Thank you all for the nice comments!!  It really made my week.  I want to show off our tie dye masterpieces today, but first, I’m long overdue to share some more Patricia and Julius stories.  My favorite thing in the whole world is watching Julius and Patricia have conversations.  Patricia, in her toddler speak will ask him questions and he’ll answer whatever it is in earnest.  He’s also started speaking up for her – for instance sometimes I cannot understand some of the words Patricia is saying.  Julius, by who knows how, understands exactly what she is saying at all times and will indignantly shout it at me.  For example, “She said raisins, mommy!  Not crazy!”  As if, obviously, she said raisins clear as day, and Will and I are the confused ones.  It makes her feel more confident though so I love it.

Patricia is amazing at remembering names.  She will hear someone’s name one time and then ask about that person a day later and we’ll have no idea who she is talking about.  For instance at Davis Farmland the other day she was playing “with” (aka near) a little girl and she introduced herself.  The little girl introduced herself as Charlotte and later Patricia said “I want to go back to play with Charlotte”.  I had no idea who she was talking about but luckily Will did.

She’s been eager to use “real names” lately and sometimes reminds Will and I that our real names are “Will” and “Lexi”.  Also this happened the other day:

• Patricia is facing away from me into the chair mumbling something.  I can’t hear her.
• Me: what did you say Patricia?
• Patricia: (turns to me) oh I’m talking to the chair.
• Patricia: (turns back to chair) Hi chair my real name is Patricia Naomi.

She also is obsessed with… poop.  She loves to ask me to play her clips of animals on my phone and I usually give in.  The other day she asked me this, “I see doggies?  I see doggies in garden?  I see doggies pooping in garden?”  Umm, what?!  I have no idea how she came up with that one.  I did not oblige.  They say a lot of toddlers are obsessed with poop so maybe this is totally normal, but this was NOT at all the case with Julius.  When Patricia was around 1 year old she would mumble poopies to herself and crack up laughing.  She’d do this for half an hour before getting bored.  Now Patricia inserts “poopies” into conversation for comedic effect anytime she wants to get a laugh.  (At least I assume to her toddler friends she is basically a toddler comedian.)

The other day we were at a sushi restaurant.  This was more upscale than our usual dining and one of the first indoor dining options we’ve really done that wasn’t Davis BBQ.  Patricia and Julius were waiting for their food and there was a lull in the coversation.  All of a sudden Patricia (quietly) outburst something.  I couldn’t hear her so I asked, “what did you say Patricia?”  And she giggled and said “I say poopies really loud.”  Of course after that Julius chimed in and I had to stop them before anyone could actually hear my children shouting poopies.  Julius is inherently more compliant than Patricia but he feeds off her silliness.  When she is doing something naughty he absolutely wants to be a part of it.  While it’s adorable to see them playing together, it’s more than a bit frustrating getting Patricia to stop while Julius is doing the action as well.

I don’t know if this will last but both my kids seem to like crafts.  (Much to my great joy.)  The other day when Patricia was home sick a couple weeks ago I was leading a meeting and Patricia sat next to me and opened one of the envelopes of animal crafts that Julius got for Christmas.  She looked at the picture and put together almost the whole face by herself just by asking me things like “where are the eyes”?  “Are these the eyes?”  It was adorable and she persevered on her own for quite awhile before eventually giving up.  I felt bad that I couldn’t help her more while I was leading the meeting.  This is becoming a trend with my life.  I think I have to try and reclaim the balance part of the work/life balance.  It’s just the kids have been home so often this year that it is very hard to get things done while they are here and I end up working odd hours so I don’t feel guilty about it.

“Stretch the Giraffe” -Patricia (age 2, without assistance)
My favorite part, hands down, is the unibrow.

Julius is very creative and he makes these mobiles out of trash and scrap paper that are actually quite beautiful.  His teachers at daycare had to tell him not to go in the recycling bin anymore, but he still frequently comes home with scrap paper from school that he has repurposed into masterpieces.  I definitely don’t remember doing mixed media art when I was his age, or really ever.  He might be on another level than me.  And he’s great at drawing.  Sometimes his teachers draw pictures for him during nap time that he brings home.  So I’ll sneakily throw them into the recycling bin (sorry teachers, I’m not framing your art on my art wall.)  At some point though, I realized I had been recycling pictures Julius was making because I thought they were sketches from the teachers… Oh and most of his pictures still have very emotional animals.  A lot of them have tears.  I hope this isn’t a cry for help, but he has told me on several occasions that he thinks sad animals look cuter.

“Two ghost sharks who are going to be married, but a wrecking ball comes between them and pushes them away and now they are sad.” -Julius (age 5)

Patricia still loves beans.  You may remember when she was younger Will would give her an entire can of beans for her lunch and she’d eat them all.  We eat a lot of beans as vegetarians (or mostly vegetarians for Julius, Patricia and Will) so it is convenient she likes them.  The other day we had this conversation when choosing what she wanted for left-overs night:

• Me:  What do you want for dinner, Patricia?
• Patricia: Beans!
• Me: What kind of beans?  3 bean salad, refried beans, or white bean soup?
• Patricia: All the beans!!

Last poop story I promise.  I don’t want to become the parent who talks and laughs about poop but I’m sorry this is my life now.

• A toot noise emanates from the brown chair in the living room where Julius is sitting.
• Will and me (at the same time): Julius do you have to poop?  Go poop.
• Julius:  I guess so.  (waddles to bathroom)
• Patricia: (pops out from behind the brown chair) I toot!
• Me: Do you have to poop too?
• Patricia: No.
• Me:  You need to go potty if you have to poop.  Julius, did you toot or did Patricia toot?
• Julius: (walks out of the bathroom with his pants around his ankles and says indignantly) I have no idea!

Will and I laughed for days about that one.

More Patricia-isms:

• Emooses (emus)
• No away!  (No way!)
• I need has ta potty (I need to use the bathroom.)
• unbutter (unbutton)
• bandy (band-aid)
• He’s my bestie (I like him a lot)

Okay now that you sat thru all the poop stories I want to show off this tie dye! (Also, I’m really sorry that I rewarded all the nice comments from last week with an entire blog post about poop.)

I LOVE tie dye.  It is always so fun to see how it comes out.  Julius’ came out amazing!

Look at these 2 cuties. Julius made his shirt himself.  And yes, I did say “poopies” to get Patricia to smile.
I used 3 tsp dye:3 tsp sodium carbonate 2 cups of chemical solution and applied to dry fabric. Dyes used were Procion bubble gum pink, citrus yellow, and aqua from Pro Chemical

Everytime I finish a tie dye shirt I think to myself “why can’t all my clothes be tie dye?!”
I used 3 tsp dye:3 tsp sodium carbonate 2 cups of chemical solution and applied to dry fabric. Dyes used were Procion bubble gum pink and citrus yellow from Pro Chemical

I mean, don’t you just love tie dye?! t doesn’t get any better than this!
I used 3 tsp dye:3 tsp sodium carbonate 2 cups of chemical solution and applied to dry fabric. Dyes used were Procion bubble gum pink, citrus yellow, and aqua from Pro Chemical

I still have Will’s shirt that I haven’t photographed yet…  I’ll add that shortly.

Well I was in charge of the kiddos the past 4 days while will was at a board game convention (I was supposed to go too, but there were several reasons I ended up staying home instead).  I had all these great plans to do with the kids, starting with logging off work at an actual reasonable hour on Friday.  Those plans didn’t happen and I ended up barely getting home in time to make them dinner while on a work call then putting the kids to bed (late) and working until 1am on Saturday, and much of the day on Saturday.  I noticed Patricia does bad things to get my (negative) attention while I am working.  For instance she colored on the couch, hit or pinched her brother (out of the blue) and did various other mean things anytime I was on a work call.  Normally she only does things like that when she is cranky so that scared me.

Despite the horrible work schedule I did get the day off on Sunday and decided to take today off to take them to the New England Aquarium.  (It’s a state holiday today for the marathon, so Patricia was already out of school.)  I figured Julius would love the aquarium because he’s been super into sharks lately and told us he wants to be a marine biologist.  And I told Patricia there were penguins, so that convinced her.  I don’t know if I’ve ever been to this aquarium, but it was super cool.  They have two different species of penguins, sea lions, a tank where you can pet rays and sharks, a humongous coral reef 3 stories high and numerous other tanks on the sides.

Patricia stared at the penguins for at least 20 minutes, and then I had to drag her away from each penguin area anytime we passed by.  Julius was extremely excited by the sharks in the shark tank but was slightly disappointed that I made him leave after like 20 minutes of hanging around there.  He did work up the courage to touch one of them, so I was proud of him for that.  I think he might have been disappointed I didn’t give him longer to work up the courage to touch more… but Patricia was also there and I had to try to keep them both interested which was challenging with just one adult.  Overall I considered the day a success!

This is as good as it gets, both kids looking the same (wrong) direction.

Another success was this little mushroom house I made for the fairy peg dolls at Patricia’s “party”.   For this guy I combined felt sheets with felted details.  I want to start doing that more often because felting opens up a whole new avenue for realism on felted projects.  I only touched on that briefly with the little bushes around the base of the mushroom and the door, but next time I’ll try to up my game.  Oh and this tutorial is a bit loosey-goosey.  I will provide my measurements as guidelines, but I don’t have a pattern.

Felt Mushroom House

What you’ll need:

• white felt
• red felt
• stuffing
• roving for decorations (I used shades of brown and green)
• brown embroidery thread for details

1. Cut a 9.5″x 11″ strip of felt for mushroom base.  I folded this in half to form a 4.75″x11″ strip of felt, then overlapped the unfinished two ends so the part near the folded side had more overlap than the part near the bottom (causing it to flare out a bit).  I then trimmed where they met, and trimmed the bottom (the larger side) so it would sit flat.
2. Finally I stitched together at the unfinished ends.
3. Next I drew and cut out an arched door and circular window panes.
4. At this point I felted the door and bushes onto the side of the mushroom house.
5. Then I embroidered the trim around the door and windows.
6. Next I cut a piece of circle of white felt and a circle of red felt with 9″ diameter.
7. I hand stitched them together, leaving a 3″ gap, turned them right side out and then stuffed them very lightly with recycled poly stuffing and closed the gap with a ladder stitch. 
8. Cut a 2″x12.5″ strip of white felt.  Stitch the two ends together
9. Fold in half the long ways so the unfinished edges are on the inside.  Stitch
10. Stitch circle (unfinished side) to bottom of the mushroom cap.

Well friends I had an eventful week last week!  I ended up in the hospital (long story) unexpectedly after my doctor called me at 10pm on Tuesday and suggested I go to the ER.  The short story is that they did admit me to the hospital (much to my surprise and unpreparedness) but didn’t find anything interesting.  They did cover me all over in adhesive tape (which is listed along with latex as one of my allergies) so that after I left I broke out in rashes.  (I guess I can consider that a party favor!)

When they finally discharged me at 5pm on Wednesday I had to scramble to pack for our weekend at PAX!  Mark and Erin flew in from out of town while my mom watched Julius and Patricia.  We had so much fun!!!!  I’m so sad it is over already.  The highlights were these mini puzzle rooms (that were a bit too easy for us puzzle experts), a fun D&D adventure, lots of board games, some video games and seeing lots of friends!  Oh and the theme was 80’s computers, so Will and I naturally had to get merch!  It’s the first year I’ve waited in the merch line but I’m glad I did because now I’m the proud owner of a PAX microcomputer shirt.  (And even better Will has an evil wizard hoodie!  Sidenote: I only recently realized I might have married an evil wizard and I’m not upset.)

On Sunday I slept like half the day due to sheer exhaustion but then Julius and I decided to do some pottery painting.  Okay, to be honest my reason for going to the pottery place was that I had to pick up some pottery I had already painted, but what’s wrong with more pottery painting?  This pottery painting studio is HUGE.  They have two floors, tons of options for pottery and colors, and give you free range to do what you want.  I found them because they have a stoneware painting class.  Stoneware is a mid fire pottery where you can use mid fire glazes that do all sorts of fancy things in the kiln.  I’m obsessed with the sort of asymmetric dripping glazes that you see on high fire pottery and really wanted a set of new pasta bowls.

The pasta bowls my aunt Ruth gave me 12 years ago when Will and I got married are heavily used and on their last legs.  (If I’m being honest I’m down to just 3 pasta bowls total, and the remaining bowls look pretty shabby.)  I couldn’t find any I liked when I got new dishware a couple years ago.  The new plates and bowls used a reactive glaze which they advertise as being random and unique on every piece, but I was a bit disappointed when I got them.  They were much more uniform than they looked on the website.  I still love them, but decided to look on Etsy for some bowls instead.  Holy moley, individual bowls on Etsy are expensive!  Despite the price I still didn’t see anything in the size I wanted (I guess most people call “pasta bowls” “dinner bowls” or “meal bowls”).

This is when I started calling pottery places.  I decided I could paint my own bowls for the same price as ones I could buy off Etsy.  Not only could I pick the color scheme I wanted, but I’d get to play around with paint.  Most of the places I called were generally confused that I wanted to buy 6 of the same bowl.  Clay Time on the other hand was super helpful and over the phone measured a bunch of different bowls for me, and even set 6 aside.  Of course when I got there the bowls they set aside didn’t seem very large… and instead I chose some larger bowls that were labeled as “serving” bowls.  I now realize that I probably need to cut down my carb intake.

I did a test run on my first bowl during the stoneware painting class I took and it came out AWESOME.  I cannot take full credit for the awesomeness.  I followed an example that one of the owners had; I just picked a different color scheme.  I planned to return 2 weeks later to paint the rest but came down with a fever on the night of.  I was extremely sad since I’d planned the whole week out so Will could watch the kids (and it was a day I wouldn’t have to work late).  Instead I ended up going there on a Friday night (which happened to be the stoneware class night again) but I asked them to put me far away from anyone in case my work called.  (We were once again all working late.)  It ended up working out for me because I was able to take up an entire table and assembly line create 5 more bowls (with some slight tweaks from the original bowl to account for how far things dripped etc.)

I’m going to put the recipe here for if I ever need to make some more of these bowls!  The glazes they use are Mayco Stroke & Coat.  I forget what cone they fire to, I’ll have to ask.  (Guessing 6 based on the Mayco pictures.)

This doesn’t seem like a serving bowl, right?! Or do I really just eat too much pasta?

Lexi’s Definitely Single Serving Pasta Bowls

• Mayco SW134 Eggplant
• Mayco SW156 Galaxy
• Mayco SW 110 Oyster
• fan brush
• liquid wax resist and a disposable brush, or brush dipped in soap.

1. Sponge entire piece off with water to make sure no debris is on the surface.
2. After dry, apply a thin ring of liquid wax resist on the bottom of the piece 1/4″ from the bottom. Let dry.
3. Dip fan brush in water, then squeeze out extra between two fingers so brush is damp but not wet.
4. Paint the bottom inside of each bowl with Oyster.  Make sure to apply more paint whenever the brush starts to drag.
5. Let dry.  Paint 2 more coats of paint, letting dry between each coat.
6. Paint the inside top half of bowl with eggplant. (Overlap the oyster slightly.)
   

   Here’s my assembly line process. I’m working on the top inside layer.

7. Let dry.  Paint 2 more coats of paint, letting dry between each coat.
8. Paint the bottom half of each bowl (up to wax resist) with Oyster.
9. Let dry.  Paint 2 more coats of paint, letting dry between each coat.
10. Paint outside top half of bowl with eggplant.  (Overlap the oyster slightly.)
11. Let dry.  Paint 2 more coats of paint, letting dry between each coat.
12. Apply a thick 1.5″ wide band of galaxy where the eggplant and oyster overlap on the outside and inside of bowl, loading it up with crystals. Let dry.
    

    Note I made the band on this one a bit higher because I didn’t want the drips to go so far down the side of the bowl this time.

    

    

    It is going to make me happy everytime I eat out of one of these.

    

    Why yes I can make you some! ;)

    

    Check out my stack of new dishes.

    

    Want to know what I painted this time?  You’ll just have to wait and see!

Happy Monday!  (Or I guess Tuesday when you’re reading this.)  I’m again finding it hard to motivate myself to do projects.  I’ve been procrastinating by cleaning.  This is very weird.  There might be something wrong with me.  Just about the only thing I clean on a regular basis are the bathrooms and the kitchen.  Everywhere else in the house is full of toys and whenever we clean it, it instantly becomes full of stuff again.  Or worse, full of paper scraps because now Patricia is learning how to use scissors and she leaves piles of snipped up papers in her wake just like Julius used to do.  Usually though she’s snipping up Julius’ artwork (which is also all over the house) so in addition to the wake of little papers from Patricia, there’s tears and crying from Julius.

Julius is still at the temporary daycare location (in a church) so every morning I have to take Patricia into the building to drop off Julius.  She loves this and always gives him a hug and kiss before leaving him for the day.  It’s so darn adorable.  Patricia has gotten more imaginative with her play, and has started building little structures out of magnatiles like Julius likes to do.  This means the magnatiles are a hot commodity.  They also have been playing with the little pegdolls I’ve made a lot more.   They like to use them as people in their magnatile structures – they seem to fit perfectly

For Patricia’s birthday you may recall that I made a fleet of pegdoll fairies for her.  I love painting pegdolls.  I had just finished the A Court of Thornes and Roses series so obviously I had to make one of the fairies the best character in the books.  I’ll leave you to make your own guesses on who the other ones are if you’ve read the series.  If you haven’t read the series, then what are you waiting for?!   I made a cricut template for these so you can cut the wings out of felt using the cricut if you have one!  It makes it so much easier.

Finished fairies hanging out (sorry lighting is terrible)

Fairy Pegdolls

What you’ll need:

• cricut templates:
  • large illyrian wings
  • small butterfly wings
  • medium butterfly wings
  • large butterfly wings
• cricut explore air with fabric blade
• thin, stiff felt (I like this stuff)
• pegdolls of all sizes
• acrylic paints
• mod podge acrylic spray sealer
• hot glue

1. Mount a sheet of felt on a cricut mat (make sure it has good adherence or else use tape to tape it on)
2. With the fabric blade loaded, load the mat and cut wings.
3. Remove wings from mat, set aside for now.
   

   Cutting out a set of wings.

4. Paint pegdolls with your desired color schemes.
   

   After painting the fairies

5. After your fairies are dry, apply 2 coats of mod podge acrylic spray sealer, letting dry according to bottle directions between coats.
   

   Spray paint with mod podge sealer.

6. When sealer is dry, hot glue a set of wings to the back of each fairy.
   

   Hot glue wings on each fairy.

   

   After adding their wings

   

   You may notice I made some mushrooms too! Those are from pegs I cut off the pegboard that was in our closet (before I refinished it and added nicer hooks) and wine bottle corks!

I had the kids to myself this weekend which was fun.  I had grand plans to do some fun activities but the kids said no, so we just hung around at home.  Instead we ended up doing a bunch of cooking together and had a tea party.

I went all out for the tea party and brought out the good silver and china and made little tea sandwiches (I even polished the silver).  The kids picked out their own fancy outfits and mine as well (they chose a beautiful kurta bought for me by one of my work friends).  I put one of my ridiculous headbands on and Julius declared “you look like a queen!”  He gets lots of points always for buttering me up.  Patricia was also on mostly good behavior this week so it seems she must finally be feeling back to her usual self.  All weekend she kept telling me “<insert stuffed animal here> is my bestie” after snuggling said animal.  It’s so darn adorable.

If this isn’t the cutest picture ever, I don’t know what is.

Tea party lunch.

“The Queen” and her prince and princess.

One of the days we went to the grocery store to get food for our weekend cooking adventures.  I lured the kids into going with me by telling them they could ride in the cart (Hannaford’s has these cool two seater carts shaped like farm trucks, but they are frequently taken.)  Of course the carts were not there when we arrived, so I let Julius ride in the basket of the cart (you can judge me but in my mind he’s safer in there than getting lost in the store).  They were quite happy with this situation especially when Patricia realized that we had to put the FOOD in the basket part of the cart where Julius was sitting.  She of course wanted food piled up on her as well so we ended up wandering around the store with a mountain of groceries on top of both kids.  A person in the store saw us and thought it was adorable.  I’m glad he said something because I wouldn’t have thought to take a picture.

I’m still behind on crafts from Patricia’s party!  So I will show you quickly how I made the fairy skirts!  They are super easy, and very forgiving, so once you get the hang of them you can make them in front of the tv almost as a side thought.

Fairy Skirt

What You’ll Need

• about 2-3 yards tulle (I found mine at the thrift shop a couple years ago!!)
• about 1 yard of 1/4″ wide elastic

1. Measure your child’s waist.  Cut a piece of elastic to that width.
2. Overhand knot the ends together to form an elastic belt.
   

   This is the only picture I have of the elastic – see it on the table in the top right?

3. Measure from your child’s waist to 3 inches below their knee.  Fold tulle in half.  Cut about 24 5″ wide strips of tulle (folded in half) in that length. (Note: you may need more and less depending on your child’s size.)
4. Knot tulle onto elastic belt as follows.  With tulle piece folded in half, hold fold/loop over the top of elastic belt. 
5. Put ends of tulle down and around the elastic and back up thru the loop.  Pull tight. 
6. Repeat for other strips until the entire belt is full.Note: When you come to the knot in the elastic, cover up with one of the knots.
7. Let your child use their imagination!
   

   I just love this photo

   

   And this one too.

   

   And here they are admiring their outfits.