The Lady Beekeeper

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

   

Well I can finally tell you all about our costume this year!  When we asked Julius what we should be for Halloween he decided mama could go as Winnie the Pooh.  I asked if he wanted to be Piglet and he said, “no dada will be Piglet”.  To which I asked, then what will you be?  And he responded “Christopher Robin” matter of factly.  Which honestly made a lot of sense.  Much like last year, when I thought I’d be Princess Peach, Julius would be Mario and Will would be Bowser,  I had a different picture of what we would each masquerade as for Halloween.  I thought I’d be Pooh, Julius would be Piglet and Will would be Tigger.  The 6 foot tall Piglet though kind of made the costume.

So as you know, Julius’ drum was for his Christopher Robin costume – which honestly was just a pair of clothes he already had.  I felt better that he asked me to make him an accessory, because really, I didn’t think Christopher Robin had any accessories.  These were some of the easiest costumes I’ve ever put together.  They were almost entirely purchased clothes.  I did buy clothes that we could re-wear again at least.  Next week we’ll cover Piglet, but today I’ll cover Winnie the Pooh.

There are so many pregnant Winnie the Pooh costumes on Pinterest, and they all look so darn adorable.  This is my version.  I bought a mustard colored maternity dress on Amazon that I also wore to the sprinkle my sister in law and sister threw for me (which was bee themed).  I considered wearing it for the photo shoot we did a couple weeks ago, but at the last minute picked a different dress.  For Pooh’s red top I picked a super cheap top that was non-maternity and I could certain wear again.  The only thing I made for my costume were the ears and I included the instructions below.  The finishing touch was a dab of black face paint on my nose.

Definitely rumbly in my tumbly

Winnie the Pooh Ears

What you’ll need:

• black headband
• 1 sheet mustard yellow felt
• a small amount of stuffing
• hot glue
• pattern here

1. Cut out 4 ears from felt.
2. Place 2 pieces of felt together and stitch, between two markings, leaving the bottom opened.  Trim. Turn right side out.
3. Repeat for second ear.
4. Stuff ears with a small amount of stuffing until they are pleasantly plump.
5. Place one ear slightly off center from the top of the headband.
6. Put glue on the headband, fold one flap over, add glue to the top of flap and fold over top second flap on top, so ear encircles the headband.
7. Place other ear equidistant from the center of the headband on the other side and repeat step 6.

This weekend was definitely peak foliage in Lancaster.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  We did another bike ride to George Hill Orchards again to get some lunch, cider, cider donuts and sugar pumpkins.  The views from their hilly farm were spectacular.  I don’t know what we’re going to do when the picking season ends.  It’s one of the few places that we feel fairly comfortable “in public”.

At this point in time we have acquired a large quantity of squash, gourds, pumpkins and apples between our CSA and our weekly farm trips.  It’s like fall has exploded inside the house.  I can’t show you a picture or you’d be embarrassed for me.  For perspective I’m sitting at the kitchen island and there are 14 pumpkins/squash sitting next to me.  And trust me that is just the tip of the iceberg, there are more on the other counters and in the other rooms and outside as decorations.  It makes me so happy.  (I might be a pumpkin hoarder?  Is that a thing?)

Well speaking of pumpkins and fall… I don’t think I need to remind you that my favorite holiday is coming up!!  I don’t want to ruin any surprises about our family costume this year… but let’s just say it involves a drum.  I had actually completely forgotten it involved a drum until Julius asked me “but where is my drum” when trying on his costume.  All will be revealed next week, but now I’m going to show you how to make a drum for a toddler.  This was completely free for me to make as I had everything on hand, but it was actually a bit time consuming.  If you can guess who’s drum it is (and I haven’t already told you) I’ll send you a prize.

Also I have to tell you one more cute thing.  Upon presenting Julius the drum after his naptime with the words “I made you this” (and probably by making him lots of other things) I may have accidentally convinced him that I am capable of making all his toys.  He started looking at the Amazon wish catalog the other day and pointing to things saying “I want you to make this for me”.  One of the things was a robotic hand, and he asked me “could you make this one?”  I skirted the question by telling him that I went to school for robotics and sometimes worked on things like the robot hand.  He surely knows I didn’t make all his toys, right?  I’m not sure I did a good job convincing him, but do I really want to destroy the image that mama can make anything…?

Toddler Drum

What you’ll need:

• 2 sheets of red paper
• 1 26 oz coffee can (my mom always has the chock full o’ nuts cans)
• 3/8″ yellow ribbon
• brown cord or yarn
• yarn needle or very large embroidery needle
• 2 small clasps (I used these swivel clasps that I had leftover from past projects)
• 2 small eye hooks and 2 small cubes of wood
• 1-1.5 yards of tan ribbon 1″ wide (mine was saved from old Williams-Sonoma gift packaging)
• chop sticks
• hot glue gun

1. Holding the paper horizontally, mark the height of your coffee can on the paper, so the paper will be between the top and bottom metal lips of the can.
   

   Mark the height of the coffee can

2. Cut both pieces of paper to this height.
   

   Cut paper to marked height.

3. With a drill bit slightly smaller than your eye hook screw, drill 2 holes in the can, about .5″ below the top of the can, 5″ apart.
   

   Drill holes in can for eye hooks.

4. Hot glue paper to the can.
   

   Hot glue paper to can.

5. Poke screw eyes through paper and screw through the holes you just made in the can.  Screw into tiny bits of wood on the inside of the can to secure.
   

   Screw through paper and holes you drilled into bits of wood on the inside of the can.

6. Measure the circumference of your coffee cylinder.  Mine was 19″, so to make it easy I chose to divide this into 6ths for the drum threading, leaving a slight gap at the back of the drum where no one would see it.
7. Cut one strip of ribbon 1″ longer than the circumference of your cylinder.
8. For the bottom of the drum you want to create small triangles, so I marked out dots along my strip of ribbon in the following pattern:  1″, 2″, 1″, 2″ until I had 6 2″ long markings
   

   Mark pattern for drum cording.

9. Using the yarn needle, poke through the holes, going out at the 1″ markings, and back in at the 2″ markings.  Adjust the yarn or cord so it is about 3″ long at the 2″ markings.
   

   Leave 3″ loops on ribbon over the 2″ markings, and pull 1″ segments taunt on the backside.

10. Hot glue the ribbon along the bottom perimeter of the can, covering the bottom metal rim. The brown yard/cord along the 1″ segments should be hidden, and the 3″ segments should be loose towards the top of the can.
    

    Hot glue ribbon to the bottom of the can.

11. For the top of the drum, if your top is already yellow (like the choc full of nuts cans) you do not need to use another piece of ribbon, otherwise mark along the ribbon as in step 8.  Mark 6 points,  3″ apart from each other.
12. Using the yarn needle, poke through the holes, going out at a mark, down to the 3″ yarn/cord segments from the bottom of the can, then back through the same marking.  Repeat for other 5 markings, and other 5 3″ segments.
    

    Poke through the lib, loop down to catch the bottom triangle, and back up through the hole you exited from.

13. When you are finished, put the top on the can, making sure to center your top lines in between the bottom 3″ segments.  Pull up the slack so everything is taunt and the top yarn/cord pulls the bottom segments into triangles.
14. Push one end of your ribbon strap through the loop on one clasp.  Fold 1.5″ up, and then 1/2″ under and stitch down to hold clasp on.  Repeat for second clasp and other end of ribbon.  (You’ll want to see how far down this should come on your child.)
    

    Fold under ribbon 1/2 and stitch just below fold.

15. Attach claps to eye hooks.
16. Present drum and chopsticks (drum sticks) to child and let them parade around the house. 

Ignore the kitchen chaos and just focus on the happy toddler with the drum.

The empty coffee can actually makes a pretty good sound.

Well this is going to be a quick one because I’ve been sick the last two days.  In brighter news my sister in law, Erin and my sister, Mandy threw me a virtual “sprinkle” for baby #2 this weekend!  It was a bee-themed family tea party and so very fun and cute.  And despite not having a registry everyone gave the baby girl such sweet and thoughtful things.  On top of all that brightness my co-workers (I shall remind you my co-workers are 70% male) threw me a surprise shower last week complete with silly games.  I had no idea it was coming, and actually had prepared to give a presentation in the meeting (though my manager had urged me to not work too hard on it, suspicious now that I think about it).  They really had me surprised!  I’m so lucky to have such great family, friends and co-workers.

Me and my little bee

Julius and I have been preparing for Halloween.  We decorated the house, and have been acquiring pumpkins, gourds and mums on our bike rides to local farms.  The other day Will, Julius and I were at George Hill Orchards and decided to check out the gourd and ornamental pumpkin patch.  (They have 3 pumpkin patches!)  I picked out a huge swan neck gourd and Will picked it up so I wouldn’t have to carry it.  Then I found this adorable little green warty pumpkin and decided I wanted that one too.  Julius, apparently disappointed he wasn’t carrying anything, grabbed the next little pumpkin he saw (a little sugar pumpkin) and said “and this one is mine”.  Will and I both looked at each other and chuckled and Will said “well if you can carry it, you can take it home”.  And the little guy carried it all the way to the farm store, not a short walk.

For Halloween night I ordered a bunch of things from Oriental Trading, and will probably set up a table at the end of the driveway.  You may recall that we get a total of 8 trick-or-treaters every year (and in previous years it was even less) so buying gift bags from Oriental Trading did not break the bank at all.  Plus I can use them for my trick-or-treating idea for Julius!  Since the CDC thinks trick-or-treating is a high risk activity (I’m not 100% sure I agree) and we are avoiding anything above low risk, we are not going to go out.  Instead – we are going to have Julius trick-or-treat from door to door around our house!  We have a front door, side door and porch door as well as a door on our shed.  All total that’s more houses than we hit up last year.  If we’re feeling really up to it I’ll have whoever answers the doors put on a silly disguise at each door.  We may also pop down to meemah and meepah’s house for some treats.

The other day I was staring at the adorable coffee filter butterflies that have been on our sliding glass door, and decided they clashed with the Halloween decor.  Then I had a stroke of genius!  Why not make coffee filter bats?!  We could use the same technique with bat-colored markers.  I put them all up on the window and reused Julius’ moon artwork from earlier this year at daycare!  They look a bit like devils, but I suppose that works for Halloween too.

Bats on a dark night.

Coffee Filter Bats (or Devils)

What you’ll need:

• coffee filters
• washable markers in browns, blacks, greys and purples
• medicine dropper
• pipe cleaners in corresponding colors

1. Take coffee filters and cut them in half down the middle in a jagged line.
2. Have child color on the coffee filters with washable markers.  (The more marker the better – Julius went a bit light on his)
   

   I love his concentration when coloring.

3. When they are finished, provide them with a medicine dropper and a cup of water to wet the coffee filter and make the markers bleed.
   

   Dropping water on his bat wings.

4. Place coffee filters on towels to dry.
   

   Letting the wings dry.

5. When coffee filters are dry, form your bat’s head with pipe cleaner.  Fold pipe cleaner in half and then twist to form a quarter-sized loop.
   

   Testing wings for dryness.

6. Form ears onto the loop.
   

   Form bat head.

7. Insert coffee filter wings underneath the head in between two tails of pipe cleaner, scrunch slightly.
   

   Secure wings under bat head.

8. Twist pipe cleaners together below wings and form legs.
   

   Form legs.

   

   Finished bats

   

   Bats in daylight?! Watch out…

   

   Julius with our Halloween setup.

We had a great fall weekend again – the weather was so beautiful we were able to do a bike ride to our favorite orchard, George Hill Orchards.  The nice part is it is so huge that even on the weekends I don’t feel unsafe there, and if I ever do, it is very easy to just move away from people somewhere else.  Julius totally understands.  This year we’ve picked blueberries, peaches, apples, pumpkins and gourds there!  I fully intend to go back weekly until they close (or I have this baby).

This week I had a lot of good ideas for a socially distanced Halloween.  I LOVE Halloween.  Have I ever mentioned that?  (Probably.)  It is hands down my favorite holiday – fall, gallivanting outside at night, spooky full moons and black cats, costumes, candy, what isn’t to love?  As you know I love to make costumes, so we of course have been planning ours for months.  They are pretty low key compared to last year, but I’m still excited about them.  Julius’ birthday being only a week away from Halloween makes planning everything a bit challenging… and did I mention my due date is the day before Julius’ birthday?  Because of that I’ve been trying to put together the baby’s room, Julius’ party, a homemade present for Julius, and Halloween costumes all at once.

Last year I started a bunch of projects for Julius’ play kitchen to give him for Christmas or later.  I tucked some of them away for a rainy day, and I was thinking I could give them to him for his birthday this year since he still loves his kitchen.  Well he ended up finding my stash the other day, and he was so excited, that I just let him have a couple things early.  The one I’ll share with you today I made on a plane ride (remember those?)

Felt Farfalle

What you’ll need:

• off-white felt
• pinking shears
• off white thread
• An empty box of farfalle

1. Cut 1.75″ wide strips from felt with normal straight edge scissors.
2. Using the pinking sheers cut strips into 2″ long segments to form 2″x1.75″ rectangles. 
3. Pinch a rectangle in the center so the pinch forms a “w” shape (or “m” shape depending which way you’re looking at it).
4. Use off white thread to put a couple quick stitches through the pinch to fit it in place.  I found it nice to hide the tail of the threads inside one of the peaks of the “w”.  
5. Repeat until you get sick of making pasta.
6. Place pasta in box. 
7. Let child’s imagination go wild.

Making us lunch