Halloween Busy Book

So, I'm a fan of busy books (or quiet books as they're known these days) because they are so fun with ENDLESS possibilities. Plus I had one as a child and I remember the fun I had with it. Recently I've been collecting ideas to make one, but haven't decided on quite what theme I want to do as of yet. However, I ran across some adorable halloween themed ones on Etsy which prompted me to want to do one for Tot only with some more age appropriate activities (the one I saw was more of a texture touch book).

Turkey Handprints

We've all seen the turkeys made out of handprints, whether they're painted, cut out of colored construction paper, traced, stamped, or just freestyled on the paper.
Sometimes, you just can't go wrong with tradition!

Tot had a LOT of fun with this one. She adores tracing her hands (and I adore the cute little handprints left behind) so it was a breeze to get her to pose her hand all in a circle for our turkey.

I'm not ready to let her go all out with paint yet, so we did ours in crayon, but there's so many different ways you could go with this one, you really can't go wrong!

We did two papers with her hands traced. I colored her turkey, and she made the masterpiece below. She is BIG on circles right now, so she filled the page.

A wonderful and fun November afternoon!
What Tday traditions are on your plates this month?

Fall Fairy Halloween Costume

For Halloween this year, Tot went as a Fall Fairy.

I made this costume from scratch and it was actually kind of last minute deciding on how everything would come together. But it turned out really pretty and she is having lots of fun with it in all the Halloween parties.

I actually bought the wings first, great find from the dollar store:

Pardon them being red in the picture, I forgot to take a picture of the orange ones before I bent them into leaf shape:

I just used my fingers, but you could use pliers to bend the wire if you want a sharper crease.

Then, I needed to figure out the dress portion of the costume. I decided that I did NOT want to go with tulle. I was just tired of working with it, slippery and scratchy, and cold, and I dreaded putting together a tutu, so we went a different way. Luckily, I found this secondhand dress after scouring everywhere for a suitable costume. 

The dress was several sizes too big for her, which allowed me to easily alter it and make a fairy shift. The colors were absolutely perfect and gorgeous to boot! It's a nice soft velvet which is easy to alter as it doesn't fray. 

First, I measured and pinned where the dress fell (measuring up from the hem so I wouldn't need to redo it) under Tot's armpits, and across her chest for the neckline.

Then, I cut a diagonal line connecting the two points (I did this on each side of front and back) And cut the remainder off the top. 

Then I folded the dress sideways (matching the side seams) to be sure the cuts were even for front and back.

With the remaining material, I cut out some rectangles that I used for the sleeve/strap of the tunic.

I cut it long in order to add elastic in for the look I wanted.



Then to the sewing machine! I once more used a lettuce hem as I thought it would be quicker than trying to do a regular one. It would add to the frilly, nature like look of the dress as well.



To do a lettuce hem, you need to set your machine to a narrowish zigzag, and small stitch length.

Then, stretch the material as it is going through the machine, the longer the stretch, the more it ruffles. I find it easiest to sort of pull the material to the left as it feeds through.

Here is my finished hem, nice and frilly. The stretchier the fabric, the better the frill.

After sewing in the sleeve straps, here is what the altered dress looks like:

For some reason, I forgot to take a picture of the sleeve after putting in the elastic, but it's super simple, all I did was sew up the strap sides and sew the elastic into the top and bottom seam, that naturally gathers it and looks super cute!

Next, I took a packet of cloth leaves I'd gotten at the dollar store, and started hand stitching them to the hemline. I probably could have machine stitched them, but I wanted to have as little stitching showing as possible. I put the yellows all around the hem, and alternated reds above every other space, then added a yellow every other one above that. I also stitched a couple to the neckline where the sleeves joined in.

Lastly, I hotglued some of the leaves onto a headband for Tot's headpiece.

And there you have it...the CUTEST fall fairy ever! :)

What are you going as for Halloween this year?

Owlapalooza 2

I had every intention of doing a cloth owl for the second week of owlapalooza. But, an emergency came up, so we were scrambling to fit in a craft. I had thought of doing this one for our first paper craft, but didn't, so I figured now was as good a time as any to let Tot try her hand at gluing.

 First, we gathered our materials. In this case, a foam circle, scraps of orange and brown paper, glue, glitter, and scissors. And of course, the google eyes!

Tot put the eyes on first. She liked the yellow circle and once it had the eyes on, she kept calling it a happy.
I cut the feathers out while she was gluing the eyes and playing with "a happy". hee hee.

Then, I simply spread a little glue with her "helping" and let her go to town putting the feathers on. She was very precise at first, but then she got some glue on her fingers and decided she could go no further. After a bit of a cry and some paper towel rescue, we were able to finish placing the feathers.

We added some big "ear" feathers at top, and I glued the orange feet and beack on. Yes, there is even some 3D effect with the beak. Just make a triangle, then fold the two long ends down to the middle so it forms a square. Then, you can fold it in half, and when you pull it just so, the front pops out a bit. It still has the ability to fold flat for storage, though.

And here he is after the glitter accents were added. Tot like these, although she had more fun glittering the kitty than her paper owl. Oh well. I think he'll be a lot of fun for her once he finishes drying. She loved saying: Who who Hoo!

Owlapalooza Post 1

I decided that October is going to be our Owlapalooza.
This means Owls....lots of owls! Bring on the owls, because you can never have too many! (unless they outnumber the cats)

So, my goal is at least one owl craft a week until Halloween.
That is roughly 4-5 owl filled fun days.

Day one was a simple papercraft owl.

I decided that since Tot was familiar with paint with water, she may switch over to watercolors fairly easy. I had picked up a set of watercolors from Walmart's back-to-school sale for a very sweet price, and I was itching to see how well she could do! And what she would do!

 She was a very careful painter. Just like when she colors, she thinks about where she's putting each and every stroke. She carefully painted these colors, although, she didn't quite get the concept of putting the COLOR down. She kept dipping the brush in the water and smearing it around instead. That's what I get for starting her out with paint with water, I guess!

 Still, by the time she had done, we had a nice fall colored bunch of lines that could resemble a forest. I added a treeish figure on the left and then we assembled and glued the paper owls I had cut while she was coloring. I just did everything freehand, simple shapes to put together. Oval owls with a square bottom, triangle ears and circle eyes.

 Of course we HAD to opt for google eyes to finish it off! There we are for our first Owlapalooza entry, a nice little owl famiy just waiting to say: Happy Whoolaween! Hee hee.

Fall leaves from Pinterest

I love the ideas I find from Pinterest, and this wax paper leaf project was exactly what I needed to spruce up my house for fall.

Tot and I had just put the fall decor up the other day and I decided that we needed more.
The orignial post that inspired this is here.

I had read this post a while ago, and thought I remembered how to do it, so I made a few mistakes which I'll share with you along the way.

First, you'll need to put a towel (and paper towel lining) down to protect your ironing board.
Then you need to put down a layer of wax paper.
Next, gather the crayon bits and get shavings from them. I wasn't sure how I wanted to do this, I almost used a cheese grater, but then I got SS (Super Spouse) to lend me his box knife. It came out covered with crayon wax, which I was able to get mostly clean. However, in his super sweet way when I told him I thought I had gotten all the crayon off, he said, "That's ok, it's a tool, it needs to be used and get dirty."

Here are all the bits right before I put another sheet of wax paper down.
If I had to do this over, I'd use larger and thinner pieces of crayon to get it to melt better. I would also use less colors.

After putting another sheet of wax paper over it, I folded my towel over.

And use the iron to melt the wax and push the color around. The original tutorial said to use sparingly because you want a very thin layer of crayon. However, I found that at least with my bits, it didn't spread much and so I had clearish white holes in between my colors. I also had bits of crayon that didn't melt as they were bigger chunks, so finding a way to shave off the crayon would probably have worked better than a box knife.

You will want to put a layer of paper towel down on either side of your wax paper instead of a regular towel. Because it DOES ruin the towel. (and it would definitly ruin your ironing board or iron with direct contact)

Always stop work to check on what Tot is doing. This time, she was hiding under the bed with the kitty.

Once the wax paper has cooled, you can cut out your leaves. The original tutorial had a leaf image to trace but I found interesting patterns within the melted wax and just cut around them. I wanted my leaves to be interesting and different sizes. It worked rather well to free hand them.

After you have them all cut, you can put them on thread or fishing line to hang, adhere them to branches, or just hang them up with tape. As you can see, hanging below the storebought leaf garland, they add just the right touch to have a "fall" in our house.