Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, everyone! We actually have all our celebrating in already, since our town does a downtown trick-or-treating on the Wednesday before and neighborhood trick-or-treating on Thursday. We took full advantage though, going out both nights and enjoying watching Colter soak it all up.

Let's back up to Tuesday though, which was a beautiful day. Keith managed to get home a bit early, so the pumpkin carving was able to happen outside. Three cheers for pumpkin gunk staying outside! I am not a fan of getting my hands down in that goo, and Colter wasn't so much either, but he did want to help with the carving.

Meanwhile, Elliott had no qualms about slimy stuff on his hands.

Ok, maybe a little unsure.

Hmmm...what is this stuff?

 I wonder how it tastes?

 Let's take some nice photos out front with the pumpkins! Right...

On Wednesday, we suited up to head up Main Street. 

Let's try those pictures out front again!

Colter wanted to be a hermit crab, so a hermit crab he was.

He managed really well all night with his bulky shell, which ended up a bit heavier than I anticipated.

Elliott was an avocado because, well, because Colter said he should be an avocado. Green head to toe, with a hat I knitted for him and a produce label made with an iron-on transfer.

 Colter was so excited to wear his costume, and I'll admit I was pretty excited about how it turned out.

As for making it, I was a little stumped at first. You know you have a challenge ahead of you when a Pinterest search only has about three results. I texted a bit with my fantastically creative friend, and landed on a long tube of fabric, stuffed and spiraled into a shell. I sewed it onto a thrift store backpack, and then sewed and stuffed legs and attached them to the straps.

His claws were made out of the same fabric as the legs, and attached to a long piece of yarn that went through the sleeves of his shirt like mittens for little kids so he wouldn't lose them. I also put a piece of elastic on the underside of each claw so it could stay around his wrist without flopping around. His eyeballs were one of those silly headbands for parties with springs and two balls on the top; I just painted the balls white and added some goggly eyes. By raiding my mom's fabric bins, pulling apart some old pillows for stuffing, and checking the thrift store, the only new thing I bought was the headband (and it was on clearance at Target). Even Elliott's costume was all things my mom or I had on hand. My little eco-crab and eco-avocado!

I do find it funny that for three of his four Halloweens, he's gone as a shelled creature: a turtle, a lobster, and now a hermit crab. Perhaps a manifestation of his introvert ways?

Keith's parents were able to join us on Thursday night to see the boys dressed up, share some snacks, and bring the boys lots of goodies and some Halloween books. What a treat for all of us!

I think we'll be swapping the usual afternoon cartoon for some Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin today, just to make sure we do something Halloween-ish on Halloween (besides eating candy!) Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween, with just the right amount of spooky and sweet!

Busy Needles

I like to follow a pattern. I like to do what it says and have the desired results. So adapting a pattern is something I rarely do. But there's this baby hat that I like to make, and a friend asked for one for her baby and one for her toddler as well. So obviously the one for the toddler needed to be bigger.

The first round of adapting and it was way too big. Way too big even for my head. I was farther in than you might expect because it was squished on my needles and tough to determine how big it really was. So, I pulled it apart and started over. I knew I needed to be somewhere between the baby hat and my first attempt, probably closer to the baby end of the spectrum. And this time, I decided to write down what I did, in case I ever want to make another. Since I've done all the figuring, why not share it?

Toddler Hat (that's it on the right)
adapted from Artful Yarns' Candy One Skein Baby Hat

Work on size 7 double points or small circular needle.

Cast on 98 stitches, divide over three needles if working on dp. Join in the round.
Work in St st. until piece measures 4 1/2".
Dec row 1: {K5 sts, k2tog] 14 times - 84 sts. Work 9 rows even.
Dec row 2: [K4 sts, k2tog] 14 times - 70 sts. Work 6 rows even.
Dec row 3: [K3 sts, k2tog] 14 times - 56 sts. Work 3 rows even.
Dec row 4: [K2 sts, k2tog] 14 times - 42 sts. Work 1 row even.
Dec row 5: [K1 st, k2tog] 14 times - 28 sts. Work 1 row even.
Dec row 6: [K2tog] across - 14 sts. Work 1 row even.
Dec row 7: [K1 st, k2tog], with 10 sts. remaining.
Work even for 3 1/2", cast off.
Tie knot at top of hat.

I hope I made all my notes right and my math works out because I just wrote it down as I went but haven't worked it again from my own pattern. Does somebody else want to do it and let me know if it doesn't work?

For the Birds

Sometimes I have ideas for projects that I think Colter will be really into working on with me. I get very excited, and pull out everything we need to create something, only to get a lukewarm reaction from the little man. Pinecone bird feeders were something I thought he would love, but his attention span was pretty short. And, in typical two-year-old fashion, he had no interest in following my instructions and insisted on doing it his way.

It's a pretty simple process to make these little bird feeders. First, tie a piece of string or yarn to the pinecone with a loop for hanging. Then spread with peanut butter, and simply roll in peanut butter.

Colter insisted on grabbing handfuls of birdseed and dumping them over the pinecones, which was less effective but possibly more fun.

Also, we had to have a little chat about not licking the peanut butter of his fingers after it was on the pinecones and in the birdseed.

At any rate, they made a nice little hands-on gift for his great-grammy's birthday and I'm told the birds loved them.

Pillow Project

Last week I had a blissful afternoon when both boys napped at the same time. It doesn't happen often, and I decided to take full advantage of it, diving into a project I've been thinking about for months. While we were in Maine over the summer, I bought a t-shirt with a neat print on the front that I wanted to make into a pillow for Colter. I picked up a pillow form at a craft store at one point, and some fabric for the back somewhere along the way. Then I shoved it all in a box and didn't do a thing with it. Until that afternoon last week.

An afternoon with both boys napping is a good time for a project because I can actually pull out my sewing machine and ironing board, but it is not a time for futzing around with the details, nor apparently for taking pictures along the way. It is evidently a time for winging it, a time for mental math of questionable accuracy, and a mad dash for the finish line before anyone (myself included) starts crying.

So here's the pillow:

The process went something like this:

• I ironed some fusible interfacing to the t-shirt to make it a bit stiffer and less stretchy, then I cut it to size.
• I cut two strips of my fabric and sewed them on either side. This is where my dubious math comes in; I should have made them wider because the fit is a little tight end-to-end and the borders ended up not being even all the way around.
• Then I sewed a piece across the bottom to fold up over the back, and hemmed the edge. I did the same thing at the top.
• After figuring out how much overlap they needed, I pinned them in place, right sides facing, and sewed up the sides, making a kind of "envelope" for the pillow to fit in.

There you have it. The least-helpful guide to making a pillow case ever.

I considered taking a bit of the stuffing out so it isn't so tight, but Colter plays hard with his pillows so he'll probably beat the fluff out of it.

Light My Fire

In talking with Keith's parents late in the fall, they mentioned that they were enjoying using their fireplace on chilly evenings. While kicking around ideas for their Christmas gift, we settled on a bucket of items to enjoy a fire on winter evenings: a new lighter, a chimney-cleaning log, some snacks and hot cider K-cups, and pinecone fire starters. Keith was pretty excited about making the fire starters, and gathered pinecones from a nearby tree almost immediately. Then all we needed was some wax and a free afternoon.

We followed these directions and were thrilled with how they came out.

You will need pinecones, string or yarn, wax (we used beeswax but paraffin is even more flammable), and crayons if you want to add some color, and we used an old metal coffee can as a double boiler.

Keith chopped the wax up for quicker melting...

...while I tied yarn around each pinecone for dipping and lighting.

I would suggest adding your wax a little at a time or you get a big glob that takes awhile to melt. We'll know for next time...

We had an old pot around that we used for this so we didn't have to worry about dripping wax on it.

A paint stirrer came in handy to use in the melting wax.

Let the dipping begin! We dipped each pinecone a couple times, lifting it out and letting it harden a bit between dips, before setting it in a pan lined with waxed paper.

 

After we did the first round of dipping about 30 pinecones, we went back and re-dipped them. We dipped them each a few additional times, but this time around, we hooked up a little fan to harden them even more between dips. This helped us to get a really good coat on each pinecone.

Before gifting them, we trimmed down the strings to about a little better than an inch to use as a wick. We weren't sure how many we would need to fill out the bucket for Keith's parents, but we ended up have enough leftover to share with our next-door neighbors and some friends. I hope they are actually coming in handy for starting fires, or at least giving off the lovely scent of warm beeswax!

Oh, and a certain someone enjoyed the pinecones and yarn when he got up from his nap...

He told me he was building bridges. I don't see it, but I'm just glad his imagination is going full throttle!

"Bean" Busy

I know things were pretty quiet here on the blog before Christmas, and part of the reason was that a few of the things we were busy at were Christmas gifts. One of those projects was a big batch of homemade vanilla that we made, bottled, labeled and gave to lots of family and friends.

It was actually a pretty simple process, but it does require thinking ahead because it has to sit and brew for at least a month. Basically, you combine vanilla beans, chopped into approximately 1" pieces, and vodka, and shake daily for at least a month. Ours sat for closer to two months, and the longer it sits, the stronger the flavor becomes.

Then I just set up a little straining system, placing a coffee filter inside a strainer to get out as many little particles as possible.

After it was strained, I used a tiny funnel to fill two dozen 4 ounce bottles.

The fun part for me was making a punny little label.

There are lots of instructions for making vanilla available online, and the vendor I ordered the beans from through Amazon even sent some as well. If you are making your own, I would recommend ordering the beans from Amazon as the prices are a lot better than what you would pay at the grocery store. It was a fun project for us and we even have a little leftover for our own baking.