The Lady Beekeeper

It seems a group of sadists-who-shall-not-named have decided to make 2021 2020 again.  They wanted to start things off with a dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.  And you know what is weird?  I didn’t even hear about it until late in the day!  That’s right, mama preschool is almost completely disconnected from the fabric of technology!  Almost!  That’s right you can send your kids to mama preschool and I’ll disconnect them from electronic entertainment and throw books and crafts at them like my sanity depends on it.  (And as an added bonus you’ll experience an uneasy feeling that a sleep deprived narcoleptic is watching your child.)

So, anyway, while I was not watching the Capitol dumpster fire, I was instead teaching Julius about the valuable subject of coconuts.  You heard me right – coconuts.  Books on coconuts, coconut crafts, coconut opening, coconut cooking, pretty much all the things you can do with a coconut.  Why coconuts you may ask?  Because I have lost my mind.  That’s right.  Last week was all about coconuts, and this week is all about tea parties.  Valuable.  Life.  Lessons.

With coconut week I may have accidentally overplayed the significance of coconuts in everyday life.  For example, witness this conversation, spurred by my remark that we needed to take down our Christmas tree (because it is a fire hazard).

Me: [to Will] We desperately need to take down our Christmas Tree.
Julius: Because it's not Christmas time anymore? 
Me: That's right bud. 
Julius: Because now it's Coconut time?

As a side note, do you know how hard it is to find library books about coconuts?

Well to counteract my crazy I’m going to show you a craft that is far more practical than coconut boats!  A mask lanyard!  And not just any mask lanyard, a geeky mask lanyard!  I have had this idea for many moons, but didn’t actually implement it until the very beginning of December.  This is one of few crafts that Will, Julius and I have all done together and I think it was a hit with everyone.  Just yesterday Will came in from a walk and held up his lanyard saying “this thing is the best”!

Check out this sweet lanyard with my favorite mask!

Dice Mask Lanyard

What you’ll need: 

• 6 assorted dice (I find everything but D4s work well)
• 1 yard of 1/2″ satin ribbon
• 2 1.25″x.5″ lobster clasps
• drill with bits
• yarn needle

1.  First you’ll need to drill holes through your dice.  Place your die in a vice with one face facing upwards.  Be careful not to overtighten or the die could crack.  Starting with your smallest drill bit, drill a hole directly through the face of the die.
2. Increase drill bit sizes and re-drill your hole until you reach LKSJDF.  Gradually increasing the bit sizes will prevent your dice from cracking (trust me).
3. Repeat steps 1&2 for all dice.
   

   Julius wanted to help drill all the dice.

4. Thread one end of satin ribbon through your yarn needle.
5. Thread 3 dice onto the satin ribbon.
6. Thread the lobster clasp onto the lanyard after the 3 dice.
7. Thread the ribbon back through the first die next to the clasp.  Leave a tail about 7″ long and square knot as close to the die as you can.
8. Thread the ribbon through the second die.  Again square knot.
9. Finally thread the ribbon through the last die.  Cut the excess ribbon as close as possible to the die so it is hiding inside, then tie one knot with just the long length of ribbon to hold it in place.
10. Repeat step 4-6 and then loop the lanyard around your neck.  Accounting for 7″ of tail, adjust the ribbon length to your desired length, keeping in mind that that mask will hang lower than the lanyard ends.
11. Finally repeat step 7-9 for the other side of the lanyard.
    

    Or get your threenager to do the other side for you!

You’ll notice Will has a slightly different pattern for his lanyard.  I can post instructions on that if desired.  I had a concern while I was making it that the dice may be heavy and weigh down the mask on my ears.  I can confirm that the dice don’t pull on my ears and that it is extremely comfortable and convenient for me to wear the lanyard with my mask.

Wow, I look 3 weeks postpartum here. Oh right, I am.

Showing off that sweet, sweet lanyard.

Looks like it fits!

Lets crit this virus because I need undisturbed sleep.

Today was the first day of “Mama Preschool” in which I once again pretend I am qualified to home school my child (I am not).  At least this time we’re not pretending to do it while we both work.  We’re still afraid of sending Julius to daycare until at least Will gets the vaccine, but if he were still in daycare he’d be in preschool by now.  Julius was pretty disappointed when he realized “Mama Preschool” was not the same as actual preschool.  He told me multiple times “I want to go to preschool!”  I felt like I’d deceived him a bit…

Through no credit of my own, Julius’ vocabulary has dramatically improved over the last year.  It is really funny, he still makes up words and uses them in sentences, but when you ask him what they mean he tells you that they don’t mean anything.  He still has some gems in his vocabulary though.  For instance the other day he was pushing a box (imaginary firetruck) around the floor with his favorite stuffed dog Gaga inside and shouting “the smoke protector is coming!”  I explained to him several times that the thing on the ceiling was a smoke detector but he would not be convinced.  Oh the irony.  And when he doesn’t want to go to bed he tells me “I am going to unscape!”  And then when he wants you to catch him, “I am unscaping…” Adorable (and also when he’s escaping, frustrating).

Well this is the last installment of my how-to’s on Julius’ Winnie the Pooh Adventure.  Today I’m going to show you how I made Owl’s Blustery House.  So I have to be honest – this is far from my best work.  I had grand visions of making a really cool cardboard house that looked exactly like owl’s tree house in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.  Something to rival the catbus.  In my dreams it had peaked roofs and everything.  Unfortunately as I got closer to Patricia’s due date my dreams slowly degraded.  The day before the party on the expected due date of my second child I devoted about 45 minutes to this little number.  Honestly he uses it all the time so in terms of effort-to-use ratio, we’re really getting our money’s worth.

Owl’s Blustery House

Owl’s Blustery House

What you’ll need:

• Large cardboard box
• Box cutter
• a small desk fan
• cabinet knob (optional)
• acrylic paints in desired colors (ideally yellow and white and blue)
• string
• streamers
• crepe paper leaves to cover the roof (I used these in green)

1. Cut double door out using the box cutter.  My split door was 12″x20″ high and divided into two portions 12″x8″ on the top and 12″x12″ on the bottom.
2. Cut windows in the left and right sides of the house.
3. Cut small 5″x5″ square in the back of the house to insert the fan in.
4. Using the box cutter, cut two 1″ slits in the bottom of the 5″x5″ square, spaced apart the length of the stand of the fan (see picture below).
5. Insert fan through the back of the house into the 1″ slits, and poke a hole just above the 5″x5″ square, insert a piece of string through the hole, then through the top wire of the fan and tie.  This should hold the fan securely in place.
6. Paint the house as desired.  I attempted to paint the front of the house to look like owl’s house in yellow with white trim, and blue window glass).
7. Along the “trim” of the bottom door, poke a small hole in the door then insert cabinet knob as door knob if desired.
8. Throw some crepe paper pom-poms on top of the house to look like fake leaves as if the house might be in a tree.  (Mine were reused from the Totoro party).
9. Finally tape some crepe paper streamers in varying lengths from the room of the house before you turn on the fan.  Julius had great fun catching these and ripping them off.  We attached puzzle pieces to a few of them for the Adventure.
   

   Close up of the fan – note the tie above and the slits holding the fan base below.

   

   Julius contemplating the house.

   

   Julius is delighted by the windy house.

   

   Having a great time pulling the streamers

Julius has been using the expression “super good” and “extra super good” and “really extra super good” to describe the levels of goodness of things he is interacting with.  He started using it a couple weeks ago.  I was quite pleased when after I cut his hair he ran upstairs to look in the mirror and proclaimed “I look super good!”

So you may have noticed that in our birth pictures of Patricia, Will and I were wearing color coordinated masks.  I blame my co-worker for that idea.  Since I discovered I was pregnant a couple days before going into quarantine, none of my co-workers even knew I was pregnant unless I mentioned it.  With this pregnancy I was already showing by 8 weeks, and by 20 weeks I felt like I already looked nine months pregnant, so it was weird to me that my some people had no idea I was pregnant.  It was getting embarrassing when I’d drop a comment about being pregnant and I’d get the response “you’re pregnant?!” from people I swore I had told… So I just sent out a mass email to people that I was pregnant and my due date.

One of my co-workers was disappointed that I hadn’t announced it with another funny shirt and said that a quarantine solution for informing people I was pregnant this would have been to change my Skype photo and see who noticed.  But my photo is again just a headshot… which is when my friend Roger suggested that I could have made a custom mask with a stork on it… I thought this sounded like a cute idea, if not for a quarantine pregnancy announcement.  So… before we went to the hospital I decided to make new masks.  In addition to being pink in honor of the little lady to be, they also had a stork on them.  Since we’d be wearing them in the hospital for several days on end I made them more airtight than the previous batch.  This included adding the n95-style around the head elastics and nose wires.

Form Fitting Fabric Masks for Extended Wear

• Nose wires (I used 2 of these stacked per mask)
• 1 sq foot of cotton fabric for interior
• 1 sq foot of cotton fabric for exterior
• 1 sq foot of oly fun
• 1 yard of 1/4″ elastic
• Iron on vinyl (optional)
• Cricut pattern for stork

1. Measure yourself for a mask as described in this blog post and follow steps 1-6.
2. If desired, create an iron on vinyl patch for your mask using the Cricut pattern above and iron it onto your front cotton fabric.
3. Cut out 2 AxB size rectangles of Oly Fun, and pleat the Oly Fun together with the interior fabric in step 6, but do not iron!  Just press material with your hands to form the pleats.
4. Pin together the fabric layers, with interior fabric and exterior fabric right sides facing.  The stack will look like exterior fabric, interior fabric, 2 layers of Oly Fun.
5. Measure from an inch in front of each ear, across the top of your head.  This will be the top elastic length.  Cut elastic.
6. Measure from and inch in front of the ear, around the back of your neck.  This will be the bottom elastic length.  Cut elastic.
7. If desired, cut ear elastics as described in step 10 in this post.
8. Insert one end of top elastic into side of mask at the top between interior fabric and exterior fabric.  Feed it through and insert other end into other side of mask at the top.  Pin both ends.
9. Repeat step 8 for bottom elastic on the bottom of mask sides.
10. If desired, insert an ear elastic between interior fabric and exterior fabric on one side, pinning on top of the top and bottom elastic locations.
11. If desired, repeat step 10 for other ear elastic.
12. Stitch top and sides of mask, and bottom of mask 1″ from each corner, leaving the rest of the bottom opened.
13. Turn right side out.
14. Insert a nose wire between the exterior fabric and layer of Oly Fun in the direct center of your mask at the top most edge.
15. Using a zipper foot, stitch very close to the nose wire, sealing it in.
16. Turn the unfinished edge of the bottom under, and stitch the entire bottom edge, close to the fold.
17. Put on the mask and adjust the nose wires as you would an N95.  If desired, you can also wear it like you would a surgical mask, but the seal will not be as tight.
    

    Worn as an N95 with over head elastics

    

    Here we are at the hospital, wearing our masks for the first time.

    

    Worn as a surgical mask with ear elastic

    

Well we’re at the 1.5 week mark and I think it’s safe to say I’m tired.  I am emotionally feeling a lot better this time around.  But after raising a toddler it is so easy to forget the early days and how many times babies eat, how long feeding takes, and how little time you really have between feedings.  Will has been trying to do everything in his power to make things less stressful for me.  This means letting me sleep in while he does all the chores and toddler care.  He has been really helpful, but I feel like poor Julius is not getting enough attention now because we are both so tired.  And on top of all that, we have decided to shelter in place for Thanksgiving instead of going to my parents house in RI for a while and mooching some TLC.

Tiredness aside, Will and I have such super sweet friends, family and co-workers that I had (and have) lots of thank you notes to write for gifts for Patricia!  My sister-in-law asked me if I planned to do cute thank you cards again like I did for Julius, or if thank you notes for baby #2 were going to be written on store bought cards.  I originally said store bought… but of course Erin’s comment got me thinking…  My hair dresser (who I haven’t seen in over nine months thanks to covid) has this super cute frame on her desk of a pregnant woman’s silhouette with an ultrasound photo in the belly.  (Kind of like this one.)  I’ve been wanting to get one of those frames for a while, and since I acquired a Cricut since my last pregnancy it gave me an idea…

Ultrasound bump cards!

Baby Bump Ultrasound Silhouette Thank You Notes

What you’ll need:

• A side photo of your pregnant profile against a solid colored background (I am 37 weeks in mine)
• Paint.net or other photo editing software
• Ultrasound photo scanned into computer
•  65 lb cardstock in color of your choice
• black cardstock
• cricut or silhouette with cutting tool for cardstock
• glue stick
• “Thank you” stamp and black ink

1. Load side profile photo into paint.net.
   

   Side profile photo I used for my cards.

2. Use magic wand to select the background area in photo, tweaking tolerance up and down so only the wall portion is removed.
   

   Remove wall portion with magic wand tool.

3. Clean up other areas with an eraser on a zoomed in setting.
4. Lower the brightness and increase the contrast until you have a black and white photo.
5. Cut down silhouette to just bump upwards and then cut out a heart shape over the belly.
6. Save the file and import it into Cricut as a cutting file.  I resized the cutout so the silhouettes were 5″ tall, and approximately 3″ wide.
   

   Resize cut outs in cricut software so they are approximately 5″x3″

7. Cut silhouettes on black paper.
   

   Cut silhouettes on black paper

8. Paste multiple copies of ultrasound into word or another program.  This part is a bit tricky, you’ll need to resize them so the area you desire fits into the heart in the silhouette.  For me this portion was just the baby’s head and face profile, and this meant my ultrasounds were around 2″ wide.
   

   Put multiple ultrasounds on one page for printing.

9. Print ultrasound page.
10. Cut out the ultrasound photo so it fits in the belly as desired. No ultrasound portion should peak out from under the silhouette.
    

    Cut ultrasound photo so it fits in the belly. After my test one, I stacked multiple sheets and cut them together.

11. Apply glue stick to front of ultrasound photo around edges.  Don’t worry about extra glue getting everywhere on the photo.
    

    Apply glue stick around front edges of ultrasound.

12. Place silhouette on top of ultrasound photo, so baby shows through the heart cut out.  Press firmly to adhere.
13. Take colored cardstock of choice and cut in half to form two 8.5″x5.5″ sheets.  Fold each in half to form 4.25″x5.5″ cards.
14. Cover the back of the silhouette and ultrasound combo in glue stick and adhere to the bottom left of the colored card.
15. Ink your thank you stamp and press near the right hand side of the photo between mother’s mouth and belly.
    

    Finished cards ready to send!

Well, we had an exciting weekend.  We had a little celebration for Julius on his birthday and that morning I had some early labor signs.  (I’ll post about the celebration in a later post.)  No baby yet, but I had some more contractions this morning that went away after a few hours and then returned again this evening.  Who knows?  Certainly not me.  I think it’s funny when people believe women have control over their due date.  The only thing I know and can control for sure is that this will be a short blog post.

Piglet… kung fu master?  Confused yogi?

So I’ll tell you about the world’s tallest piglet costume.  This costume was another super simple one… just purchased clothing for the most part.  The main problem was that I couldn’t find pink form fitting clothes to fit someone six feet tall… without paying a prohibitive price (a different version of the pink tax perhaps…)  So I bought white 100% cotton long underwear (shirt and pants here) and dyed it pink.  On top of the pink long underwear (which Will will be sporting under his ski clothes this winter) Will wore a magenta tank top and athletic pants (both of which he’ll be able to wear again later).  To anyone who is in desperate need of a pink size men’s XL long underwear and wants to know how to dye long underwear pink, send me an email and I’ll send you the instructions.

All the ingredients lined up for dyeing.

Dyeing Will’s cotton thermal underwear pink.

Piglet Ears

What you’ll need:

• black headband
• 1 sheet pink felt
• hot glue
• pattern here

1. Cut out 4 ears from felt.
   

   Cut 4 sets of ears from felt

2. Place 2 pieces of felt together and stitch, between two markings, leaving the bottom opened.  Trim seam allowance around part you stitched. Turn right side out.
   

   Stitch ears together and turn right side out.

3. Repeat for second ear.
4. Place one ear slightly off center from the top of the headband.
5. Put glue on the headband, fold one flap over, add glue to the top of flap and fold over second flap on top, so ear encircles the headband.
6. Place other ear equidistant from the center of the headband on the other side and repeat step 6.
   

   Piglet and Pooh BFFs