in the top of the sling to hold the Kindle in place and get that cover out of the way.  It was at this point I realized that movies will only show in one direction. The flap where the cover attaches would have to fold back on the bottom, not the top.  This gave the Kindle more bulk than I had originally expected and I ended up making my corner pockets deeper.  I think it worked out ok in the end, but I was really annoyed at the time.  Fortunately, the straps ended up being the perfect length.  I was pretty excited about my guess-timating abilities - and thankful that they weren't too short.  That wouldn't have been fun.

So are you ready to see it?  Here is what came out of my experimenting:

Are you as excited as I am???  Probably not, but that's ok.  I'm so happy with how this turned out! Now I can look forward to our next long trip in the car with a little less trepidation. 

Just to explain exactly how this works:

1. Place bottom of Kindle in the elasticized corners.

2.  Place top strap over top of Kindle and velcro to hold in place.

3. Loop "holder" straps over front car seats and position Kindle in between them.

4. Listen to the wonderful silence of happy children watching a movie on a long car trip!! Sigh...

This would be super easy to make for IPads or Nooks - just a change in size!  Anyone else want one?

The Accident

A couple of months ago I took down our shower curtain to wash it.  While it was in the basement waiting it's turn for the washer, I dumped about 1/4 cup of bleach on it.  I think I was in post-accident shock for about a minute.  My brain went from "Yay! Shopping! Redecorating!" to "Ugh. Spending money. Have to find a curtain I can look at for another 10 years" in that minute.

Now, for those of you who thought this post was going to be about an actual, serious accident - I'm very sorry for the angst I caused you.  It's about a shower curtain.  I still think that's serious.  I can NOT have just a shower liner on that rod.  It is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye. My husband kept insisting it was no big deal and the liner was fine.  He was thinking with his wallet. As I'm writing this, I'm remembering the pea-green, holey La-Z-Boy from 1978 he kept insisting would look just fine in our living room.  I'm thinking he really would have been fine with just the plastic liner for an indefinite period of time (probably forever).

Anyways, back on track.  My shower curtain was irretrievable. The bleach splotch was right in the dead center of the curtain.  I couldn't even hide it in a fold.  So, I started looking for a new one.  I was so overwhelmed by the choices!  On top of that, I wasn't happy with anything that I saw.  Well, there was one that would have been nice, but it was about $100 and that is at least $100 over my desired budget.  Hmm...free would be nice, wouldn't it?  On the off chance I would find something, I looked up tutorials on how to make a shower curtain out of scraps of fabric. Because I really do not have 72"x72" pieces of fabric laying around - it would have to be patchy.

This is what I found:

http://www.designsponge.com/2010/04/sewing-101-how-to-make-a-shower-curtain.html

Sweet, right?  I wanted different colors, but the general layout looked like something I could pull off.  Now all I had to do was find fabric.  I dug through my scraps and came up with enough to make my own.

This is what I came up with:

Not too bad, right?  And I even had enough scraps left to throw together a matching valance for the window.    The old one was looking decidedly off next to the new curtain.

Funny thing is, I love this shower curtain WAY  more than the old one.  Good things come out of accidents. :)



PS My husband insists this curtain was not actually "free" as I had to buy the fabric at some point.  True, but I didn't spend any MORE money.  He conceded that it was better than spending $100 more.

Introducing LittlePunkin'Pie!

A friend asked me a little while ago to design and make some superhero capes for her boys and nieces and nephews for Christmas.  Much to my shock, she offered to PAY me for them!  Me?  Really?   My planning, organizing, love-to-have-a-project brain immediately started thinking about what I could do with that.  At first I was just going to label the capes with my name and email address and hope my friend would pass my name along to her relatives (MORE sewing projects?? Umm...yes, please).  Then it was suggested that I open a shop on Etsy.  Why not? A simple shop under just my name.  Good idea.  Unless you have my name.  Did you know there are about a million Rebecca Smith's in the world?  Go figure.  So that was a no-go.  Well, it just so happened that at the time I was on Etsy opening up shop my 3 year old was pretending to talk on the phone with my mom.  All I heard was "Well, hello punkin' pie!  Are you my little punkin' pie?"  Huh, that's cute.  So there we have it.  The birth of an Etsy shop and my foray into the unknown world of selling the stuff I love to make online.

As a way of getting the word out and keeping friends and family on top of what I am up to, I have decided to start a blog. My amazing, technologically savvy husband has graciously offered to help me set up the look and feel of this site.  If there is something off or wrong about it, I am sure that I pushed the wrong button. :)

So...thanks for visiting and keep an eye out for some awesome (if I do say so myself) stuff from LittlePunkin'Pie!