Birds. SPACE Angry Birds.

This post will probably read something like "tales from a design-starved unemployed-architect-Mom..."  I have to take my design challenges where I can get them these days...

Since I have had children, I have had a blast each Halloween dressing up my kids - sometimes against their will (the monkey costume for the first two-year-old was NOT popular).  It has been fun, as the kids have gotten a little older and actually have opinions, to make their Halloween-dreams come true. From last year, you might remember the insane train costume.  This year, for awhile there were threats of wanting to be a mixer truck, then a dump truck.  I suppose I would have found a way... Gratefully, my older son changed his mind somewhere in August and decided he wanted to be an Angry Bird.  Specifically, the black exploding angry bird.  My younger son went along with this and decided he wanted to be the red angry bird.  Around mid-September, I decided it seemed safe enough that minds wouldn't change, so I bought boatloads of felt while it was half-price.  Sometime after I bought the fabric, the costumes somehow morphed into SPACE angry birds.  It was doable - the colors were the same.  The black one got more complex, though, because now it needed an orange belly and an orange ring around it. 

I spent lots of time figuring out how I was going to achieve the angry bird look while creating a comfortable costume that my sensitive (older) son would actually feel comfortable wearing.  I landed on a great sale where patterns were $1.99 and so I picked up a toddler pumpkin costume pattern.  I ended up having to get myself in gear a little earlier than I had planned because I just learned that I am about to get very busy.  I wanted these little time-consumers to be done as soon as possible.
Using the pattern as the starting-point for the costumes worked out SO well.  The only change I made to it was to stuff it with quilt batting instead of just an extra layer of fleece as the pattern called for.  I also used the base of the headpiece from the associated witch costume for the angry bird heads, then I created the necessary embellishments for each costume myself with trace, felt and scissors.  The costumes velcro at the shoulder and have elastic around the bottom of the bodies.  The orange ring attaches to the costume with velcro at the shoulders.  The hardest parts of building these were installing the elastic and sewing the black fuse into the black headpiece.  The only thing I'm not totally satisfied with is the angle of the tall head-feather on the red bird.  It really should be pointing a little more sideways.  Perhaps some built-in imperfection makes them more loveable somehow...
The boys will wear a long-sleeved shirt the same color as their bird and then black tights underneath (the bird bellies go down almost to their knees).  I am still deciding if these guys need some big yellow bird feet to go over their shoes or if perhaps black rainboots might be good enough...  Thoughts?  Big Bird-like feet?  Hmm?  (I'm not entirely sure how to make that happen, but I figure that I've gotten this far, I could probably find a way...)

The costumes will look even cuter with kids in them...I need to think of a good place for a photoshoot.  Stay tuned.

Buying LOTS of Ribbon

Somewhere around November, I was randomly on etsy and I saw the cutest advent calendar I'd ever seen.  It was a row of white mittens all cutely embellished and numbered.  It was selling for $150.  I was somewhat incredulous.  I could totally do that, right?  How hard could it be?  And wouldn't it make a cute gift?  Feeling over-ambitious (and forgetting about the other work involved in the upcoming holidays and my sons impending tonsilectomy in early December), I figured heck, I could make what? 4? 5?  I bought tons of supplies and set to work.  And found myself having to table this craft for most of the holiday season.  I ended up making them for my two sisters and figure I will get to mine sometime before the next December 1st.

All in all, this was not too terribly complicated, just time-consuming and somewhat tedious.  I sort of invented this project as I went, and learned lessons along the way.  I used white felt for the mittens, white grossgrain ribbon about an inch thick sewed into a double-layer to connect all the mittens.  The embellishment is mostly rick-rack and various kinds of ribbon of different patterns and textures.  I love ribbon so it was not hard for me to buy many, many spools.  I am excited to have lots left over.  I ran into small wrinkles such as not being able to find pre-made numbers made out of felt that were the right size so I had to create stencils and cut them all out myself.  It turned out to be not as terrible to cut out all those numbers as I thought it might be.  I found that I could get all the numbers I needed out of a single 9x12 sheet of sticky-back felt.  Oh, and note about the sticky-back felt: I still had to use fabric adhesive to get the numbers to stay put.
The first calendar I made is of the red/green persuasion and all 24 mittens are different (I'm really proud of that).  It turned out very cheery and festive!

The second calendar is more a wintery-theme in blues and silvers.  It has four different mitten-styles and I made and used pom-poms to embellish the top.

I love them both.  I am still trying to decide how to do my own.  In keeping with most of my Christmas decorations, it will probably be mostly red.  At the moment I'm kind of done with sewing for awhile, but I will get back to it someday, I will, I will!  I love these sorts of advent calendars because they allow the flexibility to count down to Christmas however you would like: stuff them with candy, activities, scriptures, you name it.  It is a great way to create a holiday tradition.

Bedtime Festivity

Showing off the first of my Christmas crafts!  For some of the important kids in my life (including my own), I decided to make festive pillowcases in nice warm flannel.  For my nieces, I included a copy of one of my favorite Christmas books - Mary Engelbreit's version of The Night Before Christmas.  I like it because it is very detailed and completely jolly!  I had them open their gifts before Christmas so they could enjoy them for a couple of weeks, so I am now free to show them off without spoiling any surprises. 

Pillowcases are a great sewing project for someone who is perhaps less confident with sewing skills.  The cool thing about making a standard pillowcase is that it takes exactly one yard of 45" wide fabric.  No waste!  (Well, except for trimming edges to straighten them.)  It's just a bunch of straight stitching, folding over twice, more straight stitching - all you have to do is pull a pillowcase out of the linen closet and take a look at how it's put together and you are on your way. 
I love the rick-rack embellishment on these (and it hides the stitch underneath). 
I loved making them so much (I made 8 total) that I bought some more non-holiday flannel to make a couple more for my boys for the new year.  My sister claims that there is no such thing as a half-hour craft, but I am here to tell you, if you have washed and pressed flannel, this takes slightly less than 30 minutes, start-to-finish.  Wahoo!  Need a gift from the heart but it's taken you a long time to decide what to make?  This is for you!
Stay tuned for another one of my projects coming very soon (I need to photograph them before I give them all away).

Bags for Halloween

When I made the train costume, I bought WAY too much yellow canvas.  Feeling somewhat wasteful, I was trying to figure out what to do with at least some more of it before I forget all about it in my fabric box.  I decided to make trick-or-treat bags to go with both boys' costumes.  So, behold the Union Pacific Diesel Engine accessory bag which I tried to make somewhat Halloween-ish by shaping the logo into a pumpkin.  In hindsight, I wish I hadn't because maybe he could have used it for other things...oh well.  I also made a little faux-leather treat-bag for the little munchkin to go with his motorcycle dude costume.  I am totally digging the flames.  These took me a little longer than I had anticipated, but I am SO glad I made them.  With the bags and my husband and I wearing our stop sign and railroad crossing t-shirts, we are going to be thoroughly decked out for Halloween this year and even somewhat thematic too.

Boys cook too

My oldest son is a complete and total train-fanatic. Occasionally, though, he enjoys cooking. In an effort to build other interests, we got him a play kitchen for his birthday (we got it a few weeks early). He hasn't been too into it yet, but I think it's because he is lacking proper tools. So, for his birthday, I decided he needed a little-boy-apron. These are a little hard to come by, so I made my own. I saw this great idea on this fabulous blog called I Am Momma Hear Me Roar (SERIOUSLY, if you have some time, check out this awesome blog - the woman is amazing and posts some crafty thing EVERY DAY) and decided to create my own spin (I thought the fork looked a little too tough to actually sew around so I left it off). I bought a cheap kid's apron at JoAnn's and then embellished it. The entire project took me exactly a half hour and cost me $4 (I used scrap pieces of fabric that I had at home). The best part is, it does not look girly in any way! I love it when I am crafty AND thrifty all at the same time.