Making Magic

Well, thank you to those who entered my contest last month!  The winner (determined by Google’s random number generator) is Mark!!  I’ll be sending you your jar of honey soon!  And keep reading for your chance to enter this month’s give away!

I don’t know about you all, but I need some more joy in my life!  The news combined with a stressful job during the day (and evenings) and dystopian fiction before bed is really dragging me down.  Luckily I’ve got some little balls of energy to cheer me up.  Patricia is always good for a cheer-up.  A couple weeks ago she walked around the dinner table 4 or 5 times “tickling” everyone in sequential order (Dany included).  Her tickling consists of nearly pinching you and saying the work “tck tck tck” over and over again while smiling.  We pretend to laugh about the tickling (though we’re really laughing over the cuteness) because it’s so darn adorable.

Yesterday we went to our favorite place, Davis Farmland, for unicorn weekend.  All the farmers had unicorn horns on, and their pony rides were “unicorn rides”.  (This just meant we waited three times as long for the same ponies we ride every week, with horns cleverly attached to their heads.)  Julius was very excited to take a unicorn ride and Patricia usually loves to go on the ponies as well.  When we finally got up to the front of the line though, Patricia freaked out and decided she couldn’t handle a unicorn ride.  When I asked if she was scared of the unicorn her response was, “yeah scare”.  Who knew that plastic horn was so intimidating!

Julius of course wanted a unicorn horn after seeing the ones the farmers had, and I, opening my big mouth, told him I could make him one.  He watched me make one last night, and now you can make your own too!  I used more of the rainbow batik fabric I’ve been using it for everything lately, though I gave Julius the choice of rainbow or shiny and he chose rainbow.  After we finished it, Julius jumped around his room the rest of the night pretending he was flying, and then made up a story about how he could take his horn off but it would make him lose all his magic.  It was hilarious and I managed to get some of it on video.  I just hope Patricia isn’t scared of Julius the next time he wears it…

Kid’s Unicorn horn

What you’ll need:

• a small piece of lightweight fabric for the horn (I used cotton batik)
• a handful of stuffing
• thread (I used metallic, but it was extremely unnecessary)
• elastic (I used a light colored metallic that would blend with Julius’ fair hair)
• pattern here

1. Cut fabric for your horn, by cutting out pattern as directed.
2. Fold horn fabric in half, right side together and pin and stitch along the edge line you drew to form a cone.
3. Turn right side out and stuff gently.
4. Using a water soluble ink pen, draw along the outside of the horn, starting an inch from the top and spiraling down to the base.  At the base draw along the seam allowance.
5. Thread your needle and handstitch a wide running stitch along your spiral, gathering as you go.  You want to gather slightly at the top to give the horn definition and more drastically at the bottom to keep the horn less dramatically tapered.  Tie off.
6. Cut a small circle of fabric and handstitch to the bottom of the horn to cover the unfinished portion.
7. Measure elastic by fitting around your child’s head.  Do not overlap the ends when measuring.
8. Overlap the two ends by 1/2″ and then stitch together.
9. Hand stitch the overlapping ends of elastic to the underside of the horn.
10. Wear with pride.
    

    Checking out his magical unicorn horn in the mirror

Wow!  You got this far?!  You are magical as a unicorn!  You deserve a prize!  Or at least a chance at a prize.  Tell me a magical story in the comments below and you’ll get a chance to win a travel utensil set for your next picnic or outing!  We carry these utensil sets everywhere so we don’t need to use plastic silverware.