kirstencan

Costumes - 2011!

First up: Did you guess Ash Ketchum?  From Pokemon.

He REALLY wanted to be Ash this year - talked about it all year in fact. 

I REALLY wanted him to be a pirate or knight or something not so... cartoon-y.  But that's what's kind of magic about Halloween.  Making dreams come true through craftiness.  And my mom never said 'no' to our costume ideas, no matter how weird they were.

Anyway it was pretty easy.  All I had to make was the jacket and paint the hat.  Not too bad.

Oh, and the backpack.  Inside are his pokemon cards.

For the jacket I thrifted a white polo shirt (a couple sizes big for him), and cut off the sleeves and collar.  I used the rest of the shirt as a vague pattern and cut out the fronts and back from blue fleece and then attached the sleeves and collar to it.  Nearly miraculously, it worked just how I thought it would and I had no problem setting in the sleeves!  Wahoo!

I really thought that was a pretty good idea.

Also we I ended up hot-gluing the gym badges to a small piece of fleece and tacking that inside the jacket.  Because apparently, Ash keeps his badges there (the first season, anyway - later seasons he has a badge box?  So they tell me).

The hat was found at the craft store, and I painted it with fabric paint.  Easy.

He is so stoked about his costume.

Thomas really wanted to be a knight.  He plays with playmobil knights a lot, so that's probably why.  My mom had made dressup tunics and such for them a few years ago, and if you add in some sweats - well, there you go, really.

But I felt bad making so many things for the other kids' costumes and none for his, so I got some shiny (slightly chain-mail looking) fabric to make a quick tunic, crown, and armbands for him.  Just to snazz it up a little.

Wonky bootcovers are from last year.  Stupid things.  Never again.

He's very happy with his costume, as easy as it was, and is already planning next year's.  He says 'Train Engineer', but I'm trying to talk all three into being the Three Amigos (If the village of Santa Poco can make those costumes, so can I).  So far they've said maybe, but Monkey says he will NOT sing the Buttercup song.  Darn it.

And then there's the girl.  A faerie.  She didn't care what kind of faerie, just wanted to be one.  Put artistic control totally in my hands (Mwaa ha ha!).

We started with a yard sale dress, cut it up, and hot-glued some dollar-store autumny flowers to it (neckline and hem).  Then we made a tutu-ish skirt for under and a leaf garland (with bits of tulle) for around her shoulder.  Flowers and leaves attached to elastic is the headdress.

But the real story is the wings, I think.

I was SO excited when these turned out!  I saw the idea online, but didn't follow directions exactly as they did.  Basically it's craft wire sandwiched between two layers of cellophane, ironed and trimmed.

For hair we went with the bedhead look + random yarn braided in...

We did big fall makeup and 'facepaint', but it's hard to get a photo of that...

Oh, and if you're curious about the cost breakdown (click to see larger):

Now what are your kids being for Halloween?  I'd love to see!

"Fall Tree"

Last week a neighbor stopped in for a minute.  She hadn't been inside the house for a while and said "Cute tree and owls!"  about the paper decorations up over the school cubbies.  She thought they were new.

Ahem.  Let's  take a look back, shall we?

Yeah, the Monkey's Totoro birthday decorations?  Still up!  Well, the tree and little totoros are anyway.

So, I kinda was like... ooohh... not owls, and not a cool fall decoration.  Just procrastination!

I realized later what I should have said was:  Thanks!

Because she wouldn't have known, would she?

Putting up those decorations (in April!) was a great excuse to take down the quilt that's been up on that wall since we moved in.  I'm tired of it.  It's pretty, and I hand-quilted it, but I want something new.  And I kept thinking that I'd paint that wall first, so I haven't bothered hanging anything else up yet. 

Also, whenever I'd think of taking it down, Monkey was around so I'd say to myself that I'd take it down that night when he was in bed.  And then I'd forget.

Anyway, it was time (5 and a half months ago...) to at least change it.  Since it's a festive week, what with Halloween and all, I kinda turned it into a fall tree.  The kind that magically grows several different shaped leaves - heh.

With one lone owl Totoro sitting on a branch.

And it was a great place to hang some fall art projects!

Last week we talked about warm/cool colors.  I luckily had a handy poster from college that we used. (Weirdly, while I know I made this poster, I have no recollection of when or why I made it.  It's just vaguely familiar.  And handy.)

And the kids went hunting for warm and cool-colored items. 

Then we looked at leaf shapes, drew leaves, outlined in black crayon (or white for Monkey because he likes to do the opposite of what I suggest) and painted them with warm colors.  The background was only cool colors (I know purple is questionable - we went with it).

I love Thomas' contours!  I think it's pretty obvious who's work is whose - can you tell?

This week we followed that up with leaf rubbings - with only warm colored crayons.

I am, however, bound and determined to get those beach photos blown up and framed BEFORE CHRISTMAS.  There.  I said it. 

Pumpkin Patch

There's something wonderful about pumpkin patches.  This one stepped it up a notch this year with free hay rides and a little corn maze.  Still very sincere.  Locally-owned and actually grew the pumpkins. 

Fun stuff all for the price of a few pumpkins.

Hooray for fun and not spooky Halloween traditions! 

Have you been yet?

p.s. My favorite part was when Thomas got sick of the corn maze and busted his own way out through a 'wall' yelling 'I'm FREEEEE!'. Ha!

Halloween Fun!

I thought I'd send you back to some of my past Halloween posts (I've been blogging for over 5 years now!) in case you need some ideas/inspiration for your kiddos this week.

Favorite books and movies

Pumpkin Pillow

Parties:

Little neighbor party

Kindergarten party (room mom)

Preschool (special needs - room mom)

 

My favorite printables

Costumes:

Star Wars

Postal Worker +

Harry Potter

Felicity, Han Solo, Link

My Halloween Flickr Set

Thomas still struggles with Halloween, but he loves his costume and is excited for the carnival next weekend.  I think we'll go trick-or-treating as early as we possibly can so it's still light out, too.  He goes back and forth between "I'm only going to 3 houses" (his friends on this street) and "I want to go to 100 houses to get 100 pieces of candy!".  We'll see what happens.  Not sure he'll make it past our corner (where the neighbors went ALL OUT on spooky decor including an inflatable 'death driving a coach' (Whaa??)).

Oh, and don't forget to have your kiddos go Ghosty Hunting (scroll to the bottom of that post) this year!  It's so easy and fun.

Costumes: It's all about the accessories

It's that time of year (my favorite crafting time, I think!) and Halloween costumes are well under way.  The girl's is done, and the boys' are close.  Here's an accessory for Monkey's costume.  I'm not going to tell you who he chose to be yet - but see if you can guess!

The backpack didn't HAVE to happen, but this kid loves his bags anyway.

It's 'our interpretation' of this character's backpack, but I think it's way fun.  I started out using a tutorial online to find out how much fabric to buy/cutting measurements, but after I cut the fabric wrong (seriously, Kirsten?!) I pretty much winged it.  Which is what Halloween is all about, Charlie Brown.

Anyway, he loves this backpack and has been carrying it around a lot. 

But I know that wasn't enough to guess on (if you did, 75 points and a gold star for you!) so here's another hint.  Which is also a totally unnecessary accessory but really fun and we already had the shrinky dink film.

I traced, he colored.

I forget how TINY they shrink up!

This made his day, let me tell you.  And we're well on our way to beating the costume accessory record we set last year (Man, I loved those costumes!).

Any guesses?  And if you follow my pinterest costume board, you probably already know.

Ready Set Go

Seriously, how is it only Tuesday???

What are we going to do about that?

 

*sigh*

In other news, here's something that's been working for us lately.  We seem to have trouble getting going in the mornings.  I made a checklist on these little dry erase boards (from the back of Kumon books) and the boys check them off as they go.  I used sharpie and the boys use dry erase markers. Morning jobs are dry erase so I can change them.  I just leave these in their first box.

If I said 'clean the playroom' the boys would freak out, so I assign them specific playroom jobs, like 'bionicles and beyblades'.  Other jobs I assign them:

*clear playroom rug

*clear living room rug

*vaccuum living room rug

*take out compost

*wipe table

*shoe patrol (make sure all the shoes are in the shoe basket or cubbies)

*dust piano

*bring down laundry & sort it

*unload silverware from dishwasher

*fold napkins (or washcloths)

*vacuum stairs

*clean out anything under couches

Anyway, it's working pretty well, much better than me telling them all of these things they need to do before school.  However I do end up saying 'How's your list coming?' or 'Work on your Ready Set Go list!' often enough.

What jobs do your kids do?  I'm looking for more jobs to assign the boys!

Oh, and Also working for us?  Blasting Beastie Boys REALLY loud to wake up the girl.  Ramones work, too.  The boys think this is way funny, the girl... not so much.  But as much as I love letting her get the sleep she needs... c'mon, it's after 10:00 already!

Breaking News

Get this:  The girl successfully put her hair up in a bun by herself today!

This is huge.

Today, at a little after 5:00, I called upstairs like I do most days "Are you ready for me to do your hair?"  And she came downstairs to show off her bun she'd DONE HERSELF.

Do you know what this means?!!  Do you have any idea how many times I've put her hair in a bun?  And her hair is hard.  She's not so good at fixing it herself yet.  Thick hair, and tons of it, with long layers.  Bobby pins DO NOT work in her hair (spin pins + tiny claw clips do). 

No, seriously, she has a lot of hair.  Let me show you.  How many hot curlers does it take to put in your daughter's hair when it's already in a ponytail?  Cuz my daughter's takes 1, 2, 3... all of them.

She needs a bun for dance, so I've done her hair once a week for... 5 years?  And then twice a week for 2 years, and three times a week for a year and a half.  Plus performances.  LOTS of bun experience over here folks.

And now she can do it herself!  I've been waiting for this day...

She was really cute and proud of herself when she saw my reaction (I may or may not have been doing the Happy Mom Dance).  And then I had to document the occasion:

Hooray!  It's not perfect, but it's not a perfomance.  I'll still take over on those days.  At least for a while.

Now if only it doesn't take... 8 years for her to be able to put on those fake eyelashes by herself she's supposed to be getting... that'll be good.

Not Just Pinning Stuff

Facebook, Twitter, I don't get you or like you.  But Pinterest...

Oh, Pinterest, you are wonderful.  And invented just for me, I'm pretty sure.  Visual bookmarks that you can categorize - yes!  But all those pretty pins of things I want to make all together can be pretty overwhelming.  I've heard of people making a point to actually DO some of the things they pin, not just look at them (but they're so pretty!), so I'll show you what I did last week that I originally had pinned.

First up:  A rainy day art project.  I took the kids outside (on a clear day earlier that week) and took photos of them holding umbrellas.  Then I printed them just on regular paper, trimmed them up, and waited for a rainy day.

BTW, my kids look like they have hobbit feet because they were standing barefoot in the grass.

We glued the picture down on watercolor paper and I showed them how to drip watercolor paint (liquid was recommended, but we used what we had) onto the paper...

... and then blow the paint around with straws.

Fun stuff, and they all turned out really differently!  I kinda love these.

Last week I also made a pipe-cleaner bottle (using a lid-lifter magnet - it would work better with a strong one, but the kids think this is fun), and a calming glitter jar.

And then yesterday I made DIY Surf Spray for the girl's hair (which always looks awesome and curls beautifully at the beach.

Oh yeah, and a while back I did this, which is surprisingly awesome.

You can find me on Pinterest here.  Often. ;)

(Are you pinning?  Anyone still need an invite?)

Nature Sketching

In the mood for a project, and inspired by Jessica, we all tromped into the garden last week (good thing not THIS week!  Nothing but wet, cold, and gloom over here) and I had the kids each pick 3 things.  Seeds, leaves, fruit, etc.

Then we came in to sketch.  I didn't know how this would go, as I'd just read a book about teaching art and saying that kids aren't able to really draw from observation until... a certain age (I have notes somewhere).  But we tried, and it was fun.

Can I say how SHOCKED I was at Thomas' drawing?  He surprised me again, and his observations were excellent (yellow in the red flower, yellow veins in the leaf).  Yay!

It's fun to find projects that all the kids can do together, on their own levels.  We tried again the next week with shells from our beach trip.  Next we'll have to find some autumn leaves!

Shirts for Legoland

Man, why does it take me so long to post these days?  I guess the past couple of weeks have been swamped, and this weekend I spent (listening to General Conference and) printing, high-lighting, color-coding, and seating-chart(ing?) in preparation for the Primary Program at church.  ANYWAY.

So I won't go TOO into our family vacation - it's much like last year, and I documented that one pretty well. But I thought it would be fun to make the boys minifig shirts (similar to the Lego birthday shirt) for our day at Legoland. 

The girl wanted one, too!  Surprise!  She is SUPER into Lego right now, though, so it's not really one. 

Once again, I just sketched the design (not perfect) and used a freezer paper stencil to make these.  EXCEPT, this time was my first using actual fabric paint (metallic for the boys) and I have to say it kicks acrylic paint's butt.  Seriously, Kirsten, it's taken you like 5 years to try 'real' fabric paint?  That was dumb.  I've always used acrylic because I have a lot of it.  But I now recommend using fabric paint.  Much smoother and turned out softer and nicer.

ANYWAY...  Here's a closeup (inadvertantly cropped, too) of the boys.  Do you ever just start pointing your point-and-shoot randomly around at places like this?  Apparently, I do.

They totally got compliments on their shirts, too - so that was cool.

SOMEONE could have stayed all day in the new Star Wars section of Miniland. Seriously, I'm pretty sure he'd rather have stayed there than done rides or anything else. 

I have to say, it was pretty cool.

And I took a ton of photos, which I turned into a Shutterfly photobook for his birthday (shh).  Here's a couple of fun scenes.

Funny Legoland story:  When we walked in I saw a K-12 booth.  Turns out we accidentally came on HOMESCHOOL DAY!!!  We could have gotten $20 tickets if we'd known about it ahead of time!  Bummer.