Halloween Part One

After last year's Halloween my sister and I started discussing costume ideas for this year's Halloween.  We talked to the kids to see what they wanted to do.  Kira again wanted to be a princess, but we were having a hard time coming up with another fun theme that would allow for this.  Damian mentioned Angry Birds.  He is addicted to the game and even owns a shirt.  After discussing this we decided that  this would be a great theme.  The kids all settled on which birds they wanted to be.  Kira would be the Black bomb bird, Damian the Red birds, Joy's two would be the Yellow and Blue birds, and Joy and I would be the Pigs.

Now that our themed was settled we started looking for costumes.  After looking around we realized that cost was going to be a huge problem.  Manufactured costumes were running between $30-50 apiece.  If we dressed everone up, it was going to run us anywhere from  $220 to $300.  Ouch.  Thus we decided to make our own.  We looked around online and found this blog, The Clock Blog.  They blogger had made some for him and his friend.  The problem was this is about the only instructions and they aren't very good from a instruction stand point.  Its more of a rough how to.  So out came the art supplies.  I have enough know how to wing this project. A couple of designs later and we were ready to start.

I took measurements from the kids to get a rough idea on fabric amounts.  The ranged from 0.5 yards for the littlest to 2 yards for the biggest. The it was just a matter of felt, fabric paint, fusible interfacing, a couple of t-shirts, and some miscellaneous supplies. A trip to the fabric store and two to the art supply store. Netted us enough materials to make 6 costumes.  The total cost was right at about $100.  Not bad considering what it would have cost us to buy them.  Now it was just a matter of time to complete all of the costumes.

I started by making a newspaper template for each costume.  This was much easier than trying to draw the shapes out on the fabric.  I was able to hold the templates up to the kids to determine sizing and a rough fit.  If you try this, make sure to account for seams and allow yourself an extra inch or so. Then it was just a matter of laying it down on top of the fabric.  I pinned it to all three layers, the front, back, and the lining so I would only have to cut once.



Then I cut out and sewed the bottom sections of the red, black, and yellow birds. A little bit of trimming and the fronts were off to a good start.






I didn't want to waste the felt, so I raided my kid's art supplies for some construction paper.  I had already sketched out rough faces, so between my drawings and Rovio's site I made faces for each of the birds.  This This worked well as I made stuff too small to start with and had to resize the pieces a few times.  I played with the pieces until I was happy with how everything looked.  A double check from Joy and Kevin to make sure that everything looked right and I had my templates for all of the felt.

Oh Bucket

Bucket is an unusual  (almost) 3 year old.  He is completely fasicinated with how things work.  He already likes to take stuff apart and put it back together.  He plays with toys that are for much higher age groups since the stuff for his age isn't designed to come apart.  I already know that he will be the kid that takes apart the DVD player when hes 6 just because he wanted to see how it worked.  His newest fascination though it a little strange.

He is obsessed with the toilet.  It's not even in a lets flush stuff way, it's more of a how does it work.  We keep finding him with his head in the bowl watching the water come out of the rim when you flush it.  It doesn't seem to matter that we keep telling him not to do this, every time he goes to the bathroom there he is checking out under the rim. 

While it doesn't really bother us, it does the daycare.  She is worried about the whole germ factor since multiple, little, toilet training kids are using it.  However she has the same problem as us, that being you can't really get him to stop.  He has been doing it for weeks at her place, but when I talked to her this week it turns out that he has stopped at her place.

Daycare is in an older home and that means older pipes.  With kids that use to much tp this means that it backs up once in a while.  Our house doesn't have this problem so Bucket had never gotten to experience this gross lovely phenomenon before.

A few weeks ago he went in like normal and did his buisness, and the next thing Daycare hears is him yelling.  She goes in and he is standing there watching the toilet overflow.  She gets it stopped and cleans up the mess.  Bucket being the curious child, stood outside the bathroom and watched the work.  She noticed him looking at her and then the toilet.

"Did you need somthing?"

He looked at her and then back to the toilet... "That freaked me out."

Then he turned around and went about his day.  I hear about the incident and laughed at his choice of words and then put it out of my mind.  Fast forward to this week. I was talking to her and she said something about the toilet again, and from the background we hear  "That freaked me out."  Apparently he has been going into the bathroom and when he flushes he eyeballs the toilet and then leaves.  She said thinks he is afraid its going to overflow again so he doesn't watch the water from the rim anymore.  She does say that once in a while she catches him looking over at the bathroom and muttering "That freaked me out" to himself.

So it seems that his fascination with the toilet at Daycare is over with, but somehow I don't think we will ever lose it at our house.  Living with a plumber does have its benefits.