Turkey Invasion

This weekend, we were invaded by turkeys. Of course, this was of my own doing. While I was at Artco Crafts gathering items for Potato's Boo costume, I found some turkey foam projects for a dollar a piece. Really, how could I pass up something so incredibly simple, cheap, and fun for the kiddos to do? I did however pass up the foam glue it recommended. Whoops.
Since Bug, Pix, and Bear will be at their father's for Thanksgiving, we decided to do the craft yesterday. I handed them some Elmers, cut open their little packages, and told them to have fun. Oye. It would seem Elmers is not optimal for foam turkeys. Pixy seemed to think more glue would fix the problem. Oh my. After I made them baby wipe the mess away, I tried Liquid Stitch. Yeah... No. Baby wipes to rescue again. I swear I shall always have these on hand, even long after my youngest is out of the pampers.




Eventually, I gave into to doing what I knew I should have from the beginning. I dug out the glue gun and plugged it in. They point, I dab, they apply. Bear did the tail feathers, then passed the project to me for completion. Pix, after touching some still hot glue while attaching a wing, decided she point and leave me to dabbing and applying. Bug actually finished hers herself.


Mixed up in the turkey insanity, I pulled out some ribbon, some felt, and googly eyes. My girls are going to be festive dang nabbit. Because mommy is crazy, and on a craft kick.
And so I present... Turkey Hair Accesories!!


Bug and Pix get the hair clip variety, as Bug models.


Potato gets a hair tie.


I was going to make them each two, but Jeremy convinced me they didn't need flocks of turkeys on their heads. Pish. Perhaps the neices. ;)

Apparent Insanity

So, after losing my mind with the horrific debacle of sewing Halloween costumes for four children, I decided to continue with the madness.

Saturday night I began working on a skirt reminiscent of a mock vintage style. I have oodles of fabric laying about for random projects. After perusing two different black fabrics, crushed purple velvet, and some beige two tone stripe, I finally settled on some shiny gray fabric. It's not as bad as it sounds, I promise.

Then came the depressing part... taking my measurements. Oye. Wow. I need to lose the rest of this baby weight. I grabbed a coke to tone that twitchy feeling of a breakdown and began plotting and cutting the fabric. Everything pieced together wonderfully. Unfortunately, I was all out of black zippers. Green, red, white, and even purple, but no black. Sunday morning I ran over to Artco Crafts to get a zipper. They only sell zippers by the foot, and were also out of black. WTF? The gal told me to go to JoAnn's. I must have made a face of disgust, because the woman quickly said, "I know, I don't blame you, but we're all out." I did find some cute little turkey craft projects I will be having the kids do next weekend though. :D

So, off I went to Hancock fabrics where they were having a sale of up 50% off through Veteran's Day. Whew boy did my hands feel twitchy. It was SO hard to just walk in there for what I need.... and two spools of ribbon. For some insane reason, they only had two people on staff. One had a line of 8 people for fabric cutting, and one was running cashier with a line of 15 people. But, I was dedicated to the cause. About half way through the line, another cashier magically appears from the back of the store! I think I was only in line a total of maybe 20 minutes. (Ha! ONLY 20 minutes, for a blooming zipper, she says!)

Thanks to it taking such an expedition to retrieve a zipper, I was unable to resume work on my skirt. We headed off to our buddy Rory's house for an awesome dinner of fajitas made by his darling wife, Dianna. We also played a serious amount of Wii, where Jeremy finally found a game where he's not the constant loser. Finally. Dianna also had coloring books for the older kids. She bought Miss Potato an adorable little chef outfit and some kitchen stuff! She looked SO Freakin' Cute!


Yesterday, while I was pinning in the zipper for my skirt, my son was in the bathroom. When he came out, this is what I was greeted with....


He is such a card. He walked around with his hair like that all day. Very Jonny Bravo/Jimmy Neutron-esque. lol

Finally, at some time last night, my project was done. And here are some pics of the result.



This my favorite pic I took today, despite the blurriness.

Fabric, Pins, and Thread- Oh My!

For the week and half before Halloween, I was measuring, cutting, and sewing like a fiend. I could feel the sanity seeping away the closer Halloween got. I thought things were going swimmingly with two costumes done, and two costumes that only needed sewing by Wednesday night. Sewing is the easy part, after all. It's the cutting and measuring and pinning that'll drive ya crazy. Mostly the pinning. Eek!

Then it happened. My sewing machine is a 1960something Singer Zig-Zag 457. It's a very good, industrial strength little machine that would probably sew through your bone if your finger made it's way under the needle. Unfortunately, there is one little gear in these machines that are notorious for breaking because they are made of plastic. While I was winding the bobbin for my Bear's costume, I heard this loud crunching, shattering sound. The bobbin wheel would no longer spin for thread catching. My boyfriend opened up the machine, and we discovered tiny bits of translucent orange plastic shards littering the interior of my machine. I almost started crying. I did do some cussing. But, instead of throwing a tantrum, I grabbed Bear's fabric pieces, the thread spool, and a needle to begin channeling all the anger and frustration into the productivity of getting the project done. I had one shoulder to ankle seam done within less than 15 min, and straightly stitched even! Then I tapered down and only finished half the oppostie side seam that night before going to bed. I finished Bear's costume by Friday morning, thanks to other chores and school runs.

Jeremy's sister blessedly loaned us her machine. She said she'd never sewed anything with it anyway cause she didn't know how to use it. We got it home very late Friday night, thanks to the required Ellensburg drive. I threaded the machine, inserted a bobbin, and realized the thread wouldn't catch. Once Jeremy got home from his closing shift at Lowe's, we found out somebody had inserted the pieces that hold the bobbin casing in wrong at some point. Jeremy got things lined up right, and PRESTO! We were in business. His poor sister thought she just didn't know how to do it, but it's the machine's fault this whole time. Or rather, the previous owner's fault.

I finished the final costume, just in time for Trick-or-Treating Saturday night. So, here are the pics from our Halloween. Bug went as a demon. Pix went as a fairy. Bear went as a cow. Potato went as Boo from Monster's Inc. All costumes were created without patterns, and with much senility.

The night started off right at a buddy's house, who unloaded quite the bounty on my babies.





This house had the entire front yard done up.


We drove through Old Town on our way to a Halloween/Bday party. These people covered the majority of their porch with carved delights.


RAAWWWRR!!


Bug with our friend, Joey as a vampiress.


Mom, stop putting my hood on!


Our very good buddy Rory was there with his wife and two kids. He didn't dress up, but let's say he's a lumberjack, k?


I made all six kids group together for a pic. I took several, and this is the best one. Kids, jeesh.


I'm a COW!! Moooooo! *jingle jingle*


Balloons. Who doesn't love them? If you don't, be quiet and rain elsewhere.


This photo cracks me up! She's such a clown.


Jeremy got cornered entertaining the drunks.


Apparently the kitchen was the hot place to be. (Get it? Kitchen. Hot. haha) Potato was playing the Keeper of Cool by keeping out the riff raff.


Bug found HUGE rice krispie treats, which even she was unable to finish.


While I spent the day sewing up monsters, Jeremy and the kids worked on pumpkins. Jeremy and Bug get going on these witty backhand schpeels that make me just go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! This of course happened while gutting pumpkins (not penguins like I originally typed. What the? Even messier than pumpkins.).

Pix designed this vampire pumpkin at Bear's request. She's so good.


This kitty one, I took a minute to design for Pix after she made several attempts at great designs that just weren't carver friendly.


Bug designed this one.


Jeremy did this Jack Skellington inspired pumpkin.


On that note of skeletons and varied faces, I leave you with shots of my makeup for the evening, and a disturbing photo of Jeremy in costume.


I'm still creeped out by this one.