Schnibbling Along: the Full House version

Today was the deadline for submitting your finished "Full House" Schnibbles quilt to the Year of Schnibbles girls. I am a bit late. Just a little. Not that the quilt is done, but I did get the top put together today. Without borders. All I can say is, Hey, I might be really done by Valentine's Day, which is my personal goal for this.

Do you participate in the Year of Schnibbles? I had a bit of trouble with the roof pieces. I wonder if anyone else did?

My version is made with Moda's Chemistry fabric line charm packs. I bought some coordinating Kona solids (the dark raisin-y color and the light peachy pink) to add to the selection, since the Chemistry charm packs consist of 4 or more of each print. I was disappointed about that, but what can you do? I bought  online to get a deal, because the prices at quilt shops - where I can look in person at the contents - always make me put back what I have inspected.

I'd like to guarantee that I am going to do every Schnibble for the whole year along with the group, but next up is I.S.T.H. and I don't have that one. I plan to substitute a different Schnibble from one of Carrie Nelson's books instead. Who's with me?
 

My hat is off to all the blogging mommies out there who get so much done while toddlers and the older siblings run laps around their legs, leaving a wake of toys and clothing throughout the house. I no longer wonder why I did not take up quilting when my kids were little. I was lucky to make the occasional Halloween costume and Christmas outfit! And I was so much younger then. Ugh...

Now that I am home full time with Tyler, I just can't accomplish everything I plan to do each day. Almost 3 year old boys are VERY busy, and they get real squirrely if they don't get outside to play. Nap time comes around and I have to prioritize what gets done. Lucky for you I chose quilt top finishing over clean floors today! As Scarlett said, "I'll think about that tomorrow."


Stay tuned for a blog post about what these Schnibble quilts are going to be used for!

This Week with Tyler

Last weekend we were at the beach. Now we are bundled up and splitting our time between outdoor play and indoor activities. It is about 25 degrees and windy in the morning now! If you've been thinking that Florida is always warm, think again.

This week we rescued a butterfly. A Monarch who forgot to migrate to Mexico. He was found laying on his side in my mom's yard. Tyler actually got to hold him/ he held onto Tyler's finger, so of course I don't have a picture of that.

We tried to get the butterfly to sip some sugar water. He was not interested. Tyler did get a look at the long curled up tongue butterflies have. And this picture. I think that is a worried look, but I can't be sure.

So, after the sugar water was rejected, we decided to try to find some remaining flowers in the yard. Butterflies love flowers. We still see the yellow sulfur butterflies out there, so maybe he'd like the company?

Here he is on the last camellia blossom. Its all that is left in our yard in January for flowers. I suspect that the Monarch blew away, rather than flew away, so please don't tell Tyler. He'd be real sad. There is a reason he didn't migrate, and I suspect it is old age. C'est la vie.

On Monday Tyler announced that we needed to make cupcakes. Here we are making mini cupcakes with a melon ball for the scoop. Chocolate with cream cheese frosting. Mmmmm. We used leftover Halloween papers and Halloween sprinkles. He thought it was awesome and only really ate the cream cheese frosting. Tyler loves to be "the cooker."

Counting the cupcake papers as we add them to the tins is educational, right? And scooping batter into the papers is eye-hand coordination and learning a sort of measuring by look is also educational. We'll call this cooking school for toddlers.

Do you have a Train Table for your kids? There are more uses than you might have guessed. Last year it was an elevated play area and platform for looking out the window. This year it is an arts and crafts table, dinosaur habitat, and lately, Tyler invented another use for it: Dinosaur Soccer. See the hand holes on either side? Those are the goals. We play a little soccer out in the yard, but this kid has never seen a real match (or a foosball table for that matter) but he is brilliant enough to have invented this game!

He usually wants to be the Long Neck Dinosaur team and I am the T-Rex team and we fight over and attempt to score with ping pong balls. It is really fun, and a little rough on the knuckles at times. This kid is going to be a Foosball enthusiast.And I just saw a small table-top version at Ross for $15. Birthday gift? Yes.

We were lucky to get his table from a yard sale, so the cost was not a factor, but even if you pay full price, you and your kids are SO going to get your money's worth out of it. It is a stage when Tyler wants to sing and dance. It is where the building block towers are crashed down with monster trucks, and where he builds puzzles and play dough sculptures. The height is just perfect for him, and it is sturdy enough to hold his weight through years of use.

Here you see our dino-rama. Ha ha. I had to say it. We have dinosaur flash cards and looked up every single one in his dinosaur box. "Dino Dan" on Nick Jr is a show he likes to watch and for not quite 3 years old, he can tell you a lot of dinosaur names and what they eat and look like. I guess while he's in college on sports scholarships he can major in Paleontology and minor in Culinary Arts?

T-Rex is ready to defend his goalpost from the Long Neck player (me.) I think Tyler is making it extra hard for me to score with his body block, don't you?

Another indoor sport he invented is Hallway Hockey. The plastic golf club is the stick. Ping pong balls again. Slippers are required for better agility. And by the way, the golf club is also: a sword, a pony, a reach under furniture ball retriever, a light switch arm extension, and a pointer.

Would you like to be goalie and hold still for one after another on-goal shots? Me neither. I leave that up to Papa. He's a tough guy, he can take it.

Shopping tip: Target's $1 section has foam swords. Joann's also has foam swords, but they are not $1. However, Target does not have the coordinating black pirate hat, hook hand, and eye patch that you will find at Joann's. So there you go. Things to shop for this week for you Neverland Pirate fan.   If you have a pirate theme birthday in your future, you can score on those.

And lastly, because you may start feeling like you are sitting through a relative's vacation slide show, we made our first bedroom fort out of sheets and clothespins, etc. Please note the heavy duty cardboard tube being used for yet another project. This is one of the tubes we use for Hot Wheels racing. He thought the fort was awesome. For about 5 minutes. Now if I could have invented a pirate ship instead of a fort, I would be forever his hero.

Hello from sunny Pensacola!

Hello all! Happy New Year! I hope you are off to a great start and keeping those resolutions! Greetings from Pensacola Beach!

It is January and we spent the weekend at the beach! Saturday was gorgeous, but I forgot the camera, of course. The temp is in the low 70s, the water is clear and cool and emerald green. The Gulf of Mexico was as flat as can be on Saturday. Green flag flying. Things can change so quickly, because today it was a yellow flag and a purple flag and cloudy. Still, we had fun.

This boy is all sports, all the time. When we played football today, he said he was Tebow and I was Polamalu. Too funny! When we play baseball, he is Benny and the other person (whoever that may be at the time) is Smalls, as in 2 characters from the Sandlot.

Neither of us can wait for the water to warm up for swimming.

Tyler and I played baseball, soccer and football, made sand castles, chased seagulls, looked through the pay-to-view telescope, had lunch, waded up to our calves in and out of the surf, collected shells and just had a blast both days. Just the two of us. It was awesome.

We had such a good time that we decided to go back again today, even with a 30% chance of rain. It doesn't sound like much of a chance, but I've seen it absolutely downpour all day when they called for a 10% chance. (You can't put a lot of stock in what our weather people say.)  Just like Saturday, there were sunbathers and swimmers filling up the beach by noon.

Do you see that purplish color on the horizon line? Yeah, the jellies are coming. What we really need are a lot more sea turtles, who eat the jellyfish, because there doesn't seem to be any time of year when we DON'T have some kind of jellyfish attack.

This one is about 9 inches across.  Ick. Does anyone have a cure for jellyfish invasions?

the Spirit of Christmas

This year at Christmas is not the best of times. It is a little stressful, what with my new job venture not working out and me looking for a job at my age, but we'll get through it. I had been thinking about the season and that it is better to give than receive, because no matter how difficult it might be financially, there are always others worse off.

Tyler should learn about giving this year. That is what I told myself. Most of our neighbors are elderly. Then I got another one of the millions of emails about Christmas cookies and a lightbulb went on over my head.

Let me tell you that I have never made sugar cookies from scratch. Chocolate is more my thing, but Alton Brown's recipe seemed like a no fail plan for us, so I made a double batch.

Having made 2 trips to Joanns this week in between rain storms (EVERYTHING for Christmas is 70% off!!! more on that in another post) Tyler picked out a gingerbread man cookie cutter and big can of various red and green sprinkles, so the plan seemed made to order. We jumped in. Here we are rolling out the dough. We learned that it doesn't roll well right out of the frig, and not well after it gets too warm. And it requires a LOT of powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to everything.

Tyler loves learning about anything and everything. He wants to help all the time, even with sweeping and mopping, so he was very excited to use his new cookie cutter and the rolling pin. I was excited to get out my long neglected copper cookie cutters! 

Look at that effort!

This was a great crafty project to do with an almost 3 year old. The breaks we needed for baking and cooling of cookies allowed him to go play and then refocus. By the time we got to icing and decorating, he was still totally excited about it thanks to Claymation Christmas  (we have the whole dvd - a favorite)  and the Backyardigans.

Tomorrow should be a great day to walk down our little street and make gifts of cookies to the neighbors.

Hey, they might even want to leave these out for Santa!

Pre-Christmas Activities

Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas, friends! We are half way through December already, can you believe it???

Here's what is cooking at our house! We haven't had a Christmas tree in a few years. Now that Tyler is almost 3 it seemed wrong to not have one this year. He was SO excited to go with his Papa and Nana to pick one out and to help put it up and decorate. Christmas is a real thing to him already. The whole package. The movies, the songs, the baking, the lights, all of it. Childhood excitement about Christmas is what makes the holiday magical, if you ask me. And of course we are working on the concept of it being the birthday of Jesus.  

I took Tyler on errands yesterday and he spontaneously told everyone we saw "Merry Christmas!" He made a lot of people smile, including me.

Here is how you decorate a tree with a toddler boy. God bless his Papa (sore shoulders and all) because like me, he cannot say no to the grandson! If I had thought of it earlier, I might have made this photo into Christmas cards! Ha ha ha!  I can foresee a "Christmas Vacation" decorating team  in our future. Tyler with the ball of Christmas lights to untangle, Bryan overloading the electrical system. That is Bryan's favorite part of the movie - when the emergency switch has to be thrown to stop the blackout. It takes a former Navy gas turbine mechanic to appreciate the humor there. Or an electrician. Anyway...

I did not get the Advent calendar made in time to start the month. I told myself I would do it next year, but when Tyler started asking how long til Christmas, I knew I had to get this made, even half way through Advent. So here it is. It has a sleeve on the back and I found a magnetic curtain rod, so it is displayed on the back of our entry door! How cool is that? I am pretty pleased about it. No nail holes in the walls and it is out of reach.  This is a fabric panel from Makower fabrics that I have had for a few years. There are little pockets on and around the tree for gifts or tiny ornaments or what-have-yous. I plan to go out after Christmas for some major markdown ornaments that will fit in the pockets, and a small wreath to hang them on for 2012. For now, the remaining Advent pockets have candies and Hot Wheels. There is even a Scion XB Hot Wheel like my daughter's car!

While I made the calendar, my daughter and Tyler made their first gingerbread house together. Can you say sugar high? Tyler was eating the colored sprinkles by licking them off his sticky hands! When my kids were little we lived near this wonderful German bakery in Costa Mesa, CA. Every year they had gingerbread decorating days where the house was pre-assembled and you decorated it with what they supplied or brought your own items to add to it. When that was over, Santa showed up with candy canes and you could take pictures with him. It was fantastic! My kids and I had the best time there! Not having found something like that here yet, we were glad to find gingerbread house kits everywhere. I even saw a chocolate version at Cost Plus World Market. We don't have an IKEA, but we have Cost Plus!

My freaky camera created some interesting effects with the lighted tree in the background. I sort of like this ethereal image of Tyler, who begged me late at night to take his picture in front of the decorated tree. He's sort of the Ghost of Christmas Present, here, right?

I hope you are enjoying the countdown to Christmas too!  

A Little Baseball During Football Season

Tyler is an All Sports boy, my friends. He likes hockey,  football, golf, frisbee, basketball, soccer, but especially baseball. He got a tee stand and plastic bat set when he was a year old. He's only 21 months now, but he thinks he's ready for the major leagues already. 

He got a golf set then too (just the cheap $5 Walmart set) but that golf set has seen a lot of mileage. One club left, and it is a hockey stick, a pirate sword, an under the sofa ball retriever and any number of other things most days.  But the golf set, the basketball hoop and soccer set cannot compare at all with baseball.

This boy has never even been to a real game, but he loves it. Maybe in part because he's watched "the Sandlot" about 20 times. He could quote lines from the movie this past Spring. Anyone else have a 2 year old who tells you "You are Smalls, I'm Benny" when you go out to play?

And he really does not want to use the tee. He wants to take turns pitching and batting.

This weekend has been cold and windy and overcast, but that can't keep him from play. His pitch is very accurate, so look out, cause it might be coming at your head!

Notice the pants? Go Steelers! He has a Steelers shirt under his hoodie jacket too. He told me this weekend "I like Polamalu! He's on the Defense!" He may not understand exactly what that means, but it has helped him accept that our #43 is not on the field all the time for a reason.

It is so rewarding to be outside with a little one who is so enthusiastic about being active! I cannot wait til there are Little League games to go out to and cheer. No, I take that back. I can wait. He's growing up too fast already!

O Christmas Wreath

I love making wreaths. It is really very simple, whether you use a straw base or one with artificial greenery, you can do what ever your imagination can come up with.

Here are some examples of past creations. 


I bought the foliage and straw base etc with my mom, then gave her the directions for creating this beauty for my grandparents. It is about as big as my tiny grandmother!

The second pic is the small wreath I hang out every Fall. There are silk butterflies on it and they are starting to come off the wires they are mounted on, so next Fall, I'll be replacing them.

To make one: purchase the long strands of silk leaves from a place like Michael's when they have their big discount sale, usually in August. Wrapping the straw wreath with the strands of foliage and using floral wires and wire cutters, one of these wreaths takes maybe half an hour. I stick sunflowers on stems and other items into the straw wreath base and wire them down separately. Sometimes a glue gun comes in handy, but you have to be careful not to melt what you are making!


Today I gave my Christmas a makeover. I made this one about 5 years ago and it had gold glass ball ornaments that have lost their paint and luster over time. I un-wired them and removed the ribbons that were wrapped around the wreath taking it down to the wreath I started with, plus the magnolia swags and the Cardinal bird ornament that hangs in the center. I just love that little Cardinal bird and his snowflake!  Last year a little finch tried to build a nest in the wreath.! I guess she liked his company.

I bought this heavy, very real-looking greenery wreath at Old Time Pottery. It is 3 feet across and the base of it is a double ring of strong steel. Very sturdy. Great for tying floral wire to and I know this wreath is going to last and not get bent or anything.


Initially I planned to put all plastic ornaments on here in place of the faded gold glass ones because they won't fade in the sunight of our West facing exterior wall, but I saw the cutest red glass ornaments that spell out J-O-Y and had to have them. Red plastic ones went on also going on. Red is my favorite color.

Here is the finished product. I reused the wires from the first version so I spent less than an hour on this. I hope I have inspired you to try this yourself. Do it with your kids or grandkids or friends! You could put stuffed animals, unusual ornaments, cookies, candy canes etc on it. Even a string of lights.

Next year I will be getting another wreath and assorted toy ornaments. I'll put a string of lights on it and hang it inside so that we can make it an Advent wreath, adding a new ornament to it every day until Christmas.

Happy December! Make it a memorable one!