Dinosaur Party

Ashton recently turned 5 (!) and we decided to have a full-on, friends over birthday party for him. His choice of theme wasn't a big surprise, since he's been into dinos for the past few months now. I used my Cricut to make his invitations

 Since I'm too cheap to buy a specific Cricut cartridge for every project, I combined different shapes (ovals, apostrophes...) to create the dinosaur shape.




And although I imagine up beautifully fabulous birthday cakes, I severely lack the skills to execute them, so this year I kept it really simple:

Two stacked round cakes (I don't have 2 spring forms the same size...) with some dino fossils 'buried' under Oreo crumbs, and dino shaped sprinkles adorning the sides.



My sister found some t-Rex skeleton sand toys, and made a jell-o dinosaur when we were at her place, so I snagged the moulds and made another one for the party.

Ashton's shirt was specially made for the occasion (with freezer paper stencilling cut out with the Cricut - again combining shapes to make the dino) new dino slippers, and a pith helmet to complete the 'look' The guests were also each given a pith helmet when they arrived.

I created a 'dinosaur dig' activity using play sand, white glue, and dollar store dino figures.

If I were to do it again, I'd play around more with the glue to water ratio. The outside dried rock-hard, so I had to break open each brick and the kids dug around inside where the sand was softer.  They had a blast though!

Can't believe my boy is 5! He had lots of fun with his buddies!

Homemade Birthday Gifts

My sister's kids have their birthdays on the 22nd and 25th of December.  I know. Great timing. And I sort of started a tradition for myself of making their birthday gifts, since we usually buy their Christmas ones. And this year was no exception! For the big 6 (!) year old, I found this Geologist Kit idea on Pintrest. I sewed up a vest and freezer stencilled his name on the front and 'Jr. Geologist' on the back:

























To go with the vest, Ashton and I put together a rock collection box for him:

and filled it with special rocks from Scholar's Choice, as well as a magnifying glass:

He has a rock collection already which he can add to this.  If I remember correctly, the rocks are (clockwise) assorted treasure rocks, an obsidian arrowhead, a geode which he can break open, agate, peacock ore, and pyrite (fool's gold) As you can see most of these came with little slips of paper describing them.  Educational AND fun!

For the 3 year old (who is singing happy birthday around the Christmas tree and trying to blow out the lights - poor girl!) I sewed up a dress using Burda #9740 and some funky Ikea fabric.  I've been hesitant to try out any of their fabric since it seems so heavy, but once washed it's like a lightweight denim.

And since no 3-year-old gets all that excited about clothes, I whipped up a little crocheted bunny to go with it (using this pattern)

I think I have more fun coming up with and making their gifts than they have receiving them!

How to resize a tshirt (and my first go at freezer paper stencilling!)

K, so altering a tshirt may not be rocket science, but you never know.  I've had this idea for freezer paper stencilling for awhile, but since I don't have the shopping opportunities I used to it's kinda been on hold until I could pick up two red tshirts.  Plain red.  With nothing on them.  Like, no logos or anything.  Yup.  Harder than you thought isn't it?  Okay, it wasn't all that hard.  Zellers had them.  And on sale too!  At least they had Ashton's size (I got him a 6)  But try to find a plain red t or onesie in a 6m size, especially in August!  But I found a long-sleeved t which could be re sized for O (on sale too!) in a size 2.

So obviously the first thing to do is cut up the shirt.  Trace a tshirt that fits along the arm and side seam, remembering to add seam allowance (!)  If the neck of the new shirt isn't too much bigger, leave as is. (in my case it was fine.  If you do have to alter it...um...google it?) Cut along lines.  Trace the sleeves of the old shirt along the arm seam onto the sleeves of the new shirt.  In this case the hem of the sleeves were about the same size, so I definitely took advantage of that.

So you should end up with something like this:

I used a serger for this project (hence the white thread.  Too lazy to change it) but you could easily use a regular machine and zig zag the edges afterwards.  Open up your shirt, and sew the arm seams, but not the seam under the arm for now.  You might have to tweak the curve of the arm a bit, but this is knit, and knit is forgiving.  A little stretch, a little push, and a final steam with the iron and no one is the wiser, right?  Okay, yes.  I admit it.  I cheat a lot with sewing, but is anyone actually going to stop your kids and examine their clothes reeeally closely?  I should hope not.  Moving on.  Where were we?  I think here:

Now sew the underarm seam continuing to the side seam.  Ta Da.  For those of you still trying to 'set' your sleeves after sewing the side seams, STOP.  I serged the bottom of the shirt as well so I wouldn't have to roll the hem 'cause I'm lazy like that.

A quick switch to the regular machine for the hem (yes, I switched the thread) and DONE.

Okay, not quite done.  I still had to press it. (when ironing knits don't drag the iron across, just hold in place and steam. Not for too long obviously.  When you start seeing smoke, that's a sign you've pressed a little too long...) But I had good reason not to press this right away, since I was using this shirt for my first (bum ba da bum!)

FREEZER PAPER STENCIL

Yay! Lots of tutorials for that floating around blog land for these, so I won't give you a step by step for that, but I will show you the finished product.  Ahem, drum roll:

(see how pretty the hem is now?) I'm so proud of myself for pulling this off with the first try!  And Ashton looves them! (Olivia just wanted to eat it, go figure)  They weren't really in a posing mood, but I did get this shot of them:

Anyways, hope this was marginally helpful to somebody...

my crafty side is already filling up with more freezer paper stencil ideas...it's so easy and fun!