Super Duper Capes!

Big Girl J just keeps getting bigger! My first born turns 5 in a couple weeks. But she acts much older, sometimes. And much younger when she doesn't get what she wants, the part of this that drives me crazy is Little Miss O gives into her crying fits and gives her the color cup or spoon that she wanted. Those silly girls!
The birthday party is going to be held the weekend before her actual birthday. This is confusing to a 5 year old. I have had to explain to her, many times, why her party is a Saturday in March rather than the Wednesday in April, that she knows is her actual party. For a long time now, she has been very into superheros. Back in the fall, I got the idea of a superhero themed party for her, and made the mistake of telling her my idea. Since then, that is all she has talked about, there has never been another option for her party. So I did some research online for ideas and turned up very little. Some parents go overboard and spend tons of money on a young child's party, and others didn't seem to try. So to meet in the middle where I want to be, don't go broke, but put in some effort, I had to pick and choose and try things myself. The invites, and the capes were the toughest.
I will get into more details on the invites later after the party, when I blog about everything I did. Today I am talking capes. I had my Super Mom, go to a local fabric store with me and we tossed around some ideas. I left there knowing I could make one yard of fabric into three or four capes. We also decided to use light colors so the 'craft' of the party would be the kiddos decorating their own cape with fabric markers.
So the time came, I felt that I had almost all RSVP's and printed off my discount coupons and headed to the local craft store. Got the first few yards of red fabric, and attempted to get the idea of the cape out of my head and into real life. I have a friend who loaned me a sewing machine, so I got to avoid digging mine out (Thanks!)
I feel they turned out better than I thought they would. Very basic, but I was able to make four capes to one yard and that includes the tie. This makes the capes about $0.35 and hopefully the masks will be just as cheap.

Of course, the big dilemma, I only thought I had all the RSVP's in. This weekend I made roughly 25 capes thinking I would have 5 extra. As of Tuesday, I am short about 5 capes! Luckily I can make four capes in a half hour, so I am not worried about that, however, I no longer have extra capes or fabric, so I will have to print some more coupons and make a couple trips to the fabric store! But it should be fun, and I am hoping for some awesome pictures of 30 or so superheros running around my back yard. Oh, yeah, and I am hoping for good weather, since 30 superheros running around my house seems impossible, wait, that should read 'is impossible.'

Springy

We have had some crazy awesome warm weather. It has really been testing me, I know I shouldn't get out and clean the garden quite yet, but it is sooooo nice. Of course, maybe I just should, since I am 8 weeks and counting down. It might be more realistic for me to do it now, in sections, very slowly.
I did go play in the dirt yesterday though, I got the go ahead from my friend's mom (who works at a nursery) to turn over the veggie garden and get ready to plant those cold weather seeds next weekend.
Of course, I came home, changed my shoes, grabbed my hand tiller and went to work. I am out of shape or 32 weeks pregnant, because, man that really kicked my butt! However, it is done. The garden is ready.
I will be planting carrots, lettuce, onions, and broccoli next weekend. We do have a chance of snow/ rain early this week, but is should be super pretty again next weekend. This means that I need to finish making my seed tape for the carrots and lettuce. I got this idea from the crazy world of pinterest. I don't think I knew of seed tape, I am still a novas to say the least about my gardening ability.
It uses lengths of toilet paper, cut in half and separated (if two-ply.) Then use a ruler, paint brush and cornstarch or flour glue, drop a glue spot every couple inches.

 The carrots suggest a couple inches, I haven't read the lettuce yet, but obviously measure to the seed you are using. Then fold the toilet paper over on itself. I used cornstarch and it seemed to dry very quick, so after four feet, then folding, it did not stay. So I went back on top of the fold and dropped another drop of glue on the top. It seemed to hold very well. I did 4, four foot strips this way. Then I ran out of time. So I must work on this some more this week! But I have a very busy week, so I will have to plan time wisely and calculate how many I need, so as not to waste time.
Come next weekend I should be able to 'dig' a shallow ditch to lay this in, then cover. Then hopefully they will grow!
I never admitted this about my garden last year, but I had no clue what size that seed was when I went to plant. I had muddy gloves from 'working' the area I had planned to plant the lettuce and the carrots, so when I opened the packet of microscopic seeds and dumped them into my muddy glove, I instantly realized it would be impossible to separate these by two inches in rows. So I 'sprinkled' the seeds to the best of my ability over the area, and used the dirt to cover and 'help' spread them. During my harvest it was painfully obvious that they were extremely crowded. I am excited to see how this tape works. Especially since I can work on this, in the garage, out of the wind, out of the rain, or at night.

Very Unfourtunate

Do you ever have those kind of days. You know what I am talking about. The kind of day where you are ready to snap. It probably won't take much more than dropping a napkin on the floor to set you on a crazy spree.
The kind of day that starts out okay, but then you get home from taking your kids to preschool and find that the dog you have no patience for has chewed the antenna balls off the lady bugs you just made and placed in the garden. Then you realize that your entire garden has been trampled over the winter and there is absolutely no reason to worry about it this spring, since it will just just trashed. And then more things get piled on you from there and the deep buried crazy side begins to creep closer and closer to the surface.
I had my little break down that evening. I got it out, I buried my crazy side back down where it belongs. Which is good. Because if what happened to dinner the next night had happened that night, the crazy would have come out in full force. I bet you are thinking, you burned it? No. You left out an important ingredient? No, I do that a lot, in fact I do it a lot at cooking shows!
The girls had been playing outside all day. Dirty would be an understatement. Hubby wasn't coming home for dinner, he was taking some big wig guys to dinner. So I brought the girls in to bathe and started dinner at the same time. I had water beginning to boil while they played in the tub. When the water started to boil, I put in the noodles, grabbed the timer and went to the bathroom with 8 minutes to clean the girls. Success. With a minute to spare.
I opened the cans I needed for tuna noodle casserole. I mixed them in the corning ware, I added the noodles. I had even remembered to preheat the oven! So as the girls run around naked, I walk to the oven to put in dinner and....

It never made it. I broke dinner. I cleaned up, still with naked children running around, but told to stay out of the kitchen, since I broke dinner. I cleaned it up. I dressed the girls, we went to Qdoba. It is a very good thing this did not happen the day before. But, it still happened. At least I wasn't using one of my stones. It would have made it that much worse. But really, it still sucked.

Lady Bug Art

There is this new Internet craze called pinterest. If you haven't heard of it, then I might consider you lucky. It means you probably can get online, check your email and get off. I tried my best to avoid it, but I only resisted for a few months.
I signed up just after the first of the year, and have drooled over all the gardening ideas. I am ready to go play in the dirt. I like to consider it my dirt therapy. I can both gain my sanity and get the girls out of the house, and for an extra bonus, we get veggies! There are many great ideas on pinterest, both things to buy and things you can make. There are silly ideas, like how to make your laundry room awesome however you have to use your entire house and loose bedrooms to make it that great. There are ideas that make you go, well duh, how come I never thought of that!? And then there are ideas that you look and and think, when would I come across a bowling ball to do that craft with.
And then it happens. Your husband has the idea of taking the kids bowling this weekend. He gets up in the attic to pull down his bowling ball bag, and discovers his $300 ball has cracked into 3 huge pieces. I walked into the garage around the time of this discovery and asked what he was doing. He pointed at the ball, and I immediately said, "oh, I saw something on pinterest that I could do with that... it was a lady bug! Oh don't throw that away, I can use it! Oh, sorry about your ball."
After finding that pin, and saving it to my board, I read up on how to make it. I started in on painting it the next weekend, and it was very easy. I hadn't a chance to find something for the antennae, so it sat for a couple weeks.
In the next few weeks, my husband found another bowling ball to give me. Apparently he thought the little guy was cute. And then next day, my mom found one to give me. However, she wanted it back once it looked like a lady bug!
This past weekend, we went to the used building supply store looking for something very specific. Or my husband was looking for something specific, I was looking for things I had seen on pinterest that I wanted to try. I lucked out, only found electrical conduit, for the antenna!

 So much fun! I can't wait to find their home in the garden. I will dig them down half way, so the cracks on the one won't show, but more importantly, I saw one picture on pinterest where they didn't do that, and it looked silly.
Next pintering project: Toadstools with old wooden salad bowls. I hope to get working on those over the next week or so.
I will have to pace myself, since I do have a bit of work to do with Big Girl J turning 5 in just a few weeks!

Here Fishy Fishy

Little Miss O goes to preschool one day a week for 2 1/2 hours. Tuesday they learned about Dr. Suess. Their art project was gluing the colorful cracker snack 'goldfish' to a fish bowl shaped paper. The book they read with this was 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish. She told me all about it, and how they aren't for eating, they are for art. This statement must have been repeated many times during art! She was so proud of her art, she carried it around with her almost all day. She even brought it to the dinner table!
At story time, I asked her to set the fish bowl on the table in the living room, so we could focus on the books. And she did. And it stayed there.
The next morning, I was heading towards the shower as she came out of her room. So I picked her up and kissed her good morning.
She said, "My goldfish are gone, I ate them."
I looked at her confused, she didn't take them to bed, so I looked to my left to see the piece of paper shaped goldfish bowl with just crumbs glued to it! I tried not to laugh to hard, but I couldn't help but giggle about it for a while. My silly girl snuck out of bed, I am not sure if it was just after she was put to bed, or if this was a midnight snack, and ate every single fish! I think this might mean we need to hold out on getting the girls a pet goldfish!