Signing Off For Now

There's a lot going on in my personal life right now, so I'll be taking a hiatus from blogging. I'm sure I'll be back at some point. :)

Max's Beans

I'm so proud of my kid. :) I cleared out the spent tomato plants from the pots on the patio, let him pick out some seeds (I pre-chose packets that would do well with a late-summer planting), and he planted the seeds all by himself! Green beans, a very good choice. I was prepared to explain to him how to plant seeds, but imagine my very excited surprise when he told me how to plant seeds! I guess all of that monologue that I did while gardening with him paid off!

Look at those gorgeous, healthy green bean plants! Seriously, I'm so proud. :)

Super HeroGauntlets

Now, what super hero costume would be complete without gauntlets?? Exactly.

The easiest way to make them is to cut a little glovette from the sleeve of the shirt that you made the cape from - but often the sleeves are too big in circumference for little hands. So, to size it down, you can tie a seam!

Fold the fabric in half and cut a rectangle. Cut a thumb slit on the folded edge, and fringe the opposite edge. Then tie the fringe together, and you have gauntlets! I left the fringe on mine long, but Max likes his short and edgy.

Capes

Capes are really easy to make - just take an old shirt, cut up the sides from the bottom, angle in toward the collar, then cut around the collar and that becomes the neck hole for the cape. I snip the collar in the front and add a snap or velcro for easy release.

Usually I just use a shirt that already has a fun design on it (yes, we have a lot of capes around here!), but this time I drew on a spider web... Because Spider-Man is Max's favorite. :)

Super Heroes!

Max LOVES to play super hero. :) He would wear a cape all day, every day, if possible. And most days, he does!

I shall sneak up on Super-Max...

Oh no, he got me!

Dye it Black

As I've changed careers and pant size (I'm down another size, btw!), I've been reevaluating my clothing choices. While I still have my collection of business casual clothing, the majority of my time is spent in jeans, corduroys, and comfy pants. And shirts... well, let's say they need to be very washable. Spit-up and such.

Between taking old pants in to make them smaller, yard sales, and shopping the not-too-small-anymore clothes in storage, I had a nice pile to supplement my wardrobe. The only problem: they were all the wrong colors. I just don't really feel comfortable wearing colorful pants. Especially pink. So, into a black dye bath they went! (Along with a stained shirt, and a hand towel that snuck in.)

These items originally were (from the top):

Brown and blue hand towel

Light blue shirt

Olive green cords

Light olive/khaki yoga pants

Light blue lounge pants

Pink lounge pants

I love how putting all of these things in the same dye made them all different shades of gray, depending on the original color and the fiber content. The photo makes the bottom two items look almost blue, but they're much grayer in real life.

Wardrobe update: Complete. Cost: two boxes of black dye, and a quarter for the yoga pants.

Taking in Mending

I've recently decided to take in mending. After doing it for my dad, my husband, my son, and myself for years, I realized that I could make a few extra bucks in the evenings, so why not?

I mean, check out that perfect jeans hem. :)

So far I've had two happy customers.

Cat box box

This post is a little out of date, but when I sold the box at the yard sale recently I realized that I forgot to post about it last year when I (we) built it.

We used to have three cats, one of which was a nervous pee-er. He has since gone to a much quieter home where he has never had a peeing incident (aka - no toddlers). I have mixed feelings about that still, I'm happy that he's happy, but I still miss him. <sigh>

Anyhow - Max and I built him this cat litter bench last year. We used all wood that I found in the garage, left over from the previous homeowners. I don't have the pictures of the completed box, but imagine it with a hinged lid on top. We made sure that the slats were spaced for ventilation as well as kitty viewpoints (one cat likes to make sure no one will sneak up on her). The bench was much bigger than the litter pan, which was nice because it led to less litter tracking, and there was room for the extra litter, scoop, etc.

Max LOVED helping me assemble this. :) He called it his coyote hole (he was calling the cats coyotes at that point, quite the imagination), and the hardest part of the whole project was telling him that he couldn't play in it anymore.

And, like I mentioned, I built it for the cat that no longer lives with us. The new owners weren't interested in the bench, and the other two didn't really use it. So it sat in the garage until the yard sale, where another cat owner was more than happy to buy it for her furry babies.