My big guy turned 4 this weekend! We had a little celebration that you’ll hear about in upcoming posts. He had a great time celebrating with his friends Mia and Caleb and his grandparents. And his birthday presents were a total hit! We got him a camera which he loved and a… vacuum. Which he also loves. He loves to try and help me vacuum now. He used to take out his toy vacuum everytime I pulled out the big one, but now he wants to use the real vacuum and has gotten to the point that he won’t let me use it because “he can do it”. I really appreciate the help but now he’s lugging this giant vacuum around while I cannot actually get the floors clean. So I decided to just buy him a lightweight Dirt Devil. It is perfect! He can carry it all around, maneuver it easily and he is actually helping us clean! It is a win-win!
Julius’ homemade Mama costume
Well, Julius insisted that he needed a scepter in order to be Max for Halloween, so about an hour before our photo shoot Julius and I threw together a scepter out of stuff around the house (and a lot of hot glue). I think it came out pretty good, considering we only spent about 20 minutes on it and 0 dollars. This lead Julius to come up with his own “craft” from the rest of the supplies. He then asked Will to take a picture of him “with his homemade Mama costume”. (I am not exactly sure what this says about me or Julius’ view of me, but I’m sure we will unpack that one in 20 years.)
Oh just one more story. I have had to repair the scepter about 4 times now because, it is just held together with hot glue. Every time I repair it I cannot find the glue gun. Thinking I must be going crazy I finally asked Julius “do you know where the glue gun is”? To which he got all excited and started scrambling around saying, “ummmm yup!” He then ran off into the wood shop and pulled out the glue gun from one of the bottom drawers of my tool chest. I literally never would have found it. Yesterday I was missing my glue gun again (which I swore I had put away in my craft desk), so I looked in the bottom drawer of the tool chest again and there it was…
Max’s King of the Wild Things Scepter
What you’ll need:
- 18″ of 1/2″ dowel
- ping pong ball
- a 4″ diameter circular take out food container with lid. (Or two 4″ diameter lids.)
- black spray paint
- yellow acrylic paint (or paint pen)
- hot glue and glue gun
- Cut the outer rim off the take out container, leaving aa 1/2″ wide ring. Cut the inside of the take out container lid out, so only the outside of the lid remains. These will form the rings.
- Using a craft knift (or drill – which I did but was tricky because it shattered more than drilled) cut two holes in the top and bottom of the ball, just large enough to fit the dowel through.
- Insert dowel through holes in ping pong ball so there is 1.5″ from the top of the rod. Hot glue in place.
- Cut through each of the two rings so they can open up into a “c” shape.
- Hot glue the portion of one ring opposite the slit to the top of the dowel. Glue the two ends in place 1.5″ below the ping pong ball, where the ring hits naturally.
- Repeat step 5 for the other ring, gluing on top of the first ring but at a 90 degree angle from the first ring.
- Spray paint the entire thing black. Let dry.
- Paint the ping pong ball yellow (I used an acrylic paint pen to do this quickly).
- Let the wild rumpus start!
