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Well, my grand intentions to make Eleanor’s blue dinosaur costume (with teeth) fell through, but luckily there was a blue dinosaur towel-cape thing at World Market (random I know), which had teeth and is working perfectly for her various Halloween activities. Good news is, I’ll be able to use the blue fabric for some other fun project.
Anyway, today was pumpkin carving day. I was thinking about it last night as I was going to sleep and decided I wanted to do a proper Jack-o-lantern this year. The wheels started turning and I came up with the idea to make it an Obama-08-lantern. (Hopefully, a tiny bit of politics won’t scare anyone away!) My thought was to use his name to make the teeth but as I got to imagining what it would look like, I realized that his logo would be easy to make into eyes and 08 could be the nose. I drew it out, pinned it on, marked the pumpkin and cut it out. Easy as pie. Well, almost. I actually knocked off the tooth in the “M” but fixed it by using a toothpick.
I realize there will probably be some folks who are able to carve Barack Obama’s actual likeness into the pumpkin, and I will be glad to see those pumpkins, but with two little kids hanging off my legs I didn’t have time to try and figure that out. If you want to make an Obama-08-lantern too, you can print off the picture from Flickr and pin it to your own pumpkin — or, if that doesn’t work, let me know and I can email a PDF. Send me a note if you do make one, I’d love to see!
Happy Halloween to everyone (and don’t forget to vote on Tuesday).
One of my favorite traditions in the fall is making applesauce. I remember the smell of cooking apples and the taste of sweet, warm applesauce as a child, and thinking about it now still makes my mouth water. My mom always made pink applesauce, cooked with the skins on and then pressed through an applesauce maker. Maybe there is some proper name for that piece of equipment — a colander with a wooden apple smoosher put over a bowl — but I do not know what it is. My mom, bless her, took it upon herself to find me one so I could make applesauce here at my house too. And, I have.
A few weeks back we went apple picking at a nearby orchard. I knew the apples were not really cooking apples but we had so many that I decided to try and make applesauce from them. I had a few from the farmers market as well that were good for applesauce so the results were not as disastrous as I expected, but certainly not as good as when you have really good apples.
So the tradition continues here in our little house. I hope that my kids love making and eating applesauce as much as I do!
The other day, we got a large box in the mail. I knew it would go to the recycling bin but decided that we could have a bit of fun with it first. With a bit of tape and box cutter we had ourselves a little house. The highlight of the afternoon though, was painting it. I got out a paint roller and let them go to town. I must say, Henry’s rain jacket hasn’t been quite the same since (washable only sort of means washable) but it was well worth it.
I really should have gotten a shot of the finished product. It was lovely, colorful and entertained us for an entire afternoon. But alas, recycling day was yesterday.
So, my next big project is going to be a Halloween costume for Eleanor. I better get on it too — not that many days until the end of the month. She has mentioned, several times, that she wants to be a dinosaur for Halloween. One with big teeth. I just need to get to the fabric store…
And, on another note, in the case that I don’t actually get the dinosaur costume made, I am hoping to win this costume (again on Grosgrain), which is so pretty.
I finally finished the dollhouse. At least, I think I am finished. Does it need a door and a window? Or some flowers? I can’t decide. So I haven’t added any yet.
I used a dark heavy denim for the house, a grey linen napkin for the roof, an embroidered linen for the wall paper and green flannel for the garden.
As I mentioned before, the pattern is up at UK Lass in the US’s blog. I made a few small adjustments to her pattern: 1) instead of duct taping the batting on, I loosely stitched it on; 2) only one handle instead of two (my own laziness); 3) I put the button loop elastics in by sewing first then ripping out a small place for them with my seam ripper, which was a mistake the first time but it worked well so I did it on the other side too; and 4) I sewed through all of the spaces in between plastic. I just figured it would hold up better that way, even if there is a seam in the garden.
It appears to be a hit. Eleanor already informed me that Hello Kitty lives there, apparently along with a small cow.
And, on another totally random note, doing this project reminded me of the show “The Polka Dot Door”. We used to watch it when we would visit my Nana and for some reason, the theme song has always stuck with me. Just for fun I looked it up on You Tube, check it out for yourself here.
Here is the photographer’s shot of the veil I made for my sister-in-law. I should have taken some close ups to show how it was put together, but I was just not that organized.
So, there is this site called Grosgrain. I’m not entirely sure how the woman does it but she makes these amazing little outfits for her girls and then gives them away. Yes, you heard right, gives them away! All she requires in return is a link back to her site. I’ve never entered before but it looks like this little red riding hood jacket would be so cute on Eleanor.
(Oh, and we are back from vacation. More soon on other crafty things.)
Cygnet Small 