Fatuous reasons to become a Mum

To show somebody how fun it can be to step in a puddle of paint, feel it ooze between your toes, and then march across paper, leaving a trail behind you, feeling it stick to your feet and giggling at the mess.

 

Recently seen on my sewing machine

Early this year I found a sleeveless fleece vest for my son's wardrobe. It's been really useful on cooler days this winter, when we've gone out to playgrounds where it's very cool when you stand still, but running around like a two year old makes it a bit warm for a jumper.
I didn't quite trust myself to fit a zip to stretchy fleece fabric so planned to do a double-breasted button thing for my homemade version. This turned out not to be as practical as I'd hoped, since a sudden growth spurt meant he was filling out his clothes an inch or two more than when I first began cutting. So the resulting garment looks slightly lopsided, but was still a big hit - the minute I added the buttons and rediscovered my machine's buttonholing capabilities that is (he didn't want a bar of it, pre-buttons).

The outside is a gorgeous grey minky fleece, and I cut around the fading on an old cotton garment for the lining, that was retired from the Medieval Society when I was in charge of the loaner gear (so the local group heads offered me the spoils!). I patterned it off a (slightly A-line) shirt, allowing a few centimetres extra on each seam, so a few layers could be comfortably worn beneath. (To do this, turn your garment inside out, pull the sleeves inside the body of the garment and lay it as flat as you can. Potential tute to follow. Eventually.)


I think next time I'll try finishing the edges with a contrasting rib knit and not bother lining it. I'd also curve the front edges rather than leaving them as right angles, one of which inevitably flips up.
But not bad for a first go. With the skivvy and embroidered flares the Tiny Tyrant was definitely channelling the 70s the other day!

Bag of Swag

Went to visit the Out-laws last week, and came home with these lovelies, which my Mother-Out-Law was planning to toss out. They're all genuinely vintage, from the 70s or 80s (and gosh, doesn't that make ME feel old)! Most of them have a little fading or wear, but if I make them into Small People things that will be easy enough to avoid. I'm really chuffed, even though I'm meant to be cutting down the amount of stuff in my craft room - I twisted my ankle in there this morning, when I tripped over some of the piles.

Food Pr0n

Round here, winter is for baking!
Here's a peek at some of the baking I've been doing lately, because when stuff goes right in the kitchen it's worth celebrating, for me.

First, a chocolate zucchini cupcake with peppermint and choc-fudge icing. It's got vegetables in, it's healthy, right? Without the icing it's actually been a huge toddler hit and I'll be doing them again.

And here are some Very Naughty gingerbread men that I sent to my sister, after a silly discussion about me mailing her "hot naked men". Well, except for the one of them who got shy and donned a posing pouch!

Toddler Tuesday: pants from bunny rug

I enlisted the Tiny Tyrant's help in making him some new PJ pants (which he needed desperately, since the past month's growth spurt has added an extra two inches to his legs, seemingly).
Digging through my stash of flannelette material lead to the discovery of the rug we wrapped him in for his first Mama-Baby photos, the first day we were home from the hospital. Since he was in the NICU for a week he was already eight days old. I remember asking my partner to take the two photos, so I'd have something to send to the family; apart from a fuzzy, long distance view of the plastic crib he was in, all our photos so far had included wires, heat lamps and machines that went PING.
Finding that blanket made me feel very nostalgic, and I remembered how exhausted, relieved and overjoyed I was that I finally had him home with my partner and I, and we had the opportunity to begin enjoying being the new family that we all were, together.

Tyrant seemed to be drawn to it too, because it was the material he chose to have his new pants made from.
I've been getting him a bit more involved in my sewing, lately; he likes to sit on my lap when I'm not sewing fiddly things, and watch the fabric move through the machine (thank goodness he's such a careful child). He works the presser foot for me, and I pause to let him pull pins out and stick them on my magnetic mushroom, which he loves to do.
So we sewed up his new pants in around fifteen minutes, and for the first night in some time he wanted to get into his pyjamas early!

Thrifty Thursday: Rags for the Bag

In case you haven't yet realised it, I am seriously enamoured of clothes. Not "fashion" as in what the magazines are telling me the designers like right now, but fashion; the great, enormous scale of designs, colours, fabrics and accessories human beings have used in all cultures, for centuries, to decorate and protect themselves.

Clothes are amazing, and I'm not sure I could ever get tired of thinking about and playing with ideas for ways to be dressed. Sure, I have my favourite eras and styles, my own tastes and preferences, but I still enjoy mixing it up and thinking about others and what might suit or excite them, too.


This is why I never thought I would ever meet my match. Enter my partner; a man who loves thrift shopping even more than me, who- when I met him - had more clothes than me!
Part of this is becase he loves the thrill of finding that perfect item that suits as much as I do. But some of it is certainly also because he's gotten emotionally attached to a lot of his clothes. A bit like those supposed women who hang onto that dress for "when I'm a size 10 again", he had pants whose waistband would now just close around a single thigh still lurking in the depths of his wardrobe.
That he'd last worn twenty years ago.
That had a bleach stain on one leg from when his Mum had dropped it, in the laundry.

Because of the emotional investment in his clothes, I've been using a mixture of gentle and more aggressive tactics to get rid of some of his dinosaurs (my own wardrobe tends to get purged of the unworn and unfit every few years).
The bane of my existence has actually turned out to be the Terribly Comfortable (Moth-Eaten) Hole Transportation System, the sort of shirt that's hanging together with goodwill and a few bits of thread and fond memories.
I'm not denying that you need a shirt or two like this in your wardrobe. For the memories, for yardwork, for moving furniture or to spatter in red paint to wear as a zombie costume for a birthday party (no, really). But a dozen or more?
So I've been ditching them, slowly, taking what I can use again and doing so, but trying to be really ruthless if the fabric is too worn or there are just too many holes.

Here are a couple of things I do when I find a fresh victim shirt:

• Cut off (and keep)the buttons. These are always reusable on sewn garments or items that are missing one. They make great game counters or eyes for toys. Toddlers, kids AND adults love playing with and arranging buttons (it can be v therapeutic and soothing). Plus, they're usually plastic and thus most likely the last thing to break down at the tip.
  
  
• Assess the sleeves. Sleeves make nifty hats for small babies, and two sewn together (with a bit of shaping and elastic) can make baby shorts or bloomers.
  This totally used to be two old t-shirts.
  
• Check out the rest of the shirt for patches not too worn or holey. Small squares and rectanges are practical as pieces for baby and toddler tunics, pants and shirts or for cleaning cloths - worn clothes are usually soft and especially good for glass cleaning.
  

So those are my tips for Hol(e)y Old Relics of the Wardrobe. Got any of your own?

Two Year Old Backpacks

Yesterday my Small Person turned 2.
We had a Ladybugs' Picnic at the local Botanic Gardens, inviting all his friends to wear black and red and join us near the really cool playground there.

I've been prepping like mad, and can now totally understand other parents' love for pay-n-play padded spaces and professionally catered events! I tried not to pressure myself too much (hence the low-key theme), figuring two year olds would just love the chance to run around and have fun, but the one thing I did pull out all the stops for were the party bags. I'm not super-comfortable with handing a group of very small people a bunch of sugar and chemicals to take home and smear all over their rooms, and I really wanted not to give away a heap of disposable plastic junk that would go into land-fill in no time at all.
Also, the food issue was especially important for me since not only does the birthday boy have some food sensitivity issues, but quite a few of his friends do, as well as having all-out allergies.

So instead of traditional party bags I found vegbee's toddler backpack over at her indietutes blog. It was the perfect size for our toddler invitees, and the perfect shape for bug bags!

Inside each bag was a bubble-blowing kit (so I didn't totally escape the cheap plastic - at least it's reusable), a red ribbon on a stick (made at home with chopsticks and lengths of ribbon from Spotlight) and two home-made lavender bath fizzies (with printed instructions designed by me).

Long story short the bags and contents were a bit of a hit - far more than my mediocre attempt at a birthday cake (thank goodness I have lots of years to perfect this art!) and now I have to go figure out my neglected Paypal account, to donate to vegbee.
And after all my stressing and work we all had a lovely time and quite a few of our guests decided to wear their new backpacks before they even got home.