And there’s a lot of them, you know, since you’ve been so patient.  That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

The name on his tag is Ember.  Ember is a dalmatian that works with a clown in a fire safety education program.  I asked him what name he wanted on his tag, and he chose Ember.

Funny expression

Peekaboo

A flower for mommy

He wanted to play in the leaves, and I just went with it.  Glad I did because it turned up some cute pictures.

Ready…aim…

…fire!

It actually didn’t take all that long to pick most of the mess off before we left.

His tail.  Just because.  It is cute.

One of my favorites.  But I have a lot of favorites!

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IT’S DONE!! IT’S DONE!!  IT’S DONE!!

I cannot wait to see it on him.  If I had been paid minimum wage for the hours I worked on this thing, it would be selling for about $300 bucks!  I just finished gluing the spots on the hood and sewing on the ears.  Procrastinate much?  A couple jokes came out of the whole process.  Scott came home yesterday to this (minus the spots on the hood):

He was like “Um, honey?  Do you just not like the bear?”  I replied, “Well it wasn’t like I could put a plastic bag over the kid’s head to glue spots on.”

This should give you some idea why you haven’t heard from me in several days.  And that’s just a small percentage.

Caleb and I picked out a red collar at Walmart the other day.  Yes, right out of the pet section.  And yes I did get a few strange looks trying collars on my toddler.  Scott said, “Are you gonna get him a leash too?”  Um.  Yeah.  I can see that now.

“Hello, child services?  Yeah these people just showed up at my door trick or treating.  I know the kid was dog and everything, but I think they took it a little too far.  Do you consider a leash and collar around his neck endangerment?”

That would go over well I’m sure.  So that’s a negative on the leash.

Caleb also just so happened to get this patriotic necklace from the children’s museum a few months ago.  It has a plastic disc on it that can be opened up so that you can draw on the paper inside.  It was on a red white and blue ribbon for the fourth.  So I took the disc off the ribbon because it will make the PERFECT tag for his collar!  I am so anxious to put it on him, but I don’t want to risk doing so too early since I literally don’t have time to reglue any spots!  Sorry the pictures have taken so long!  It wouldn’t be made by me if it wasn’t finished at the last possible second.  I did manage to squeeze in four episodes of Will and Grace last night when I should have been finishing it though ;)

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I took a break from the costume making Sunday and Monday, and now I am in the final push.  I’m currently in the process of covering the whole back of the costume with spots (by the way, have I mentioned how many hours I have spent cutting those out?).

How am I keeping Caleb occupied?  Two words.  Moon sand.  He loves that stuff.  We bundled up in several layers today and spent a long time on the screened porch.  Him playing in the sand and me cutting out little black dots, and smiling to myself as I watched someone mow at the house next door (more on that later).  I just realized, since we are having a cold snap with a high of 50 today and 25mph winds, that Caleb doesn’t have a thick winter jacket yet.  He has several light weight ones.  So I put him in a long sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, a jacket and a hat pulled over his ears with his hood up.  He might not have been able to bend at the elbows, but everything was warm except his hands and nose!

Didn’t I take this picture last year?  I’ve come to the conclusion this hat is never going to fit.

Pictures from the playground last week.  Awful/harsh lighting, but who cares.

Taking a little break

Playin’ in the leaves

Cramming leaves in that poor rocket

What?  Why would you think this is a baby toy?  I’m not to big for it.

Ran into a leaf drift

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It is actually going better than expected.  A white hooded one piece suit would have made my life invariably simpler.  But, it is made none the less.  And it has a strip of velcro on the butt for the tail, as I don’t imagine it would be too comfortable to sit on (every time I do it, my -preposition at the end of a sentence- alarm goes off, I just don’t care enough to reword it.  I’m such a dork).  I just need to make some ears and paws, then finish cutting out and glue all the spots.  You know, nothing much.  You don’t even want to know how many hours I’ve spent on it already.  But it will all be worth it.  I think.  As long as the seams don’t fall apart before next Friday.

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I have no business doing this.  Like, slowly put down the handheld sewing machine (they have those?  I’m pretty sure.) and step away from the fabric.  I’m supposed to be purchasing white attire and gluing on some black dots.  But I have waited so long, I’m afraid ordering online, the items won’t get here.  And it would be very painful for me to spend $40 on a pair of white pants and a hooded sweat shirt.  (But not on a highly coveted Tom Arma costume.  Damnit man!  Where’s the dalmatian one?!)  The kid wants to be a dalmatian, so dalmatian it is.  I already turned a giraffe into a bat, so how hard can this be?  Right?

P.S. I also want to make the treat bag out of felt.  I little brown “paper” bag.  A doggy bag.  Hahaha, get it?  I’m so clever.  And stupid.  It will be like one of those little videos with the word counter.  Ding.  One.  Ding, ding.  Two, three.  #!%*.  How many times will she cuss while making this?  Oh I kid.  Sort of.

White flannel, black felt, new scissors, safety pins (to pin it together and then try it on him without tears), black felt, velcro, a “pattern” - a slightly too small Harley Davidson one piece, and a handheld sewing machine, because I don’t know how to work the ‘68 big lug my mom gave me.  Gotta find something long sleeved to make the sleeves though.

The inspiration

Wish me luck?  I’m gonna need it.

Oh and if by some chance, I actually pull this off…I’ll be on cloud nine.

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I was talking with Charley a few days ago.  Yes talking.  Caleb uses this high pitched voice and makes Charley talk to me and give me kisses goodnight, etc.  Anyway, Caleb wondered out loud at naptime a few days ago about Charley dressing up for Halloween.  A conversation ensued about what Charley should be for Halloween.  He first suggested a tiger, and I wasn’t sure I could pull that off, so I started rattling off possibilities, asking Charley what he thought of them.  I mentioned a dog, to which Charley replied, “Nah, too woofy.  Dats what Caleb’s gonna be.”  So after a few more suggestions, we settled on a bat.  Charley was in agreement so we set off to Walmart today for a few buttons and some black felt.  $3 well spent.  I worked all through naptime on what Scott has cleverly named “Charley the Bat-a-raffe.”  It just so happened that I was able to keep the sewing, not my forte, to a minimum by just wrapping the piece of felt around Charley and adding a couple buttons.  I didn’t even have to cut the first piece of felt.  I added his hood and wings and ta-da…I give you…Bat-a-raffe.

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It makes me feel like I can do anything!

I’m talking about baking soda people.  Jeez, where is your mind today?

Seriously, the uses for regular old baking soda never cease to amaze me!  I’ve been on a cleaning spree here lately, and the badly neglected microwave fell victim today.  I poured a small clump of baking soda in a bowl with a little bit of warm water.  Microwave for a minute, let some steam build up in there, and stuff was just wiping right off.  Amazing.

Until I looked at the neighboring toaster oven.  Can I just say, “Ew.”  It is so bad that food doesn’t even taste right coming out of there.  You open the door and the smell of ‘burnt’ just hits you in the face.  Burned what, I don’t know.  Just burned.  I scrubbed and wiped everything down, trying to avoid using chemicals.  I put everything back, but it just still wreaked.  I couldn’t see anything else in there, it looked clean.  It just didn’t smell clean. Now if you’re like me, you have that cute little box of baking soda in the back of the fridge.  It has been there for over a year (hey, did you know you’re supposed to change it every month?).  “They” say it helps absorb odors, but you have no idea whether it actually works.  Maybe you just remember your mom doing it.

So I was a bit skeptical that my microwave application might have the same wondrous effect in the toaster oven.  After all, the microwave didn’t smell this bad.  But I decided to give it a try.  I covered the tray in foil (I always do this anyway, so I don’t have to scrub all the baked on stuff) and dumped some baking soda and water on there and popped it in to bake.  I turned the oven up to 450 for 5-10 minutes.  When I returned, it had created a big ball of gas that erupted into flames and the paint was melting off the walls!

Nah, just kiddin :)  I balled up a hot cloth (so as not to crack the glass!) and wiped off the door, which now looks significantly better.  But I was amazed to find, the smell was gone.  No hint, no remnants, nothing.  Once I replaced the foil cover, I was all done!

So there’s my cleaning tip for the week.  I see you over there shaking your head.  Yep, you’re toaster is gross too isn’t it?  What’s that?  Don’t even look inside the microwave?  Your secret’s safe with me.

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Okay, I totally am, but anyway. I’ve now been cutting Caleb’s hair for a year myself. It takes me a while, and makes me nervous, but I feel like I’ve gotten reasonably decent at it. Haircuts were such an embarrassing nightmare, so one day last year I said, “Do you want to go somewhere for a haircut, or do you want Mommy to do it?” I ask him every time, and every time he picks me. He sits still better (although still not great) if I ask him first. I give him a the choice already knowing his answer. Saved a few bucks too, which certainly doesn’t hurt my feelings!

Plus no hairdresser seems to comprehend when you say “leave it a little shaggy”  Apparently it must go against some oath they take.

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I figured with our cold weather projects this week, homemade ice cream would tie in nicely. I think both Caleb and I were a bit skeptical of this one. We followed this super simple recipe. Boy, talk about surprised when he saw that the three ingredients resulted in something resembling ice cream. I tried it and it is delicious! But he was still raising his eyebrows. Finally he took a cautious bite and pleasantly surprised. I put it in a bowl for him with a little chocolate sauce on top. That was one happy kid.

I wrapped a dish towel around the bag to shake it, I imagine it would hurt your hands without one.

Can you tell we haven’t been sleeping too well?

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Every now and then, I like to give hubby a weekend project to keep him on his toes. Nah, I’m just kidding, but my little Saturday morning project turned into an enormous, time consuming, life sucking, entire weekend project. It all started out as a table for the aquaplay set to cut down on the mess. He was soaked and had to be bathed after playing the first night. I couldn’t see us having to give him a bath every time he played with it. So I suggested we use an old kitchen table in the storage building and cut the legs off. After getting a better visual of the size (which was much smaller than I remembered), we decided it needed a piece of plywood on top… Then that the plywood should be cut to the layout of the canal system. After hacking the legs off the old kitchen table, we decided it wasn’t really usable after all! So that will now be our outdoor art table for the super messy stuff (as well as a good place to do sensory play when we get into homeschooling).

Gotta love this guy, he’s so patient with my hairbrained ideas!

Oh well, at least he had help right? (See the shortened table with the legs laying underneath?!)

The handymen at work (I just realized, despite looking pretty lifelike, that is indeed a KIDS Craftsman saw in his hand! Just as an FYI!)

8000 screws later

Oh why must we overdo everything. It weighs approximately 9000 pounds, but at least it is functional

Here’s what I accomplished. Yay me. Luckily I had hubby to remind me of my ABC’s. No kidding…I was standing off to the side where I couldn’t see the letters on the opposite side of the box, basically where this picture was taken from (between the I and the O in the picture). I asked him what letter I was on, as I flipped through the remaining foam pieces. “L” he replied, “so you need M next.” Thanks dear.

If you’re smirking to yourself thinking, ‘what the heck is she gonna do with that hunk of wood in the winter?’ I’ve got that covered too! We painted the top green (and will paint the bottom structure and legs brown). When cold weather arrives and the Aquaplay can’t be left outside, I’ll take it off and paint a road system on the table with parking lots and buildings and stuff! I love doing stuff like that anyway.

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