by Robbi | Nov 1, 2013 | Alden, August, Bobbledy Dad, Bobbledy Mom, Kato, Kids, Life, Projects |
Hi everyone! It’s me, Robbi!
I love Halloween. I think it’s my favorite holiday of the year (actually, I think it’s tied with Thanksgiving, but for the purposes of this blog post, let’s just say it’s my favorite for now). I’m not, however, one of those ambitious Halloween maniacs – the folks who come up with elaborate spooking devices they put on their lawns, or who go all out with the spider webs and jack-o-lanterns. I wish I were. Really, I do. But Halloween has a way of sneaking up on me and I’m never quite prepared for it.
This year was going to be different. Alden had been claiming since the spring that she wanted to be a princess fairy, and wear her Tinkerbell dress-up dress for it. Costume #1: done. It’s been done since May. Check. Kato has said all along that he’d like to be an airplane. Actually, specifically, a jet. So we have spent the last month or so discussing what we would need to make a jet. He’s been quite thoughtful about it. Well, all this discussion went nowhere until the 29th, when our Yankee Candle school fundraiser order arrived in just the right sized box to make a jet plane out of. We sprang into action.
I cut a hole in the top of the box for Kato’s head, and some small holes on the sides for his arms. We fashioned a tail out of a triangle of cardboard, and Kato advised me on the proper aerodynamics of the tail fins (I originally had much too long of a top fin, making the jet look more like a sideways rocket). It was such a flurry of jet-making that I forgot to take pictures. After ransacking our storage area for big pieces of cardboard that might work as wings, I found a bolt of cloth, and voila! Cut it in half and you’ve got two pre-fab wings.
Kato very carefully placed them into the slots I cut out for them.
We used the styrofoam packaging for a Yankee Candle jar to make the nose of the plane, and added the propellor from an old balsa wood wind-up plane that had been long broken. Again, I forgot to take pictures.
I also forgot to look after August, who announced that he had taken off his diaper and pooped on the floor. In the flurry of excitement following his announcement, I kneeled on my exacto knife, ruined a favorite pair of pants, and suffered a not-really-mortal flesh wound.
Because of the poop debacle, I only had time for a packing tape and paper towel bandage, but it seemed to do the trick.
Once we were back on track, Alden helped out with the taping.
We had decided to put duct tape over the entire cardboard construction to make it look more shiny, like a real plane.
We did not realize at the time how long this would take, given how impossible it is to keep duct tape from sticking to itself.
After a run to the store for more duct tape and several hours of dedicated service, the plane was finished.
Kato put it on, and immediately said, “I don’t like this.” And then took it off. Resisting the urge to scream, I asked what was wrong with it. He said that it smelled funny and didn’t have any wheels.
Well, wheels would have to wait. Not 100% enthusiastic, but bleeding from one knee and smelling of duct tape, we headed to bed, with a whole day to spare before Halloween.
After getting back from school the following day (Halloween Eve), we added some wheels, using the bolts for Iggy’s travel crate, so that they could be retractable.
Kato agreed that they were pretty cool. But he still wasn’t fully on board (no pun intended). A little more rummaging around produced a pair of work earmuffs that I converted to a pilot headset with the addition of a bendy-straw and ball-of-tape microphone. Instantly, Kato was sold.
Apparently being able to speak into a microphone and say, “Pilot to co-pilot, we’re ready for blast-off” cures all ills, including the funky smell of duct tape.
So, while Kato took his plane on a short test flight,
Alden began to fret. Her costume didn’t feel like much of a costume anymore. We had spent all this time on Kato’s costume, and she was just going to pull hers out of a drawer the next morning. I appreciated her sudden desire for craftiness, but couldn’t help but be a little annoyed at the timing. She still wanted to be a princess, but wanted to have a new dress. With about an hour to go before bedtime, we raided my closet. We came up with a few options, but they didn’t look quite princess-y enough (too cottony, perhaps, not enough polyestery). And then I remembered a piece of fabric I had – regal red with a gold herringbone pattern. And I discovered the most amazing thing (necessity really IS the mother of invention!) – you can make a fantastic princess dress out of a single piece of fabric and a ribbon – no sewing required.
And here are some vague-ish directions on how to do this, which you can skip over if you don’t care about princesses or princess dresses or how awesome it is to not have to sew a dress at the last minute when you can’t really sew:
So, these directions probably don’t make any sense, but it’s super easy. You cut a hole big enough for the head in the center of one side of the fabric, kind of close to the edge – that’s the neck hole. Put the fabric on, with the short part of the fabric towards the back. Bunch up the fabric that’s hanging on the back and drape it back forward over the neck (so it looks like a halter top). Then take the corner of the fabric that you just folded over to the front and pull it towards the back (under the arm) and up through the neck hole. Pull it tight until it tightens around the arm, making a kind of a sleeve. Do the same for the other side. The fabric that is pulled through in the back will make a bustle-looking thing, and you just tie the ribbon around the waist to keep everything in place. Note that relative to the kid, the fabric is actually a little bigger – for Alden it dragged on the ground in the front a little bit, because she wanted it to be long and princessy.
Again, I have no photographic evidence, because we were down to the proverbial wire. We cut a crown out of paper, added a wand with a paper diamond on top, made up a name for our princess (Princess Juliana!), and called it a day.
And then, it was Halloween! We were invited to a Halloween party after school. Once again, I decided to put together a costume for myself in the hour that we had after school before leaving for the party. I found two bags of indian corn under the stairs that the kids had brought back from a field trip two weeks ago and I had forgotten about. I decided to put it to use. With the help of a trusty construction stapler, some foam core and saran wrap, I made myself into a corn flake.
Get it?
August stuck with the old standby chicken hat:
(while Matthew stuck with the old standby “Exhausted Dad”).
I adjusted Alden’s ribbon:
And we were ready to party:
There were several great things about the party. One of them was lounging on the Adirondack chairs next to the fire pit:
And the other was getting away with forbidden love between man and cornstalk:
Oh, and of course, I forgot about all the pizza and candy we consumed.
And, perhaps best of all, the fake fangs that were in the goody-bags:
There’s nothing scarier than an off-duty pilot who’s turned into a vampire, unless of course it’s Princess Juliana come to suck your blood:
After the party we rushed back to our house to grab some candy and head over to our neighbors’ porch – ours is small and hardly noticeable, so it isn’t great for candy distribution. Donald and Ann have generously hosted us since Alden was a wee one – and we have so far successfully tricked the kids into thinking that giving candy out to trick-or-treaters is more fun than actually trick-or-treating.
We had a wonderful time and saw lots of great costumes.
Did I tell you how much I love Halloween? A LOT. I just can’t stop talking about it (no kidding!).
Hope you all had a happy, fun, and gratifying Halloween. Until next time,
by Robbi | May 14, 2013 | Fun Things to Do, Projects, Reader Submitted |
We just got word from Owen and Jojo’s mom Alison that they have been making robots, thanks to the Make-Your-Own-Robot instructions found in the back of Bobby and the Robots. This is exciting news. We always wonder if people actually read to the very end of the book.
Here are Jojo and Owen, preparing for robot crafting by mugging more or less enthusiastically for the camera (Owen more, Jojo less):
Here is the stack of tea bags that Alison sacrificed to make this project happen. In case you are concerned, they’ve been rehoused in a less glamorous non-robotic sort of container.
Jojo and Owen have the good fortune to have a craft box and lots of craft supplies.
We have one too, except ours is called “underneath the couch cushions.”
It’s a lot of work to make a robot. Just like Dr. Frankenstein with his monster, so works Jojo on her robot. Her focus was intense, as decorations were carefully applied:
Meanwhile, Owen installed some complex circuitry:
Apparently, this is the electricity that comes out of the robot. Apparently, Owen’s robot can make you eggs. Now that is my kind of robot! (If it could also do laundry, Owen could be a millionaire!).
Jojo’s robot has a tea bag face:
And, if you were worried Jojo’s robot was going to turn out like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, have no fear! Jojo remembered to give it a heart!
No Frankenrobot here!
Owen’s tea box was so big, he had to use a paper towel roll for the arms instead of a toilet paper roll. Even better, because his robot has some real lifting power!
All in all, I consider this a super successful project. Owen and Jojo are clearly very enthusiastic now:
I hope the tea bag sacrifice was worth it, Alison. If you’re still feeling a little bad about it, you can have Owen’s robot cook you up some eggs while Jojo’s robot tells you how much it loves you.
Thanks so much for sharing, guys! We love robots!
by Robbi | Apr 20, 2013 | Kids, Life, Projects, Week in Review |
So, here’s what we did around here this week:
I worked on the design for the upcoming Bobbledy album by Drew. We decided we’re just going to go with a simple 5″x5″ sleeve. Seeing that fewer and fewer people are interested in dealing with CDs, it seemed silly to invest in a big booklet sort of production that people might look at once and toss in the trash, once their CD has been copied over to their iPod. I fondly recall my days of poring over liner notes every time I listened to a cassette on my walkman, but I believe those days are gone.
Though I had worked through most of the design for the front of the sleeve last week, there was still the question of what to put on the back (song list, special thanks, info about Drew, info about us) and how to organize it (painstakingly). We finally settled on this design:
If you are confused by all of the extra gobbledy gook around the design, whenever you design for packaging, you have to design to a template, which is set up how the piece will print. Since this is a little sleeve that will fold in half with the edges wrapping around, you design the back of the sleeve to be on the left hand side of the page, and the front of the sleeve to be on the right hand side. Fold on the orange lines and you’ve got a sleeve. Voila! If you don’t believe me, print it out and try it!
We also had to figure out what to print on the disc. We wanted to keep it simple, so decided on a close-up of the monster face. But then there was the problem of what to do with the title and Drew’s name.
(Again, all that extra writing and weird marks are for the printer’s, so they know exactly how to line up and print out our disc art.) We tried the above one first, but we weren’t really happy with how it lost some of its punch by the face not taking up the entire disc. So we tried again:
Actually, this was the fourth or fifth try. But it did the trick. That face is right in your face, and isn’t undone by the small writing down below.
We like it very much. And it looks pretty good, hanging with Drew:
In other news, I painted some more auction items:
We went on some bike rides:
Doug the Baker got some new chair and table sets for outdoor seating:
Alden assisted in the unpacking:
and the transport:
and Iggy kept the perimeter safe and the cardboard boxes at bay:
We brushed August’s hair, rendering him powerless.
We call this his “Dapper Dan” look. He is not a fan.
We played “Find the Baby”:
And finally, Kato helped make Lemon Kick Pound Cake for the Tang Soo Do bake sale today (Saturday) at the Kingstown Farm Store from 10-2! Come buy some! It’s lemony!!
August helped in the clean-up:
then discovered sour cream:
then enlisted Iggy in the clean-up:
then decided baking cakes wasn’t as interesting as making soup with plastic vegetablestuffs (another favorite pastime around here):
When I say this pound cake is lemony, I really mean it:
(pay no attention to the child passed out on the floor in the background, or the unidentified screw driver on our kitchen counter).
In spite of all the missteps along the way, Kato deemed the whole affair a success:
(on the Kato scale of success, a skeptical single thumb up is about as good as it gets).
We also started to lay out our next Bobbledy Book, tentatively called, “The Imaginary Dragon.” You can read a bit about our brainstorming process over on the Idiots’Books blog, HERE.
We also learned how to Twitter, which is turning out to be the colossal waste of time that we thought it would be. Follow us at @BobbledyDad and @BobbledyMom.
So that was our week.
by Robbi | Feb 14, 2013 | Bobbledy Kids, Projects |
We have been hearing a lot about Valentine’s Day lately. Most years it comes and goes without us realizing it (somehow I’ve got in my head that February is post-holiday trough month where I don’t really have to think about cards or presents or anything like that.) (Wrong.) Apparently the Valentine’s Day party at Friendship Montessori School is a whoopdeedoo for the ages. The kids get nearly apoplectic when talking about it.
I vaguely recall my grade-school years, and must admit that Valentine’s Day sits fondly in my memory. I especially enjoyed going around the classroom and putting my cards into other kids’ shoeboxes. It seems my fondness for mailing stuff has held over into my adulthood.
Anyway. I resisted the urge to purchase Valentine’s cards at the store. For one, I was too lazy, and the thought of wading through aisles of Valentine’s dreck was exhausting, and for two, if there’s one thing we have a lot of around here, it’s stuff to make things with.
So I opened up all my drawers and went on a search. I found the makings for some magnets. And there were exactly sixteen magnets – perfect for Alden’s class. Alden wrote each of her classmates’ names on a little paper circle I cut out. The paper circles get glued between the magnet and these little glass magnifying beads.
Actually, in full disclosure, I had to make the circles at 200% so they were big enough for Alden to write on and then I had to scan them and reduce them back to the right size. This is the sort of annoying thing we do all the time around here getting illustrations into books, so it wasn’t as complicated as it sounds.
And Alden was pretty pleased with the results.
Since we only had 16 magnets, we had to figure out what to do for Kato’s classmates. I did some more rummaging around and found a bunch of coil bindings that were extra bits we had snipped off of some books we had made for Idiots’Books. They were much too small to make actual books from, but I figured we could make some mini kid-sized notebooks.
I trimmed some extra scrap paper we had lying around (we have lots of that, too) to the right size. Kato helped punch the holes.
The puncher is pretty simple and just requires a good pull down on the handle.
Kato became a punching machine. Each book required 3 or 4 punches, so we had our work cut out for us. But Kato was into it, and punched pretty steadily, until:
he needed a boogie break.
That really was the only thing that slowed us down.
Putting the wires through the holes proved to be a bit too tricky for 3-year-old hands, so I agreed to help him out.
In not much time at all, books were finished!
Looks like Kato will have no excuse not to help out next time we’re printing and binding a bunch of books. I had no idea we could train him so fast! Think of all of the years we’ve wasted with Alden already!
So, all the projects were finished with time to spare. This was pretty exciting. It wasn’t until last night around 7 o’clock that I realized Alden couldn’t really just hand out her magnets – that they should be in some sort of envelope or something. There wasn’t time to go looking for cute little envelopes, so we just ended up stapling them in between a couple pieces of construction paper that Alden wrote names on. They make these fun little pillows that can be ripped open. Hopefully, no one will get stabbed with an errant staple in the process.
And all this was because the idea of finding Valentine’s cards was too exhausting. It’s a far cry from Martha (seriously, check out that link) but we’ll work our way up. Maybe by the time the kids are in high school we’ll be 100% ready for the Friendship Montessori blowout.
by Robbi | Dec 31, 2012 | Bobbledy Mom, Projects |
I did it! The nests are done! Not before the original Christmas deadline, of course, but I blame the general chaos of Christmas and my own complete hubris for that. A week late is actually not bad for me.
To get you up to speed, I decided to craft some “nests” for the kids. You can read all about it here and here. The idea was to make a basic cinch-able bag for each of them to put all of their miscellaneous toys in. I wanted to make the bags look like nests because they often play a game where they make cozy nests for their toys out of blankets. My hope is that they will be fooled into actually putting their toys away. You may laugh now.
Here’s the orignal idea:
I had to modify it to this when I realized the above design would not cinch closed and that kids don’t want appliqués of branches and leaves on their bags, they want monsters and sparkly butterfly buttons:
Matthew’s mom brought her sewing machine down from Boston for the holidays, and after a quick tutorial I set to work.
Her machine is especially awesome because it threads the needle for you, and plays a little chime for you when it starts up, like a computer. For inexplicable reasons, this makes me very happy.
Alden and Kato occasionally stepped in to help. One of their jobs was to take the pins I had removed and put them back in the pincushion.
The other of their jobs was to hold as still as possible and not continually try to spin the office chair we were sitting in around. They were both fired for not fulfilling half of their prescribed duties.
I discovered that pinning on trim is super exciting, especially when you pin it all on upside-down first, and then do it all over again “just for fun.”
I also discovered that in trying to keep pom-poms away from the needle, one should not use one’s most used finger (in my case, left index finger).
My finger got pinched between the screw that holds the needle in and the bottom of the body of the sewing machine. I have a wicked blood blister that is now giving my finger a headache.
NONETHELESS.
The nests are done!
Here they are at their most nest-like, with the top half tucked down inside and the fringe sticking up:
And here they are at their most bucket-like, with the top half stretched up and not cinched:
And here you can see Kato’s cinched closed, and Alden’s left open:
Kato was quite reasonable in his requests for trim – a simple brown fringe and some lace:
Alden, on the other hand, wanted four different kinds of fringe – green lace, white lace, pom-poms and a feather boa. Though I accommodated her, I place the blame of my injured finger entirely on her and her G.D. pom-poms.
I had originally planned to save these until tonight – as New Year’s presents. But when I went to look for them to take these photos, I found one in the middle of the living room floor, in perhaps the most appropriate manner a nest bag has ever been used:
Alden had literally put a bunch of small stuffed animals in the nest and put a duck on top of them. It could not have been more perfect.
I found Kato’s nest bag nearby on the cabinet.
Kato had been unaware that his nest bag had already been put into action. He opened it up and saw books inside.
Furious at the misappropriation, he removed all the books and scolded Alden, saying that it was his nest for his toys.
I know I probably should have told him to be nice and that he needs to share with his sister, but I was secretly so pleased that he cared that I let him off the hook this time.
I suppose it’s a slippery slope. Soon enough, he’ll be demanding his own room.
by Robbi | Dec 19, 2012 | Kato, Kids, Life, Projects |
Alright. For those of you who are keeping tabs on my crafty aspirations, the countdown to Christmas has seriously begun and I am craftin’ it all up, up in here.
As a quick refresher, I’m trying to make something like this:
Having received a fistful of coupons from JoAnn’s Fabrics in my email on Friday, we took the 45-minute drive to the nearest store in Dover, Delaware. (Yes, things are so pathetic here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that we have to travel to DELAWARE to get our hands on the good stuff. Like “Blizzard” and “Anti-Pill” fleece “solids and prints.”)
Alden and Kato came with me to choose the appropriate “snuggly” fabric for their respective nests. I also discovered that there are things called “notions” – little buttons and baubles and plasticy things you can sew onto whatever you’re sewing. I like that they’re called “notions,” like it’s some sort of crazy idea in your head that shouldn’t really be taken seriously.
Alden chose a remarkably un-disgusting brown flowered fabric. She also selected some notions that actually go quite well with the crazy idea sense of the word: sparkly jewel butterflies, a hot pink feather boa, pink pom-poms, and a variety pack of ballet-related buttons that includes slippers, hearts, roses and (inexplicably) one of those scene-clacker-thingies from the movies (again inexplicably) in pink.
I’m afraid I had to nix several of Kato’s first choices, which were all emblazoned with licensed Disney and Pixar characters. I debated in my head why I needed to be all draconian about it (why should I care?) but became exhausted at defending myself and defending Kato in the same mental argument, and settled for a monster pattern on a brown background. Kato’s notions included a brown fringe that will (hopefully) give the edge of his bag a twiggy look, a colorful assortment of bug buttons, and (as an allowance [in my own head] since I was being such a jerk about his fabric choices) a bunch of non-thematically-related cupcake buttons.
MY nest is going to be very nest-like: a simple brown spotted fabric, the same twiggy brown fringe as Kato got, some green lace, and a clip-on bunch of tailfeathers for my bird clip.
I found a tutorial for round flat-bottom bags online here, though must admit I don’t understand most of it (what’s a “fat quarter”? what’s a “gathering stitch”? what’s “math skillz”?). That being said, it gave me the information I needed to calculate the circumference of my bag and the size of the pieces I needed to cut.
I’ve decided to line the bag with some stiff filter paper (I call it “Reemay” but I’m not sure if that’s a trade name or what) – I saw something similar at JoAnn’s but realized I have a huge roll of it here at home, because I use it to pull clay monoprints on. I’m hoping that way our nests will be shaped more like nests than sad little piles of fabric.
Once I cut out the Reemay, I used it as a pattern to cut the fabric. I was going to use my nest as a guinea pig project, but then realized that if time became of-the-essence, it would be better if I had one shoddily-made nest for each of the kids instead of one shoddily-made nest for me and one semi-shoddily-made nest for only one of the kids. Kato’s came first (he’s got lower standards). I decided to use my fabric for the inside lining, since I had more of it than he did.
When I was at JoAnn’s, I bought a new pair of scissors. I chose the kind that had “Designer” printed really big on it, thinking it will make me feel better when my nests turn out all gimpy.
Wow. They cut beautifully. I love them.
Then I pinned everything together, just to see what it looks like.
Hmm. This nest looks more like a bucket than anything. Plus, it won’t really close with the liner in it. So, I’m thinking I’ll cut down the liner a little bit and add the trim bits just at the edge of the liner.
So it will look something like this partway down:
And then when the bag is closed, the trimmy bits will stick up a bit. That’s the hope, anyway. Actually, the real hope is that the kids actually use these to put their toys in. Because, frankly, this is an incredibly time-consuming and expensive way to make something that is completely useless and will just end up under the couch.
So – Kato came in this morning to inspect his nest. He was quite disappointed. “I’m too big to sit in this nest!” he exclaimed. I guess I had neglected to tell him it was a nest for his toys and not for him. He took it in stride, and immediately collected some toys to put in his nest.
He has requested I put a pillow in the bottom of his nest to make his toys a little more comfortable. I will, but I think they already look pretty cozy in there.
If we can keep up the trend, maybe my greatest Christmas wish will come true: corralled toys for all!
