When old is new again

Having a new baby does that. What was put away for years resurfaces again and for the new baby, everything is new.

The first blast from the past is this little tutu skirt. Tulle was layered, then machine gathered followed by ribbon being folded over and stitched in place. I made a few of these as gifts for the little girls in my life probably six or more years ago.

The next is the tiger costume. This was a major undertaking for the mom of a young toddler. It got a lot of use 10 years ago and was the perfect choice for a chilly Halloween night for the newest toddler.

Fleece poncho and leg warmers

Long ago when Sydney was a baby, I wanted to make a fleece poncho for her. It works so well with baby carriers and in and out of the car.

The Same Fleece Poncho for Toddler

I started with a circle-like shape and cut a small hole for the head. It just wasn't right, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. I added a hood and called it quits. It was functional, but nothing special.

With new baby, Kessa I get to try everything again and this time I had a store bought poncho to use as a guide. The poncho was a 7/8, but I thought the dimensions would not be that different for a baby. I just made the hood a little smaller.

Fleece Poncho & Leg Warmers for Baby

The key to this pattern is four equal sections that are smaller at the top and flare out at the bottom. I also learned along the way to cut the hood with the stretch going side to side. It makes it easier to put over the baby's head too.

I had extra fabric and made legwarmers to match.

It fit great when she was 9 months and still is great at 18 months!

Hoop castle

The kids learned about hula hoop castles in gym class. You only need four to make it work, but if you are seven years old and have tons of hoops at your disposal, they ALL can be used!

When not used in castle construction, you can see us all hooping in the yard and inviting our neighbor friends over for hooping fun!

More Hooping!

My whole family is hooping! I finally decided to go ahead and make myself the exercise style hoop that I wanted to make more than a year ago.

Back to Lowes. This time buying 100 feet of 160psi 3/4" black irrigation tubing. I wasn't sure how many hoops I'd be making, but knew I wanted one or two and maybe these would make perfect gifts.

More cutting, heating, connecting and taping. I have become more proficient and confident in my taping and tried out some different patterns and mixing wide and narrow tape. The wide tape I just tore in half and the other half just stayed stuck on the roll.

My daughter had a birthday party coming up and I thought, why not! Hoops for everyone! Back to the Lowes, ordered more tape and more hoops were made!

I also decided to work with the mini 1/2" 125psi tubing for hand hooping and performance hooping. I see a potential talent show act in our future.

Hula Hoops

Well I guess we're not calling them "hula" hoops anymore, but it's sometimes hard to remember.

I learned about this style of hoop form a friend of mine who very successfully changed her lifestyle and lost more than 100 pounds.  Hooping started it for her.  I thought why not?

But it took me more than a year to actually make my own and the first ones weren't for me at all.  My little Brownie Girl scouts come down to the cafeteria on Friday afternoons after a busy week of school.  They would like nothing more than to race around the cafeteria for an hour, but that is not on the agenda.  I wondered if these new, improved, exercisey hoops would help.

I headed over to Lowes for black irrigation tubing.  I found what I was looking for and perplexed the staff.  They had never heard of making hula hoops out of irrigation tubing.  I started with 100 feet of 3/4" 100psi tubing.  I learned about making hoops form the many tutorials out there.  I read about different options for tape and decided to order the gaffer tape.

Both Jason Unbound and Karen Tiede have helpful tutorials and information on hoop making.

My husband already had a pair of cutters for the tubing and also a heat gun which made the connectors slide in easily.  Taping went pretty well.  I certainly got better as I went along.

Ten hoops later and we were hooping!  I made 9 smaller ones for the girls and one big one for me.

The Brownie Girl Scouts LOVED the hula hoops!  It made the transition from school to scouting go much more smoothly.  We also used the hoops at the end of the meeting when kids are being picked up.  

Good Turn Mouse

For the first Girl Scout Brownie meeting of the year I was looking for a fun project. I found this little poem about the Good Turn Mouse:

This saucy creature is a mouse
Most mothers won't let one in the house
See, this one it has quite a tail,
Each Girl Scout made one without fail.
Take it home and help all week,
and for good turns you must seek
for every good turn that you do
tie a knot in the yarn...make quite a few.
Remember why each knot you tied
and how much to help you really tried
and then next week, please take your turn
to tell us all, so we can learn...
just what you did to help at home
a ready helper you have grown!

I looked at Google images for a felt mouse pattern to sew. I settled on an almost circle that is folded in half and stitched with embroidery floss.

I started with beads for eyes, added little ears, and finally stitched the body from nose to tail leaving the tail long for knotting.

For the girls, I decided to prep the project for them so they would be able to finish in the time allotted and the project would not feel too hard for them.

I cut out all the mouse bodies and ears. Then I sewed on the mouse eyes and added a threaded needed with coordinating thread. I made up directions with sketches and the steps.

The group of second grade girls enjoyed the project a lot and were very excited to do the hand sewing. They did need a fair amount of help and it was great to have a few extra adults around. Everyone finished their little mice and took them home to keep track of all their good turns for the next two weeks.

Unicycle Cookies

My husband is a mountain unicyclist. My 7 year old daughter rides a unicycle too. I had looked for unicycle related items in the past and knew there was a limited supply. Last Christmas I found someone who could custom make a unicycle ornament for us. Custom seems to be the key with unicycles.

A unicycle only race was coming up and I thought it would be fun to bring decorated unicycle cookies. I did a Google search for unicycle cookie cutter. No luck.

Then I did a search for custom cookie cutters and I found this little kit. How hard could it be to make a cookie cutter?

It turned out to be pretty easy. I started out on the big side and then scaled the design down.

Then off to the baking and decorating. I decided to make my mom's recipe for gingerbread cookies. They come out great and are very tasty. The recipe comes from Applehood and Motherpie. I also spent a few nap times learning about frosting cookies with royal frosting. I was intrigued. A blog I found called Annie's Eats had many great tips. I even used the recommended recipe for both the frosting and a batch of sugar cookies.

Having three children and one of them under 2, I had to give myself a few days for decorating. My mom was able to come over and give me a hand and we made a great team.

The first challenge was just making the royal frosting. Everywhere I looked the recommendation was to use a standing mixer. Some people even reported having burned out their hand mixers trying to make royal frosting. I looked into buying one, but they are very expensive and I needed it the very next day!

My mom and I decided we would try to use our hand mixers, but we would use two and switch them in and out when the motors felt warm. It worked!

I had bought some new supplies too: squeeze bottles, decorator bags, tips, and gel food coloring.

With my 18 month old on my back, we started with the royal icing on the gingerbread cookies. It took a long time, but we created unicycle cookies!

I still had the sugar cookies to decorate, but I was running out of time. I made up some buttercream frosting and tried a simplified outlining and very quickly they were done too!

I was excited to complete this project and share the unicycle cookies. Of course the other unicyclists seemed to get a kick out of them too.