A Girlie Birthday

Since today is the Second Anniversary of my 39th birthday, I took a girl's morning and had some fun!

We had coffee at the coffee shop, a real treat for me and then we had pedicures.

Last but not least, I treated myself to a Fascinator hat (for a tea that I'm hosting in December) and a fun and obnoxiously huge ring:



I love the hat.  Who doesn't love feathers, flowers and lace on their birthday?

Wanna know what the kids gave me?  An electric tea kettle that I've been eyeing for a while and the Youngest picked out the most eye irritating fuchsia colored lipstick that you've ever seen.   The kind that little old ladies wear and that makes me look like death warmed over (not the best look for someone as pale as I am.)   Completely cracked me up.  His favorite color is pink and he was so proud to have picked it out for me.  I'll be sneaking out to exchange that for a pink that's a little more wearable for me.  He'll never know the difference.  :)

He Won!

Guess what?  My costume His costume won the School Ball Costume Contest!

The kids were absolutely fascinated by it:

The Dads completely geeked about it.  I was asked about a hundred times how it was made and then they couldn't believe that a mere woman had made it.  I mean, what woman works with joint compound?  :)

My other favorite costume of the evening was a giant story book.  The cover opened up and revealed a story inside.  The best part of her costume?  The (working) book light that was attached to it.

The Lego Man and the Story book both took home top honors.  One for most creative and one for best homemade.  When the Lego Man was announced as the winner, you should have heard the place cheering.  It was very cool and The Eldest was "cock of the walk" for the rest of the evening.

Here's an "action" shot of my two guys:

 

The little guy was not told to pose, he's just a natural born actor.  :)

Lego Minifig Halloween Costume

http://allthingsshea.blogspot.com/2010/10/eldests-projects.htmlToday I wanted to share something that I am absurdly proud of, The Eldest's Lego Minifig Halloween Costume!

 

(This is sans child of course since he's at school as I'm writing this up.)

There have been lots of Mommy hours put into this project.    It all began with this inspiration.  I want to thank those guys for creating these costumes and putting up such great pics of the whole process.

Some details:
1.  The mouth is made of screen that has been painted to resemble teeth.  The wearer of the costume can easily see out, but unless you are very close, you can't see in.
2.  The head began as styrofoam and posterboard that I covered in three layers of joint compound.  After much sanding, it was spray painted within an inch of its life a tradional Lego yellow.
3.  The hands were constructed in a similar way.  The child will hold the paper towel tubes that are connected to the hands.
4.  The torso piece was put together from a couple of different boxes and was to me, the hardest part of the whole project.
5.  The face was hand painted on with acrylic craft paints.
6.  For the logo, I did a google search and grabbed an image, then threw it into Gimp to enlarge and clean it up.  Once that was done, I Modge Podged it on.
7.  Everything has been sealed with a clear gloss sealer spray paint.

You can see how the process came about here and here.


From the top:

From the back:

The Eldest will be wearing a long sleeve red shirt (mine) to cover his hands while he is holding the hands part of the costume.  For the legs, he's going to wear black pants and regular old tennis shoes.  I'll probably have to lead him around so he doesn't run over his friends.  There is no peripheral vision when wearing the head piece.

Want to know how excited I am about this project?  Well, let's just say that The Eldest and I may have to arm wrestle over who gets to wear it on Halloween.  :)

Paper Mache Space Shuttle

I keep repeating to myself, "On Friday it will all be over, On Friday it will all be over, On Friday..."  I've been so bogged down in projects for the Eldest for the past two weeks that I've had zero time to work on anything for myself.  Not really for myself, but projects that I am wanting to complete.  I've got a couple of super secret Christmas Gift knitting projects that have been stalled and I'd really like to get back to work on them.

One of the projects that the Eldest is working on is way beyond anything that I ever did in 4th grade.  He had to read five books, take a test on them, do a thinking map for each book, complete a bibliography for each, create a project that shows off his topic (which was space) and make a presentation on it which for him also will be including a powerpoint slide show.   I never had to do anything like this until I was in high school.

I have never seen a 10 year old yet that had any sort of time management skills.  I've had to stand over him for the past two months with a whip in order for him to get this thing finished.  It didn't help that he chose to make such a huge (1/40th scale) and involved creative project either.  But, it's finally finished!  We just have to get it safely to the classroom tomorrow morning.

Here's the final product:

In retrospect, we should have gone without an opening cargo bay, but this is what he wanted.  It does open and they do have tiny little one inch hinges holding them on.  He applied a thick coat of Modge Podge to it last night to seal it and harden it a little bit more.  I'm very proud of him with this project.    Not many 10 year olds could tackle a paper mache project of this size and have it turn out this well.  I think it turned out great, but I'm just a wee bit biased!

Pumpkin Decorating

This year I haven't had a lot of time for Halloween yard decorating.  In fact, I decided that I really didn't want to carve a pumpkin either.  My solution?  Make a Mummy O' Lantern.  I also took a page from Centsational Girl's book and made a small Vampire punkin.

The Mummy O' Lantern was super easy.  I used spray mount adhesive and stuck two large googly eyes to the front.  Then, after spraying more adhesive to the rest of the pumpkin, I applied strips of cheesecloth around it trying not to be too neat about it.  Instant Mummy!

I did put up a few spiderwebs, spiders and skeletons around the front door:

Can ya find me in the pic? :) The Autumn flowers are totally fake.  I put them in my planter every year in the Autumn and don't worry about them again until it's Christmas and I replace them with some fake poinsettias.


The skeleton on the door was a Dollar Tree find:

A tree:

Notice the fall Auburn football flag in the background. War Eagle!

And even the mailbox got some attention this year:

 

The yard decor is not as elaborate as I usually do, but it's still fun for the kids.    

The Eldest's Projects

This is how my garage looks today. 


There's the head of the giant Lego Man Halloween costume for the Eldest that has the joint compound drying:

And the hands:

As well as an upside down Space Shuttle where he has applied the black paint:

All of my projects are geared towards the Eldest child this week.  I'm so looking forward to this week being over!  I really need to concentrate on Christmas crafting.

Peacock Shawlette

On September 29th I started a test knit for Kitman Figueroa called the Peacock Shawlette (Ravelry Link).  After a few minor glitches and one huge one, I finally finished this project.  I've been up to my eyeballs busy and haven't been able to get it blocked until now.  I think the recipient will be very pleased with her new shawlette.  Just look how gorgeous this project turned out: 

Yarn used:  Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic, fingering weight.    Don't you just love all the greens in this?

Tips:  If you make this shawl, you are far better off using less stitch markers than more.  One on each end between the garter and lace stitches and one on each side of the center stitch will be sufficient.  When I tried to use the stitch markers between each of the lace repeats, it just caused major confusion. 

This is such a lovely pattern.  The lace charts are awesomely easy to follow and it just gets more and more fun to knit as you go along.  You go from more stitches to less and the project just gets faster and faster.

Super Great Day

My day started off with a real bang.  I took a load of Chimera Patterns, Knitting Gift Tags and Stitch Markers to a local yarn shop, Lovin' Knits for them to sell.  Not only did she want to sell them, she bought the whole load and requested more.

I'm so excited about this!  It's a wonderful opportunity to get my name and product out there.  It's also a great way for the knitters to have one of a kind, fun stitch markers.  No two sets were alike and all are super cute.  If you are in the area and get a chance to go by there, look next to the register for the packages that have a similar design to the pic below.

I forgot to take a pic for you to show you the new packaging that I came up with, but this is a sample of the card that they are mounted on and some examples of the hand drawn sheep that I used for some of the gift tags and stitch markers:

When I get some new packages put together I'll make sure and get some proper pics for you.


We also tackled the Space Shuttle Project today.  We have finished the newspaper and glue part and are now gluing cheap paper towels on top to get a smoother finish.  Cheap paper towels are a lot better way to go, by the way.  The super thick soft paper towels just cause a huge mess.  Besides a smoother finish, the paper towels also add more strength to the project as a whole thanks to all those absorbent cotton fibers.

Something doesn't look right does it?  Something missing?  Yep.  The cargo bay doors are on the floor and not shown.  They will be hinged in so that they can be opened once everything is painted and sealed.

Tomorrow, if everything is completely dry, The Eldest will begin spray painting it white and then we'll add the detail.  To finish it off, he'll be applying another "Mmodge Podge" type coating to make it shiny and to seal the paint.

It's coming along nicely and should be finished just in time for him to turn it in.  I'm looking forward to this project being completed.  It's been a huge time consuming project and has caused the boy tears a couple of times, but I think he's done a fabulous job, don't you?

Mother Necessity

The Eldest decided that he wanted to be a Lego Minifig for Halloween.  If you are not familiar with the term Minifig, it's short for mini-figure.  Basically, it's a Lego Person.   I did a lot of online research and decided to emulate these guys and their costumes.

The first problem that I ran into is that the 3 inch thick styrofoam sheets are not to be had in my area.  But, I did find some 3/4" thick ones that I gorilla glued together and it worked like a charm.

The second problem was cutting the styrofoam.  I didn't have anything near me that would cut this stuff neatly.  Or did I?

Mother Necessity is a wonderful DIY deity and she showered me with her blessing in the form of a, wait for it,
- A bread knife.  Yes, I said a bread knife.  I wasn't that worried about dulling the blade (and styrofoam will definitely dull the heck out of a blade) because I haven't used it for it's intended purpose in years anyway.  That wonderful tool went through that styrofoam like buttah and with a minimum of mess!

The circle isn't perfect, but that's my fault, not the knife's.  I'm not worried a bit about it since it doesn't have to be perfect anyway.  We'll be covering it with posterboard and joint compound and then spray painting it a Lego yellow.  So it really does not have to be perfect at this stage. 

Who really needs proper power tools anyway?  Kitchen tools rule!

Look What the Yarn Fairy Brought

I mentioned on Friday that Fabric.com was having a big sale on Rowan Yarn.  Well, look what the Yarn Fairy brought me today:

I can't believe how fast this shipment got here.  What awesome service.  I will definitely be ordering from these folks again.  There's two sweaters worth of yarn in those two bags and the cost comes to around $20 bucks for each sweater.  You just can't beat that price.

The blue is actually closer to a periwinkle blue in real life and is a worsted 75% wool/25% alpaca mix.  The rust color is pretty accurate and is an extra fine merino DK.  I've already go the sweater patterns picked out for these and can't wait to get started.  It'll be a few days before I can get started on it, but I'm so wanting to start now! now! now!

Yarn and Pirates

Two quick mentions today:

1.  Fabric.com is having a huge Rowan Yarn sale over the next couple of days.  I ordered two sweaters worth of yarn from them for very, very little.  We're talking less than $3 a ball cheap.  How often do you find Rowan yarns going on sale this cheaply?


2.  We're huge Johnny Depp fans in this household, particularly of his Captain Jack Sparrow persona.  Click this link to find out why I now love him even more and make sure to watch the video clip there.  How cool that he took time out to go to a school and spend time with these kids. Here's another link from the Daily Mail that show's her letter.

Note to Captain Jack:  If you happen to read this, rest assured that if you decide to stop by sometime, I'll gladly mutiny on the ol' hubby and sail off into the sunset with you!  Would it happen any faster if I wrote it on notebook paper and drew a skull and cross bones on the page?   Love you.  Call me!

PS.  This little guy would mutiny as well:

PSS. Please ignore the Batman sticking out from under the white shirt.  The kid's a little confused as to whether to be a good guy or pirate, but he leans toward piracy more days than not.

Birthday Surprises

Yesterday, the Eldest received a birthday gift from my parents.  Want a great tip to make a kid really happy on his birthday?  First, grab a box.  Then take 30 one dollar bills, crumple them up lightly and throw them in the box.  Wrap gorgeously for the kid to open.   You'll get this response:

Now, beware.  See the little fella?  That smile was only for a split second and right before he realized that there would be none of those little green thingies coming his way.   There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, stomping of feet and huge tears once he figured out that those pretties were not for him.  We had to give him two of dollars of his own to keep him (The Youngest) from punching his brother out of anger because he (The Eldest) wouldn't fork over any.     Life is never dull with The Youngest around.

More Halloween Decorating

I added a few more decorations to my mantle today, small ones.  Rats!

You can snag these templates over at Martha Stewart.  Check out what Thrifty Decor Chick did with hers.

If you look closely over to the left, there's a rat checking out the climbing skeleton:

I used black poster board for mine that I bought over at the Dollar Tree.   I just couldn't resist these cute little rats once I saw them.

Weekend Wrap Up

Guess what?  My Skull Pops are featured on Dollar Store Crafts today!  Yay!  If you're dropping in from over there, welcome, glad you could join us.

 

In other news, The Space Shuttle Project is coming along nicely.  The Eldest got all nice and sticky yesterday.  We moved to the garage for this part of the project.  It's just a bit too messy for the house.

Because of the humidity that we have around these parts, we opted for a mix of glue and water instead of flour and water.  It may need a bit more glue on the next go around, it's not quite as hard as I would like it to be.  

My Sister-In-Law's birthday was celebrated this weekend.  I got out her gift, the Queen Anne's Lace Crochet project and finally blocked it.  Look at the difference:

Before:

After:

The Magic of Blocking has worked it's wonders once again!

Photo Intensive Fall Decorating

For me, October 1st marks the official start of Fall.  It's also the day that I begin decorating for Halloween.

The month of October is my favorite month of the year.  Wanna know why?  It has my Sis-In-Law's birthday (Today - Happy Birthday Jennifer!), my parents anniversary (Oct 15th), my anniversary (Oct. 19th), my birthday (the 26th) and my favorite holiday in the whole world Halloween!

So this morning, out came the decorations!

I dressed my mantle (which has since had a burlap runner added all in it  You can see it in a pic below):

Look how cute these little guys from the mantle are:

The Youngest dressed himself:

He insisted on being photographed in his bad guy hero pose.


Here's another view of the mantle complete with coffee table:

I can't tell you how glad I will be when the striped wallpaper is gone.  Coming soon to a blog near you!  It's on the to do list, trust.


And I just realized you've never seen the living room from this view:

That's more burlap on the coffee table.  I intentionally left it all wrinkly.  I love the effect.

Guests in the downstairs powder room will see this:

In the the Hall:

In the Breakfast Nook you'll find this:

The tablecloth is actually a throw that was from Pier One.  It makes an awesome Autumn tablecloth, though when the kids sit down to eat it's moved out of the way.  They can't be trusted to eat neatly.

Check out the dog in costume (purchased at a yard sale for 5 bucks):

My family thinks he's weird, but I find him adorable.

And the springy things hanging from the chandelier:

Even the sink area gets the Halloween treatment:

 Most of these decorations were purchased end of season from Joann's, The Dollar Tree and thrift stores.  Can you tell that I just love Halloween?

Spinning My Wheels

Which wheels?  The Mommy van kind? no.   The spinning wheel kind?  again, no.  The lace project kind?  Why, how did you guess?

On Sunday I received the pattern for a lovely test knit.  The designer requested that the item be completed in one week and asked for fast knitters.  Now, I pride myself on being a quick knitter, and you can probably guess that this was where things started to go wrong.  The whole pride goeth before a fall kinda thing, you know.  I totally jinxed myself. 

The next thing to go wrong (because this is me we're talking about here and there's always another thing to go wrong) was getting confused about the pattern, three times.  This is not the fault of the pattern or designer, I will completely own up to that.  I messed up.  Short and simple. 

I recovered and moved along.  I actually caught up to where the other knitters were in the charts. Woohoo!  But wait, congratulations are not in order here and this time, it's not my fault.  I'm fully aware that this is going to sound immature and like I'm making up excuses, but it's true, I swear. 

The dog did it.

The almost completely blind and almost completely deaf 18 year old dog walked between my project and my ball of yarn.  I was in another part of the house making a cup of tea.  Said dog was clueless as to the fact that she had done this, so she continued on her plodding little way, pulling the yarn.  Could it have pulled from the ball?  Yes.  Did it?  Oh no. 

Stitch, by small stitch, the yarn came away from the needles.  Drop, drop, drop.  Approximately 10 stitches fell off the needle and began running in many different directions.  Have you ever been working on a lace project and have this happen?  For me, there was no recovery.  Too much of the lace became unraveled for me to even consider getting out the crochet needle and patching it up.  Meanwhile, the dog walked on, with me yelling all the while.  She never heard a thing. 

I caught up with her eventually and untangled her and then sat down and stared at what was left of my pretty lace.  Believe it or not, I was very calm at this point for a couple of reasons:  One, the dog didn't know she was doing this and is so pitiful already that it's difficult to yell at the little geriatric.  Two, I didn't do it.  If I had done this, the yarn would probably be lying in the bottom of a very deep, dark hole from the stress of it all.

The stretchy crocheted cast-on, with which I have already become intimately familiar due to previous mistakes, have become acquainted once again.  I'm on row three now for the fifth time.

Now how am I ever going to explain this to the poor designer who needs it in just a couple of days?

Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop

Saturday, on a hunt for some fingering weight yarn (I'm test knitting a new shawlette pattern), I went to a local yarn store for the first time.  It's called Lovin' Knit Yarn Shop and Studio.

I can't say enough good things about this shop.  The owner and (Pat) and one of her employees (Cindy) were wonderfully helpful and incredibly welcoming.  They had a great selection of yarns and their shop is very well laid out.  They even encourage crocheters and aren't a bit biased against them.  That's such a nice thing to see in a lys.  Most of the lys' that I've seen tend to cater only to the knitter and ignore those that crochet. 

Plus, to make this visit even better, they were having a sale on Noro (buy one, get one half off) and I just couldn't pass it up.  I snagged some Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic sock yarn in the most beautiful greens ever and two skeins of Noro Silk Garden at the sale price. 

With all this shop has going for it, I'll definitely be going back soon!

Fireplace DIY Skillz

Yesterday I showed you the pics from my Fireplace insert painting project.  Today I want to show you the before and after pics.

I forgot to take an official "before" shot of how the insert looked before I began this project.  Not that that will be a surprise to anyone here of course.  However, I do have a pic taken at a birthday party last year that shows it very nicely.  Just ignore the party decorations:

Check out how it looks now:

I love the new look (even if the lighting is poor!) Click to see the enlarged version of the pic.


Obviously I have not updated the mantle in a while.  That's on my next week's to do list, promise.

Fire Place DIY

Since we moved into this house seven years ago, I've hated the way my fireplace insert looks.  It's a big ugly nasty colored brass.  Not a pretty brass, an ugly one.   Yesterday I decided to do something about it.

I had gotten out the steamer cleaner to clean the bricks on the fireplace and had to take the insert out anyway to do this.  This is the first time that I've had it pulled out and I decided that now is the perfect time to fix the color.

I took a trip to Home Depot this morning and purchased some High Heat spray paint for about $5.  DISCLAIMER: Please, if you do this kind of project, make sure you buy High Heat paint, not the regular spray paint.  I will not be responsible for your burning your house down if you don't buy the proper paint!

Here is the before:

And here is the insert after taping up the windows and applying the first coat of paint:

I picked a flat black paint because I want it to disappear in the fireplace.  It's had enough attention over the years, it doesn't need more.  It's there to insulate the house when the fireplace is not in use and that's all it should be doing, not taking away from the beauty of it's surroundings.

Tomorrow I'll show you how pretty it's going to look in the fire place!

The Goody Box Incentive

Years ago I created a thing of beauty.  It's more beautiful in concept than reality.  In reality it's just a plain cardboard box.  Nothing special to look at.  It sits in the shelf in our garage and it looks just like every other box on a shelf in the garage.

The objects inside are not beautiful either.  It's the motivation that those objects provide that is a thing of beauty.  I call it, The Goody Box.

The Goody Box is filled with little toys, Pez candy dispensers, items found at consignment or yard sales, puzzles, etc.  Nothing fancy or expensive. 

It began as potty training motivation.  The Eldest was into Thomas trains back then, so I created a train track on a chart.  Every time he went he got a sticker.  Every fifth track had a star on it.  When he got to a star, he got a prize out of The Goody Box.  Worked like a charm, for him at least.  His brother is not motivated like that, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.

After a few years it morphed,  no longer used as potty training motivation, but for incentive to do chores.  This has been a truly wonderful invention and one that I'm quite proud of.  We use it for any chores that are not on their normal chores list.  The normal chores are done in order to attain a small weekly allowance.  These chores are not negotiable and are the same from week to week.  The Goody Box chores are outside of the normal realm of chores. 

Today after school both boys suddenly came to me begging for extra chores to do.   The operational word in that sentence is begging.  The Youngest dusted for me (at least every where that he could reach.) The Eldest asked to clean the toilets.  "Heck yeah!", I said, "Get to it".  What Mom in her right mind wouldn't say that? 

The Youngest chose a Toy Story Slinky Dog Pez for his collection.  The Eldest picked a Bionicle that I had bought at a children's consignment sale.  Both items cost me a dollar each. 

The Goody Box, truly an item of beauty in my home.