The Lady Beekeeper

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year dear readers!  May 2022 be the best year yet!

We are having a fabulous time on VACATION!  Fun to see family, even though the pandemic has made it a bit harder to imagine this is an ordinary Christmas year.  Let’s hope for a return to pre-pandemic normalcy in 2022.

Because the house was supposed to be packed with people we are staying in the same room as Patricia and Julius.  Julius is very excited by this and is so sweet when he goes into bed.  Not only is he very quiet when he enters the room, but he tells Patricia “goodnight I love you Patricia” when he snuggles into bed.  It is my favorite thing.  Today he was running around in the cozy coupe and Patricia desperately wanted to participate.  He swapped between pushing Patricia around in the cozy coupe and (me holding) Patricia in the back of the coupe while he drove.  He did not even have to be told Patricia needed a turn, he readily switched off at appropriate intervals.  I am so proud of him.

You know what else I’m proud of?  Finishing up with Halloween craft blogging in December!  This is the last entry in our extensive family Halloween costume tutorial!  Last but not least is Will’s wild thing costume.  I am a bit sore about this one.  It is basically a bull that stands upright and has big giant men’s feet.  I bought Will a onesie with zip off feet, but for our photos he zipped them off and left his loafers on…  I guess our wild thing has been civilized.

Hairy Man-Footed Bull-Looking Wild Thing Costume

What you’ll need:

• scrap fleece dark grey fabric
• scrap white fleece for teeth
• stuffing
• scrap yellow fabric
• Peltex interfacing
• black embroidery thread
• 1 15mm snap set
• embroidery pattern here
• hood pattern here*
• hot glue gun
• spray adhesive

*My husband has a men’s large size head, so you may need to size up or down the pattern.  Do not forget to add 1/2″ seam allowance when NSA (No seam allowance) is indicated.

1. Cut hood pattern pieces and nose pattern pieces from grey fabric as indicated.
2. Match hood pieces, right sides together, and stitch along the back.
   
3. Fold unfinished edges under 1/2″.  Pin.
4. Cut out teeth from white fleece, by cutting roughly 1″ triangles into a 2″ wide strip of fabric 8″ long. Pin to the inside of the hood in the center and stitch seam of the hood attaching the teeth in the process.
5. Cut interfacing as indicated.
6. Fold interfacing where indicated.
7. Hot glue interfacing nose front to folded interfacing for nose as indicated.
8. Stitch nose bottom to nose top, right sides together.
9. Stitch nose front to assembled nose piece, right sides together.  DO NOT TRIM SEAM ALLOWANCE.
10. Turn inside out.
11. Spray outside of nose interfacing with spray adhesive and insert into nose fleece.
12. Fill nose with stuffing.
13. Place nose on bottom of hood and mark where it will go.
14. Use the embroidery pattern above to applique eyes onto the hood just above the nose marking in step 13.  Center a 5″x7″ hoop on the seam and a line parallel to and 1″ above where the top of the nose will be.  Stitch guide lines, spray yellow fabric and attach over guide lines. Stitch tack down stitches.  Clip as close as you can to the tack down stitches leaving yellow circles.  Stitch final stitching.
15. Hand stitch nose to bottom center of hood as marked in step 13.
16. Fold ears in half and pin them to right and left top portion of hood.  Then stitch. (Note:  If you want to make this work better, cut 4 pieces of ears leaving 1/2″ seam allowance.  Place two together, stitch and turn inside out.  Then fold ears in half and pin and stitch.  Repeat for second ear.)
17. Cut out 4 pieces for horns.
18. Place two pieces together and stitch along all edges but the bottom.
19. Trim.
20. Turn inside out and stuff.
21. Hand stitch the horns onto either side of the head, just inside where the ears are. 
22. Attach the snaps to the bottom points of the hood as directed.
23. Pair with a grey onesie and you’re ready for the rumpus!

Only 2.5 weeks until Christmas?!  Where has the time gone?!  Just a couple weeks ago I thought I was ahead of the Christmas curve – I’d bought most of the gifts I intended to buy, and I’d ordered Christmas cards.  Then Thanksgiving happened and everyone got sick and I fell behind.  Just when I thought everyone had recovered fully this weekend, everyone got sick again!  Luckily we got to see Santa first.  Unfortunately that meant I am way behind on the gifts I planned to make this year.  I reeeeally need to start early next year.  I know I say that every year but with Julius and Patricia being born only a few days apart, just before my favorite holiday, my fall has become extremely busy.

Even so, I am proud of myself for getting all the Christmas cards out already.  This must be a record!  For the cards this year we got our fabulous photographer, Shayna to take more Halloween costume photos.  I am totally in love with them.  I cannot wait to show them to you on Christmas, but I don’t want to spoil them for those who have not yet gotten our mail.

Oh my gosh, I have to tell you a crazy breakthrough.  Patricia LOVES hats.  Before this week Patricia would rip hats off her head as soon as they were placed there.  Now she ASKS for hats to be put on.  The more hats the merrier.  Yesterday she walked around the house all day with both a reindeer hat and a unicorn hat on.  She still doesn’t verbalize exactly yet (or we haven’t figured out the verbalization) but she has gotten very good at hand gestures.  So she’ll point at a hat and lean forwards so you can put it on her.  And in a crazy twist of fate she now cries when you remove a hat.  Honestly it is adorable and my dream come true as a haberdasher!

So my costume for Halloween was extremely easy.  I just made a hood/hat thing and a tail (that can’t even be seen from any of the pictures, so I won’t bother showing you how I made it) which I combined with a store-bought onesie.  Onesies for adults are extremely easy to find nowadays, thanks to the pandemic and the “fashion” of pajama wearing.  Much like Julius, I have worn my costume several times now because it is so darn cozy!

Wild Thing (Feathered bird thing) Adult Hood Costume

What you’ll need:

• scrap fleece pink fabric (darker would be better, but I didn’t feel like buying anything)
• scrap white fabric (mine was terry cloth)
• scrap orange fleece fabric
• stuffing
• scrap yellow fabric
• black embroidery thread
• 1 15mm snap set
• embroidery pattern here
• hood pattern here*

*I have a ladies’ medium size head, so you may need to size up or down the pattern.  Do not forget to add 1/2″ seam allowance when NSA (No seam allowance) is indicated.

1. Cut hood pattern pieces from pink fabric as indicated.
2. Match hood pieces, right sides together, and stitch along the back.
3. Fold unfinished edges under 1/2″.  Stitch.
4. Cut out all pieces for beak from orange fabric.
5. Pin two top pieces of beak right sides together and stitch along top.
6. Pin bottom of beak to top, right sides together, stitch.
7. Turn right side out and stuff.
8. Cut feather pieces out of white fabric as indicated.
9. Pin top feathers pieces, right side together and stitch along two longer edges.
10. Turn inside out and stuff.
11. Pin 2 side feather pieces, right sides together and stitch along two longer edges,
12. Turn inside out and stuff.  Repeat for second side feather.
13. Use the embroidery pattern above to applique eyes onto the hood.  Center a 5″x7″ hoop on the seam and a line parallel to and 5″ from the front of the hood.  Stitch guide lines, spray yellow fabric and attach over guide lines. Stitch tack down stitches.  Clip as close as you can to the tack down stitches leaving yellow circles.  Stitch final stitching.
14. Hand stitch extra material of beak, down over the opened end of beak.  Stitch beak to hood, just below eyes.
15. Hand stitch top feather to hood by facing the unfinished side just above the eyes, with the finished side pointing towards the beak.  Stitch.  Flip the feather back towards the back of the hood and discretely stitch to the top of the hood to hold it in place.
16. Hand stitch on of the side feathers to hood by facing the unfinished side just above the eyes, to one side of the top feather with the finished side pointing towards the beak.  The point should be pointing towards the centerline of the hood. Stitch.  Flip the feather back towards the back of the hood and discretely stitch to the top of the hood to hold it in place.  Repeat for last feather.
17. Attach the snaps to the bottom points of the hood as directed.
18. Pair with a yellow onesie and you’re ready for the rumpus!

Julius is staring into all our yellow eyes.

I hope all my (American) readers had a fabulous Thanksgiving!  This time my siblings and their families all came to visit us!  It was awesome!  Everyone has gone home now which is sad, but I’m hopeful we’ll get to see everyone again soon.  Julius and Patricia both had a great time with their cousins.  It was so cute watching the little guys all play together.

Have I mentioned recently that I love the little guys?  Patricia has turned into quite the Chatty Cathy – she still doesn’t say any real recognizable words consistently yet, but she talks like we understand her… oh and she started nodding her head for “yes” this week.  (She’s been shaking her head “no” for a while now.)  It is really cute.  Julius got a set of “Bob Books” for his birthday and has started learning to read.  He has gotten very good at recognizing his name and writing it, and just today wrote Patricia as well.  Also he earned some serious brownie points at Thanksgiving.  We all went around the table saying what we were thankful for, and Julius was a bit bewildered and didn’t have an answer, so we skipped him and returned to him at the end and he said “I’m thankful for my mama”.  Pretty much the cutest thing ever.

I’m thankful for my little wild things too.  Speaking of wild things, Julius still wears his Halloween costume all the time.  Unfortunately Patricia’s costume was far more work and she hasn’t worn it since.  It’s too bad because it’s so cute!  I used a baby pattern I had on hand and added my own features for the body.  I wasn’t planning to put eyes and a nose on any of the wild things, until I saw this adorable rendition.  I’m glad I did!  This costume took me a few days to make but it was worth it!

Wild Thing (striped feathered, hairy thing) Costume

• 1 yard orange fleece
• 1/2 yard yellow fleece
• 1/3 yard pink fleece
• 1/2 yard grey fleece
• 1/4 yard (or less… just scrap mostly) white fleece
• sublimation printer and pattern here
• scrap pink fabric for nose
• scrap yellow fabric for eyes
• black embroidery thread
• 1/2 yard plush fur
• zipper
• Eyes and nose embroidery pattern here
• fur/hair & horn pattern here
• Simplicity S9215 hooded zip up onesie pattern or equivalent

1. Cut out pattern pieces from orange fleece as directed, with the exception of the hood, which you will cut from pink fleece and the hand pockets, which you will cut from yellow fleece.  You should also omit the pockets. 
2. Cut 10 x24″ pieces of yellow fleece
3. Sublimate the scale pattern onto grey fleece, 2 8.5″x11″ sheets per leg half, overlapping the pattern so the scales roughly line up.
4. Cut out scaley leg from the bottom of the pattern piece (2 and 1) drawing a line from hip to crotch.
5. Pin scaley leg, right sides together, onto of your cut out orange fleece version of (2 and 1).
6. Stitch.
7. Repeat for all front and back leg sections.
8. Lay stripes across back on orange fleece, 2″ apart.
9. Repeat with the front pieces, but make sure to line up the edges so they align with the lines on the back.  Make sure to also make them line up in front.
10. Stitch each stripe along top and bottom of strip.
11. Repeat layout and stitching for arms.
12. Finish bodysuit as directed except when making the hood.  When the pattern calls you to form an edge on the hood – cut out teeth, by cutting roughly 1″ triangles into a 2″ wide strip of fabric as long as the opening of the hood. Pin to the inside of the hood and stitch, forming the seam of the hood.
13. Embroider eyes and nose following pattern above.
14. Cut out two pieces of hair from the pattern above.
15. Pin pieces of hair together and sew along curved outside edge.
16. Turn right side out, and stitch to hood, so hair goes right between embroidered eyes.  Continue attaching the hood as indicated in the pattern.
17. Cut out 4 pieces for horns.
18. Place two pieces together and stitch along all edges but the bottom.
19. Trim.
20. Turn inside out and stuff.
21. Hand stitch the horns onto either side of the head in the black hair.
22. Make and attach tail as in instructions here.

Wow I have SO MANY things that I have been working on that I cannot wait to show you!  I feel like I can relax finally.  Between working 14/7 and Halloween plus two kiddos birthdays within a 2 week window, I have been pretty burnt out.  I also have been sick the last week which didn’t help.  The good news is that we had a fun time with the kids’ parties and Halloween and now I have a backlog of crafts to share!

Speaking of birthdays… I cannot believe I have a one year old now!  It seems like just yesterday I was pregnant with my little bunny (and scared of leaving my house at all costs).  She has grown up so quickly.  She’s been walking for a couple months and is completely mobile.  Yesterday we went for a walk and she was annoyed to be pushed in the stroller.  She wanted to run around and chase Julius.  My mom took her to get shoes a few weeks ago and they only had one pair of shoes in her tiny size in the whole store!

Patricia has been doing a lot more communication lately both verbal and nonverbal.  She claps whenever she likes something (I guess if you’re happy and you know it really drilled that in) and she is constantly pointing to things.  Today she pointed to the mermaid tail I made her (more on that in a future post) and plopped onto my lap so I could put it on her.  It was adorable.  She babbles a lot too.  I feel like I can see the gears turning when I talk to her too, and I really believe she understand me.  And she still ADORES her brother.  Even though she goes to daycare and have other toddler “friends” she adores Julius.  She’s constantly chasing him, giggling at him and hugging him.

I know I started the Halloween posts and should post more on that, but I’ll just take a quick break to show you yet another craft that I considered making when I had Julius, and only implemented a couple months after Patricia was born…  Age blocks!  They were not hard to make, but I wish I’d done a couple things differently… since I’ll never make them again I’ll share the feedback so you crafters can incorporate it!  I should also mention that the cost of wood when I made this project was like 2/3 what it is now…

Age Blocks

What you’ll need:

• 4″x4″x8″ piece of untreated lumber
• 2 12″x12″ pieces of contact paper or removable vinyl
• Paint
• mod podge
• Stain (optional)
• stencil pattern here

1. With chop saw cut 2 4″ long pieces of wood and 1 8″ piece of wood.
2. Route all the ends of the cubes and column with roundover bits.
3. Sand all faces.
4. Apply stain (if desired).  This is where, if it did it again I might not stain…  the stain made the paint difficult to stick, and I decided not to finish the cubes, so the paint was prone to pulling off before it cured. Also if you want your child to be able to chew on the blocks, stain is not food safe…
5. Cut out stencils on vinyl using Cricut.  Set your machine to the vinyl setting 
6. Cut around each stencil, leaving a wide border.  Apply to the face of your block.
7. Cover with mod podge and let dry.
8. Paint over the mod podge.  
9. Remove stencil.   Repeat for all faces.  The long block will be month, years, weeks, grade.  One cube should have 0,1,2,3,4,5 other cube should have 0,1,6,7,8,9).  

My big guy turned 4 this weekend!  We had a little celebration that you’ll hear about in upcoming posts.  He had a great time celebrating with his friends Mia and Caleb and his grandparents.  And his birthday presents were a total hit!  We got him a camera which he loved and a… vacuum.  Which he also loves.  He loves to try and help me vacuum now.  He used to take out his toy vacuum everytime I pulled out the big one, but now he wants to use the real vacuum and has gotten to the point that he won’t let me use it because “he can do it”.  I really appreciate the help but now he’s lugging this giant vacuum around while I cannot actually get the floors clean.  So I decided to just buy him a lightweight Dirt Devil.  It is perfect!  He can carry it all around, maneuver it easily and he is actually helping us clean!  It is a win-win!

Julius’ homemade Mama costume

Well, Julius insisted that he needed a scepter in order to be Max for Halloween, so about an hour before our photo shoot Julius and I threw together a scepter out of stuff around the house (and a lot of hot glue).  I think it came out pretty good, considering we only spent about 20 minutes on it and 0 dollars.  This lead Julius to come up with his own “craft” from the rest of the supplies.  He then asked Will to take a picture of him “with his homemade Mama costume”.  (I am not exactly sure what this says about me or Julius’ view of me, but I’m sure we will unpack that one in 20 years.)

Oh just one more story.  I have had to repair the scepter about 4 times now because, it is just held together with hot glue.  Every time I repair it I cannot find the glue gun.  Thinking I must be going crazy I finally asked Julius “do you know where the glue gun is”?  To which he got all excited and started scrambling around saying, “ummmm yup!”  He then ran off into the wood shop and pulled out the glue gun from one of the bottom drawers of my tool chest.  I literally never would have found it.  Yesterday I was missing my glue gun again (which I swore I had put away in my craft desk), so I looked in the bottom drawer of the tool chest again and there it was…

Max’s King of the Wild Things Scepter

What you’ll need:

• 18″ of 1/2″ dowel
• ping pong ball
• a 4″ diameter circular take out food container with lid. (Or two 4″ diameter lids.)
• black spray paint
• yellow acrylic paint (or paint pen)
• hot glue and glue gun

1. Cut the outer rim off the take out container, leaving aa 1/2″ wide ring.  Cut the inside of the take out container lid out, so only the outside of the lid remains.  These will form the rings.
2. Using a craft knift (or drill – which I did but was tricky because it shattered more than drilled) cut two holes in the top and bottom of the ball, just large enough to fit the dowel through.
3. Insert dowel through holes in ping pong ball so there is 1.5″ from the top of the rod.  Hot glue in place.
4. Cut through each of the two rings so they can open up into a “c” shape.
5. Hot glue the portion of one ring opposite the slit to the top of the dowel.  Glue the two ends in place 1.5″ below the ping pong ball, where the ring hits naturally.
6. Repeat step 5 for the other ring, gluing on top of the first ring but at a 90 degree angle from the first ring.
7. Spray paint the entire thing black.  Let dry.
8. Paint the ping pong ball yellow (I used an acrylic paint pen to do this quickly).
9. Let the wild rumpus start!

Well we had an excellent Halloween!  We got to hang out with our friends Ka and Joe and their kiddos who are the same ages as Julius and Patricia.  After an amazing dinner of homemade flatbread pizza we set out for some trick or treating in their cute neighborhood.

Forever blurry because she’s always in motion!

Stopping for a second before sprinting to the next stop.

Julius LOVED it.  It was adorable watching him excitedly run from house to house!  We had been practicing “trick or treat” all day and at the first house he sprinted up to the door, where an older gentlemen was sitting just inside the door ready to give out candy.  Julius ignored him and pressed the doorbell (step 1 in our practicing).  The older fellow chuckled and then offered Julius the candy bowl.  To which we asked, “did you say trick of treat?”  He then shouted “trick or treat!” and took a piece of candy.  We prompted again “what do you say?” “THANK YOU!”  The process continued like this for a while until he started getting to the hang of it.  At one point he ran up to a house and shouted “TRICK OR TREAT THANK YOU” immediately, I guess streamlining the process.  It brought me so much joy watching him have fun!

We had fun too!  Of course we all dressed up, and since Halloween temps are not like they were when I was a kid, we were all sweating.  Julius remarked at the end of the night, “oof I’m super sweaty!”  Guess that was all the exercise from running house to house!  I showed you Julius’ crown last week, so this week I’ll show you the rest!

Julius as Max – side view.

Max’s Wolf Suit (from Where the Wild Things Are)

What you’ll need:

• White zip up footed onesie to fit your child
• 4 1.25″ white buttons
• 1/4 yard of black faux fur
• Stuffing
• Pattern for tail here

1. Cut out two tail pieces as indicated on pattern, leaving 1/2″ seam allowance.
2. Pin tail pieces, right sides together.
3. Leave top of tail opened and stitch around the rest of the length of the tail.
4. Turn right side out and stuff with stuffing until firm.
5. Position tail over the seat of the pants, with the unfinished portion pointing down, tip of the tail pointing towards the hood. Stitch across the unfinished portion to attach it to the suit, let it flop over.
6. Hand sew 4 buttons on one size of the zipper, spaced 3″ apart.  Be sure to avoid stitching the buttonholes near the teeth.

The night Max wore his wolf suit he made mischief of one kind…

…and another.

Well…. it’s been a busy couple weeks.  I have a new position at work so I’m busier than usual.  That means no time to do much blogging… I think last week was the first week in a couple years that I’ve missed.  I won’t let it happen again!

Despite my miss last week I have been working on Halloween costumes in the limited time I have off.   Below is a crown I made last weekend for Julius.  We are all going as Wild Things from the book “Where the Wild Things Are” and Julius is Max, the king of all wild things.  He was so excited by his costume that he wanted to wear it as soon as I finished it.  I had to convince him not to wear it (for fear of getting it completely wrecked) before we took pictures in it (yesterday).  After pictures he wanted to keep the costume on.  This afternoon he came downstairs to bring me dinner and he was again wearing the wolf suit.  I would say this is a successful Halloween costume so far!

Check out this sweet crown!

Max’s King of the Wild Things Crown

What you’ll need:

• Pelton peltex interfacing
• Gold synthetic fabric
• 3″ x 22″ of Brown fake fur
• 2″ wide Velcro hook & loop
• Pattern here

1. Using my pattern, cut 1 piece of interfacing with no seam allowance and 2 pieces of gold fabric with 1/2″ seam allowance on the top 3 sides.
2. Stitch gold fabric, right sides together along top and sides leaving the bottom opened.
3. Trim selvedge and points.
4. Turn gold fabric right side out.
5. Insert interfacing into inside of gold fabric and baste along the unfinished edge.
6. Cut a 2″x24″ rectangle of fur.
7. Pin fur, against bottom of gold fabric crown right sides together, lining up unfinished edges.  Stitch 1/2″ from the edge along the bottom of the crown.
8. Fold fur around the bottom edge of the crown, and fold under 1/2″.  Stitch in the ditch on the front of the crown (along the stitching in step 7) to secure the fur band. 
9. Stitch a hook end of velcro to the outer outside edge of the crown.
10. Stitch a loop end of velcro to the inner outside edge of the crown.

Adjustable velcro means it can fit a variety of head sizes.

So excited to wear his costume.

My two wild things.