Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Finishing up some Fall Fun

We headed to an Orchard after our Atlanta trip.  We bought some good food, fed some goats and played on the playground.  We took the camera in hopes of some good pics of B... here's some of what we got.



Warm and candied


B ran over to the bulldozer yelling "Cat Machine! UP! UP!"



Last year I had to walk him up this ramp
holding both of his hands, and now...

If only you could hear him say llama... hilarious




Bond, James Bond.
Trying valiantly to get Ben to smile at the camera with me



Credit goes to Joe for this great pic

They gave him a little apple on the way home which he promptly ate... yay!


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Meeska, Mooska, Mickey...


MOUSE!

B needed a costume he would enjoy and want to put on so it had to be someone or something he likes right now.  That was clearly Mickey Mouse.  
Also his same aged cousin that we were going to be visiting could be Minnie! 
Grammy teaching about the value of chocolate :)


THE HOW-TO 

I made or tailored every piece of this costume and loved just about every minute of it:
- The leggings were from the Old Navy girls section, don't tell. (sewed the lace under on the bottoms of the legs to be sure it didn't show).

- The black shirt is a 3T from Target.  A size bigger to get the longer arms and torso but then I used this tutorial to make it tight.  I refer to it as his toddler underarmor :)  I used the same technique on my costume, but more on that later.

- Red shorts were made from scratch and lined with black satin to keep them from riding up on the leggings.  I used this tutorial (great website!) for the kid shorts and lining them. Then I hand sewed on white felt "buttons" on the front and a little velvet black trim as a tail.

- The ears are plastic mickey ears that I hot glued onto an old headband of mine.

- The gloves are homemade... traced B's hand, sewed around it, clipped the same allowances and turned it inside out.  Then added the black marks on the back.  I found some websites that were helpful, but I ended up winging it my own way in the end.  I found some thin white knit at Joann's and then doubled it on both the front and back of each glove.

- The yellow shoe covers I made with this tutorial.  Then I added the roll around the ankle just like the gloves.  

Just in case somebody needs an explanation (or I need to come back to these notes later :) ) The roll technique is one I'll be coming back to again I'm sure but I can't find the site I used to figure it out.  Basically you sew around the thumb and fingers but where the roll starts you leave it unsewn on the sides and long (as if it was going halfway up to his elbow.)  After you pull it inside out then you sew the sides of the long section so when you roll it up to the wrist your seam allowances are getting rolled up.  Then I hand sewed the roll so it would stay in place.




I didn't get too many pics of B to post because he's 2 and never stops moving... especially when he sees a camera!  Thanks to my dad for getting him to stay still for 2 seconds.








How can you not love this little tail!?  I think we have video of him trying to get it to wag by saying "wiggle wiggle" and shaking his hips side to side.


  
It was awesome to see so much family in our week long road trip both immediate and in-law.  We drove home feeling so blessed!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Recapping Octoberrrr

a little bit from the garden on my window sill
What a great month that seemed to fly by!

Some highlights:

- B attended his first high school sporting event at the age of 2, when we went to watch some of my former students play volleyball.  It was awesome for so many reasons.  I love my former students, and I got to see many of them. I got to watch volleyball (and I would by lying if I didn't say I teared up when varsity ran out to warm up music, dang I wish I could still play like that.)  And I got to witness B enjoying the whole event.  He kept saying "too loud" to the warm up music but liked clapping and watching so many people running around.

- Date with Joe at a nice restaurant celebrating a number of things all rolled into one night.  It was just a great night that gave us a chance to reconnect.

He travels so well... and I'm so glad!
- Road trip to Atlanta.  Both Joe and I have brothers in ATL so it makes it convenient to see both whenever we go down.  We were able to attend a baptism (of my Godson, what what!) AND surprise Joe's dad for his birthday by having his whole immediate family staying at his brothers for a few days.


Enjoying the rest stop view

Stretching at stop while travelling
 More soon, finally got my computer back up and running!