Halloween 2011 chuckles

I wanted to post a couple of photos of our Halloween antics for you, because I'd mentioned plans to make costumes that the kids had requested and also I wanted to show you the decorations they helped to make for the front yard.

I think maybe I'm an unorganised blogger, because often our seasonal projects are very last minute and I don't get to post about them until after the holiday is over, so too late for readers to really do anything with the idea other than bookmark it for next year if they like it, but in my defence, I do try and do a round up of previous year's antics before the holiday, so I'll likely mention anything we did this year for Halloween, just before Halloween 2012. We were so last minute with our yard decorating that it got done on the afternoon of Halloween itself. We enjoyed the frantic putting it together though and the girls thought it was really funny.

So, I ended up making Carys the Ms Frizzle costume that she had requested, but like I usually do, I left it until the night before, so I was up quite late trying to make the dress. I used an old kid's white shirt and a white knitted dollar tree earwarmer/headband thing for the cuffs of the dress. I would have used the shirt cuffs, but it was a VERY old shirt and the cuffs were too small! The material I got for it was outerspace themed cotton print that I think was likely quilting material. It worked really well though and I sewed some satin type quilt binding around the bottom of the dress. To make the pattern for the dress I used a shirt dress that fitted Carys and just approximated the pattern pieces from that. One thing that was very helpful though was a post by LiEr over at Ikatbag, showing how to adapt a sleeve pattern piece to varying styles of sleeve, whilst making sure that it's still going to fit well. Thank you LiEr! By following her advice I was able to make the slightly puffed top sleeves that Ms Frizzle wears. Very clear tutorial that even me at stupid o'clock at night could follow :)

Kiddo wore a tutu under the dress to make it nice and full and we glued a sun and moon cardboard decoration to her dress up shoes. The finishing touch was just luck really. The local thrift store happened to have a really ratty looking auburn wig for $2, but after a bit of a clean and brush I was able to tie it back into a Ms Frizzle style hairdo and her costume was complete. It nearly didn't work at all when I realised that I hadn't taken into account if the dress would actually fit over her head with the buttons undone, but a tab of velcro on the front placket of the dress fixed that. Phew.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Ffion had decided to be Rapunzel, which was really easy because there was a princess dress at the same thrift store that we got the wig from for just $3, so all I had to do was shorten it a bit and make her a fake frying pan out of foam sheets from some of computer packaging and a roll of black craft from from the dollar tree. Yay hot glue funtime!

I also talked about the idea of dressing Delyth up as a lizard to be either Pascal to Ffion's Rapunzel, or Liz to Carys's Ms Frizzle, and a couple of readers gave some excellent suggestions as to how we could pull that off, but, well, we saw a frog costume at the thrift store and it was very cute and snuggly and only $3, so we figured it was close enough and she was lovely and cosy in it while we trick or treated.

The thank you cards that we made from Carys's drawing were a big hit with our neighbours and Carys did enjoy giving them out almost as much as she enjoyed the candy that they gave her, so we'll definitely be doing that again next year!

Now for the last minute yard decorating. My kids caught the bug for the game "Plants vs Zombies" from some friends of theirs a while ago. They dont' really do much in the way of computer games, but this one really caught their attention and I kind of like it because it's funny and silly but does involve a bit of strategy and a bit of math. Our front yard is in a similar style to the one in the game, so for Halloween the kids wanted to decorate it with the plants and gravestones from the game. I just grabbed a few of the polystyrene gravestones from the dollar store to use and then I drew out some of the plants and the kids coloured them in. We taped a BBQ skewer to the back of each one to stand it up in the lawn.

Last touch was a zombie mask that Ffion was insistant must be a girl zombie, so she could reinact the game. I'd love to have gone all out with this and made more masks and more plants and maybe even a cut out of Crazy Dave to go on our porch, but we just had enough time to get those few bits done and that was enough to please the kids.

By the time we were done with all the sewing and chopping up paper and cardboard, the kitchen looked like someone had thrown a grenade onto the set of Project Runway, but it all worked out in the end. I've been pretty lucky so far with the kid's requests for Halloween costumes. The last two years only one kid has asked for a costume that you can't find an approximation of at a thrift store.

Last year Carys wanted to be Darth Vader, which was great because a mate of mine had a costume from her son and it was Ffion that needed the custom approach because she was hell bent on being Cindy Lauper from the music video of "Hey Now". Given my habit of leaving everything until the last minute, I'll be in big trouble if they ever decide to both ask for something awkward one year. I know I'm not the only one that gets unusual requests for Halloween costumes, because this year a reader wrote to me about her son wanting to dress up as a chair. Hooray for kids with oodles of imagination! Have any of you had to accomodate unorthodox costume requests? I'd love to hear about them if you have.

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween!

"Make Stuff Together" Book Giveaway

Here we are! That illusive book review that has taken me so long to write up.

I was approached by Bernadette Noll and Kathie Sever, the authors of “Make Something Together” a few months ago, before their book was released. They asked if I would like to be part of their book blog tour and although I have never said yes to a giveaway on Filth Wizardry before, and I was just about to give birth, I wanted to say yes to this particular book. The way they described it to me, it sounded quite lovely and totally in keeping with the vibe of our home, so I wanted to be involved in helping to promote it in some way.

Now that things have reached some sort of rhythm in the newborn department and I’ve had a chance to really sit down and read through the book and see how the projects and philosophy are applicable to our own family, I’m ready and able to write about it and of course offer a copy of the book to one lucky commenter on this post.

Bernadette and Kathie, the authors of this book, have had a lot of experience with collaborative crafting, especially with children. Bernadette co-founded Slow Family Living and Kathie is the creator of Ramonsterwear. Together they have formed Future Craft Collective to find ways that families can be creative together in a sustainable fashion. At the start of the book, before you get to the detail of the individual projects, they take the time to share their experiences and talk about the “why” and “what to expect” aspects of creating with your family. This part of the book, as well as being very well written is also extremely encouraging to those that are nervous about setting the right environment for a pleasant crafting experience when children are involved.

I think the thing that I like most about this book is that it is relevant to a large range of ages and abilities. Out of the 24 projects, some are simple projects that younger children can use as an initiation into sewing and to gain confidence quickly, but there are also more complicated projects that preteens will be able to throw themselves into. As much as I can see me and my five and six year old making some of these things together, I can equally imagine that the book is still going to be in use when my older girls are ten and eleven and they have their little five year old sister to help join in with the making too.

The other thing that stood out to me when I read through this book was that the projects are all real keepers. You're upcycling, reusing and recycling materials, but in a way that creates family items that will really become part of the home atmosphere and traditions. Most of the upcycling that I do with the kids when we craft is making things that are fun and yes they use recycled materials most of the time, but they aren't things that I can see us having and still using say ten years from now. In contrast to our usual fun with recycling, I'm excited to make some items from this book, such as the table runner and napkins or the family flags, that can be more permanent creative fixtures in our family's home for years to come.

I've wanted to sit down at the sewing machine with my older girls, who are five and six years old for some time now, but deciding on what we should try and how to go about it has delayed me taking the plunge. I think it's this book that's going to ease us into the process of sewing together and I'm looking forward to it!

If you'd like a chance to win your own copy of "Making Stuff Together" then just leave a comment on this post and I'll announce a winner on Wednesday next week.

Disclosure: Bernadette and Kathie gave me a copy of this book for myself as well as one to give away on Filth Wizardry, but all the views I have expressed above are my own and this also means that the book the winner gets won't have little jammy fingerprints all over it from my children ;)