The day before the trip

This morning it has been a busy one packing and preparing.

If You do not know the whole story yet, then I will fill you in.

My husband Jason and I are going on our first semi-vacation together. The reason this is big is that we do not get out to travel alone togethr. So when the chance came for him to go to the eclipse con in Santa Clara, California, we sprung for me to go to. Even tho this is work for Jason we will still ahve travel time together and also dinners and evenings (if he does not end up working). We will be leaving with his coworker/long time friend and his wife too. While the guys attend the Eclipse con, us girls will be traveling around the area to different places, sightseeing, and appreciating the area. 

I felt terrible to go away from my boys. This will be the longest and furthest I have been from them ever.  I decided to at least let our oldest, Trace, feel that we are thinking of them and that we love them (Dannon being too young to understand). So I thought it would be fun for both us and Trace to have cuddle puppy go with us on our trip to explore with us and meet new people and then to Blog about it every day so that trace can read the adventures of cuddle puppy every night to know mommy and daddy are thinking of him. 

this is Trace

So back to today.

This morning was a little off with trace being sad that we are leaving. But he perked up a little when i told him he could give cuddle puppy a bath to get him ready. Cuddle puppy is now clean but WET!

Dannon with the wet puppy 

 Trace telling me to put him in the dryer

And now for the first adventure. 

Wishing you were here… err.. i mean… wishing I was NOT here!!

 HOT HOT HOT!

I just came across this blog that someone pointed out in a comment and i read about how she made fabric blocks.

see the article and blog here 

Picture BY: nikki on http://craftnerd.blogspot.com 

I think this will be a great idea to add to my cache of things to do for the month of recon!!! 

Trying once again to dress my younger one.

So many resources for fabric in our storage. I found lots of sleep pants, almost too many for my son to wear one a day for a month!

So now to make something else that he might need. I know he needs a little bit better looking clothing than the p.j.'s and cutsie baby stuff. I thought i need to start manking him something that is a little more grown up and kid looking., not baby.

I thought to myself that a vest could be the best thing because he has a lot of shirts that have that food stain that i cannon get rid of and a vest can cover that very well and extend the life of those shirts.

Now i start the easy vest from fleece sleep pants

You start this out by stripping the pants of the elastic and taking out the inseam.

Then fold the pants in half to even up the cut of the fabric. you can see in the picture where there is a part that is longer. I cut a straight line across here to make the bottom of the vest.

 Then lay the pants flat with the seams that we left to the sides. Cut a rounded collar to the back of the neck and then cut a v for the front. But if you do not have a nicely cut pair of pants you can lay a pattern or a premade vest over this to get a better cut.

Then in the next picture it shows how i folded it and pinned it for sewing but then i decided to put an edge stitch on the fabric first, but this is optional to whatever kind of fabric you are using.  you do not see the edge stiitching in the pic but  you get the idea. so fold, pin, and stitch. (order of stitching in next picture)

When you do the fold and stitch (areas for the first stitches are in red) you want to do the arms front to back or back to front. and then the v, and then for the rounded collar you might need to make some triangle cuts in the edge to make it easier to sew without pucker or bumps (this is one of the reasons we do pinning. It helps us figure out how the stitch will go before we stitch it) 

Then when it is all nice and edged you want to stitch the join seam at the shoulder (pointed out with blue arrows)

And that should be it!! if the vest is too wide then just sew a seam up both of the seams on the side to get the right fit for your child. i took mine in about a inch in total for a slightly tighter fit. If you are real patient you can try a more tailored fit for a girl's vest. Or another idea is adding buttons, but that is too complicated for me right now.

but it looked like my boy liked his vest.

Now that the weather is changing my two boys need to get a winter wardrobe. Right now there are a whole bunch of hand-me-downs sitting for my little one but his size is only fitting for my oldest's old summer clothes. Now I have been going through all the clothes trying to make some of those summer clothes a little warmer to wear.

Now before anyone says " Why don't you dress them in layers?" well my answer would be, You try it! My youngest is just like my oldest used to be. You cannot get him to hold still for a diaper change without thwarting my efforts and doing a naked baby run down the hall. How am i expected to get him to hold still for diaper, pants, undershirt, overshirt, and coat????!!!

SO now on my first of the series.

Cute polo, and old pair of sleep pants. 

I have taken the pants apart to use them for extending the polo for the upcomming cooler weather.

I hope this gives people a little idea on how we can use the things we have. You know.. save a little money.. save a cute shirt… Be happy to get rid of some storage :) 

I have been experimenting again!!

Wanting to cut some costs around the household i have decided to use cloth diapers. I figured if we did that and only used disposable diapers when he goes for a sleep or when we are out we could be saving around 30$ a month. That is a nice extra payment toward debt..

Yesterday i made him some cloth diapers with some soakers which i will be showing how to make but i wanted some plastic or vinyl coverings so if he leaks through it would not get all over. I tried making one out of vinyl that i had from a pillow case cover but it ripped from my son playing..

I had nothing that was any thicker, until i thought of the old technique of making fabric out of duct tape.

This is all experimental so i will keep an update on how the cover does.

Step one. Make some duct tape fabric.

Step one. Make some duct tape fabric.

I first found a plastic cutting board so the tape could be removed from. I laid tape strips down overlapping about 1/4 inch until i had covered the whole board.

I then took the tape off and then placed tape stickey side to stickey side in the same fashion going perpendicular to the first layer.

 Trimming off the edges

I then free handed a pattern to cut, but you can get one off the net for free to print.

Elastic, needle, thread, and scissors for inserting elastic for a more fitted cover. 

I then made a piece of the fabric to fold over and tape for the elastic casing making sure no stickey parts touched the elastic.

showing the strip being folded over the elastic on the edge.

I stitched in the elastic and covered the ends with tape making sure there would not be any wetness contact with the elastic edges.

I then attatched the sided and a casing across the back of the waist placing in elastic and doing the stitching and covering  like i did on the legs and there you go!  

For a couple months now we have been potty training our oldest boy. It has been a long challenge and he has been going through potty charts and rewards. For his first reward we got him somethinghe had seen on on a recorded show that was recorded last year. It was the geotrax train system. Looked kinda cool. I looked online for a starter pack and it led me to get him the grand central station.

He loved it! it was awesome. it is easy for a child to put the trax together and they are not confusing. He liked the idea that the train can be played with off the trax too so he  drive it all around the house following it.

The remote is so simple for kids too. A lever that goes back and foward only to control the train so nothing difficult. All the tracks, roads, and whatknots are compatable for this set so you can get the skyscraper that has the roads and it will hook right up to the grand central station that has the tracks.  Very resonable priced too. so you can collect them all overtime and they will rarely get board with it. It is good for kids that are older too. I know my boy will probably play with this for at LEAST 3 or 4 more years (I HOPE!)

But be stocked up in the AAA batteries. It is not a battery eater, unless it is played with a LOT! almost all the individual stations have sounds and motions on them but those do not kill the batteries that bad. It has been almost a month and the fire station is still going but we change the batteries every 2-3 weeks on the train's engine because he uses it a lot.  

The only big complaint is that i have to buy these online so when i do not know when he fills up his potty chart it makes it hard to go out at the last minute to the store to get it i can;t find it.

But so far i have found a decent selection at toysrus.com