Cut and Paste

Henry and I are in love with doing cut and paste together this past week.  It started with me suggesting we make some Halloween decorations and to my surprise he said yes.  And then to my further surprise he sat with me for over and hour as we made the decorations and he kept wanting to make more.  The picture above shows him posing with the decorations we made that day.

What's working well right now is he tells me what he wants to make and what colour it should be and I cut the pieces and put the glue on and he sticks it together.  He loves the eyes, nose, and mouth stickers that we have, we have been doing people a lot.  I think it's exciting for him that for the first time he's making art that actually looks a little like what he wants it to look like.  

Uncle Steve, Aunt Eliza, and Wilson the dog

Baby Bridget, Henry, Daddy, and Mommy

Henry

 Mommy, Daddy, Henry, and Bridget

the sun

Spiderman 

Play Tent

I made Henry this play tent yesterday.  He calls it his fort.  It was a thrift store play tent with a smelly vinyl cover so I just made a new cover for it.  I set it up at night so he saw it for the first time when he woke up this morning.  He was pretty excited.  But he soon remembered that he only likes cars and he wasn't too interested in it for the rest of the day.  Actually we played peekaboo with it a few times by his request.  But he was not taking blankets and books in there and hanging out.  

The cover doesn't fit super well, it's a bit tight.  That kind of bugs me and part of me wants to redo the whole thing.  But really I don't want to do that especially since it is likely going to spend most of its time folded up in a closet for now.  

Advent Calendar

I finished up my advent calendar that I planned and bought the materials for just after last Christmas, now I'm ready for December 1 to roll around.  It is a series of 24 little pockets joined together with some double fold bias tape.  I bought a Christmas-y charm pack so I didn't even have to cut the squares.  It was still quite a bit of sewing though.  And the numbers are just stickers.  I couldn't think of any more durable way to do the numbers that wouldn't take all year to do.  So we'll see how durable they end up being.

I will definitely be putting a chocolate for Henry into the pockets (must remember to fill only one pocket at a time so there is no temptation for a little boy to eat all 24 at once).  And I want to put a little slip of paper with a Christmas activity on it.  Even though Henry can't read the paper I think it will be nice to tell him in the morning what we'll be doing.  Christmas is going to be so fun this year!

Carrots

How could I not record the size of these carrots that I dug up from the garden earlier this week!?

Kids Clothes Week Challenge

I had a pretty successful kids clothes week challenge this past week if I may say so myself.  The challenge is just to sew kids clothes for an hour a day for a week just to see what you can come up with in that time.  I didn't quite do it every day but I did my seven hours.  And I did a lot of prep work including cutting fabric the week before which just makes the sewing fly by and the whole thing more fun of course.  

First I made the super simple corduroy pants seen on Henry above and below.  Henry and I both like them except I see now it was a mistake to put those patch pockets on the front because it makes it look like he's wearing his pants backwards - oops.  I was just trying to add some detail for interest - they are the super simple elastic waist pants I always make by tracing existing pants.  

 I also made a couple pairs of Anna Maria Horner's quick change trousers from Handmade Beginnings. For Henry's, I used some wool pants for material lining them in plaid flannel so they should keep Henry nice and warm this winter.  And I did the back yoke with some back pockets from some other grey wool pants which I think looks really cool.

And here are Bridget's quick change trousers.  I love the fabrics I picked out for hers - that tweedy pink is so perfect for winter pants.  And I had a very small amount of that floral fabric so it felt good to use up the very last of it for the back yoke.  Don't you love that picture of Henry helping her stand to show off the contrasting back yoke?  Bridget is also wearing the T-shirt I made her when I was pregnant, blogged here.  

And lastly I made some little warm shoes for Bridget.  My skinny-footed babies always need shoes to keep their socks on.  I used a felted wool sweater for the outer and cotton flannel for the lining so they'll keep her warm this winter.  These are also from Handmade Beginnings and I also made a pair for Henry back in the day which got lots of use.  

Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving

We did just about all of our Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving activities this past weekend:

• dressed Henry up in his Mommy-made lederhosen and went to the Opening Ceremonies so the public could see how cute he is in them
• saw both sides of the family
• made pretzels for Oktoberfest and pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving

We still might try to squeeze in making some Oktoberfest beer nuts this coming weekend.  And then we will move onto Halloween activities - October is quite the busy month.

Apple Pie

I made my first apple pie on Sunday.  It was fun to get out the apple machine and show it to Henry.  And then when I started cutting the apples into smaller pieces he went to the play kitchen to get his pretend knife and cut some apples too.  And he was narrating all this of course which made it even cuter.  It was a fun activity and we ended up with some very tasty pie.

 

 

Shelves in the Greenhouse

We finally got around to finishing up the greenhouse.  The biggest part of that was building some shelves.  I kind of wanted to just buy something but couldn't find anything that would maximise the space.  And I'm glad I built them - they were only marginally more complicated than assembling whatever we bought and they look pretty great in there I think.  We just used 2x4s so they are sturdy and cheap.  And I finally got around to weather proofing the whole thing as best I could - spray foam and silicone in the gaps and weather stripping around the door.  It is still not completely sealed but I can tell I made a big difference.  

Now I still need to really 'figure out' the best way to use the greenhouse.  The stuff I planted in there did ok but not super, I am hoping I just need bigger containers.  Right now I am trying some lettuce and spinach in there, we'll have to see if it stays warm in there long enough for them to grow.  

She Sits

It's official.  Bridget is 4 1/2 months old and she's sitting.  She still needs a little help getting balanced sometimes and she often falls after a couple minuets but she is definitely sitting.  Opens up a whole new world of pictures to be taken.  We are currently working on getting the perfect 'siblings in fall' picture.