Hello friends! I’m in another exciting town meeting again, so what better to do than zone out and daydream until they call for a vote?! Despite a truly horrible week last week (Patricia was sick and home from school without care for 4 days last week) we had a great time this past weekend. We bounced at the trampoline park, went apple picking and even had a tea party. As the icing on the cake, Patricia is finally back to her usual cheerful self today after 7 days of being a sad lady. Oh and Julius learned to bike with his training wheels off too! What a week!
Patricia despite her crankiness, still had her moments. Everything she says at this age is pure gold. I love to listen to Patricia and Julius converse during their imagination play. Julius doesn’t just pull her along for the ride, he actually has her fully participate. For instance yesterday we excused them from the table yesterday and they both ran over to the couches (their sleeper trains) and Julius, slightly behind, shouted, “Patricia is the train leaving?” To which she responded, “oh no, not yet don’t worry.” It is great to have a friend to play with and I love watching the two of them interact.
I also (usually) love her frankness. Yesterday in the car she was wearing a baseball cap and she exclaimed, “I am the coolest!” She was being so silly so I said, “what about me? Am I the coolest?” She quickly responded, “No mama. You aren’t the coolest ‘cause you don’t look like this ‘cause you don’t have your hat on.” I then put on my really, really (un)attractive “desert sun hat” (yes you read that right, complete with wide brim, neck coverage, a lanyard and detachable veil). I asked, “how ‘bout now?” She quickly responded, “oh yeah, now you’re the coolest.” Satisfaction.
Now for Julius. He still is adorable of course. He’s also doing great with reading; reading well above his grade level. (Luckily his kindergarten teacher is awesome, aware of his reading skill and working to keep him engaged with harder content.) Because of this, I tend to treat him as a big guy, and I forget that he’s really just a little guy. The other day at cub scouts the leader called for a toast. Before the toast, he asked the kids if anyone knew what “a toast” was. Julius raised his hand and said, “it’s when you take bread, and you cook it again in the oven so it gets crispy”. The adults in the back were trying really hard not to chuckle too loudly. It was so adorable.
Okay so I don’t know if you can call my stickers adorable, but if you like them, they are yours. I love to draw doodles, so I will probably draw some in the future. After I explain how I made these (again reminder, I’m still not sure this is the best method) I’ll have a follow up on how I got them to stay on toddler water bottles. Toddlers, who frequently do tape removal activities in preschool, also love to peel stickers it turns out. Patricia’s water bottle survived several days when it was just her using it, and then on the first day back to preschool 75% of the stickers had been peeled off. I’m not sure if she finally succumbed to the temptation, or if her friends circled the water bottle like vultures when she returned. Let me just say that “permanent” cricut vinyl is not toddler tested.
Sublimation Stickers on Vinyl
What you’ll need:
- Sublimation printer, ink and paper
- White Permanent Vinyl
- Heat press
- heat resistant tape
- parchment paper
- My sticker sheet! (If you so desire)
- Using your sublimation printer, print out your design on sublimation paper (remember to mirror the image!).
- Set your heat press to 350F and wait for it to heat.
- Use heat resistant tape to tape sublimation paper image to vinyl, face down.
- Cover the design in parchment paper then heat press for 30 seconds. Make sure to do this in a well ventilated area. Next time I’m wearing a respirator.
- Let cool.
- Remove tape and remove design, it will probably have stuck to the vinyl.
- Wet the rest of the paper under the faucet and gently rub your hands over the remaining paper to remove.
- You can then cut your stickers out (or if you used the cricut print and cut option, you can cut them with your cricut!)
