Much to my chagrin, The Girl chose to be a princess.  Specifically, “a princess with a fluffy blue dress.” While I don’t especially subscribe to the whole princess thing, I can surely understand my girl’s desire to wear a big beautiful dress. Despite the trickiness of all those layers of tulle, the dress went together pretty easily after just a week’s sewing.  I used Simplicity 2569, even though I had to combine several of the designs to get what she wanted. The crown is the same as these.

The Boy chose to be The Dragon King.  His favorite fantasy character at this time, The Dragon King does not hurt the dragons, but rather he communicates with them.  He is their friend.  We re-used the cape and shirt from this costume, so all I had to make was the vest.  You can’t really tell, but the vest fabric is printed with reptile scales.

This was the first year we took the kids trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood, and we had a great time!  There was much grumbling at first, but once the kids saw how much candy they had, they began to really enjoy themselves!  It was a very sweet and easy Halloween, quietly celebrated by our little family of four.

I love the springtime.  It’s my favorite season here in Florida, and it can be fleeting.  I love the whole spring holiday aesthetic: pastel colors, birdies, eggs.  What’s not to love about that?  I vowed to not let the holiday sneak up on me this year but it did anyway.  It seems that every year we are sick in the weeks leading up to it.  I don’t know why I am surprised that it happened again this year.  But every year I let go of a bit more and every year I am happier with our celebration.  I did not make The Girl’s dress this year, and I did very little crafting for basket stuffers.

And it seems I’m the only mama on the planet who didn’t make her own plant-based egg dyes.  Every year I want to and every year I don’t.  But I’m okay with that.  I have to be honest that I love the bright colors of the food coloring, but next year I swear I will make the natural dyes.

I did manage to make Not Martha’s Surprise Eggs which were a lot of fun.  The kids loved them. They are filled with chocolate, jelly beans, temporary tattoos, stickers, and a pipe cleaner chick.  These were seriously fun and with splitting up the tasks over several days, they were fairly easy to make.

I also managed to make some fresh butter while on the phone with The Bird. How’s that for pioneer woman productivity?

I made the same meal that I always do (except the salmon) and this year I made a gluten free lemon cake because The Bird planted the idea of lemon cake in my head and I couldn’t get it out. With cake flags, of course.

Hopefully next year I will actually get my act together early instead of just thinking about it.  I’ll admit that I’m still trying to find my rhythm as far as having both kids at home and working school into the day.  Watching the holiday come and go so quickly made me contemplate starting winter solstice gifts now.  Seriously.

I’m sure you know that the progress on this sweater can mean only one thing: The Boy unfortunately came down with The Girl’s flu.  For some reason the Daddy Monkey and I have been spared (so far, anyway) and for that I am extremely grateful. <repeats to self> I am healthy, I am healthy, I am healthy….

More sickness has meant more knitting.  I took a break from weaving in all those ends, and decided to start on The Boy’s stripes. Somehow it seems so appropriate to knit a sweater for someone while you’re comforting them.  Every bit of concern, love, and hope goes into each stitch.

It’s been incredibly hard this last week and I feel myself being stretched thin.

In the midst of it, however, I’ve tried to take peace in the quiet moments: knitting quietly on the couch, taking a cup of tea and a good book into the back yard to soak in the very early morning coolness (even if only for fifteen minutes), and a moment by myself to blog about it.

The Girl was afflicted with a serious stomach virus over the weekend.  She’s still feeling weak and moving slow, but I think she’s on the mend…finally.  And I didn’t really pop in here to write about that (although it will explain my absence from this space over the last few days).  The silver lining on that dark, dark cloud is that the rest of us were miraculously spared, even after The Girl seems to have vomited on every couch, chair, and horizontal surface in the house.

The Daddy Monkey was wise when he said, “I think we should hold off on a new couch until both kids know to puke in the toilet.”

Well put.

In the midst of all of the chaos, I’ve been trying to remember to stay positive, to remember that this too shall pass.  That the one thing in life I can count on is that nothing is permanent and everything always changes.

So with that in mind, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to keep positive the past four days.  Remembering that I have a choice whether to be happy or to be miserable, even if I have puke in my hair and it’s not even mine.

I’ve been knitting a lot. Knitting in the lobby of The Boy’s dojo, while waiting alone for him, without The Girl (as I usually do).  Knitting in the bathroom, keeping The Girl company while she took a cool bath.  Knitting on the couch while she rested under her baby quilt because she simply insisted that I sit with her, even though she was sleeping.

All of this means that I am beginning to see the end of the enormous sweater I’ve been knitting for The Daddy Monkey since July.  I love knitting stripes but I do not love all of those ends to weave in.

I also selected yarn for my next project.  A yellow and blue striped sweater for The Boy.  His two favorite colors.  Can I say how much I love that his favorite color is yellow?  It is so him.

After all the times I offered him a sweater and he said no, he finally changed his mind.  Perhaps it was seeing everyone around him receive handknit sweaters.  Perhaps he just warmed up to the idea of stripes, or perhaps he just decided to cooperate finally. Who knows.

I do love yarn shopping in my stash though.  Slowly, slowly, I am chipping away at that huge stash.  Nothing better than having your thrifting habit and your knitting habit collide.

So I suppose that even though the temperature is rising at an alarming rate, I will be knitting.  As Elizabeth Zimmerman says in her book Knitting Without Tears, “Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crisis.”

Years later, the memory of Horsey still alive and well, Babci gave me the pattern for Horsey, along with the materials to make a brand new one, identical to the original.  The Daddy Monkey and I were very young, and freshly married with little money.  I don’t remember for what occasion I made Horsey, but I did, and he was well received by a fully grown man.  He still roams our house; sometimes in our home office with The Daddy, sometimes finding his way into the kids’ room.  He’s starting to get a bit worn and loved himself.

Remembering that last year’s kitty has become The Boy’s most beloved stuffed animal (“because he’s filled with your love, Mom”), I knew it was time to make him a friend. Using the Original Horsey as my inspiration, I set out to make a new one.  This one is made from an old wool sweater of mine that I felted in the wash.  The mane and tail are from the infamous yarn stash, and the button eyes and wool stuffing were from my stash.

Of all the stuffed animals I have made over the years, and there have been many, this new Horsey has to be by far my favorite.  All of the components–the colors, the softness of the fabric, the perfect squishyness of the stuffing, the warmth of the wool, and his sweet, sweet face–combine to make the perfect Horsey.  I simply cannot stop touching and admiring The New Horsey.

Hopefully the New Horsey and the Old Horsey can be friends.  I would hate for the Old Horsey to think he’s being replaced.

The Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos is a holiday celebrated predominantly in Mexico and has evolved from an ancient Aztec festival.  Rather than being a somber occasion, it is a celebration of the lives of those who have come before us.  Traditionally, a feast is prepared, and an ofrenda, or altar, is built to honor the dead. It is believed that on this day, the spirits of the dead return to the earth for a visit! I believe it is important to remember the generations that have come before me, making my life possible.  And I hope someday someone will celebrate my life and memory on Dia de los Muertos!

As far as the party is concerned, I still have plenty to do.  Gather buffet supplies, get decorations ready, and finish the piñata and sugar skulls.  I’m in good shape now, and I just have a few last minute things to do. The paint on the piñata is drying as I type this, and the housecleaning will have to wait until tomorrow.  (And do I really need to clean the house before a party when it’s just going to get messed up anyway?)

I’ll be back next week to share images from the party, but for now I wanted to share the outfits I made for the kids to wear.  I had some scraps of muertos fabric from a skirt I made years ago, so I made a shirt for The Boy, and a skirt for The Girl.  I’m pleased to report that I had only tiny slivers of fabric remaining.  Love that fabric stash!

My only regret is that I did not have enough fabric for a similar skirt for me.  Also, I might be about thirty years too old for a skirt like that.

A star for The Boy.

A heart for The Girl.

One day, The Boy saw me drawing in my sketchbook.  When he found out I was drawing ideas for toys I had, he said, “You can make TOYS?!” When I told him that indeed I could, he asked for a cat for Christmas.

The “fabric” is a thriftshop wool sweater that I felted (washed and dried on hot).  The pattern is unmarked.  The pattern and the ribbon on the kitty’s collar are both very old and were given to me by The Daddy Monkey’s Grandmother years ago.  The vintage button is from The Visionary.

When I took this outside to photograph it, The Girl kept grabbing it.  I told her it was a Christmas surprise for The Boy.  She said, “No, my Christmas surprise.”  Looks like I may be making another one.

I am so thrilled with how both costumes look, and I am really happy that I got them done in time for us to to go to our local garden’s Halloween celebration for children.  They both had a great time, and I’m glad to get as much use out of these costumes as we can.  I know they’ll end up in the dress-up trunk after Halloween, so I can feel good about all the time and money I spent on these.

Here is the The Boy, dressed as a ranger.  This costume was my inspiration.  Look at that serious expression.  He is so fierce.

And here is The Girl, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood.  I also had the idea to dress her as Carmen Miranda, but I thought the odds on her keeping all that fruit on her head were pretty small.  She wouldn’t even keep the hood up.

Yes, I could have bought costumes for much cheaper, and saved myself a lot of time,  but every time I look at these kids in the costumes I made, it seems all worthwhile.  I remember so well the costumes my mom sewed for me, and it’s a tradition I’m glad to continue with my own children.

When The Boy came home from school one day to find the house decorated for Halloween, he was so excited, he said, “this place is magic!”

Hopefully he feels the same way about the costume.

This was my toy box when I was a little girl.  My mother made it in a woodworking class when we lived in Kansas.  I was not known as a neat child by any means, and I found the toy box to be a great place to hide, rather than a great place to put toys.  Inevitably what I wanted was always at the bottom, which meant that everything was always on the floor, rather than in the toy box.

I held on to this toy box for probably about 30 years.  My mom always said it could be my hope chest someday.  Does anyone do that anymore?  I didn’t.  But I lugged it from place to place, always finding it handy for stashing something away.  It got painted a couple of times.  Once it was black.  (I know, what was I thinking?) But I stripped it down a few years back, and it sat, 95% done, for years.

I was on one of my get-rid-of-stuff kicks when I decided that this sad thing just had to go.  The front panel was loose, The Boy had scribbled on it with crayon, and it was dirty and dingy from not having any varnish or paint.  I sheepishly asked my mom if she wanted it before I sent it away.  She declined, not having anywhere to put it.

But I still couldn’t get rid of it.  It sat for another year.

I’m on a major fall-cleaning kick around here: cleaning up, clearing out, and organizing.  I decided to fix up this sad old thing and give it to my own children.  I scrubbed and sanded it, and removed the last of the black paint.  I made a homemade non-toxic furniture polish out of mineral oil and beeswax, and polished it up.  I repaired the loose front.  Then, to make it a comfy place to sit and curl up with a book, I made two cushions for the seat.  I can proudly say that the cushions didn’t cost me a cent.  It was all materials from my stash.  The foam, the batting, the fabric and thread were all from previous projects.

So now it sits in my own childrens’ room, holding all their dress-up gear.  There is alot of it.  And now my own boy likes to climb inside to hide.