The Lady Beekeeper

I’m writing this blog post from the lawn chair outside the little cottage rental we have on Block Island.  It’s breeze but still glorious.  It is the same place we stayed last year and it is just as lovely.  We’ve been here since Saturday and we’ve already done lots of fun things including looking at sea creatures on a creature walk at the beach, checking out the aquarium tanks at BI marine institute, kayaking on the Great Salt Pond, picnicking, beaching and of course, biking all over the place.  Did I mention my bike trailer upgrade is still going strong?

The kids have been so cute as usual.  We’ve been talking about their birthdays recently because I need about this much time to plan 2 birthdays in the same week in November.  Today Julius asked me, “how old is Patricia?”  To which I asked Patricia, “Patricia, how old do you think you are?”  Patricia’s eyes got big and she put on her mischievous grin and said very matter-of-factly, “forty-six!”  When asked how old she thought Julius was she said “six” which was far closer.

Speaking of birthdays, I should show you one of the presents I made for Will’s recent birthday.  I have a list of board game themed polos I want to make him, but it takes me a while to get the embroidery pattern right.  The latest is a d20.  You are welcome to make your own from my pattern, but as always, it is for personal use only!  If you instead want me to make you a shirt, send me a message and we can negotiate.

Subtle d20

D20 Embroidery Pattern

What you’ll need:

• polo shirt
• 1 color embroidery thread
• embroidery stabilizer (I used the “no show mesh” stabilizer, but I know everyone has their favorite)
• embroidery machine and embroidery hoop (my pattern is set up for a 2cmx2cm hoop)
• my d20 embroidery pattern here
• tiny scissors for trimming threads

1. First, download and unzip the embroidery pattern.  It is .pes which is the format brother uses and that I have tested/produced it with.  If you desire another format, just email me and I can hopefully help you out!
2. Thread your machine, hoop your shirt and stabilizer then have at it!
3. There are 2 threads you will have to trim I believe, they are very obvious!
4. That’s it!  Wear your shirt with pride!

I’m heading home from a trip to San Francisco for my dear friend Jess’ shower.  I haven’t seen her in far too long, so my other dear friend Cathy and I flew in, and did touristy things in SF (Alcatraz, Pier 39, saw sea lions, farmer’s market etc) before getting to see Jess and her friends and family on Sunday.  I flew in a day early to see some work friends in Santa Clara on Friday.  It was great fun for such a short visit!

The XYZ axis of evil (aka Cathy, Jess and I) at Jess’s shower

As for California, I did love the amount of compost containers everywhere, and the amount of to-go containers that were completely compostable.  Why can’t we have that everywhere?!  I wonder how much that cuts down on trash/pollution… trust me I’ll be researching this.  I also got to use public transit everywhere which was awesome, though I’m completely incompetent with maps and the like.  I managed not to get lost because I got to follow Cathy, a New Yorker and master of public transit, around.

Cathy and I on the boat to Alcatraz. You can see “Karl” the friendly SF fog in the background too.

Based on my weekend getting to experience California green-ness it feels appropriate to show you the give-away I made for our Earth day party.  I gave away a bunch of recycled foaming soap bottles that I jazzed up with a couple tablets of blueland soap.  I intended to give these out as consolation prizes to those who didn’t win any of the purchased prizes, but many people chose them instead of the purchased prizes.  I got all the bottles from the local buy-nothing group, and washed them and removed all the labels.  The cricut design stencil I created myself and I’ve included below.

Love the Earth Reusable Bottles

• Cricut stencil here
• Cricut Permanent Adhesive foil
• foaming soap bottles, cleaned and removed of labels (mine were from dove soap)

1. Customize the cricut stencil to the size and number of stencils desired.
2. Cut your design on adhesive foil using normal cutting tool.
3. Weed design, then attach design to clean, dry soap container.
4. Fill container with 9oz of hot water, drop in foaming tablet

Julius was so pleased with his sourdough turtle that I brought back for him that he said “I am DEFINITELLY moving to California someday”. He previously commented he was going to move there because they had ghost sharks and California rolls.

Patricia also enjoyed her sourdough bear.

Patricia chose me to hang out with this Sunday!  Julius went to his friend’s party and we asked Patricia who should hang out with her and she said “mama!”  That’s me!  Patricia never ever picks me to be the one for anything.  Will always reads to her before bed and puts her to bed.  When she’s sad she wants dada, never mama.  I guess now I know how Will felt with Julius.  Actually Patricia picked me to hang out with her on two separate occasions, including when she was sick.  When we hang out she frequently tells me “I love just only mama”.  So I guess she’s trying to butter me up, and let’s be honest it totally works.

When Patricia was sick she had some scary petechiae rash the other day so the doctors requested blood work – which meant Patricia had to have blood drawn from her arm.  This process involves 3 people (not including the patient) – one to draw the blood, one to hold her arm steady, and one to hold everything else immobile (especially her other arm).  She did a good job and I made sure to tell her many times.  Afterwards she recounted the story to Will, “I was SO brave.  I cried when the pointy thing went into me.”

Patricia’s pet name for me is Mommy Llamy.  (An adorable parity on Patricia-licia.)  She is so smiley and cheerful 90% of the time, but that other 10% of complete obstinance and disobedience is so much worse than the Julius “terrible” twos.  I told Will the other day we are so lucky we ended up with two kids because it’s so interesting to see how unique they are and yet how similar they are.  Speaking of which both Patricia and Julius frequently say “what the heck!” and Julius always says “c’mon dude” which I assumed they had gotten from somewhere else.  But the other day I was in the car, and I said, “c’mon dude” to someone doing something questionable and Will said “now we know where he gets it”.  And the worst part, I hadn’t even heard myself say it.  Glad I curbed my swearing…

The other day I talked about Julius defending Patricia and including her made up stories as part of his own tales.  Well Patricia also defends Julius.  The other day the kids were getting their after dinner treat.*  Will told Julius he could have half a cookie dough bite and Patricia responded indignant, “Why?!  He’s a big boy!!”

Okay going to drop a few more stories/Patricia-isms before I show you the silly thing we did this weekend.

Cupcapes  (cupcakes)

Teeny leenies (tortellinis)

This one cracks me up still:

Patricia (sobbing about the train going by):

I do want to ride a choochoo.

But I don’t want the choochoo in my ears.  It’s too loud

Patricia and Julius and I went to Davis Farmland by ourselves and I was a bit discombobulated chasing after both kids so at some point a sheep got a hold of my tea container and licked the top of it.  The next day Patricia reminisced:

Lambs drink their mama’s milk.

Lambs don’t drink Patricia’s mamas tea!

Last one (sorry it’s about poop):

Julius is being silly trying to spell “poopoo”.  He guessed “p-o-p-o” which we told him was pronounced “poe poe”.  He thought it was hilarious and said:

I’ve got to go po po!

Patricia wanted to be silly as well so she said:

I’ve gotta go pee pew pee boo!

She then erupted into raucous (contagious) laughter

Okay so this weekend we went to the Davis Farmland Member night.  It was super hero themed and I had big plans to make us all capes** and masks, but that didn’t happen.  But Patricia and Julius already had incredible capes from Sugar and Daddy-o from Christmas so I made us all masks instead.  As you can tell they double as adorable headbands if you prefer. 

Super Hero Masks

What you’ll need:

• Scrap Peltex 70
• felt
• matching thread
• 1/4″ elastic
• Templates here

1. Choose a template to fit your face.  You can modify the design however you want, you just want the eye holes to be in the right spot, and you want the mask part to be about an inch wider than your eyes on each side.
2. Cut out one piece of Peltex 70 and one piece of felt.    
3. Pin or clip the peltex and felt together. 
4. At the edge of the fabric starting just below the eye hole, stitch around the outside of the mask.  When you reach the opposite eye hole insert elastic, stitch and then backstitch over the spot.  Continue to stitch until you reach just above the opposite eye hole. 
5. Backstitch and remove from machine.  Fit it snugly around person’s head, using the elastic still attached to the roll.  Clip where the unfinished elastic meets the mask on the unfinished side.  Insert elastic 1/2″ into the mask and sew in place.  
6. Wear with pride

*Sidenote:  giving Patricia 2 m&ms at the end of every day she was completely dry was the only thing that has worked for us for potty training.  And trust us we’ve been at this for 8 months now.  She is not motivated by our happiness or lack of happiness.  She is not motivated by being a big girl or self pride.  She is motivated by m&ms though.  So for the last few months we started giving her 2 m&ms after dinner as a reward for her good potty behavior.  This has backfired though because Julius, who never needed bribery for potty training, started asking if he could have 2 m&ms as well since he had no accidents.  The kid never had accidents.  So we acquiesced and give him 2 m&ms when he doesn’t have accidents either.  So Patricia forgets about the m&ms sometimes, but Julius NEVER does.  He will even ask Patricia after school, “how many accidents did you have today Patricia?”  So we are going to have to keep giving them both m&ms until they go to college.

**Second footnote: I did technically make Will a cape.  I made Will a beard cape for his birthday.  The kind for shaving beards.  Julius assumed this was some kind of beard themed super hero cape so he kept referring to Will as “beard man” all night.  Later I realized it was because I told Julius I was making Will a beard cape.  Will called himself the “bearded beauty”.  I dubbed myself the “purple people pleaser”.

Well I’m going to keep this one short because it was my birthday so Will’s birthday is coming up, and I’m behind on gifts.  My birthday was nice, my mom made me a vegetarian dinner and we got to hang out at my parents’ new and improved house on the lake!  Will let me sleep in on my weekend day on too, which is pretty much the only thing I want for my birthday ever anymore.

Kiddos preparing to bake Dany’s cake.

Speaking of birthdays – Dany turned 10 this year!  She’s become Patricia’s doggy.  Patricia loves Dany and is constantly giving her hugs and snuggles.  She also refuses to let anyone else feed her or let her out to use the bathroom or hold her leash for walks.  It’s quite adorable.  Everytime we are naming family members Dany is never forgotten on Patricia’s list.  She frequently asks us “can doggies go ___”.  Where ___ is wherever we are about to head in the car.  She’s always disappointed when we can’t bring her, which is frequently.  We have been making various varieties of pupcakes for Dany for her birthday, mostly made up from whatever dog friendly ingredients we have around.  This year’s version used frozen banana we had in the freezer.

Birthday dog, birthday hugs.

Pupcake

Banana Pupcake*

Ingredients

• 1 Banana, mashed
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• ½ tsp baking powder**

For Frosting:

• 1 Tbsp Sour Cream
• 1 Tbsp natural peanut butter

Mix all ingredients for cake together. Grease two small ramekins with peanut oil (skimmed from the top of the natural peanut butter), then flour with whole wheat flour.  Pour half the mixture in each.  Bake for 30 min in a 350F preheated oven.  Let cool.  Once cakes are cool, remove from ramekins, slice tops off so they are level and frost.  (I piped the frosting as little flowers).  The kids wanted to try the cake so we ate the pieces we sliced off.  

*Note this recipe is like 4 times the amount of calories you should give your dog in treats on a given day (depending on your dog’s weight), so give them just an appropriate sized slice for a treat!

**Baking powder and soda are toxic to dogs in large quantities in raw form (same for humans actually).  Everything I read seemed to indicate in small quantities, when baked,  they do not cause dogs any upset stomachs.  Use your own judgement.

Transfer half the batter to the prepared ramekin.

After 30 min baking.

Patricia today walked out of the porch and said “I have shoes on!” Followed closely by “bye guys I’m going to Davis Farmland”.  And she trotted off.  We did intercept her before she got very far.  It was adorable.

We went to Julius’ preschool “graduation” last week.  It was very cute.  The sang a bunch of “sunshine” themed songs all while this giant thundercloud loomed ominously overhead.  My favorite part was seeing Julius looking all around for us in the crowd, then his big giant smile (and shout of “mommy!”) when he saw us.  It was so darn cute.  I can’t believe my big guy is going to school next year!  Childhood is definitely going by too fast.

Two more quick cute stories before I show you what I made Julius for his graduation present.  We showed Aladdin to Julius and Patricia this weekend but I had to explain a couple of concepts like stealing and poverty to them before they understood some of the songs.  Julius knew that poverty was when you had no money, but I somehow don’t think he connected not having money to not being able to eat.  Patricia still did not quite grasp why you’d need to steal because as she pointed out if Aladdin wanted some bread “he just has to say, ‘please could I have a piece of bread?'” Which is a nice thought, always helps to be polite.  Patricia still uses the baby sign language for please when she says “please” which is basically rubbing her hand in a circle on her torso.  This means whenever she asks for a napkin because her hands are covered in peanut butter or some other unmentionable goo (read: all the time) she conveniently smears the substance all over her shirt before obtaining the napkin.  Can’t fault her for politeness.

Yesterday I told Julius he could come with me to the store but he had to put his shoes on.  For some reason or another he only had one sock on (happens daily), so when I was asked, I told him he needed to wear socks with his sneakers and to go upstairs and get a new pair of socks.  I stopped paying attention and he got in the car and I realized he had on one boat shoe (on the foot with no sock) and one sneaker (on the foot with the sock).  I couldn’t help but applaud his innovative solution.  I wonder if anyone at the store noticed.

Julius, as you probably know by now if you’ve met Julius recently, is obsessed with sharks.  His favorite shark is a goblin shark.  Don’t look it up, you’ll regret it.  They are horrifying.  A thing of nightmares.  Julius thinks they are cute.  Which I guess they sort of are if you can find a picture of one with it’s mouth closed.  Anyway I was determined to make him a cute goblin shark stuffed animal.  I also really wanted to use old jeans to make it, of which I have a nearly infinite supply thanks to Will’s knife-knees that rip holes in jeans after a single wear.  Goblin sharks have a long, flat, pointed nose (reminder: don’t look it up) on a smallish body with a really neat looking long tail (you looked it up didn’t you?  I warned you.)  To make the nose flat on the horizontal I had to join the head of the shark to the rest of the shark (which was made on the vertical).  I don’t love how that part came out because it would have been better to make the shark one continuous piece, but overall I think she came out pretty cute. (It’s a female goblin shark – Julius named her Meringue.)  Oh one last thing.  I thought I was being really clever with the jeans because they are blueish grey with a bit of texture (maybe like a shark’s rough skin) but apparently goblin sharks are this sickly greyish pink like a naked mole rat (if you’ve gotten this far without googling, don’t do it now).  I guess that’s from not being exposed to light?

The great news though is that now you can make your very own upcycled goblin shark for nearly free.  For mine I just bought the eyes which were less than $1.50 thanks to the nice cashier who gave me some coupons. 

Stuffed Goblin Shark from Upcycled Jeans

What you’ll need:

• 1 pair of ripped jeans (mine were from one of Will’s size 34×34)
• stuffing material (I use recycled polyester polyfil)
• pair of 18mm solid black eyes (I used these)
• black embroidery thread and embroidery needle
• My pattern here

Cut out all pattern pieces from jeans, starting with the larger pieces, and squeezing in the smaller ones where able.  For the pieces with NSA (no seam allowance) add 1/2″ seam allowance to the pieces when cutting. 

Stitch all fin pieces together to form a total of 8 fins.  

Clip curves on fins and turn right side out. 

Pin the two body/tail portions of the shark together from front to the point where the tail meets the body on the underside of the shark.  

Remove pins and insert first dorsal fin and second dorsal fin inside the shark, then repin.  Stitch.

This is around where you should pin the dorsal fins, but note they should be stitched and turned by this point and they should be placed INSIDE the fish at this point.

Attach snout of shark to front of shark, centering along the spine of the shark, right sides of fabric together.  

Pin belly of shark to snout of shark, and all along shark belly down to the tail area, ending in the point where the tail meets the body.  

Insert fins in spots indicated on the pattern (in between the layers of fabric).

Again this is where one of the fins should go, but it should go INSIDE the two layers of fabric.

Stitch, leaving a gap between the front and second fin on one side.  Clip curves (especially where the tail meets the body.

Turn right side out.

Stitch gills and smile using a backstitch. 

Apply eyes by poking a small hole using a seam ripper, inserting the eye, then closing it with the washer.

Stitch along the tail on the mark indicated.  

Stuff the top portion of the tail and the rest of the shark.

Ladder stitch the opening in the shark closed. 

Julius brought Meringue to school today and I was really proud. :D