Ode To Cardboard

Cardboard Toddler House

We have been spending a lot of time at home (not counting our week in Pittsburgh).  It's been sticky hot and while I've proved I can leave the house with two kids in tow, it still feels like quite an ordeal.  Luckily I'm blessed with a toddler who loves to sit and color/paint/draw - but apparently a two year old can only sit quietly so many hours a week.

So on the days when it feels like every toy has been played with and boredom is rearing it's ugly head we try to get back to basics.  We cook a meal together, dump a bucket of water in to the baby pool on the balcony and splash around or build a fort and read books in it.

Handmade Holidays: Toddler Crafts

We really wanted Leo to feel invested in the gifts he was giving to family members.  So in addition to joining us for holiday shopping and giving input on picking out presents (which makes it take 10 times as long), we also tried to make some gifts at home that he could take ownership of.

The most successful of these attempts was our salt dough ornament project.  jb helped Leo mix, roll out and cut out the dough.  They used a basic recipe (1 cup flour, 1/2 salt, 1 cup water) and added a bunch of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice) to make them fragrant.  jb baked them during Leo's nap and Leo and I took it from there.

Once they were cool they were hard as rocks - which was the intent, since it would be great if they could last for years to come.  I gave them to Leo along with an assortment of crayons.  At first he wasn't sure about coloring on them, but after I demonstrated a bit he LOVED it.  Seriously, this kept him busy for over an hour.  That's like a year in toddler time.

Savage Squirrels and Pumpkin Carnage

 Remember our pumpkins?  The ones we so carefully chose on our trip to the orchards?  The ones Leo and Aunt Fanny so happily hollowed out?  The ones whose seeds we roasted and ate?  And finally, the ones that I so lovingly carved for our family? 

Well, they are gone. 

Party Files: Piñata

Aunt Fanny and her friend Nayeli made a piñata for Leo's birthday party.  They used a balloon for the base, newspaper for a few layers of paper mache, toilet paper rolls for the legs and snout and finished it with tissue paper.  Isn't it adorable?

Generally I'm not keen on giving kids sticks to beat things (and possibly hit each other) with only to culminate in a greedy grab for sugar - but well, it is a part of our culture and family tradition.  So we went ahead and embraced it.

We did try to make it a little less sugar-centered with stuffers like yogurt covered raisins, bubbles, stickers, fruit leather and silly bands. 

One Year

The party was a colossal success (despite high winds that kept trying to take our balloons, napkins, and table cloths).  The forecast had been threatening thunderstorms, so I didn't mind the wind one bit.

We rented a pavilion at the park near my parents house.  It was pretty large - housing eight picnic tables, so even if there had been rain, we could have made do.  We started off with "just" family (ha!  Between jb's family, mine, and significant others there were fifteen people) doing prep work.  It was also pretty special because it was the first time all the members of our families were in one place -and sadly will probably be the last.  All hands were on deck preparing food, picking up balloons, putting up decorations, setting up the plates and utensils, choosing music, and loading and unloading cars.

Current Project

So, when I placed this topic in the list I didn't quite anticipate how much time it would take to blog every single night, so my crafting has been virtually non-existent this month.  So I'm going to cheat a little and use a project I finished up a couple weeks ago.  A dear friend of mine from high school just had twin girls (how exciting!) so I made these two little dresses for them.  I slightly adapted Made By Rae's Itty Bitty Baby Dress pattern so that the straps snapped rather than tied.  If you don't look too closely they turned out pretty well!

Amarillo. Amarillo. Amarillo.

Toys. We've got a ton of them. We tried to resist being overtaken by toys, but slowly (or not so slowly, the kid is only 10 months old) we've accumulated quite a few. Most are hand-me-downs or thrift store finds. When we do purchase a new toy, we try to choose one that is imagination based, made with high quality materials, made by a socially responsible company, and won't break the bank. We are big fans of the Melissa and Doug line and Folkmanis puppets.

Magnets from an alphabet book by Melissa and Doug

I am officially my mother

Ok, so I've managed to put my own spin on this, but anyone familiar with my mom can see the strong influence she's had on my style. May the universe have mercy on me and all who have to deal with me on a daily basis.

Step One. Wait until approx Dec. 18th to start thinking about preparing for the holidays.

Step Two. Realize that preparing requires a lot more time than you have. This is particularly true because your decorations are still in Pittsburgh and you had grand illusions of making a gazillion things yourself. Ha.

Step Three. Take a moment for a small breakdown/tantrum. Then pull yourself together and decide you are going to pull this off.

Step Four. Go to a craft or sewing store and just randomly pick out supplies. Make sure you do not have a clear plan or any idea of how to go about creating the vague ideas you have.

Step Five. Get home and assess situation. You have about 48 hours to make four stockings, a tree skirt, a few ornaments, presents and a December activity calendar. You also have a six month old. How should you proceed? I know! Google: How to make a stocking

Step Six. Realize you have about half of the supplies you actually need. Perhaps you should have looked at these tutorials first and then gone shopping. (Also, please be sure to forget this for the next time you have a project so that you don't avoid multiple trips in the future). Send husband (and baby) out for remaining supplies.

Step Seven. At this point you are down to about 36 hours. Take a break to sort the buttons in your craft drawer.

Step Eight. Repeat step six after googling tutorials for the other projects. On second thought, tag along for the trip this time and pick up a bunch of other supplies that aren't on the list for ambiguous future projects. This should draw the trip out to twice as long as it needs to be.

Step Nine. (And here is where the true "mom factor" kicks in) Pull it the eff off. Seriously. Ok, so maybe you'll make the tree skirt in January (Or December 23rd of next year) - but for all intensive purposes, make a holiday out of nothing. Ta Da!



I got started on the stockings using this tutorial. Of course rather than printing and tracing the pattern I just eyeballed it.


Here are the finished stockings. From left to right: Leo, Me, jb, and Daniel. Daniel's stocking had the misfortune of being the trial run.

Since way before we had Leo, I've known that I wanted to have a calendar, like an advent calendar, to tick off the days in December for our children. Each day there would be a winter/holiday activity for us to do as a family. Like volunteering at a soup kitchen, making snow angels, singing carols, drinking eggnog, baking cookies, etc. I fell in love with some that I saw with little hats and mittens and wanted to do something similar, so I made mini stockings.

And in each stocking there is a little card for the day's activity. There will be 31 stockings and about 40ish cards (we will switch them out each year depending on how busy we are and whether there is snow).
And finally the ornament. I would like to add an ornament to our collection each year. This year I obviously wanted to mark Leo's first year, but I really hate most of the "1st Christmas" ornaments out there. Well, for some time now jb and I have been thinking that Leo's main present this holiday would be a goldfish. He fell in love with Abi's fish when we were visiting and so we figured it would be a great thing for him to have at home. So a fish ornament seemed like it would be perfect to mark this first year.

I also made Leo a present (a ball) but that's already wrapped, so pictures will have to wait until after the holidays. :)

Half A Year

Leo turns six months today. Unreal. What a huge freaking milestone. Half of an entire year. He's going to be starting solids. He's already scooting across the room in a flash. I can't believe my little tiny baby is growing up so fast.

The last few days have been challenging. I'm not quite sure why. I think we are in between bouts of teething. He's still a little stuffy, but is clearly feeling much better. Maybe a growth spurt? All I know is that he's been resisting sleep like nobody's business. I try to anticipate when he'll be tired and he won't nap. He stays up and is clearly tired, but still, he won't nap. He's screeching (he's taken to making this high-pitched, ear-piercing scream) he's so exhausted, and still the kid won't nap. If by some miracle I do get him to fall asleep, he wakes up after about a half hour. Bedtime is not much better. It's driving me crazy and making him miserable.

In other news, I've been doing some crafting in order to welcome a couple of new babies into our lives. Leo has a new cousin (Welcome Isis!) and some dear friends of ours recently had a new baby (Welcome Parker!). We are hoping to get to meet them over the Thanksgiving trip to Pittsburgh. Now that I'm becoming a pro at making knock-off babylegs, I figured I could whip them up a pair of those - but it didn't seem like enough. So I thought maybe I could use the extra sock material to embroider their initial onto a onesie. It took a while to figure it out - the stretchy sock material is hard to work with! But after a couple dumb mistakes (cutting out the "P" backwards and sewing the two sides of the onesie together) it worked pretty well. I hope they like them!

Homestretch

35 wks. I'm still feeling pretty good. After a few unseasonably hot days, the weather has cooled off to pleasant spring temperatures, which I'm grateful for. I spent two nights falling asleep with the help of fans and wet towels. I don't know how my mom survived August being 9 mos. pregnant without air conditioning!

I'm trying to catch my tummy moving on camera, but the baby seems to be camera shy. Actually, the baby has been very shy about allowing anyone to see or feel movement (except for jb and, of course, me). Thank goodness for hiccups, they are a surefire way to guarantee my siblings and parents will feel some sign of life - because usually the baby will be rolling and kicking like crazy until I invite someone to feel the movement and then nothing. Maybe the baby will be really good a freeze tag.

We are doing lots to prepare in this final month. We plan to cloth diaper this baby and I've been doing a lot of research about the different types of diapers and am starting to build up a stash of a couple different kinds. Mostly I've been focusing on one-size diapers (that should last from birth through potty training), but BumGenius currently has a promotion that offers a free diaper (sized) with purchase. So, naturally I took advantage of the offer and for the free diaper I chose a size xs, since sometimes newborns are too small to fit into one-size diapers. Well, they came in the mail today and the newborn diaper is soooooooo small, and soooooo cute. Here is the xs diaper next to a regular one-size diaper:

And of course every stuffed animal in the house has a diaper on.


I also made a mobile for over the crib. It's very basic - two wooden dowels, some nylon string, and oragami paper cut into bird shapes.


I've also been dying and aplique-ing some of the more boring clothes - but that's a-whole-nother post.


Now, most of what is left is cleaning. Ugh. I'm all about nesting in the making things or buying things or rearranging and organizing ways - but the typical deep-cleaning type of nesting totally does not appeal to me. Maybe it will kick in the next week or two...

Leg Up

So, some time ago, one of our many generous neighbors gave me his old sewing machine. I had been wanting one, but now that I actually had one I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. My skill level is really basic - but projects that are too basic don't really appeal to me. So I've been on the search for a project that isn't beyond my capabilities, but that is cute enough to seem worth the effort of hauling out the machine, figuring out how to thread it, etc. (Maybe one day I'll have a sewing/craft room and it will be easier to get inspired.)

That's when I stumbled upon a tutorial to make a DIY version of babylegs. I've always thought these baby legwarmers were super cute (and easy access for diaper changing), but with money being tight these days I can't rationalize spending $12/pair (especially since I want like 30 pairs...)

So using this tutorial I was able to make a couple pairs from some socks we got on super sale at Target. The socks actually came in a three-pack, but I mis-cut the first pair - oops. Once I understood the directions, the process was really quite easy.


Snip, snip, sew - and voila! I'm excited to keep an eye out for more socks on sale (in more exciting colors).