CPSC Grants One Year Stay

www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09115.html

This is good news, for the next year at least.

Crayon Hearts

Audrey and I tried out making heart shaped crayons this afternoon and we were pretty happy with the results. The entire thing was pretty simple to do and I have consulted to many other blogs to site just one for the idea, so I wont.


WHAT WE DID:

1. Peel crayon paper from crayons. It took us a couple of hours because Audrey took her time peeling off the paper from the crayons. Granted, she is only 2 so I guess I can cut her a break.

2. Cut up the crayons and put them in the cookie mold








3. Bake for 20 minutes at 200 degrees
4. Let cool
5. Color

Instructables

I am totally in love with THIS site right now.

Best Costume Award

DSC_0043.JPG
Originally uploaded by conaclark

Trick-or-Treat was awesome this year. As you can see, the monkey was a pile of leaves. Not to brag or anything, but she was a TOTALY hit. People we didn't know were taking pictures of our baby, a little freaky I know. And she totally scored when it came to the candy because people were just in love with her. She played it cool and didn't seem to care what all the fuss was about and kept her eye on the prize - Chocolate! More pictures of the PILE OF LEAVES COSTUME here.

So, now about the costume. I started thinking about what I could make the girl this year and had originally bought a pattern to make her a cute alien costume. When this didn't work out I went back to the drawing board. Wifey and I love fraggle rock and thought it would be awesome to make her Marjory the trash heap (photo to the left). However, we feared very few people would get it and think our baby was just gross. From this (and many google searches)came the idea of a pile of leaves.

MAKING THE COSTUME: I have to admit, I thought it would be a lot easier and cheaper to make than what it actually turned out to be. It was terribly hard - it was just quite time consuming. Not to mention silk leaves are not nearly as cheap as I thought they would be.

MATERIALS:

brown cotton sweat suit, needle & thread, lots of silk leaves, skull cap

HOW TO: ok, try to keep up - this can get tricky...

Thread needle and start sewing on leaves. Cover completely. The end. Seriously it's just that easy! The hard part is fining the time to do it. I would allow for 1 week to complete the costume. What's nice is you can do it for a couple hours every night while watching t.v., giving the kids a bath, or just lounging on the couch. All in all the costume cost me about $30. It's not too bad if you consider this is the same price as the cute costumes from old navy only no one else on the block will have one.

Now I have to think about hwat can top this one next year...

So, Jo-Ann fabrics had a big sale on Simplicity patterns ($.99 ea.) over the weekend for Columbus Day. I ended up bringing home 20 of them to keep me busy over the winter. This gave me a good opportunity to pick up some of the ones I wanted to try out for wifey but didn’t want to pay full price for. I bought the cutest holloween costume pattern (little aliens) and coolest fabric to make it with for the monkey, however, I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. Upon getting it home I realized it was far to involved for my skill level. Don’t get me wrong, I’m learning my way around a sewing machine pretty quickly. Still, the holloween campout is this Saturday so that combined with the amount of detail and number of steps this pattern requires has me less than thrilled to try to whip it out. The good news is the pattern goes all the way up to size 8 – so there is plenty of time. The bad news is I have no costume for my toddler...eek!

I have taken a little time away from crafting for my shop to concentrate on some gifts for friends expecting this winter and spring. In addition, I have been working on holiday gift ideas, as I intend to only give HANDMADE items this year. I have already gotten way behind - I should have started months ago if I am ever to finish on time!! Oh well, I'll do my best.

Everlasting Patterns

I must do this...as soon as I get the time, HA!

green shoes

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Originally uploaded by conaclark

No real reason to post - just wanted an excuse to throw up this photo because I thought it was a cute one of my little monkey...well, her shoes anyways!This was taken while we were scouting the vendors at the Apple Festival in Lebanon.