Halloween photos

It is almost a month later, and I am just getting around to posting Halloween photos! After quite a few weeks of interrupted sleep by the 11 month old, she is finally back to sleeping about 11 hours at night, a morning nap, and a great afternoon nap! I can breathe again! I can sit down in the morning while the kids play, CLEAN--it was getting BAD, fold laundry, and sit down at the computer--it's been a while! 

My friend had sent me a picture last year of a cute costume for Lucy.

Queen of Hearts by YourSparkleBox

$130 seemed QUITE a bit too much to spend on a costume! I ordered some 6" wide crochet headbands( about $.70 each), in black and red, and bought about $6-$7 worth or tulle. I still don't buy on the roll if I'm trying to save money. I get it cut from the bolt, measure, & cut my own strips. I also bought a piece of gold and red glitter fabric/paper. I'm not sure exactly what it is.( It has washing instructions on it, and it is thicker than paper.) I hadn't made a tutu on a headband before, so I had to look up some instructions. I found a few youtube videos and some other instructional tutorials.

I decided that I was just going to make her costume short, although the long dress was part of what I loved most. I also decided that Ella needed to be Alice in Wonderland. I ordered blue and white headbands with the others, and picked up just a little tulle for her little self. We already had a black headband and black bow to complete her outfit.

It took me a few minutes to decide just to sew the 2 crochet headbands together to get the red&black seem up the middles. I had thought about cutting them in half and then sewing, but then decided the thickness would help the fact that they are see through when stretched. And I was sure it would just all unravel once I made the first cut.

You don't have to turn the headbands inside out, just lay on top of each other. The red one had a little spot that was torn, so that became my 'inside' (outside while sewing) of the red. 

Flip right side out.

We have a small garbage can that was perfect to slide this over to work on the tulle.I like to usually use 2 pieces of tulle on each loop, but was planning on doing 3 layers. I only grabbed 1 strip for each loop this time. The seam also doesn't matter--crooked or not-- because you can situate once it is on your princess.

Before you make your loops, make sure you are NOT looping into the bottom thin row (elastic) on the headband.

It will scrunch up so you can't see it once you start looping, but it might break if you loop on them.



The loops are the same as you would do for an elastic or ribbon tutu.

I did 3 rows all the way around. This picture shows a gap where the gold is. I ran out and Luke had to bring me another half a yard on the way home from work. The gold paper/fabric on top is for her crown.

After all the rows were complete, I cut some hearts out of the red glitter paper/fabric & hot glued onto the tutu.

I found some Halloween black and white striped tights for Lucy to wear underneath. They were actually girls Small. They pulled all the way up to her chest, and made a perfect extra layer underneath the crochet headband! 

Lucy loves her 'mingo' I got her on the way home from Florida in the spring. 

The Queen of Hearts & Alice in Wonderland

Lucy with her friend at their Glam-O-Ween Party.

Tooth Fairy Mommy. Luke was a tooth. I found one I wanted to make, and then skimped on the details & it was not the most impressive thing ;)

I'll have to add more photos later from the other Halloween events. Some virus doesn't understand that my baby's birthday party is this weekend, and won't leave her alone. We're past the runny nose part and have moved onto gagging on drainage and throwing it up....4 times since last night. There wasn't much sleep last night, even though she was upright in the swing. She's got a cough that won't let her stop =(  She needs to feel better soon! Off to snuggle with her.....

PLEASE CRASH MY YARD!!!

We are still pool-less. I'm not sure if that is the correct way to write that. But we still have no pool. We have no money set aside to buy another one. The company that instructed us to fill our pool when it was 40 degrees, which caused the liner to shrink, and caused the walls to collapse, and caused us to have no working pool is not seeming to entertain the idea (at all) that they caused our pool to be gone, leaving us with a sand pit in the backyard, and a lot of money down the drain--or down the ditch & into the scrap metal yard. ( It seems to be common knowledge that pools DO NOT get filled below 65 degrees outside OR at night, yet we got a text around 4 PM and 40 degrees saying to leave the water running to fill the pool & he'd be back to connect the top hose later).

This is our dilemma now:

This is the best I can do with my phone ( full and no memory to do much) to show the bare backyard. It's not big. But it has a 24' sand circle. And it was grated to be level, and has a drop off into the sand on the right side.

We are working on over seeding the front yard this week, but don't want to start on the back yet until we know what to do with it.

 My current obsessions on TV are 1) Flea Market Flip, 2) Rehab Addict 3) Yard Crashers. Landon had to go to bed early without dinner one night ( don't ask), and he woke up at 10 PM hungry. I fixed him a PB&J and let him watch Yard Crashers with me. He is now also obsessed. And he asks us why our yard can't be crashed.

I WISH! But we don't shop at THAT STORE ( and neither should you because when you shop at the GOOD store, your money goes to buy my kids food & pay for our house. Yes, regardless of how people say big businesses don't need your money and it just goes to corporate rich people, sales affects salary and bonuses for all employees too) that the people are picked up at. =)

We have quite a few ideas, a little money to spend on it( from our SMALL refund we have received from the cleaning part of the pool company), but are at a standstill of what to do! We need a designer, a contractor, or someone to do some pro-bono work. Or better yet, we just need some help on what the best solution to the yard would be. It either could start with a big amount of fill dirt or a skidder to level it back down or even a good amount of pavers. . .

Throw out some ideas!

Help us!

Girls' room details.

I posted  a few links from the room last week. I think the Sweet Heavenly Molasses is currently my favorite thing in the room. I also really prefer this bookshelf versus of all their books stacked under Lucy's bed:

We bought 3 crates from Home Depot (where else?) They sat for quite a while. We bought 2 cans of the same color pink spray paint that we painted the drawer pulls and some picture frames with & 1 paint of white. They got painted 1 coat, and they sat for a long while. Once it got warmer and I was playing outside with the kids everyday, I painted a few more coats, and finished them off with some Rust-oleum clear gloss. Luke screwed them all together, and then we put another coat of clear on them.I thought about attaching this to the wall somehow, and was afraid Lucy would pull it down. She isn't interested in trying got climb it, and it really is not heavy at all. Landon has quite a few more books than the 2 of them, but they both get the Imagination Library books every month. It will keep filling up!

Luke thinks we just made this shelf up, or thought about it on our own. But I think I saw it on a blog ( from Pinterest). DIY BOOKSHELF LINK

 

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Landon has swimming lessons starting today. I'm thinking back to him being 18 months old....