Pandemic Peeps

Posted on October 11, 2021 by lexicolton

Well I have about 3 hours left of free time before I go into crazy work mode for my job for the next month.  I’m trying to get our Halloween costumes as done as possible before then, so this is going to be a short post.  This is kind of a silly post.  My co-worker, Roger, mysteriously started getting stale peeps delivered to his cubicle months after Easter for no apparent reason.  Others interpreted this as a love of peeps and over the next couple years more peeps were added to the collection.  Soon Roger had a stack of peeps on his desk 3 feet high.

As you know, for his sabbatical, someone made his cubicle into a giant box of peeps.  That was 5 years ago and over the next couple years a strange holiday or colored box of peeps was known to show up on his desk.  Then the pandemic hit and Roger and his (now extremely stale) peeps have been parted for far too long.  Someone decided this might be the time to remedy this and bought some peeps for Easter.  The peeps purchased at Easter were horrifying.  The quality control in 2021 was pretty bad, and of the peeps I was even able to find, all 3 batches had really strange eyes.  Like cyclops.  Not quite as bad as the conversation hearts, but still off-putting.

The contents of my box of 2021 Conversation Hearts. I’m not sure what type of conversation you’d be having with these, but it might involve a seizure.

These guys are like the flounders of the peeps world

These guys are just straight up cyclops.

I was not discouraged though.  I gracefully aged the peeps the prescribed 6 months necessary for ultimate inedibility.  By that point Julius had opened and sneakily tasted one of the peeps in one of the packages.  This was the package of peeps with the worse quality control so no concern there!  By September it was finally time to put my plan into action.  I had made a batch of royal icing (for cookie decorating) so I piped tiny masks onto a piece of parchment paper and let them harden for 24 hours.   Then I used a bit more royal icing to glue them to the peeps beaks.  Here is where the real genius came in – I couldn’t figure out how to get the little mask strings to stay on the peeps, and Amy suggested white chocolate!  I heated up some white chocolate in the microwave and piped on a pinprick sized set of mask elastics.  I then used my food sealer to seal the package back up.

Piped some masks

The genius white frosting mask strings.

Then, because I still haven’t had time to get to the USPS, they have been sitting on our counter for 2 weeks.  Sometime during that period the masks have gotten a smidge crushed.  Honestly it’s a miracle Julius hasn’t eaten them yet.  Hopefully Roger will still enjoy them, or at least be very confused when he opens them.

 

 

Posted in Culinary Delights | 2 Comments

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Posted on October 4, 2021 by lexicolton

We are making PROGRESS!  Will and I have cleaned out about a third of our garage.  Wait, I didn’t tell you this story?!  So… after the Tesla roof and power walls were installed, we got a call saying that the laws on power storage in MA changed (that day) and that in order to pass inspection we’d have to have our entire garage dry walled. What.  This meant we’d have to take down all the shelves, hanging stuff and the climbing wall so they could finish the entire thing.  Gah.   On top of this, we’d moved our entire basement upstairs into the garage so the basement contractors could start on that.  If you can imagine our garage is/was completely full of junk so we haven’t been able to put cars in the garage for the last 6 months…

Motivating yourself to move things is difficult.   It was getting so discouraging looking at the intricate puzzle of stuff that we’d created in the garage.  But this weekend I took a big step – I re-put up the climbing wall!  This was no easy task (sadly).  The climbing wall holds have 1.5″ bolts that protrude from the back of the plywood.  This was no problem for the unfinished wall where I just strategically placed them between the studs.  With dry wall though… I needed to do something else.  I decided to remove all the climbing holds (48 bolts), mount the board, mark holes for the bolts, unmount the board, drill holes for the bolts, remount the board, reattach the climbing holds.  It took forever.  But Julius used it immediately the next morning so I consider it a complete win!

I don’t know if you noticed but it is FALL!  My favorite season of all!  And even better it is October!  My favorite month of all!  We decided to bike ride to apple picking/pumpkin picking with the kiddos this weekend and it was awesome!  We got 6 different pumpkins/gourds and I would have gotten more if we could have fit them on the bikes.  (Honestly it was pretty dicey getting these home as it was.)

Okay maybe I did go a bit overboard with the pumpkins.

I wanted to share the instructions for a virtual cookie decorating party!  We did this as part of Danycon, but it would be fun to do as a stand alone event.

Virtual Cookie Decorating Party

What you’ll need (for 5 people):

Let sugar cookies cool completely. When cool, stack 2 cookies on top of each other, place in a food sealing bag and vacuum seal.  I gave 3 cookies per person to decorate, but 6 per person is probably a better number.

After your icing is setup, divide into 3 equal batches.  Leave one portion white, and color the others two portions with colors of your choice using a couple drops of gel food coloring.  I chose blue and green for earth/sky/water colors.

Using 1/3 c measuring cup, measure 1/3 cup of icing into each pastry bag.  I find it best to open the pastry bag inside a drinking glass, and fold the top of the bag down around the outside of the glass so the inside of the bag is ready for you to pour icing into!

Remove the air from each bag and then tie the bags shut.

Vacuum seal one bag of each color inside one vacuum bag.

Gently wrap the cookies in recycled paper or recycled bubble wrap to package them for shipping.  Place the royal icing on the bottom, followed by the cookies.  I also included a small ziplock bag with extra piping bags and toothpicks.

Before your cookie decorating session you’ll need to knead (see what I did there?) the royal icing in the bags because it may have separated.  (Some of our bags also leaked a bit, so it was good to have the bags vacuum sealed.)

To take out the cookies, you can gently break the seal to let air in, then remove the cookies from the bag and very gently pry apart.  I broke a couple of mine because I was impatient.

Then you can give this video a watch and learn a couple super simple techniques for decorating your cookies!  After decorating, you’ll need to wait for the cookies to dry for maximum deliciousness!  I recommend a day!

Look at that skill.

Will seems happy about the decorating.

Here are some finished cookies!

Posted in Culinary Delights, Parties | Leave a comment

Virtual Danycon 2021

Posted on September 27, 2021 by lexicolton

This past weekend was Danycon!  It’s the event we wait all year to celebrate!  Because the kiddos aren’t vaccinated and plane flights are scary, we opted to do virtual again.  I’m not going to lie, virtual events are getting me down.  I’ve had a taste of freedom, and now I want to go back to the before times!  I am hopeful the kiddos will be able to get vaccinated soon.

Theme

All that aside, it was a fun weekend!  We decided to theme this year’s Danycon around Studio Ghibli/Japan!  Because many Miyazaki movies involve air or water, we used blues and turquoises for the color theme.  We had several organized events to incorporate the theme, and then the rest of the time was free-play.  We thought this would work best considering virtual events involve different time zones.  Like last year we used mostly discord, but this year we also had a couple events over zoom.  We played everything on Board Game Arena, who has really beefed up their collection since last year!  The entire schedule is printed below (and was sent out virtually before the event so people could plan).  We also included a list of every thematic board game available on BGA (there are quite a few)!  This meant either themed around Japan or designed by a Japanese designer.

Danycon 2021 Discord

Swag

No Danycon would be complete without swag (or as our siblings have started calling them during the pandemic “care packages”) and this year was no different.  We wanted to make the swag this year a little taste of Japan (some place I can only dream about and hope to visit someday).  The swag boxes were filled with Pocky, Konpeito (the Japanese sugar candy that soot sprites eat!), vegetarian ramen (from Mike’s Might Good Ramen, so definitely not Japanese…), tiny felted chibi totoros, reusable travel utensil sets (with chop sticks – I think Miyazaki would approve), bags of “rolling Danycon” (inspired by the Okazu roll and write), copies of Sushi Go, a Studio Ghibli themed puzzled pint that Mark and Erin created, supplies for cookie decorating and of course Danycon shirts.  In retrospect I might have gone a wee bit overboard this year…

Swag opening!

Swag bag packing prep

One box ready to ship out

Totoros saying their farewells

Activities

Bingo

We can’t have a Danycon without Bingo.  Will started with the version we came up with for Danycon and Friends and modified it.  The most difficult items were ending up in a tie game.

Puzzled Pint

Erin and Mark made us a super fun “Puzzled Pint” that was Studio Ghibli themed!  We all had fun with the great puzzles they came up with for us.  If you want to try it yourself… you can head on over to the official Puzzle Pint website where it is posted!

Puzzled Pint!

Cookie Decorating

I wanted to do an interactive craft since the felting was such a hit.  I decided on cookie decorating – which I’ve wanted to host for a while!  I’ll have more details about that on an upcoming post.

Cookie decorating!

D&D

Will and I had fun creating another D&D adventure on our drive from Texas to Nashville.  We based it loosely on Howl’s moving castle (the first Studio Ghibli movie I ever saw), where there are two factions fighting a meaningless war over a prince (that you find out was turned into a scarecrow).   We split into two groups again and Will & I each DM’d one of the two warring factions.  At the end the warring factions meet and Will and I finished the adventure DMing the final puzzle together.  The twist this time was that all the characters were monsters masquerading as monster hunters.  They each had to hide their secrets from the others until the end when they had to discover each person’s secret.  It got silly really fast, when my team discovered Mandy was a vampire and decided to tie her up, to very little protest from her one unconcious and one concious teammate.  I had a great time DMing the adventure, and I hope everyone had just as much fun playing!  If you’d like to try to DM it yourself, the scenario is here.

Group Dinner

Part of the fun of live and in person Danycon is spending time eating and hanging out with everyone.  We decided to mimic this by sending everyone a meal they could prepare (Fancy Ramen) and eating together over zoom.  Because of the time differences we scheduled it to start at 7:30 ET.  I thought this part was very fun and added some nice face time in between our voice calls.

Ramen for dinner!

Yum!

Tournament

We thought we were going to have a full (virtual) house this year so rather than spending all our time in a tournament we decided to do a party game tournament!  We ended up having only 8 people so we decided on just the following games:

  • Hugo (this game was extremely silly and had us all laughing)
  • Rolling Danycon (each person pulled and rolled 6 dice from their copy for the group, and then we rotated)
  • Haiclue (this is a fun online party game that we discovered at virtual Danycon & Friends thanks to our friend Joe Huber)

We noted each person’s place in each game, added up the rankings for each person, and the lowest score won.  This year my brother won!!  AND he won Bingo!  We declared him the winner of Danycon!

Serious tournament faces

Games

Another Danycon requirement is not playing nearly as many games as Will desires to play over the course of the weekend and I’m sure we checked that box this year!  We did play lots of new games on BGA since they had so many new options!  I think my favorite new game was called “Abandon All Artichokes” which was a cute mini-deck builder.  It reminded me of Sushi Go in that is a quick, simple (adorable) game that mimics a game mechanic I enjoy.

Virtual Danycon setup – note the Danycon Bingo, Konpeito and King of Tokyo.

 

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Kartoffelsalat

Posted on September 20, 2021 by lexicolton

Well last week was tiring.  Julius was sick and then Patricia was sick.  Patricia beat Julius’ record of 3 days at daycare before getting sick, with only 2 days at daycare before getting sick!  I guess that’s something.  Probably not the thing we want, but still some thing.  That being said, I cannot tell you how much I love baby snuggles!  I am quite sad that I can’t walk upstairs on my lunch break and get my baby snuggles in.  Seriously, what is the point of working from home if you can’t snuggle babies?!  If you figure it out, let me know.

Patricia is SO CLOSE to walking.  She frequently will take several steps, but then resorts back to crawling.  She is so fast while crawling that I really can’t blame her.  Frequently I’ll turn my back for 10 seconds and she’ll have traveled from my side at the kitchen sink to the front hall and halfway up the front stairs.  At that point I shriek and sprint to the front hall.  Luckily it is obvious when she’s going up the stairs because she’ll giggle (which for Patricia is this ridiculous raspy laugh) and slap each stair as she goes up.  She wants me to chase her… What a wild thing.

My two wild things

Julius is enjoying his preschool.  He was very excited to go to preschool today and ran around the house jumping up and down when I told him today was preschool day.  I don’t think he was that excited for King Richard’s Faire the day before.  Actually I’m positive he wasn’t that excited.  The school is divided into two classes so he has two main teachers, Miss Megan and Miss Nicole.  He is working on learning their names (and all the names of the kids he plays with).  The first day he told us he had a teacher named Miss Negan.  We asked him if he meant “Miss Megan” and he emphatically said “no her name is Miss Negan” and that he couldn’t remember his other teacher’s name.  The next day he came home, excited, and announced he remembered both his teachers’ names. He told us one of his teachers was “Miss Megan” to which Will and I exchanged an impressed look, and that his other teacher’s name was “Miss Micole”.

I have been so busy with work, and Will has been doing Daddy daycare for the last several months so I’ve completely fallen off my cooking game.  You’d think that not having to commute would leave more time for me to make dinner and snuggle babies.  Alas, it really just means that now no one ever leaves their meetings to go home, so the “work day” is just forever, until you pass out or until your children start trying to eat the legs of your chairs, whichever comes first.  At least we have children to tear us away from work.  Imagine if you lived alone and just had to wait until you passed out from exhaustion every night?!

I’m trying to ease my way back into cooking, by seriously cutting corners.  This recipe is an adapted version of my grandma’s recipe – a family favorite.  Her version has measurements like “until it tastes right” and involves a lot more slicing.  The texture is slightly different, and my grandma usually serves her version at room temperature.  This version is lazy, so it requires no extra chopping or waiting for things to cool, but is still addictively delicious. (My grandma might be slightly offended that I call this recipe hers since it is technically her mother in law’s, which means the recipe is Bavarian, while she is from Thuringia which has an entirely different style of potato salad. After making it for 60 years though I think we can safely call it hers.)

Basically Grandma Kohm’s German Potato Salad (adapted by lazy grandchild #3)

  • 6 medium potatoes (Yukon gold are the best)
  • 1/4 cup minced red onion (my grandma used to use regular yellow onions, but the red onion gives a bit of color)
  • 1/2 tsp celery seed
  • 5 Tbsp vegetable broth (grandma used water or chicken broth)
  • 2 Tbsp vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • Salt & pepper to taste
  1. Peel the potatoes, but don’t bother cutting out any eyes, you can do that later.  (Actually, to be honest, Grandma used to boil them with the skin on and peel the skin later, but that means you have to wait for them to cool, and I’m lazy.)
  2. Place the whole peeled potatoes in a large pot and cover with an inch of water.  Add a few dashes of salt and pepper to the water, then crank the heat to high and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat to medium and simmer potatoes for 25 minutes or so (until soft).
  3. While the potatoes are cooking, finely mince your red onion and place in the bowl you plan to serve your potatoes in.  Sprinkle the red onion with salt, pepper and celery seed and let sit.
  4. The potatoes are done cooking when you can pierce them with a fork.  Remove from heat and pour off the water.
  5. Remove any eyes, then move the potatoes to the serving bowl and rough mash (Julius likes to do this part).  Don’t mash them too well, you want some texture here.
  6. Pour broth, oil and vinegar over the potato/onion mixture and mix well.
  7. Correct for salt and pepper and serve warm.

Our vegetarian “German” meal – these sausage taste nothing like bratwurst but they are tasty.

Posted in Culinary Delights | 2 Comments

Wild Thing

Posted on September 13, 2021 by lexicolton

Well today was my Patricia’s first day of daycare!  I was a nervous wreck the last few nights, and I haven’t slept thinking about people who may or may not be vaccinated taking care of my baby during the pandemic.  If you’ll remember for Julius’ first daycare drop off I had no prior nightmares or anything, but I did burst out crying.  When we actually got to the daycare center I managed to hold it together and didn’t interrogate the staff or break down crying and take her back home with me.  I will admit I did cry a little bit on the way, explaining to her that she was going to get to play with some babies.

Poor thing had a bit of a rough day.  She ate all her beans and corn (read: an entire ear of corn off the cob, and an entire can of beans) for lunch, but she only napped a single nap of 45 minutes, and took only one 7 oz bottle.  I hope the little lady does better tomorrow.

Poor Patricia being the second baby has a lot less attention doted on her.  The first couple weeks she was born we used to joke that she would get super excited when you’d look at her because no one ever paid any attention to the little lady.  Well the little lady took matters into her own hands and crawled at 7 months, meaning we HAD to pay attention to her!  She has such a silly personality too.  She’s curious and FAST.  You’ll turn around for 15 seconds and she’ll be on the other side of the room trying to jump off the side of the couch.  I call her my wild thing.  She loves baths, and snuggles.  And she especially loves her brother!  Yesterday Julius had a fever so we kept Patricia and Julius separate just in case.  Patricia cried every time she saw Julius and was taken away from him.  Julius cried when he heard Patricia crying.

The funniest thing Patricia does now is blows fart noises on your arm.  Every night while I’m getting her ready for bed I’ll blow on her belly, and she retaliates and blows farts on my arm.  And she looks at me afterwards and laughs because she knows she’s hilarious.  It is my current favorite thing.  She also GROWLS.  Like a full on growl.  It’s not just when she’s mad, she’ll just be sitting there and will growl at her toys.  It is very startling and hilarious.  Will thinks she’s part bear and Julius thinks she’s part tiger.  I just think she’s 100% adorable.

So today’s pattern is a slight modification of a previous pattern that I’ve made a dozen times by now.  It’s a portable utensil holder.  We take these with us everywhere to prevent having to use plastic utensils.  Well that was before the pandemic.  Now that we’ve gotten a bit braver, we have been using them all the time again.  We take them on road trips and on picnics and we bring them with us to Davis Farmland.  I’ve found now, more than the before times, people are really trying to push the plastic utensils on you when you purchase a meal.  Unfortunately our portable utensil kits lacked a couple of additions.  Julius, when he was slightly younger, always wanted a straw for his drinks.  Mandy got us some neat reusable straws from her company that are GREAT for kids!  Unfortunately they never fit in our little portable kits, so they stick out the side.  We also thought that sometimes it is nice to have chop sticks in your kit.  You know, for when you do ramen or sushi to go… :D

Upgraded Reusable Utensil Holder

What you’ll need:

  • Heavyweight scrap fabric such as denim, upholstery weight velvet, canvas etc.
  • Lightweight scrap fabric to be used as contrast/lining
  • Single fold bias tape .5″ wide
  • Size 16 dritz snap
  • Pattern here
  1. Cut out pattern pieces as directed.
  2. Pin lining fabric to outer fabric for both pieces.
  3. Along the flat surface of the pocket fabric, open out the bias tape and place along the unfinished edge, outer fabric to right side of bias tape, pining along the bias tape fold line.  Stitch along the fold line. 
  4. Fold bias tape over unfinished edge, pin in place and stitch close to the first set of stitching, enclosing the entire edge.
  5. Lay pocket on top of backing, with lining material on the inside.  (Match the marks on the backing with the top of the pocket.)
  6. Open out bias tape as you did in step 3 with the fold 1/2″ from the edge, with unfinished edges parallel to one another.  Fold over the starting edge of the bias tape so the seam looks finished.  Pin all around the perimeter in this fashion, overlapping the start of the tape by half an inch.
  7. Stitch.
  8. Trim the seam to 1/8″.
  9. Fold the bias tape over the unfinished edge, pin in place and stitch close to the first set of stitching, enclosing the entire edge.
  10. Insert utensils into pouch and fold flap down over them so it holds utensils in snuggly.  Mark location for snap.
  11. Insert snap following manufacturer’s instructions  with the male end on the pocket and female end on the back of the flap so it will snap together when the flap is closed.
  12. Toss in your lunch bag and save the planet!

 

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(No) Ups and Downs

Posted on September 6, 2021 by lexicolton

Wow what a weekend.  This was the first weekend in over a year that we’ve had plans with multiple groups of friends in person.  It was so much fun but I am exhausted!  I am starting to think I have become a total introvert…  In person conversations are exhausting!  Actually, if I’m being honest I only had in person conversations 2 of the 4 holiday weekend days.  My exhaustion probably stems from the fact that since I’ve been back at work for 4 months I’ve forgotten how tiring watching 2 kids by myself all day is…

Well you’ve probably forgotten by now, or maybe you’ve been waiting with baited breath… but here is how to make those fabulous balloon valances that I put up in Patricia’s room!  Like Julius’ curtains, I adapted a pattern that my mother-in-law gave me for fully functional shades.  Since we have actual black out shades on our windows these are strictly for decoration and completely nonfunctional (though with slightly different mounting and by increasing the length they could very easily become functional…)  *In the interest of laziness I designed this pattern to be used to minimize cutting; if you have only 54″ fabric to work with, use 54″ fabric, it will not affect the finished product’s fullness much.  The original pattern also called for lots of hand stitching to make invisible seams, but having done 3 sets of shades by hand I did these completely by machine and will never go back.  No one will notice the seams, not even you.  Unlike all the other shades I have made for my house these are mounted using a simple curtain rod instead of building a shade board.  This also makes them MUCH easier to mount!  (Well it would have made them much easier if the darn curtain rods I had bought from Home Depot had not been missing hardware!  Thankfully a very nice man at the Home Depot took pity on me for being so close to my due date tracked down some hardware and walked it out to my car for me!)

Weirdly I only have a couple pictures of me stitching some non-descript seams.  I guess that’s what happens when you do projects at 40 weeks.  And, more tragically, I don’t have any pictures of 40 weeks pregnant me mounting the shades on a step ladder with a drill.  You’ll just have to imagine that I guess.  So without further ado…  my DIY Balloon Valances!

DIY Balloon Valances

For each valance you will need:

  • 48″ of 58″ wide fabric* – I used this beautiful poppy fabric from spoonflower in lightweight cotton twill 
  • 48″ of 58″ wide white cotton fabric for backing
  • 24 plastic rings for roman shades
  • several yards of string or yarn for tying up the curtains, preferably white
  1. Place white cotton fabric on top of curtain fabric, right sides facing out.
  2. On the long edges of the fabric, create a 1″ double fold hem.
  3. Machine baste the unfinished top edge of the fabric at 1/4″ mark so it doesn’t wiggle around.  Repeat for the bottom edge.
  4. On the bottom edge create a 1″ double fold hem.

    Here’s the one mystery picture of me sewing a seam? Bottom hem?

  5. Fold under 1/2″ at the top, press, then fold under another 2 inches.  Stitch close to fold to form rod pocket.
  6. Here is where you will need to hand stitch.
  7. Place your curtain on the floor so you can spread it out.  Mark a line in tailor’s chalk or disappearing ink 2″ from the left and right edges.
  8. Mark 2 more lines 17 1/3″ from each of the 2″ lines.
  9. Starting along the bottom hem stitching line, mark an x where your tailor’s chalk lines intersect.  Hand sew a ring to each of these 4 points.
  10. Measure up each line 6″ and place another ring.  Repeat until you are out of rings.

To hang the curtains:

  1. Mount curtain rod as per instructions for your curtain rods, you will want the rod holders to be just slightly outside your window frame.
  2. Insert curtain rod through rod pocket, you will need to bunch fabric in the rod pocket to make the curtain fit just slightly wider than your window.
  3. Before you hang your curtain, thread string through each of the vertical lines of shade rings, pull together slightly to make fabric bunch and loosely tie.

    Loosely tie each vertical set of rings.

  4. Repeat for each set of vertical shade rings.

    Thread string through curtain rings (I didn’t have any curtain rings so I used chain maille links… :D)

  5. Hang curtain and manually adjust each set of ties so the valance is as low as you desire, and the height for each set is equal.  Knot each set of ties when you are satisfied.

    If you zoom in on the window glass you can see 40 week pregnant Lexi taking this photo… you’ll have to imagine me hanging these and fiddling with the ties.

    Here’s a photo of me 4 days before I hung the shades for perspective.

    Julius (featured bottom left) helped me hang the second one.

 

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Meeple People

Posted on August 30, 2021 by lexicolton

Well we just spent the last week hanging out with Will’s parents, siblings and cousins.  It was a fun trip and nice to be able to see some family that we haven’t seen in over a year.  Julius and Patricia loved the extra attention and were so happy to see people other than their parents.  We loved not having to cook or shop for ourselves!  It’s so nice to be doted on.

I worked most of the week again unfortunately, but I got to go for a couple nice hikes in the green mountains.  I also spent some of my down time planning and creating things for DanyCon 2021!  Because none of the kiddos are vaccinated and that makes travel hard, we’ll once again be hosting a virtual DanyCon for our siblings.  That doesn’t mean it will be any less great though!  We are going to have lots of new activities to keep us all occupied.  I can’t wait to share in a few weeks…

Just like I can’t wait to share this hilarious Julius-ism from one of our hikes.  On one of my days off the family decided to take the gondola up to the summit of Killington and hike back down.  Julius was very excited about the whole prospect and did a great job hiking most of the way himself.  The hike down the mountain wound between ski trails and snowcat roads.  At one point Julius, who was at the very front of the hiking at this point, shouted “there’s a road!”  So I asked Julius if I could tell him a joke, and our conversation went something like this:

Me: Julius can I tell you a joke?

Julius: Yes!

Me: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Julius:  Hahaha!  Mama that is so funny.

Me: I haven’t even told you the funny part yet!

Julius: Oh.

I guess jokes come later.  Makes sense considering everything they do is so darn funny.  Speaking of darn funny, check out Will’s pandemic hair in this picture. 

This was taken during Will’s birthday in July 2020, several months into the pandemic back when we believed that he would be able to go back to a hair dresser soon.  Funny hair aside, check out that sweet shirt Will is sporting!  That’s one of the gifts I made for his 30th birthday.  *Looks at the year.*  Wait no, we are way older than 30!  Where has the time gone?!  Well this project is something I thought of well before I bought my embroidery machine.  Honestly it was the reason I bought my embroidery machine.  My idea was to make geeky symbols to sell on polo shirts.  Only 5(? 6?) years after I bought my embroidery machine I finally accomplished my original goal!  If anyone wants to buy one from me just let me know… ;)  (Wait, I need to find an appropriate GIF for that.  I’ve been trying to use GIFs since will accused me of being 3 forms of communication behind everyone else since I still use emoticons.  You know what I say to that?  There are no GIF hotkeys!  GIF and emoji use severely limits my WPM.)

(RIP Jessica Walter)

Super Stylish Meeple Polo

  • 1″x2.5″ hoop (like this one)
  • Blank Polo Shirt – I love Jiffyshirts.com for shirt blanks.
  • tear away stabilizer
  • White (or desired color) machine embroidery floss
  • chalk
  • Embroidery file here (Note you will need to unzip it first)
  1. Mark where your meeple will go on your polo shirt using the chalk using a large cross.
  2. Hoop the shirt and stabilizer, centering the hoop over the cross.
  3. Thread embroidery machine with white floss, load embroidery file then embroider.
  4. Remove shirt from machine, remove from hoop, brush off chalk, and tear away stabilizer on back of shirt.

 

 

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Reverse, reverse

Posted on August 23, 2021 by lexicolton

We went to our second outdoor birthday party in the last 2 years.  It was so much fun and my friends went above and beyond planning.  Not only did we have a fabulous time hanging out with friends, but Julius had a great time.  I asked him the morning of the party if he remembered Enzo (who we saw many months ago when he was born).  He shook his head yes (I was a little skeptical).  I told him that today we were going to his birthday party.  He squealed with delight and asked, “Is that guy going to have a cake?! And we will sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”  I guess we can safely say the guy likes cake.

Patricia ate more than Julius did at the party.  She eats far more than Julius ever ate at this age.  (I guess that’s why she is in the >99th percentile and Julius was in the 10th.)  She ate multiple types of cheese, a pile of grapes, broccoli and pizza.  And this was after she’d already had an entire can of kidney beans for lunch.  That’s 3.5 servings of beans for those who are curious.  The lady loves beans.  We started giving her beans as a protein source when we realized she was consuming 90% her calories in solid food instead of milk.  I’m so glad she is a great eater and I hope it continues.

It’s been two weeks since our basement was finished and we’ve been moving things slowly  We managed to squeeze my hand-me-down sewing desk from the unfinished side into the finished side.  This meant I could finally do my first project down there.  For the last 2+ months my stuff has been packed away in the garage or compressed in the basement, which has really put a damper on my crafting.  Most of the last several months of blogs have been old projects that I had done in preparation for when Patricia was born and I am almost out!  Maybe now I can start stocking up!

This project I started to finish off a little home improvement that I started months ago.  The idea was to create some little baskets as storage for hats and gloves.  I ended up with this cute little reversible basket that I think would be adorable for storing lots of things!  It didn’t work for what I wanted, but I am going to put it in Patricia’s room or on my sewing desk.

Reversible Storage Basket

  • 1 yard of burlap fabric
  • 1 yard of heavyweight upholstery fabric (or similar)
  1. Cut 16″x16″ square of burlap and upholstery fabric
  2. Fold burlap in half.
  3. Stitch along both sides with 3/4″ seam allowance.
  4. Fold out corners so finished seam is in the center.  Press flat with your fingers.
  5. Mark a 6″ line perpendicular to the center seam to form a triangle.
  6. Stitch along the line you marked.  Repeat for other corner.
  7. Repeat steps 2-6 with upholstery fabric.
  8. Turn burlap fabric so it is right side out.
  9. Place inside the upholstery fabric.  Right sides should be sandwiched in the middle.
  10. Match the unfinished edges of baskets up.
  11. Stitch along the edges of the basket, with 1″ seam allowance, leaving a 3″ gap.
  12. Turn basket right side out. Stitch along the top side of the basket 1/2″ from the finished edge to finish the seam.

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All the Bows

Posted on August 16, 2021 by lexicolton

Julius started preschool last week!  Will picked him up from his first day and asked what was his favorite part of the day.  He responded, “Everything was my favorite!”  From there he told us multiple tales of the kids in his classes.  I guess he liked it!  Since the first day he has been a little bit more reserved in describing his day to us.  He actually won’t tell me ANYTHING that isn’t made up!  It is extremely frustrating to me, but as Will so thoughtfully reminded me, “get used to more of this for the next 15 years.”  Great!

First day of preschool!

Patricia is getting more Daddy 1:1 time throughout the day now.  For some reason that has lead to sleeping really terribly at night now.  I know I can’t complain too much since she was a champion sleeper from day one, but we thought we dodged this bullet!  She eats a TON of solid food now and really prefers solids to milk now.  We’ll see what her doctor says at the next appointment, but it seems that she’s getting bigger and sturdier every day.  Even so, she’s still a snuggle bug.  And lately she LOVES to bounce!  Bouncing baby girl I guess!

Big girl!

Well this bouncing baby girl has enough bows to last her a lifetime!  I bought a few soft ones in every color of the rainbow and then we have been gifted many, many more.  She mostly leaves them on if you put them on her, but I only do so for special occasions.  I was storing them all in a box on her dresser, but that very quickly started overflowing.  Now I only keep little clip on bow in the box, and I made a hanging holder for the rest of her bows.  I wanted something that looked like a basket of flowers and was easy to hang on the wall.  I came up with this holder, using some leftover hoops that I was contemplating using for Patricia’s mobile.  The holder does the job nicely and holds a lot of bows! If you were so inclined you could use the same sort of thing for a bow-tie holder.

Bow holder on the wall, box filled with socks on right, and clip on bow holder on left.

Baby Hair Bow Holder

What you’ll need:

  1. Wrap the square of fabric around your large hoop, by snipping from the edge of the fabric close to the hoop.  Pin in the center
  2. Using a zipper foot, stitch around the inside of the hoop, very close to the hoop itself.  Make sure to stitch through both layers of fabric to secure the fabric on the hoop and form a circle. 
  3. Place your large circle on top of your smaller circle, with the smaller circle 1″ below the rim of the smaller circle.  Cut a slit in fabric over the center of the  smaller circle up to the rim of the smaller circle itself. 
  4. Cut several more slits up to the other edges of the smaller circle.
  5. Wrap the fabric around the smaller circle so the smaller circle is empty and pin in place.  
  6. Using the zipper foot again, stitch very close to the outside of the smaller circle.
  7. Thread the cording through a tapestry needle. Stitch through the fabric, close to the outside edge of the smaller circle, then directly across the circle, and back down through the outside of the other edge.  
  8. Pull the elastic to a new spot and begin the process again, semi randomly weaving the elastic to form a spiderweb.  When you are satisfied with your spiderweb, knot the two unfinished ends of elastic together.
  9. Thread tapestry needle with scrap ribbon and poke through the top of the holder (wherever you deem the top to be).  Knot to use as hanger.

    Patricia’s room sporting her new bow holder.

    The finished product looks like a dream catcher…

    To hang bows, shove them between the elastic, so the tension in the elastic holds them in place.

 

 

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The Buzz

Posted on August 9, 2021 by lexicolton

Well friends, we just spent the last three weeks driving around the southern USA.  We spent a week in Nashville, TN, a week in Dallas, TX, and a final week in Nashville, TN before heading home.  Will is still on paternity leave, but I worked from each place which meant I lugged my backpack, monitor and assorted peripherals around the country.  It also meant I spent most of my weekend days off driving, so I am mentally exhausted!  It was worth it though to see family and spend time with everyone.

While we were out, we had our basement finished!  I am so excited with how it came out.  The problem now is that all the stuff we moved to the garage from the basement needs to go back down there.  You might think it’s the moving we don’t want to do (and we don’t) but really we don’t want to spoil the beautiful space!  Will told me specifically that he didn’t want my costume closet down there.  Then he mentioned how ugly the desk I use for my sewing desk is (I’m offended, but to be fair it is a free desk the previous owners left in the basement).  He didn’t remember the desk Amy and I picked up on the side of the road while jogging, the kitchen island from my apartment in college or the hand me down gate leg table from my parents.  Huh I’d forgotten that all too.  Maybe we should just donate everything and start over… but who would want my island of misfit furniture aside from me?

Betta fish?  Oh also check out the felted diffuser in the background too…

Well, while my basement was in limbo for the last couple months I didn’t have a craft space to work in.  This is part of the reason I’ve been felting so much, because you can do it anywhere!  For instance I made this fish in the car on the way home.  It was supposed to be a betta fish, but I didn’t look up a picture before I made it and… well… it turns out it doesn’t really look like a betta fish.  Anyway, I did a little felting activity with my family (and Amy, who I have been trying to rope into felting for months now) for my birthday before we went on our trip to the south.  I called it Virtual Felt Fest.  Everyone made a silly little bumblebee (with the lady beekeeper) and I daresay everyone had fun and they all came out great!  The event was of course virtual, so if you want to make your own all you need is the following:

Here’s my finished little guy.

Felted Bumble Bee Tutorial

What you’ll need:

Here are the bags I sent that included needles, foam, roving and eyes for each person

Look at everyone’s cute bees

Can you believe Andrew had never felted before?!

Finished bee – side view

 

 

 

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