Halloween Costume Failures

I shared some details about my 2 1/2 year old's Fly Costume, right here.

Now, I want to share a super-easy and fast Halloween Costume to go with that theme (and maybe you can learn from my mistakes).

Originally, I thought I would be a Fly-Swatter.

But, you know what? Making a giant Fly-swatter is REALLY HARD. Below is my first attempt, which I gave up after my roll of duck tape was done. I had already spent 2 hours working on it. But, I just had to LET IT GO.

Cutting duck tape is so time consuming, so I figured I just paint it.

WRONG again.

After 1/2 hour of painting all those lines, I had only finished 1/4 of ONE SIDE. That's when I realized it was time to shift gears and change my Costume idea.

I already had a foam core board that I had begun to paint. I still wanted to use it.

I wanted something simple, something that made sense with one kid being a Fly.

We had been having an issue with Fruit Flies in our house, so those little buggers have been on my mind recently. That's when it hit me...an Apple Peel.

Not much to paint. Not hard to cut out with a utility knife. A simple ribbon with knots on the back to hold it in place. And three seeds drawn with a sharpie.

Bam.

It took 1/2 hour to make.

It's interesting, until you really LOOK and have to make something, you often don't realize the details of something.

At first, I kind of went a little crazy drawing the Apple Peel Seeds. They were fun to draw. See...

It looked a little off to me. That's when I realized there were way too many seeds. Nothing a little bit of white paint couldn't fix.

Speaking of not noticing details (until you have to make something) I had never understood how Spider webs were constructed.

This was my go-with-flow first attempt of making Papa Bear's "Spider Web Costume."

It looked more like a net than a web. That didn't bother me. The baby pulling and chewing on it bothered me.

That prompted me to draw a Spider web on both arms and the back of a white sweatshirt. And that's when I learned more about how Spiders built their webs.

 

In the end, I ended up spending way more time than I would have liked on the adult Costumes for our family. But, I learned a few things about fly-swatters, webs and apple peels...so I can't complain.

Happy Halloween!

This is the Mobile that Killed a Baby Bird

 

 

Give me a minute and it will make sense. I promise.

 

Some ideas just don't work. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to make a beautiful "Driftwood Mobile" for Bright Eyes before she was born.

 

We rent our two-Bedroom house. When we moved in this Winter, we knew the girls wouldn't be able to share a Bedroom right off the bat. So one room would be for Nye-Nye (a "Can You See a Little Bear?" Inspired Bedroom). The other would be for the new baby.

 

Nye-Nye was still waking up several times a night in February. That's when Papa Bear took over putting her to sleep and co-sleeping. For the last 2 1/2 glorious months of my pregnancy I slept like a champ. It was amazing.

 

Daddy and His Girl bonded more deeply by developing their own sweet Bedtime Rituals and I wasn't disturbed by the toddler waking up at night. 

 

The Master Bedroom was transformed into Mommy and the Baby's Room. I didn't have the energy to paint the room, so blue it stayed. I was inspired by tree branches and driftwood and agonized over fabric for weeks. (Nesting...you gotta love it).

 

I wanted to use the heirloom cradle that I used as a baby.

 

I came up with a design for a Driftwood Mobile that could hang low enough over a cradle. Hanging the pieces from the ceiling seemed too complicated for me, so I devised an inexpensive way to anchor the pieces of Driftwood in a metal bucket. My solution? Plaster.

 

I filled an inexpensive bucket with plaster and arranged the branches the way I wanted. I let it set over night. I covered the bucket with some of the agonized-over-fabric. And hung the butterflies with fishing line.

 

The only problem?

 

It took up A LOT of room.

 

Actually, there were three problems...it took up a lot of room, it was difficult to get the baby into the cradle without hitting her face with the butterflies and the baby HATED the cradle.

 

So, it was removed.

 

I put it outside under our screened-in porch, thinking I could use it for Bright Eyes when we were outside.

 

I walked out one day to find a drowned Baby Bird floating in the bucket. 

 

Do you know how awful I felt?

 

I still get teary-eyed thinking about it. Poor Baby Bird.

 

Talk about a doomed project.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What To Do With The Worst Chocolate Cake Ever

I tried. I really did. But, I'm just not a Baker.

 

I made a Chocolate Birthday Cake using the recipe I had posted here. I wanted to do something special for Papa Bear's Birthday (almost a month ago). But, I had just had the baby and was not up to doing anything grand. So, Nye-Nye and I made the Cake.

 

My Sissy was visiting. Neither she, nor I could finish our pieces. We all agreed that it was the most driest, most awful Chocolate Cake, we had ever tasted. It was so dry, I had a coughing fit that lasted 10 minutes. But, my Sweet husband was a trooper and finished his!

 

This is what happened with the rest of the Cake...



 

 

Failed Experiment: Cough Syrup

Horehound from my Mother's Garden

 

Maybe my first post on herbs shouldn't be about one of my failures. But I believe it's important to talk about one's failures as much as one's successes. Spoiled violet cough syrup, burned comfrey oil, spoiled comfrey oil, stinky garlic salve...now I'm adding infant cough syrup to the list.

Lina had her first cold last week and with it came a cough. Honey is one of the best things for coughs but obviously I couldn't give her any (no honey for a child under the age of one). Often, I will gently heat honey and add thyme to treat an adult's cough. When honey heats up it becomes thinner and it's easy to strain out the thyme when I am finished.

I thought I could just do the same with brown rice syrup....wrong. I added horehound and peppermint to the syrup. But when I heated it up, it did not thin out and I couldn't strain out the herbs. To compound the issue, it tasted VERY strongly. An adult could handle the taste but I knew no child would swallow it. Hmmmm....a new challenge for me.

I ended up just taking a thyme tincture myself and nursing Lina. We also spent lots of time in our steamy bathroom. Hopefully, I won't have to conduct too many more cough syrup experiments this winter!