Very Merry

Well friends we celebrated the solstice and Christmas last week! What fun!  For the solstice we lit a fire in the fireplace, turned off all the lights in the house and ate dinner by candlelight!  Then we went out to see the moon with our telescope.  After our chilly outside viewing we ate a Yule log cake and read books by the fire!  Overall I would say our solstice celebration was a success!

Then the kids had their last day of school and we made some more cookies (snickerdoodles) in preparation for Santa.  We did a few holiday crafts, watched a couple Christmas movies, and then it was basically Christmas eve!  For Christmas eve dinner we went to my parents’ house for some yummy food.  Finally we got into our holiday jammies from Sugar and Daddy-O then headed off to bed.  (Well the kids went to bed, we had to wrap a few things.)  More on that next week.

Julius woke up at 6:30am and was waiting outside our door.  Patricia woke up at 8am!  Julius was going stir crazy by the point Patricia woke up because we told him he had to wait for Patricia to be up before he could open presents.  He voraciously opened presents Santa had left under the tree in about 45 seconds, and finished the pile of presents and stockings in the living room after another 30 minutes.  The kids then played with toys for the rest of the day.  My parents joined us shortly after for an early dinner and more presents.

The next day we went to Will’s parents’ house where we got to spend time with friends and family and opened even more gifts.  It was a great winter break… though I’m sad it’s already over!

I have been so excited to have a Christmas/holiday/solstice party the last several years but never seem to have the time.  This time we finally decided to have a little cookie decorating activity with my BFITWWW and her family.  I baked sugar cookies and we invited them over for cookie decorating and chili.  To make it easy on myself I used the tubs of frosting you get at the grocery store and used gel food coloring to color them different colors.  I filled them up in bags and put a bunch of sprinkles and m&ms out for decorating.  This was easier for the kids since royal icing can be tricky!  I apologize in advance for the photos being blurry I really need a new phone!

Patricia helped organize the cookie plate. I made just one batch of cookies but it was way more than enough.  I used this recipe which is my favorite.

Here’s the table all set up with cookies, frosting and decorations

Cookie decorators avidly working

Here’s a couple of my cookies.

Oh I forgot! After cookie decorating and chili we had hot cocoa! Amy brought candy canes, marshmallows, pirouline sticks and whipped cream to top them!

Julius showing off the cookies! (Gosh these are so blurry I really need to get a new camera!)

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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays dear friends!  Hope you are celebrating with loved ones with lots of joy!

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The Julius Express

How is it already December?!  I’m shocked.  I was making family calendars again this year and looking thru pictures of the kids and some of the activities from the beginning of this year felt like they’d only just happened!  I must be stuck in some kind of time warp.

We finally got our house all fully decorated for Christmas, and the pumpkins are gone.  I even changed out the tablecloth to a Christmas one.  That’s when you know I mean business!  There is eerily no snow yet this year.  Just a few flurries here and there, but nothing that stuck more than a few hours.   We’ll see if we get some snow before Christmas!

Will has been showing the kids classic Christmas movies, and we’ve been doing a dinner and a movie night on the weekends.  The kids recently watched the Polar Express, which I will admit I watched only 10 minutes of before I called it enough.  I do love the book though.  But the Polar Express is about a train – so it’s going to be a winner for our train loving family!  For that reason we decided to book the Edaville Railroad version of the Polar Express.  It was quite fun but pretty pricey.  The train stopped at 3 stops, one to receive hot cocoa, another to pass out chocolate chip cookies, and the last one for Santa to board the train.  After we received the cookies, Patricia said, “Julius won”.  When I asked her what she meant she said “I thought we were going to have m&m cookies and he thought we were going to have chocolate chippies, he was right.”  They are the best siblings.  I love watching them interact and play together… even though they get frustrated with one another every once in a while.

Edaville’s steam train!

I thought given the Polar Express was a pretty popular theme around this time… I’d show you how I made Julius’ birthday train.  It could very easily stand in for the Polar Express.  I had an epiphany painting this one.  After making my fair share of cardboard masterpieces (see the spaceship, or the catbus) I finally figured out the right way to paint!  I highly recommend you use a small foam roller rather than trying to use a foam brush!  It went on evenly, took me 1/3 the amount of paint and I only did one coat!

The Julius Express

What You’ll Need:

  • 2 very large boxes (mine were from a very large swivel chair)
  • 1 large box (mine was from a dishwasher)
  • 1 medium box (mine was from a vacuum)
  • other scrap cardboard (I used another 2 large boxes that were in worse condition)
  • 1 roll of white duct tape
  • 1 roll of black duct tape
  • box cutter
  • 1 32oz bottle of black acrylic paint (I only used about half)
  • 1 foam roller
  • hot glue gun
  • Fiberfil stuffing
  1. Start by laying out boxes where you would like them to go.  I recommend the two very large boxes for train cars, the large box for the driver compartment of the engine, and the smaller box as the front of the engine.
  2. Cut out windows in the sides of the engine car and a smaller window in the front of the engine compartment.  Cut a large door in the back of the driver compartment of the engine.
  3. Cut a rectangle of cardboard from your square boxes that is the length of the front of the engine, but twice as wide.  Gently bend this to form a half circle.  Using the black duct tape, tape this to the medium box to make the front of the engine more shapely.
  4. Measure and cut a piece of cardboard in an arch shape to fit the front of the train.  Tape arch on.
  5. Bend a piece of cardboard to form a cowcatcher.
  6. Bend a 1ft high piece of cardboard into a 4″ diameter cylinder for a chimney.  Tape together.  Cut a hole in the top of the train front to insert the chimney.
  7. Cut rectangle windows out of the passenger cars, and cut a door in the front and back of each passenger car.
  8. Cut 12 small wheels and 2 large wheels.
  9. Paint everything black.  Use the foam roller and press with an even pressure to obtain a uniform coverage.  I only needed a single coat for the whole train.

    So easy!

    Note the shape of the cow-catcher in the front of the image.

  10. Let dry.
  11. Use the white tape to form stripes on the cowcatcher.

    Cowcatcher after bent into place.

  12. Use the white tape around the windows and doors as an outline (I used half a piece of tape.)
  13. Use the white tape to form two stripes around the smokestack
  14. Use the white tape to form spokes on the wheels, then around the edge of the wheels as an outline.  Paint a black dot in the center of the spokes.

    So… many… wheels! And while I was painting them I also saw so… many… spiders! I ignored them.

  15. Use glue gun to attach wheels to cars.
  16. Place fiberfill in chimney of smokestack to look like steam.
  17. Cut a small hole for your flashlight in the front of the train.  Insert flashlight.
  18. All aboard!

Posted in Crafts & Sewing | 1 Comment

Heads or Tails

Today I’ll tell you about how to move another step towards merperson.  But first, let me tell you about our week!  The kids ended up getting sick in the first half of the week, which as usual was awful.  Poor kiddos.  Patricia vomited blueberries all over the couch while we were decorating the Christmas tree.  Not ideal.  So it wasn’t the most festive of Christmas tree decorating.  Oh, also the tree fell on me while I was putting on lights.  Will had to come rescue me because I was in an awkward position and couldn’t move without tipping even more water out of the base and making everything worse.  We decided it was indeed too big a tree this year so I trimmed some branches off the back and tied it to the upper floor for extra security.  So… we’ve had a slow start to solstice season.  But this past weekend was quite festive!  We went to multiple community holiday events and even went on a horse drawn carriage and saw Santa!  And we’ve slowly been putting up Christmas decorations.  We still haven’t gotten rid of the pumpkins out front though.  Someday.

Oh and we watched a bunch of Christmas movies and listened to a bunch of Christmas music!  Patricia is getting good at using the Alexa. A couple months ago it finally started to understand her and Patricia could ask it “play Hakuna Matata” and “play Paw Patrol” and it would understand and do her bidding.  (Those happen to be 2 of my most played songs in Spotify in 2023, go figure.)  The other day though this gem happened,

Patricia: Alexa Paw Patrol.

Alexa plays something that is not the Paw Patrol theme.

Patricia: Alexa stop!

Alexa does not stop.

Patricia: Alexa you’re being naughty!

Don’t be naughty!  Make your little mermaids a tail blanket that they can snuggle into.  Or do this, whatever this is. 

Honestly this would be a great gift and they are a snap to make!  Especially if you have a serger!  I made them as favors for Patricia’s party and I banged out 8 of them in just 2 evenings.  I used any fabric I had on hand, which was mostly a bunch of fleece I had bought for a project that never materialized (pun unintended).  I think the key is to make the fins and belt the same color and the tails a contrasting color.  Patricia’s fabric is a sort of minky dot fabric I got from a friend cleaning out her fabric stash.  It’s not quite as soft inside but it’s a cute texture.

Check out these tails!

Fabric Mermaid Tail Blanket (little kid size)

What you need:  

  • about 1.5 yards of tail color
  • about .5 yards of contrasting fin and band color
  • my pattern here

Note: All stitching should be done using a serger or stitch with some stretch such as a zig zag stitch.

  1. Cut out pattern pieces as indicated including a 8″x41″ strip.  
  2. Fold strip in half the long ways, right sides in.  Stitch (ideally using a serger or using a zigzag stitch for some stretch) along unfinished short side to form a belt. 
  3. Fold belt in half to form a 4″ high belt so the stitching is hidden inside.  Set aside.
  4. Pin tail to fin along the narrower end of the tail.  Stitch. 
  5. Repeat for other side of tail and fin.
  6. Place tail and fin combo halves, together, right sides in.  Stitch along edges, leaving the top part opened. 
  7. Place belt from step 3 inside the mermaid tail, matching the unfinished edges.  You can gently ease the mermaid tail and  slightly to conform to the size of the belt if needed.  If sizes are too far off, adjust the size by restitching in step 2 or step 6 (whichever is larger)
  8. Fold the belt up!
  9. Wear!

    One little mermaid

    The other little mermaid (and 1/10th of first little mermaid on bottom left)

 

 

 

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Tip the Scales

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving for those in the US!  I am thankful for every one of my readers!  Your positive energy brightens my day!  Thanksgiving was early this year!  Or rather, as I said to Will, it wasn’t early it is always the 4th Thursday in November!  But Will pointed out November has 5 Thursdays this year so it is early!  That has thrown me off!  It doesn’t feel like the winter season.  Despite that we got our tree this past Sunday.  So we have a Christmas tree inside and pumpkins outside.  I’m not ready to let go of fall yet…

Alas, the kids are already on to the next holiday.  Patricia asked me this morning (she was home sick) if it was Christmas.  I told her it was not yet Christmas, but it was the next holiday coming up.  She then said “oh yeah, so it is Christmas”.  Which, sure, I guess it’s Christmas season.  Whatever floats their boat.  Julius made a Christmas list that is 6 pieces of paper stapled vertically that he pasted toys onto that he cut out from magazines.  6 sheets of paper. That means it’s 66 inches long, taller than me.  We need to work on minimalism.

I think Santa will be favorable towards my children though.  For the most part they are sweet to each other and to others.  Patricia is constantly asking Julius to be part of her pretend games.  The pretend games are almost always “parent and child” where one of them is the mom or dad and the other is the kiddo.  Julius sometimes gets annoyed with this game, but more often than you’d think has fun playing with her.  This past weekend I called Patricia downstairs for something, and Julius objected saying “But we were playing mommies, who am I going to play with now?”  Then the next day there was this interaction:

Patricia: Julius do you want to be the kid and I’ll be the mom?

Julius: no.

Patricia: Do you want to be the dad and I’ll be the kid?

Julius: no.

Patricia: What do you want to be?

Julius: I don’t want to be anything.

Patricia followed him around for another few minutes thinking of variants of the game that he might like to play with her, convinced that she must have heard him wrong.

Despite Halloween being over and fall coming to a close it’s never the wrong time to become a mermaid.  So I would love to give you some cricut patterns I made for face painting and how to apply them!

Mermaid Face painting Stencils

What you’ll need:

  1. Load cricut pattern and then follow instructions to cut out “mylar” material.
  2. Gently remove from mat.
  3. Cut around the area, leaving a 3/4″ border all around.
  4. Repeat for other shapes

To Adorn Mermaid Scales

What you’ll need:

  • facepaint & sponge (I used Snazaroo face paint which was on sale and Michaels and was sensitive skin friendly)
  • Stencils above
  1. Choose side of the face you want to adorn.  Get the sponge wet and then ring it out so it is damp.  Swirl in the white paint until the sponge is covered.  Pat white all around the area you plan to adorn (in this case it was the side of the face).  Rinse sponge and ring out again so it’s damp.
  2. Take your scale stencil (either small for side of the face, or large for forehead area) and position over the white paint.
  3. Swirl sponge in light color paint (I used light green).  Pat the light colored paint all over the stencil directly on top of the white paint.
  4. Swirl sponge in darker color paint (we did purple, pink or blue) and apply on top of the light colored paint in strategic areas.  I did more of this color in the center and left the green color around the edges.

    Applying scale stencil.

  5. Remove stencil.
  6. Rinse and ring out sponge so it is damp again.  Swirl sponge in white paint.
  7. Place seashell or starfish stencil in desired location (I did mine on the lower part of the cheek at the bottom of where the scales end).
  8. Pat white paint onto stencil, remove stencil.

    Applying starfish stencil

  9. Wash all stencils to be reused.

Finished facepaint.

By the end of the day Julius had his whole face painted.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Crafts & Sewing | 3 Comments

Merfolk

This past weekend we wrote out thank you cards for some presents Julius and Patricia got for their birthdays.  I told Julius we were going to write thank you cards and he immediately started writing.  I was slightly concerned.  We had a conversation that went something like this:

Lexi: Wait, Julius, you don’t even know who you are writing your thank you note to!

Julius: I am writing it to Kylie.

Lexi: But you don’t know what she got you.

Julius: Yes I do!  She got me a shark book and a squishmallow.

That’s about when I left him to it!  He has such an incredible memory…

So I’m going to talk about Patricia’s party this week, but first, one quick adorable story about Patricia.  Patricia’s party was the day after her actual birthday.  So for her real birthday I bought a tiny cake.  We didn’t do anything super exciting for her actual birthday, but we did have her blow out candles on the cake after dinner.  Immediately after she blew out the candles she was super confused.  She looked up at me with uncertainty and said, “nobody came to my birthday party!”  My heart broke!  Luckily she cheered right up when we told her the party was tomorrow…

Patricia’s Mermaid Party

Theme

Obviously the theme was mermaids.  She originally had said she wanted an “octopus party” but later confessed she would rather have a mermaid party.  That’s fine!  Who doesn’t love a mermaid party?  You may remember I threw her a mermaid party for her first birthday as well.  And we were mermaids for Halloween… so who doesn’t want to be a mermaid in this family!?

Activities

From Julius’ party happenings, I was worried about having enough activities since at Julius’s party the time it took to do activities varied wildly.  We had a similar situation happen this time, but we sort of let the kids do whatever they wanted since the little kiddos were being attended by parents.

Mermaid Crowns

We put out mermaid crowns on our coffee table and a little craft table in the living room and I put a variety of ocean themed stickers around the tables to add to the crown.  Kids spent a varied amount of time on the crowns, but most of them spent quite a while putting stickers on.

Making Mermaid crowns!

Julius showing off his mermaid crown and necklace

Shell Necklaces

I put necklace kits in a little treasure chest that I’d hidden in plain sight on the coffee table.  As kids started getting bored with the stickers I encouraged them to pick a necklace and work on it.  To make the kits I drilled large holes in assorted shells my mom had given us, and then put a shell in a bag with matching pony beads and a string that I’d tied one end of a break away clasp on.  The kids strung the beads in any way they desired and then a parent helped them tie the other half of the break away clasp on.  The beads and shells had large enough holes that made it easy for little hands to thread.

Making shell necklaces! (We gave the kids plates to hold the beads)

Mermaid Face Painting

While the children were working on their necklaces and crowns I painted faces using a hypoallergenic face paint kit I picked up after Halloween for half price and some stencils I made with the cricut.  I also did my own face paint because, let’s be honest, I am also a mermaid.  Surprisingly no other parents took me up on the offer to paint their face.

Mermaid painting

It tickled!

Finished product!

Bounce Castle

If those activities weren’t enough of a time killer I then invited the kids to bounce in a bouncy house we had set up in the garage.  (We got this bounce house from some friends of ours and it is amazing, we use it all the time!)

Bouncing!

Mermaid Lantern

We actually ate lunch after the bounce castle, but after lunch we made some Mermaid Lanterns (or night lights).  Julius has been using his as a night light ever since, but Patricia was less inclined.  This was more sticker-ing which is a win for 3 year olds.

One lantern setup

Working on lanterns

Showing off their lanterns

Under the Sea Room

After everyone finished their lanterns I invited the children to explore the under the sea room, which was filled with jelly fish (from recycled wrappers), balloon fish, and an octopus guarding some treasure.  The kids right away saw the octopus guarding the goody bags, so we rescued the bags and they opened them up to find mermaid blanket tails I’d made.

Under the sea setup

Octopus guarding the goody bags

Mermaid Story Telling

The idea at this point was when the kids had their blankets we could sit and read a couple mermaid themed stories.  I took a few books out of the library (recommended by mermaid forums!)  The kids were great listeners, even though I was a bit blind in the dark room and stumbled over some of the words.

Mermaid story time.

Kids listening attentively!

Food

For lunch Patricia also asked for mac and cheese.  I made only 1 crock pot full this time, and used shells instead of elbows (to be on theme).  We also made octopus hot dogs (Ka actually boiled them all for me!  Thanks Ka!) and pimento cheese and chicken salad croissant sandwiches with little eyes to look like crabs. For vegetables we had a salad, and carrots and celery sticks.  Oh and I can’t forget goldfish crackers of course!  Since I made everything except the hot dogs before the party it was pretty easy.  We threw the hot dogs in while the kids were bouncing.  Mercifully, more adults ate at this party vs. the last one.

Yum! Lunch is served.

Under the sea lunch!

Crab (free) sandwiches

Octopus hot dogs (fun fact: some of the adults were concerned when I had a label that just read “octopus”)

Dessert

For dessert I made mermaid cupcakes.  They were vanilla tie dye cupcakes using this recipe with the same American buttercream recipe I used for Julius’ party.  (Side note: I’ve got to find a fluffier vanilla cupcake recipe.  Even when I weighed the flour this time they were super dense.  Great for a layer cake, not great for cupcakes.)  I made the tails for the cakes out of those white chocolate candy melts and I think they came out so cute!  Patricia was very excited/nervous listening to all these people sing Happy Birthday to her.  She was far happier than the previous day when “no one came” to her party.

Shy birthday girl being sung to.

Cupcakes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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All Aboard!

Well, there go two more birthdays under my belt!  Now I’m in the lull before the holiday storm.  I can’t believe my little guys are 3 and 6!  Where has the time gone?!  People have suggested I throw parties out of my house to make it easier on myself, but throwing theme parties brings me such joy!  If Julius or Patricia ever wants to invite their entire class (more on that later) or requests a special location like Davis Farmland for their party I will be happy to oblige!  But I selfishly love planning parties.  And I suspect I don’t have too many more years of at home birthdays left to plan before they ask for big kid birthday parties.

To kick off the birthday marathon, I’ll tell you all about Julius’ party.  Julius is in Kindergarten and has made some new friends in school.  He gave me a list of kids he wanted to invite to his party which was a mix of friends he met in preschool and friends he met in kindergarten.  Total he invited 10 kids, which to me was a lot of children.  The school district this year decided for liability reasons (or something) they couldn’t give out parent/guardian emails to other parents.  I was really thrown for a loop on how to connect with the parents.  I ended up going on social media and found several parents that way!  Unfortunately, there were 3 kiddos Julius asked me to invite who I couldn’t find on social media.  As you know, I do evites, so I really needed just emails.  Since we couldn’t feasibly invite the whole class (he has 20 children in his class, that is the same number of people who came to the party, including parents) I addressed envelopes to “the parents/guardians of so&so”.  I filled them with my contact information and a vague note saying I’d love to exchange emails.  I stuck them in Julius’ backpack (actually Julius stuck them in the front pocket, a pocket he never uses because it was “his special letter pocket”) and told them to try to sneak them into his friends’ backpacks.  He assured me he was up to the task and would put them in his friends’ take home folders.  Will and I had a bet going if the envelopes would reach the parents, and how far after Julius’ birthday, but just after 3pm that day (before Julius was even home from school) I received emails from all 3 parents!  He did it!  I was so proud!

Quick tangent… I found out recently that Julius got a teensy bit of help from his teacher to be sneaky about getting the envelopes into the folders, for which we are grateful.  I feel bad that we cannot fit the entire class/boy scout troop/gymnastics class/former preschool friends in our house!  As a child I was always anxious of hurting someone’s feelings by not inviting them to my party.  Julius on the other hand was very adamant about who he wanted to invite.  There were names I’d heard him mention that he insisted he “didn’t have room to invite”.  I was hesitant to push the issue.  Apparently in the past the school has said if you send invites in school, you have to invite the whole class.  I didn’t even want to send in notes to parents for that exact concern, but at the same time I cannot even imagine inviting an entire classroom to a party!  20 kids sounds like absolute chaos!

Speaking of chaos…. on to Julius’s party.  Julius originally wanted a shark theme (of course) but as the date approached he changed the request to a train party!  I realllllllllllly wanted to build some sort of train attachment to a ride-on lawnmower, but figured some parents might not be cool with that… Plus I got rid of the ride-on a couple years ago when we switched to Moe+lawn service, so I would have had to borrow one.  Instead we decided to do a silly train adventure.

Julius’ Train Party

Theme

Clearly the theme was trains.  I made a bunch of black and white signs that we taped around the house above the doorways.  The signs read Southbound Trains, Northbound Trains, Luggage Room, Souvenir Shop, Dining Car etc… On the foyer floor Amy (who was visiting from out of town) and Will put down black masking tape “tracks”.  To complete the theme Will and I wore conductor outfits (consisting of some last minute hats I made and clothing from our closets), and Amy (unprompted!) wore an engineer costume!

Activities

The activities for this party were tricky!  Some kids spent 20 seconds on each activity, some kids spent 20 minutes!  Next time I will have to plan a bit better for that.  I tried to have some little silly activities in between the main activities so kids weren’t bored, but even so some kids weren’t terribly interested in the activities.  I’ve give you the order we did the activities and a summary below.

Luggage Claim!

Luggage Claim

As each child entered I pointed them to the Luggage Room.  I’d used those paper bags I’d been collecting from Hannaford’s order pick-up to make paper suitcases!  They were actually pretty easy to assemble after I got a bit of an assembly line going.  The suitcases contained a red scarf and engineer’s cap… classic train attire as well as more stickers to decorate their suitcase.  (Julius asked me just before the party “where his costume was” and I told him to just wait for a few minutes.)

He’s ready to get on (Or drive??) the train!

Train Depot

Towards Northbound Trains I had set up a paint table with wooden Brio-like trains I’d gotten at Hobby Lobby.  They were so cute and inexpensive (I got them for half price)!  This is the activity that some children spent a large period of time on and others spent almost no time.

Setup for train painting

Kids decorating their trains

Souvenir Shop

For those who finished early I sent them inside to write out Souvenir postcards to their friends and family.  I put out real stamps and postcards and cut a recycled USPS mail box to use as a mail drop slot.  Many children wrote cards to their family which I mailed after the party.  Others wrote cards to Julius which he loved reading afterwards.  It was a win!  Some kids finished this activity quickly too and I suggested they decorate their luggage or just play with the toys in the room while we waited for others to finish.  In retrospect this might have been a good time to start kids on lunch, I’m not sure.

Post card setup

Kids writing out postcards

The Great Train Mystery

After all the kids were done painting and washing their hands I blew my conductor’s whistle and had them line up to head down to the Southbound Trains (in the basement).  I had built a large cardboard train out of huge boxes I’d collected, plus some I’d gotten from neighbors off the local Buy Nothing group.  Julius and Patricia had seen me building the train (it was impossible to hide from them) and they were so excited about it.  They played in it every day after they found it, and I had to caution them not to break it before the party.  During the party some of the kids were pretty rough with the train (read: jumping on top of the cardboard roof) which I think made Julius feel a bit bad.  Luckily the train was no worse for wear!  It survived and still looks great!

While playing in the train one of the kids found a note!  Julius (being a pro reader) read the note aloud which was a clue!  Will put sticky notes with a magnifying glass in various locations around the house, and the kids had fun going from room to room to find the missing package.  It turned out the package was left in the luggage room all along!  And it contained train whistles!  (I apologized profusely to the parents and said I wouldn’t judge if they got left behind.)  The train whistles are the coolest ones I’ve seen and sound just like real train horns!  The kids seemed pretty happy with the adventure.

Kids in the train!

Will leading the train adventure

Opening the missing luggage!

The prizes!

Brio Trains

After lunch we suggested the kids head to the “Northbound Trains” which was in the mancave (the room over the garage).  Up there Will had set up almost all the Brio train tracks in a crazy setup utilizing as many pieces as he could.  It was a masterpiece!  The point was to encourage kids to use their painted trains on the track, but mostly the kids used the trains we already had up there.  Some of the kids would have spent the rest of the time up there, but many others took one look and bolted!  Ha!  What an adventure.

The epic track Will set up!

Food

For food Julius wanted smoked gouda mac and cheese.  I was fretting about this.  Mac and cheese does not hold well.  It needs to be served immediately for the best texture!  I experimented with it on Halloween and cooked the pasta 2 min less than usual and simmered the sauce for just until thickened slightly,  then mixed it up and dumped it in a crock pot on the “warm” setting for an hour, stirring every 20 minutes.  It was acceptable after an hour.  Not great, but not completely separated either.  So I decided to go with it.

Since I didn’t feel like making another entrée I decided a mac and cheese bar could work for an adult lunch as well.  In addition to the mac and cheese I also had sautéed onions, sautéed peppers, brussel sprouts, broccoli and pulled pork as toppings.  The mac and cheese bar toppings I sautéed/roasted in advance (except for the pulled pork which I purchased) and then held in the oven on “warm” for serving.  Sides were bread with fancy butter and a garden salad.  Almost no adults ate anything!  I was horrified.  Maybe it was all the carbs, but we had 24 guests and only 3/4 of a crock pot of mac and cheese was eaten (I had 2 crock pots full) and not even an entire head of red leaf lettuce was finished (I had prepped 3 heads).  Most of the bread did go though!  So that was something…

The mac and cheese bar lunch setup!

Kiddos in “the dining car”

Dessert

For dessert I made chocolate cupcakes.  These I made the week before and then put in stasher bags in the freezer after they cooled.  I used this recipe for the cupcakes and it was phenomenal (I omitted the coffee because I didn’t have it).  I’ll make this recipe every time from now on.  To frost them I took them out of the freezer and out of the freezer bags (don’t believe what they say about this) the day before the party and put them in giant tupperware containers to thaw.  As the cupcakes thawed I made a bunch of tiny trains and train cars out of packaged cookies and candies from the store.  Then I made this American Buttercream frosting (I did ABC this time instead of my favorite Italian Meringue buttercream because it colors better – as another bonus it’s also ridiculously easy to make).  By some birthday miracle every single kid got the cupcake they wanted (either a locomotive or a train car).

Overall I would say the kids looked like they had a good time!  Julius had a great party with his friends and I can’t wait to plan the next one!

 

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See Ya Suckers

Well you probably have been wondering where I was last week!  Or maybe you didn’t even notice!  Last week I was swamped between Halloween and finishing up a bunch of crafts/prep work for Julius’s birthday party this past Sunday.  It was a wild party, but I’ll tell you about that in a later post.  Today I’m getting together presents for Julius’ actual birthday tomorrow and doing more things for Patricia’s party this weekend.  Yeesh.  Talk about my marathon month!

I have sooo many adorable quotes though from the last couple weeks, that I thought I would share some of those, plus share some pictures from a celebration that is nearly a year old now that I haven’t found the right time to post!  It’s a win win win!  First for the quotes…

First, apparently Julius has been teaching Patricia the colors of the traffic lights.  But maybe not just the traffic lights… here is a conversation I overheard that slayed me:

Julius: What’s the green light mean?

Patricia: Go.

Julius: What’s the red light mean?

Patricia: Stop.

Julius: What’s the yellow light mean?

Patricia: Police is comin’.

Julius: Nope I stumped you!

Patricia: Slow down.

Julius: What’s the blue light mean?

Patricia: Police is comin’.

Okay another one that I have to put on here is this conversation between Julius and Patricia, talking about her “babies”, a myriad of stuffed animals who she won’t go anywhere without.

Patricia: My baby has a rash.

Julius: My baby has a rash too.

Patricia: Is Gaga your baby?  (Note: Gaga is Julius’s stuffed toy dog)

Julius: No he’s a 10 year old.

Patricia: Oh does he go to gymnastics?

Julius: No.

Patricia: Does he live in preschool?

Here’s one that I love.  One of the online card games Will plays has a card called “Beast Mama” and when you play it it says, “best mama is the beast mama”.  My children quote this everytime they are happy with me.  For instance, “you’re the best mama. Best mama is the beast mama!”  Then Patricia said this poetic slant rhyme:

Best mama is the beast mama

Best dada loves the beast mama

And a few one offs:

Patricia: A-R-A-R (or other random string of letters) I love you!  (Julius spells I L-O-V-E Y-O-U a lot)

Patricia: “Silly mama!” Said in a cheerful laughing voice whenever I do anything wrong.  It makes everything better.  For instance, “Dada left my pants at home today, isn’t that so silly?!  Silly dada!”

Patricia (While “reading” the little critter Halloween book):  “Me and my sister are going Halloween-ing”

And finally:

Patricia: “Mary had an oxygen who lives on white tail lane”

Okay now for the fabulous virtual party I have been waiting to show you!  My dear friend and co-worker Roger retired this past February.  No one was going into the office those days (let’s be honest I’m still not going in), so Amy and I arranged Roger a silly virtual retirement party complete with our good buddies Pat&Ron, snarky cookies and a silly banner for Roger to use on zoom calls.  Roger dubbed the 3 of us “AARP” (Amy Alexis Roger Pannell) many years ago and the acronym stuck.  You may remember other shenanigans with Roger such as peeps, more peeps, and decorating Amy’s cube with her own private island consisting of 300lbs of play sand (why don’t I have a picture of this?!)  Anywho, I have been so sad Roger was leaving me at work that I thought I would make him this very honest cookie.  You might have to zoom in and read between the lines.

All true.

Here’s the rest of the batch. Obviously Intel colors…

I’m not actually sure if Roger ate them because I did accidentally “poison him” many years ago… and you know, that memory kind of sticks.

Okay but for the piece de resistance – I made Roger this banner that I hoped he would appreciate.  As far as I know he used it for several zoom calls on his last day.

If you want to make your own for someone who is peacing out you can use my cricut pattern below!

See Ya Suckers Retirement Zoom Banner

What you’ll need: 

  • 2 12×12 pieces of cardstock in pattern of your choice
  • Cricut with basic cutting tool (I have the ExploreAir)
  • 2 yards of 5/8″ satin ribbon
  • Cricut Pattern Here
  1. Mount cardstock on 12×12 cutting mat and select appropriate material for cutting.
  2. Let Cricut cut out the letters, removing the letters from the mat when complete.  Repeat for second page.
  3. If using polyester satin ribbon melt the ends of your ribbon to prevent fraying by putting them close to a flame.
  4. Thread ribbon through the tops of the letters in order of S-E-E-Y-A-S-U-C-K-E-R-S.
  5. Hang!PS – Happy late birthday Roger!!!
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Lvl 1 Merdad

The leaves are AMAZING!  Last week everything was in full spectacular color and it was too beautiful to ignore!  I guess I’ve been annoying Patricia the last few weeks by pointing out how incredible all the colors are.  Now every time I point out a spectacular tree Patricia gets all pouty and says, “NO! Not even one tree is beautiful!  They are all just green!” Every. Single. Time.  It makes me chuckle.  No one can get me down because October is the best month!

Well I finished the Halloween costumes a whole 2 weeks early this year! Amazing, right?!  I will be honest.  I cheated slightly.  I only had to make 2.5 costumes this year.  Maybe more if you count the shirts.  You probably wouldn’t count the shirts.  Julius has wanted to be a shark since July.  Patricia has gone between octopus and sea turtle a few times before settling on mermaid.  And…. her mermaid tail from her first birthday party still fits her.  So there’s one mermaid tail down.  And did I mention I started making tails for Will and I for Patricia’s party but didn’t finish? So I had a half-made tail for myself.  As for the tops.  It is October on the east coast.  It’s cold.  And no one wants to see us all half naked.  No one.  So we decided to lean in and go for the “mer-family” look.  We decided to wear graphic tees that a mermaid family might wear…

Mine says “Mer-Mom”.  I think I might wear this one outside Halloween.  Will’s says “Lvl 1 Merdad” which is a reference to once of our favorite comics, Litterbox Comics.  They are basically us, but, like, cats.  (The comic I linked above is an actual conversation we once had complete with crying child over peeled banana.)  Patricia’s shirt is masterful.  Will gets full credit.  I asked “what would a toddler mermaid wear” and Will responded, “sea unicorn”.

“21st Century Mer-Family”

I designed all the shirts myself then used this method of sublimation here.  I briefly considered using the cricut to cut some sparkley HTV out, but sublimation was easier.  I’ve included my pngs below so you could use them yourself.  (As always, only for personal use.  If you want to sell stuff, come talk to me first.)  Don’t forget to mirror before you print!

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God bless the daylight

We had a great weekend visiting our college BFF Ryan and his lovely wife Lydia in LA.  Ryan had a billion amazing things planned for our visit to LA, including, the highlight for me, a Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service concert.  The last time I saw Death Cab was in college with Ryan.  They’ve apparently become a bit bigger since then, but were just as awesome.  It’s not every day I get to see my favorite band with some of my favorite people in the world.  I’m always sad when a vacation ends and I’m especially down this time.  The ray of sunshine is that I had happy kiddos waiting for me when I got home.

Now that I’m home, it’s real crunch time for Halloween/double birthday extravaganza season. I’ve already been staying up way too late for the last week making Halloween costumes.  I finished Julius’ right before my trip, but I’ll probably show you that next week.  He was delighted with his costume and wants to wear it all the time, so I consider that a win.

I should have written this on our 6 hour plane flight back, but since I didn’t, and it’s crunch time I’ll keep this short.  I’m going to show you a tutorial for a renaissance garment I made many years ago, but recently perfected.  It is a pocket!  It is such an easy thing to make, but can hold all the things!  I actually resurrected this pocket a few weeks ago because the awesome leather belt/pouch I got doesn’t really work over my more elegant ren dresses (which is basically all of them, because let’s be real, I’m a wanna be princess).

Ren Pocket to Hold all the Things

What you’ll need:

  • 1/4 yard of structured fabric (scraps are great – I used scrap corduroy fabric)
  • 1.5 yards 1/2″ ribbon
  1. Cut out fabric as per pattern above.
  2. Fold fabric down 3/4″ on the top of one of the pouch halves (right side out).  Stitch.  Repeat with second half. Note:  the picture shows step 2 after step 3, but I do not recommend doing it in this order.
  3. Place pouch halves on top of each other (right side in).
  4. Stitch all around the pouch, leaving the top hem side opened.  Turn right side out.
  5. Pin the ribbon to one side of the pouch opening, in the center of the ribbon length. Stitch.
  6. One more thing – if you used polyester ribbon you can move the ends close to the flame to melt the ribbon and prevent it from fraying.
  7. Tie around your waist to wear!

See the pocket over my dress here? It blends in rather nicely!

 

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