The Lady Beekeeper

It is completely bizarre how Julius cannot identify colors.  Remember when I told you about the bug game where Julius was supposed to pick out the blue bug, and 90% of the time picked the white one instead – even after showing him just before the blue one?  Well that trend continues.  He has become quite enamored with my sad excuse for a garden, when I showed him how to pick tomatoes.  Every day he’s been helping me pick the ripe cherry tomatoes, and we take them inside to wash them, then Julius gets to eat them.  He loves tomatoes so he always wants to pick them.  The weird thing though is that he ALWAYS picks the green ones.  I have explained to him dozens of times that we eat the red ones, and yet he still picks the green ones.  Today there were more red than green tomatoes on the vines, and so I walked away for a bit to see what Dany was doing.  When I turned back around he’d picked 4 green tomatoes only.  I really have no idea what to do about that.

He told us this weekend that a horse is his favorite animal.  Who knew?!  He’s been hanging out with bunnies, doggies, and sheepies for his whole existence but horses are the ones he really wants to spend time with.  No wonder he loves the pony rides at David Farmland!  My parents neighbor has a horse (named Colton – no relation) so we walked over to chat with Colton.  Julius was too scared to pet him but he did smile a bunch at him and say “hi” in both English and horse.  Future equestrian?  I always wanted to learn to ride a horse (and swordfight) so that if I were thrown back in time I would be able to hold my own.  Very practical I know.

Speaking of practical, check out this extremely practical craft I made.  It’s supposed to look like  a pussy willow, but in multi colors, but it really doesn’t.  Will calls it the Dr. Seuss tree, and Julius calls it “mama tree” because I told him I made it and it is my silly tree.  Every morning of the first week it was in the upstairs landing he would go over to it and feel all the pom poms laughing at it.  (Because clearly it was silly.)  It was incredibly easy to make, so I’m almost embarrassed to post it, but hey, here it is.

Dr. Seuss Tree (Mama’s Silly Tree)

• 3 tree branches (I collected mine about 9 months ago in the woods with Julius & Dada on a hike. Will thought I was insane.)
• ~36 pom poms in assorted colors (I bought 2 packs of pom poms from Dollar Tree)
• hot glue gun

1. Strip off bottom branches until you will be able to fit each branch in the pot of your choice.
2. Organize your pom-poms into color groups. I used pink, red, yellow, light blue, dark blue, lime green, green, black and purple.
   

   Branches and pom pom clusters

3. Glue a pom pom at the end and junction of each branch.
4. Stick in a vase and watch your child go wild.
   

   Julius, Gaga & the Silly Tree

   

   

Julius has started asking “why?”  He seems to be using it in context, but I’m not entirely sure what he expects to get out of it.  Frequently he’ll ask “why” to which I’ll give him an answer and he’ll ask “why” again about the next thing, in an infinite chain of “whys”.  Honestly I love it.  I have been waiting for him to ask me why for months!  I know lots of parents complain about the “why” phase, so ask me in a month what I think of it, but right now it is just the bee’s knees!

The little guy is just so darn cute.  He is picking up more and more words every week.  A few weeks ago he finally started saying “Dany”.  He was saying “Deedee” because ‘n’s were difficult.  Yesterday I told him to ask Dany if she wanted to go for a walk.  He walked right up to her crate, knelt down, stuck his head all the way in and shouted “Dany”?  I could not stop laughing.  I eventually had to explain that he needed to move so Dany could get out of her crate and take a walk.  Thank goodness Dany likes him.

He of course has his negative moments as well.  Today I had to buckle him into the high chair and told him he couldn’t leave until he ate a small amount of peas and chicken.  He had eaten exactly nothing before I gave him the ultimatum and was trying to squirm out of the chair to go play.  Julius eventually ate all the required food to leave his chair, but it took 30 additional minutes.  But I won’t let that get me down – I consider the eventual eating of his dinner a win!

Another win is this mailbox makeover I completed!  I’ve been wanting to upgrade my mailbox for a while now, but I finally got the time to sit down and do it.  I created the stencil by hand sketching the line and vine art on my Lenovo yoga.  I got the laptop partially for drawing, and I’m really happy I did.  It’s fun to sketch on!  If I’d had this years ago when making mine & my friend’s wedding maps, things would have been so much easier.  I love that after sketching I can resize easily and now – send it to my cricut for cutting!  The one frustrating thing about this design was that I had to split the design in 2 so it would fit on the mailbox.  I split it into two horizontal pieces, but if I did it again I would split it on the vertical so the seam is on the top of the mailbox.

DIY Mailbox Makeover

What you’ll need:

• Sticky vinyl – I used leftover contact paper
• black spray paint
• gold spray paint
• cricut or die cutting machine (or if you are extremely adventurous an Xacto knife)

1. Remove hardware (flag) and measure your mailbox – mine was 18″ long by 20.5″ circumnavigating the top.
2. Set up your electronic drawing space to be proportional to your mailbox dimensions.
3. Start by writing your name in cursive on the bottom of the page.  Add vines, leaves and flowers as desired.
4. Thicken all lines so they are no narrower than 3/8″.
5. Transfer your design to the Cricut and increase/decrease the size until it fits in the dimensions of your mailbox from step 2.  Split design onto two mats if necessary (I found this link helpful).  I recommend doing split between the top and bottom of the design (instead of right and left) so the seam is along the top of the mailbox where no one will see it.
6. Use the cricut to cut out your design on sticky vinyl. (Technically you could use and Xacto knife…)
7. Tape off the area around the mailbox and it’s pole, so nothing will accidentally get painted.
8. Spray the mailbox black.  (I used flat paint first, but decided I hated it and switched to a glossy spray paint which I liked a lot better.)  Let dry.
9. Apply stencil to mailbox and press firmly at the edges of all the cuts to adhere. Tape off any areas on the mailbox that you don’t want painted gold.
10. Spray paint the stencil gold.  Let dry.
11. Remove the stencil, admire your handiwork!
    

    Front view

Well I’ve been having a bit of a freak out period the last few days.  My son’s awesome daycare provides snacks, and they are usually fairly healthy but last time I dropped him off right at snack time and he was given Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  I love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but it is definitely just pure sugar.  He was happy as a clam so I didn’t think anything of it. He usually has cheese crackers or those veggie stick puffs and I’m sure the CTC was just a one off treat.  Anyway, a couple days later I mentioned it to Will offhand, and Will (who abhors cereal – if you want to waste 3 hours of your life, just use the words “cereal is part of a balanced breakfast”) said something like “we should probably provide his snacks”.  Will is usually pretty chill about this stuff so it freaked me out.  Julius gets really bad eczema so controlling all his food may help us figure out what causes flair ups.

Julius has also become increasingly more picky at mealtimes.  We’ve all seen the kids whose parents make them entree after entree for dinner until they finally eat one of them, and we REALLY don’t want to end up with that kid.  We also have friends who have extremely limited palettes and we don’t want that either.  So I started googling.  I hate the internet, I really do.  Anyway, we’ve apparently been doing everything wrong – we give him a rotation of the same 5 things for lunch or dinner.  Will and I don’t eat dinner until 9pm most nights because we don’t have time to make dinner for everyone after work until Julius is in bed.  So we make Julius a quick dinner – grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, meatballs, tortellini, avocados and hardboiled eggs are our go-tos.  Sometimes we’ll give him leftovers from our meal the night before but I make a lot of Indian and Mexican food and I make it spicy.  We can’t give him that.

So now I’ve decided I need to make dinners Julius can eat or else he’s going to become picky.  We also decided we have to spend extra time preparing his snacks for the next day or else he’s going to only want sugar.  Today I attempted to make dinner when I was by myself with Julius after work and I made him beet pancakes (one of our favorites).  Even though I did all the prep work the night before it still took a long time to make them while watching Julius.  The result?  Julius ended up in bed a solid hour late.  He didn’t like them at first, but after I put a bit of sour cream on each piece he ate quite a bit of it.  I consider that a win, even though fried anything is not exactly healthy.  Maybe I’ll just give up and sail the seven seas.  Good thing I created a pattern for a Jolly Roger for such an occasion!  We gave my dad a Jolly Roger for the pontoon boat for his birthday, so I decided to make the flag myself.  Now, you can too!

DIY Jolly Roger

What you’ll need:

• 1/2 yard black “Sport Nylon”
• 1/3 yard (or less) white “Sport Nylon”
• 13″ of 2″ wide trim
• 2 extra large eyelets
• Black machine embroidery thread
• 505 temporary adhesive spray
• dissolvable stabilizer
• Embroidery pattern here (note the pattern is zipped, so you’ll need to unzip it after you download it)

1. Cut a rectangle of black fabric 13.5×17″.
2. Press 17″ long edge of fabric 3/8″.
3. Press again 3/8″.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for other 17″ long side and one of the 13.5″ sides.
5. Pin and stitch along three seams.
6. Place trim on fabric and fold 1/2″ of end of trim around the flag.  Repeat for opposite end of trim. Fold the whole length of trim in half so unfinished edge of fabric is completely enclosed.  Pin & Stitch.
7. Insert a large eyelet at each corner of the trim following package instructions.
8. Hoop your fabric with embroidery hoop at the center of flag, using the dissolvable stabilizer.
9. Stitch the first set of stitches, the placement stitches.  Remove hoop from embroidery machine and cut two pieces of white nylon larger than the placement stitches.  Spray the back with 505 and adhere to the front of the hoop and the back of the hoop on top of the placement stitches.
10. Stitch the second set of stitches to tack down your skull and crossbones.  Remove hoop from embroidery machine and cut very close to the tacking stitches. Make sure to cut out the eye and nose holes.
11. Stitch the third set of stitches to satin stitch around the skull and crossbones.  Remove from embroidery hoop and trim jump stitches and rip out tacking stitches that remain in the cross bones.
    

    Front of hoop view

    

    Back of hoop view

12. Dissolve stabilizer remaining.
13. Hoist the jolly roger!  (But please don’t do any actual pirating.)

We spent the long holiday weekend in RI hanging out by the lake.  Julius LOVES the water, to the point where he would cry if we told him it was time to get out.   Needless to say he spent many hours bobbing around in the lake over the last few days, watching the boats go by.  He calls boats “row” thanks to “row, row, row your boat”, much like he calls school buses “all through the town”.  We’re not sure why, but he calls airplanes “ahmi”, so if anyone can figure that one out we’d be indebted to you.

For mother’s day Will created a solo DnD adventure for me, so for Will’s birthday I made him a dungeon master screen.  I saw online a really cute one that someone made on Etsy that looked like a medieval door, so I did something similar.  I used wood from the drawers I had left over from my kitchen bookcase project.  All the silly ironwork accoutrements I had to get online and were a bit pricey.  The screens I liked sell on Etsy for $200+ and I understand why.  The materials alone cost me $60.  If you go with cheaper faux-ironwork elements, it would be way less expensive (those were 5/6ths of the price).  Will is probably going to balk at that price, so I just want to say that it was way less than half the cost of my favorite screen AND I recycled those old drawers that have been sitting in our basement – that should count for something!

DIY Dungeon Master Screen

What You’ll Need:

• 2 drawer faces (Mine were 7.5″x27″.  You could also use similarly sized boards.)
• 2 – .25″x1.5″x4′ board (common size .25″x2″x4′)
• 4 – 6″ dummy strap hinges with screws
• 4 – 3/4″ hinges with screws
• 8 8mm magnets
• 8mm dowel
• 18-20 small clavos nails (I used these)
• Closure of your choice (I used a hasp and lock set, but you could also use a simple latch)
• Wood glue
• Wood stain

1. Remove hardware from drawer faces and sand so stain looks as desired.  (I left it a sort of rustic color.)
2. Cut each drawer face in half to form 4 total 7.5″x13.5″ pieces.
3. Sand cut edges of drawer face.
4. Using a thin strip of scrap wood to mend the seam, wood glue two of the drawer faces together.  Clamp and let dry as instructed on glue.
5. Cut .25″x1.5″ boards into 4 strips 7.5″ long, and 2 strips 15″ long.
6. Sand the faces of the boards, edges and corners.
7. Stain boards as desired.
8. After the glue has dried completely in step 4, apply glue to the bottom of each of the strips of wood you sanded, and apply strips of wood along the top and bottom of each of the (now) three pieces of the screen.  Clamp and let dry as instructed on glue.
9. Attach dummy straps to the center of each board, between the wood strips.  I used 3/4″ screws for this.  Make sure to match up dummy straps between panels using the bottom of the boards to align. 
10. Hammer clavos nails into wood strips (when dry) at 2.5″ intervals.
11. To attach magnets for DM notes/rules sheets I used the holes from the drawer hardware to attach my magnets.  Simply drill partway into the hole with a bit the size of your magnet.  Insert magnet in the hole, followed by wood glue and a slice of dowel the same size as your hole.  Let dry, then sand down until smooth.
12. To create a groove for initiative/combat order cards, use a dremel fitted with a fiberglass cut off wheel and drill a 1/4″ deep groove in the top of each board.
13. Attach hinges to the sides of the drawers at the top and bottom, so the two smaller panels will fold flat onto the large panel.  I used an awl to provide a guide hole for me to hand drill the tiny screws.
14. With hinges and screen completely closed, mark the location for your hasp/lock mechanism.  Attach using 3/4″ screws.
15. Roll for initiative!

I’ve been teaching Julius about all sorts of important things like why we eat our vegetables, why we are nice to everyone and how to be a dinosaur.  He is a rather good dinosaur, especially when presented with the task of eating his broccoli.  He’ll roar with slight reservation when taking bites of “dinosaur trees” after hearing words of encouragement that he’ll only become a strong dinosaur from eating all of his broccoli.

He used the word “no” for the first time earlier this week.  Of course he didn’t just say “no”, he squeezed his eyes down to slits and shook his finger at me, like some adorable grumpy librarian admonishing someone interrupting the peace  (or I guess his best impression of me when I’m being stern).  I laughed when he did it, which apparently was the reaction he was going for because he smiled one of his great big grins.

He’s also started mimicking how I react to questions.  It’s totally bizarre.  Yesterday I was playing a game with him and trying to teach him colors by taking a set of his bath toys (water bugs) that look identical except for their different colors.  I’d hide two behind my back, then reveal them and ask him to find the blue one.  The first time I did it (and everytime afterwards) he’d  say “um” then stare intently at the bugs for a good two seconds as if pondering a particularly difficult question.  Then very suddenly and matter of fact he would exclaim “that one” and point (90% of the time to the non-blue bug, but hey).  We played the game about 40 times because I couldn’t get enough of his reaction.

Speaking of color sorting, Will and I played games with someone at The Gathering who had neat foldable bit bowls.  They were color coordinated to hold lots of tiny blocks or meeples and were collapsible to take up less space.  I thought these were pretty neat but decided to make them from some neat patterned scrap fabric instead of silicone.  They are very quick to make and came out very cute.  I made Will a set of four in the primary colors.

Bit bowls! 18 normal sized meeples in the top right bowl for size!

Bit Bowls

What you’ll need:

• 13”x7” piece of cotton
• 6”x6” piece of lightweight fusible interfacing
• 4 sets of size 15 snaps
• Template here

1. Cut square of interfacing using the template above.
2. Fuse interfacing to the wrong side of the 13”x7” strip, leaving a ½” border on 3 sides.
3. Fold strip widthwise, right sides in, so edge of interfacing abuts the fold. Pin.
4. Stitch around the edge of the interfacing, leaving a 3” gap on one side.
5. Clip curves.
6. Turn right side out, and press.
7. Stitch around perimeter of the square, close to the edge.
8. Mark position of snaps using the pattern provided.  Following snap instructions place a male and female snap in each corner so the snap connector is on the portion of the material that has been fused with the interfacing.  (This will just prevent the fabric inside from looking floppy when you fold it into a bowl.)
9. To use, simply snap each corner together and fill with bits and meeples!
   

   The bit bowls fold flat for easy storage!

   

   A stack of bit bowls!

Well this was a stressful weekend!  Will and I went back to Cornell for our 10 year reunion and spent 5 days in upstate New York with Mister Julius.  The poor guy didn’t get a proper nap for 5 days (it was too hot in the dorm room) and he was getting a bit crazy by the end.  Poor little man.  It was a good lesson that naps make everything better!  He is 9000x easier when we keep him on a regular sleeping/napping schedule!  (Something to consider working on if your child is a terror and doesn’t nap?  Maybe!  I really don’t know!)  I just hope he sleeps properly tonight.

Even before the nap weekend incident Julius has been doing some frustrating things.  Instead of shaking his head vigorously ‘no’ when we ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do, he now shrieks.  It is an ear piecing scream (like a velociraptor) that is enough to make anyone deaf.  We are doing our best to ignore it and show him no reaction, but it is difficult…

Something we aren’t ignoring is his vocabulary!  He’s starting to learn more words!  On top of mama, dada, all done, more, duck, cat, dog plus every animal sound you’ve ever heard (and some others) he’s added car and tree to the list this past weekend.  He no longer says “sit sit bye bye” but now “sit” and “car”.

The project I’m going to show you today is how I revamped an old basket that we use outdoors to hold Dany’s squeaky tennis balls.  The basket has a metal frame and some type of woven material that seemed fairly waterproof.  After a dozen seasons of sun, rain and snow it finally kicked the bucket and the material started disintegrating off the metal frame.  In the interest of saving something from the landfill, I kept the metal frame.  After getting up the motivation I finally finished the project on Easter (it took me several hours to complete) just in time for the Easter bunny!  (The Easter bunny filled Julius’ Easter eggs with stickers and Yogis – the yogurt snacks, not the people!)

The basket on the right is woven from Hannaford’s grocery bags!

Revamped Wire Basket

What you’ll need:

• A wire basket frame, you could make one yourself out of coat hangers, or get one from the dollar store.
• plastic bags (mine were brown hannaford bags, and I needed 20 for my 6x10x5 basket)

1. Lay a bag out flat on a table then cut bag in half down the middle from top to bottom so you have two symmetrical halves.
2. Slit down the side seams of each half of the bag to form two loops.
3. Cut the top along each loop to form two long strips.
4. Tie strips together at one end.
5. Just tie more strips on when you are running low; I found it was unmanageable to work with more than a couple strips tied together at a time.
6. Starting at the base, weave in and out of the basket bottom, twisting the plastic bag strip slightly as you go.  When you reach an end of the basket, loop over and return the other way.
7. When the base is complete, bring your plastic bag strip up the side of the basket slightly and start weaving the walls of the basket.  Push down each full row so plastic bag rows fit tightly together.  They will compress quite a bit.
8. When you reach the top of the basket, start loops along the top rail to cover it, do NOT twist the plastic bag strip so that the plastic bag overlaps on itself and covers any gaps.
9. When you reach the end, tie off and trim the excess plastic bag.