All Hallows Eve, a week late

Goodness, it's been awhile since I blogged!  I do have an excuse though! 

It all started when we got a note from school saying that Ira would need a saint costume for the All Saints Day party at school.  Being the over-achiever, can't-ever-do-anything-halfway type that I am, I decided I would make him a cassock for his St. John Baptist de la Salle costume.  He also wanted me to make him a ghost costume for Halloween, which I thought would be easy enough... unless you're me who has to complicate everything...

Initially, I thought I could make up my own cassock, but after looking at more pictures of them online, I decided they were actually kind of complicated and I might want to go off an actual pattern.  Problem being, there's not much of a market out there for size 5 cassocks... who would've guessed?   I did find a Butterick pattern for a men's cassock, however, and I knew with Andy's mad spatial skills that he would be able to modify the pattern down to Ira's size.  So I bought the pattern and fabric the same day as our zoo trip and Andy set to modifying the pattern that night.  When he finished, he let me take care of shortening the pattern pieces to Ira's height.  Now mind you, the only things I have ever sewn have been for myself, and you can guess that the direction I need to go with patterns is not shortening...ever.  I lengthen... shortening is a whole different ballgame, and I obviously missed something, because although I tried to make it so that I had 6" to take out at the bottom and 4" at the sleeves (you know, so I don't have to go through this rigamarole every year) it ended up such that it just fit him this year, and unless he doesn't grow at all, it will most likely not fit him next year... grrrr....  See, I do not have mad spatial skills like my hubs does.  I'm just special...

Cutting it out wasn't too awful bad, it's just my least favorite part of sewing.  I just like to sew.  Laying out, cutting out, lining up, pinning, blech... I mean, I deal with it, because you can't really sew without doing those things (I've tried. It doesn't work.)  I just don't like it, and there might have been some cursing involved...  Sewing it together went pretty well actually, modifications and all (which is crazy because we and by we
I mean my husband had to take 10" out all the way around)  Some things were literally lost in the translation (like a lot of the notches and markings) and it was tough because there were pleats, which I've never done before and they were tiny because they were for someone with a 20" waist, but all in all, I'd say it turned out really well.  The pattern definitely left some questions as far as finishing the sleeves and the bottom hem, but I figured it out well enough to make it look good.

Needless to say, it took about 2 weeks of finding time here and there during the day and after the kids went to bed to finish, then it took about a week afterwards to catch everything that I'd let slide (like housework, laundry, etc.) back up.  Finally this week we're starting fresh with a clean house and not much on the to-do list, so I thought I'd catch up the old bloggeroo.  I'm hoping to get back to the Photo of the Day type posts because they're just less overwhelming to me, but what do you all think of them?  Are they too boring/uninformative?

In the meantime, here are some pictures from All Hallows Eve!

Okay, this one isn't from All Hallow's Eve, this is Andy modifying one of the 6 pattern pieces

St. John Baptist de la Salle was not acting very saintly while I was trying to take this picture...

A back view so that you can see the pleats on which I worked SO diligently!

Classic Ruby face. Pardon the red-eye.  I don't have photo software on my laptop and did NOT feel like turning on the beast just to blip out a couple red eyes.  And in case you're wondering what the red streaks are all over our pumpkin, those are Ira's doing.  He said he wanted to put chicken pox on our pumpkin... not sure why, but who am I to stop him?!

Ira ghost and Ruby "lily bug" (as she says it.)  Ready to go trick-or-treating.

 

Make your own Swiffer Wet-Jet resusable cover

So, after using the Wet-Jet covers in this post for about two weeks, I decided I could make something a little better on my own.  I recently got new towels for my kitchen but couldn't bear to just throw the old ones out.  They are nice, absorbent bar-mop-type towels, and I thought they might be good candidates for Wet-Jet covers.  I am thrilled with how these covers turned out, and thought I would share my process with you.

First off, my Wet-Jet is fairly old, and I'm not certain they're made exactly like this anymore.  It has a "bump" on one side of the head that originally had a scrubber on it.  It makes making the cover a little more difficult than if it were flat (as I suspect the more recent models are) but really, it wasn't hard to work around.  So, check your Swiffer Wet-Jet first, because if it's different than the one I have, your directions will vary from these slightly.

See the little "bump" on the right side of the head?

My old dish towels measured 18.25" by 16."  I wanted to utilize as many of the finished edges as possible, so my only cut was to make a rectangle 18.25" by 6.75"  (You will be able to make two covers with each towel!)

I LOVE my Gingher brand scissors.  They were a little pricey (I got them half price for 18 dollars) but they cut through everything as if it were butter!  Well worth the money!

Next, so that you don't have fraying when you wash them, turn the cut edge under (about 0.5") and iron, and then under again and iron. I chose to use the "terry" side of the towel to be the bottom (the part that will scrub the floor.)

Using the rick-rack stitch on my machine, I sewed along the turned-under edge to secure it down.

Then I folded up one side 3.25" to make a "pocket" to go over the "bump" side of the Wet-Jet head.

Now, if your Wet-Jet head is like mine (with the bump) you'll want to just tack the corners of the pocket down so that it can easily slide over the bump.  (If yours doesn't have a bump, you could just sew along the edges of the pocket.)  My machine has a cool star stitch that worked really well for making a nice strong stitch here.

For the other side, fold under 2" than under again (just so you don't have to cut and make another hem.)  This will make the pocket for the flat side of the Wet-Jet head.

Using a zig-zag stitch, sew down both sides of the pocket, making sure to catch all 3 layers of fabric.

Pardon my messy zig-zag.  My machine wasn't very happy with me for sewing through 3 layers of finished edges.

And voila, you're done!  You now have a cheap, easy, reusable solution to those expensive disposable Wet-Jet covers.

P.S.  If you're like me and hate to pay for the bottles of Wet-Jet solution sold by Swiffer, use a vise-grip to take the cap off of one of your existing bottles and clip off the little flanges around the inside of the lid with a fingernail clippers.  You will now be able to easily remove the cap in the future.  Fill it with your favorite floor cleaning solution.  I use 1 quart of hot water and 1.5 teaspoons of borax on my linoleum for a great clean shine.

Counting Down!

Ira is totally into making paper chains for things.  So about two months before his birthday, he decided he wanted to make a paper chain to count down to his birthday.

I have just a FEW stickers lying around.  So we decorated each link with stickers and markers.

Here is the STACK of links for our paper chain.

As I said, it's been a long time, so the chain is down to about 14 links now!  Can't believe my silly little boy will be FIVE in a couple weeks!  WOW!

Bean Bag

For as long as Ira's been alive, his nickname (given to him by his daddy) has been "Bean Bag." So it seemed only fitting to make Ira a bean bag toss game.

I don't have a sewing machine, but I do have "No-sew" iron-on hem tape, so I used it on some extra fabric I had and filled them with lentils to make bean bags. (they (the lentils) are a PERFECT weight - not heavy enough to do damage to a baby sister if misdirected, but heavy enough to fly nicely through the air.)


Then I cut up one of our bushel boxes from the orchard to make an angled "board."

I drew numbers on the bottoms of 3 different sized containers (a blue cheese shallow one worth 3 points, a sour cream tub worth 2 points, and a cottage cheese container worth 1 point) and put them into the top of the bushel box.


I must say, I was pretty thrilled with how it turned out. Ira and I have been having LOTS of fun playing bean bag toss lately. And as an added bonus, Ira has gotten LOTS of practice doing simple addition! Who said math isn't fun?!