Making Halloween Costumes Without Spending Money, Part 1

This year, I challenged myself to make the girls' Halloween costumes without spending any money on them.  And this could have been really easy, except that they had already decided what they were going to be. So instead of raiding the costume and dress up clothes and putting something together, I have to actually make the costumes that we agreed upon previously. In our family, we like a good Halloween costume theme.  We've done Goldilocks and the three bears, Alice in Wonderland, Japanese kimonos, etc. This year will be no exception. The theme: sea creatures. And while a mermaid is not technically a sea creature since it is not technically real, it still fits the theme. So here is the first in a three part series: How I made a mermaid tail.

This one is Leah's costume, and Leah gets cold easier than anyone else in the family. So I knew I wanted to make her mermaid tail as warm as I could.  Luckily, I had about a yard of orange fleece in my sewing scraps from who knows when and what.  Originally I was just going to use the fleece, but then came upon a package of unopened curtains in this beautiful shade of blue. That's right, curtains.  We have had these curtains in the package for about four years now, and while I have wanted to put them in the girls room forever, for whatever reason we haven't.  So I put them to good use for the costume. 

I had found some really cute ideas online about how to make  a mermaid tail out of really pretty sparkly fabric, but once i committed to not spending anything on it, I had to go it alone. No pattern. The other thing is, I'm not great at sewing. So in figuring out how this would come together I probably ripped out as many stitches as I put in. But eventually, it all worked out. I started out by tracing Leah's lower half onto a roll of newsprint. From there, I cut pieces from both the fleece and the curtain fabric. Then after a lot of trial and error, I got the blue stitched over the orange and left the bottom unfinished so I could attach the tail fin. I also left a bit at the top to fold over to look like that part at the top of a mermaid's tail that folds over (whatever that's called).

The tail fin was challenging, because I wasn't sure how to make it look like a fin and not just extra fabric. I had some leftover elastic thread from another project and decided to try it on this. Elastic thread gathers the fabric together as you sew, resulting in a ruffly look.  I sewed a bunch of straight seams of it down my tail fin pieces and this is what we ended up with. Not really tail fin-ny enough yet.

Next I finished the edges of the tail fins, cutting more off the bottom to get the upside down V shape that I wanted. I then had to sew them into the body of the tail.  After a first attempt I tried it on Leah and realized she couldn't walk because it was too tight at the base.  So I removed those stitches and sewed it open further up the leg on one side so the poor girl will be able to move while Trick or Treating.  I also had left the side of the top open so she can get into it easier, so I attached a ribbon piece on each side for the closure (and since I was spending no money, I couldn't buy matching ribbon... oh well).

At this point, I decided it needed some dressing up, and hot glued some sequins on the front. This was tricky, because the thin blue material let the hot glue seep onto the fleece below, so I had to insert some cardboard between the layers so they wouldn't stick, but also had to keep lifting the blue layer so it would stick to the cardboard. But it worked out in the end.

Here's a picture of the final product.  I wanted it short enough that she wouldn't trip on it when walking, but I wish now that it was a little longer. For the real costume we will be adding some shell necklaces and flowers in her hair.

The whole point of this challenge is not to deprive my kids of really cool Halloween costumes, but to try harder to use what we already have instead of going out and buying something new.  I hope this challenge will help me to get more creative in my use of things and help me to learn to use old things in new ways.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for Part 2!

Geology Day and Sensory Bins

 Last Friday we were lucky enough to attend geology day at Lava Beds National Monument. This was supposed to be just for school groups, but since I have somewhat of an in with the supervising ranger there we were able to tag along with one of the public school classes.

This year we are studying Earth science, however, we are several weeks away from the topic of geology.  But I felt the kids would get more out of a geology day if we knew what exactly geology was went over some of my well planned lessons ahead of time.  And since we found out we could go to geology day only 2 days beforehand, we did a last minute crash course in geology the day before.

Here the girls are smooshing moistened graham crackers together to mimic the movement of tectonic plates to make mountains. They thought this was awesome. 

And here they learned more about tectonic plates using jam and graham crackers. I let them cover the crackers with dyed whipped cream (because I was not motivated enough to make frosting), then they put the two graham crackers on top of strawberry jam and pushed them together to mimic magma rising from under the Earth's crust. This one wasn't quite the amazing visual that the mountain graham cracker activity was, but they still liked it and of course asked to eat it at the end. 

We also read some books, looked at rocks from our rock collection and learned the difference between the three types of rocks, studied the rock cycle, looked at pictures of the layers of the earth, and read more books. 

Here are the girls at geology day. We went with some homeschool friends and you can see our four girls off to the side. They had such a great time with all the hands on activities.  I feel like they learned a lot too! And hopefully when we come back to geology in a few weeks they will remember this!

In other news, I've started the addicting process of making sensory bin activities for Hanna! Here she is with her ragamuffin hair (we are in that wild hair stage of toddlerhood) playing in the blue sensory bin. I colored rice blue using vinegar and blue food coloring (I just mixed enough in with the rice to coat it, then laid it out on cookie sheets to dry) and added blue pom poms, blue silicon cupcake liners, blue fake flowers, and any other small blue toys I could find. I am planning to make more of these with other colors to help her learn the colors, plus some seasonal and just for fun using other fillers besides just rice. There are so many amazing sensory bin ideas out there- just a google search away! When I was looking for ideas I also read a lot about how great sensory activities are for toddlers, so I am really excited to have these for her. Plus, it keeps her busy during homeschooling. The only problem is that the older kids would rather play in the rice than do their work!

Our Summer

We are back to the blogging world! I honestly don't know where the summer went.  We were busy all summer but I don't feel like we had a lot of plans or trips or anything.  I guess Summer is just like that. And after living in Death Valley for four years where summer is an endless and extremely HOT 10 months, I think summer will now always feel very short anywhere else. 

At any rate, here are some highlights from our summer.  And now that we have started school again, I will hopefully be back to weekly blogging!

Day trip to Crater Lake

The girls and I were SO excited to get all of our homeschool materials for this year in July. They wanted to get everything out and look at it, so we made piles on the floor before I organized it all. We are so blessed to live here where we have a great homeschooling program and can get all these amazing books for our homeschool!

Yes, I forgot to turn my pictures before loading them on the blog. But it's late and I don't feel like redoing it. So turn your head please. This is the girls at Junior Ranger day at Lava Beds with Daddy.  

One day we discovered that we could stick balloons on Hanna's head with static. The older girls thought this was great. I thought it was pretty funny too. 

Camping trip to Redwoods in August with our good friends the Rasmussens

The kids had a great time again this year at the Tulelake fair

We started school at the beginning of September, and I quickly realized that Hanny didn't care if I had spent hours on school plans or that I had a daily schedule all laid out that seemed absolutely perfect on paper.  So after about 6 days of trying to do school my way and Hanny screaming at me every one of those days, I realized that I would have to be more flexible.  Instead of getting everything done in the morning on my schedule, on day 7 we got out the dried beans and measuring utensils and we all played with Hanny.  After a long while of just playing, I took one of the older girls at a time and we got our lessons done.  We did our literature at nap time and we finished science just before dinner, but we all had a really good day instead of a frustrating one.  Lesson learned: be flexible; listen to your toddler; ENJOY your children instead of just checking things off on a list of things that must get done that day. 

We just returned from our last trip of the summer around the Pacific Northwest, which, by the way, is my favorite place ever. This is Kaiya at a  beach in Olympic National Park.

Another sideways picture. Sorry. Another beach at Olympic.

Someone offered to take a family photo in the forest at Olympic. So nice. 

The Girls at Mount Rainier.  Pictures do not do it justice. This place is beautiful.

The girls getting their Junior Ranger badges from Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. 

We hope your summer was great as well!

This is Hanna

I realized that I have never really introduced Hanna on our blog.  She is now 16 months old and completely adorable.  Her favorite things are cookies, going outside, and saying "no!" She tries hard to keep up with her two older sisters, but also loves to cuddle with mom or dad.  Since we weren't blogging when she was born (or before she was born, or in the year after she was born...) here are a few photos of her babyhood.  Glad you could finally meet her!

Newborn princess

2 months old

5 months old

6 months old

11 months old

First birthday cake smash!

African Animal Mosaics

We did this little art project to go with our Africa studies.  Apparently in some African countries they make mosaics from butterfly wings.  We stuck with paper.  They were supposed to choose an African animal.  Kaiya chose a giraffe, her favorite animal, and Leah chose a horse.  Not the first thing you think of when you think African animal, but I guess that works. 

Finished products.  Leah's horse is above  and Kaiya's giraffe is sideways below. 

Leah's Birthday

Leah turned 5!!

Actually, Leah turned 5 a month ago.  We had a little family party at home and then took her to Sacramento for her 5 year old birthday trip (a family tradition).  Then we forgot our camera at the hotel.  So this is why Leah's birthday is just now appearing on the blog.  Here are some highlights:

Unicorn cake.  Leah wanted a purple unicorn cake and all the while I had been planning cupcakes. So this was a last minute throw together.  Thank you Pintrest for having ideas to make absolutely everything. Even purple unicorn cakes.

Leah loved the cake and devoured it.  Hanna is also chowing down in the background.

We met my sister and her family in Sacramento and here are all the cousins together minus Hanna, who was trapped in a stroller most of the day.

We let the kids feed the giraffe.  They loved it.

The kids at Fairy Tale town.  They love this place.  A kid's dream come true. 

We recently bought an underwater camera and this was the first time we got to use it under water.  We got some cute pictures of the older two, this being one of them.

Overall, Leah had a great birthday and we enjoyed the celebrations as well! 

Barbie Mummy

Last week we studied Egypt, and I really wanted the girls to understand more about mummy making.  Although there are some great science activities where you can mummify a whole chicken or a piece of fruit, I felt that at this age they would get more out of learning the rituals of mummification.  I hope to do one of those other activities when we come back around to Egypt in a few years.  But for now, we focused on the process and Barbie made a very willing participant.

First we prepared Barbie by placing the organs from a squishy body set on top of her.  The girls then took turns pretending to pull them out and placed them in jars.  Leah especially loved pretending to pull out the brain with our pretend brain hook.

Next, they pretended to wash her and then sprinkled Barbie with salt to dry her out.  Normally, this process would take 40 days, but we used our imaginations and proceeded after about 40 seconds.

Next we began wrapping her up in our faux linens- tissue strips.  They worked out pretty well.  Kaiya was able to do a lot of the wrapping on her own, although I had to help where we connected the wrapped pieces together.

And here's Barbie, all mummified in her shoebox sarcophagus.  Unfortunately for her she did not remain a mummy long.  The girls had her unwrapped within the hour.  I suppose that the plastic will preserve her into the afterlife, even if the wrappings won't!

Best Laundry Detergent for Cloth Diapers!

I have finally found it.  Patrick bought this laundry detergent because it was on sale a few weeks ago.  Not our normal stuff.  But let me tell you it cleans cloth diapers better than any other detergent we've used. We've been cloth diapering now for a combined total of about 5 years.  So that's a lot of other detergents tried.  Not to mention the amount of times I've had to strip the diapers (Google it) or add weird concoctions to the wash in an effort to get them smelling nice instead of nasty.  After the first time washing with this fabulous stuff, the diapers came out smelling like, well, not smelling at all.  Completely neutral.  Which, in my opinion, is exactly how a diaper should smell.  

The Great Pyramid

This week we are studying Northern Africa and focusing on Egypt.  Yesterday we read about the pyramids, then decided to try our luck at making one out of rice krispie treats.  I had seen an idea to make pyramids from rice krispie treats, but it used a pyramid mold.  I do not own a pyramid mold (does anyone own a pyramid mold??).  So we used waxed paper and hoped for the best.  And it came out great! Well, great enough that a 7 and 4 year old were super excited about it anyway.  I always hope when we do fun activities like this that some of the actual lesson will stick.  I guess only time will tell.  In the mean time, we had fun!

Happy Birthday Kaiya!!

Having cupcakes with her friends

Bowling

My rainbow cake and Patrick's awesome balloon rainbow

The birthday girl!

Wow! My oldest became yet another year older last week.  Seven years have gone by quickly! We had a somewhat quiet birthday this year compared to the last few.  No big party, but we did have fun.  In the morning we met up with our homeschool friends from Klamath Falls and had a playdate and shared cupcakes.  Kaiya wanted to go bowling for her birthday, so we met grandma in town for that. (By the way, taking a one year old to a bowling alley is complete torture.  Don't do it.)  So after bowling, we took Kaiya out for dinner.  She chose Japanese food and had sushi.  Then we came back home for cake and presents.  I attempted a rainbow cake for her, and it turned out pretty well.  She was happy with it anyway.  Then she opened her presents and we called it a day!

 It's amazing to think that we started this blog before she was born and now she's seven! Birthdays are always bittersweet, because if I could I would keep them little(!), but it's also fun to reflect on how much they've grown and learned in the past year.  Here's to another great year for my big girl!

Micronesia Flag Cookies

For the past few weeks we have been studying Australia and the Pacific Islands.  The girls really loved learning about the different cultures, and, surprisingly, cannibalism, which occurred in some of the islands long ago (or more recently in the case of Papua New Guinea...Yikes!).  Anyway, we wanted to make these sugar cookie bars into flag cookies (which we made last fourth of July with the American flag... super cute!) and searched for a flag that wouldn't be too difficult to turn into a flag cookie.  Micronesia won.  Blue background, four stars.  Thank you, Micronesia, for having a simple flag that we could turn into a cookie.

General Conference

So, last weekend was General Conference.  Conference weekend is a time to be uplifted, strengthened, inspired... and driven crazy by your kids.  Granted, it's a lot of time for them to be quiet and relatively still.  So this time I wanted to be prepared with some fun activities for them to do during the conference sessions.

Now, when we were in Death Valley we didn't get conference on TV. So we would download it and listen to the talks on our way to and from church for the next several weeks (church was over an hour away, so it didn't take that long).  Last fall was our first effort at a true conference weekend, and since we were at Patrick's mom's house (aka spoiling grandma), we were not successful in fulfilling our vision of how we want conference weekend to be.  Hey, I don't think we will ever really "get there", but this time I wanted to get a little closer.

So here's what we did:
I googled "General Conference activities" and came up with THIS lovely website full of them.  I chose conference bingo, conference marker dot pages, and I made binders for each girl using activity pages from the Friend magazine.  I simply tore out the activity page, glued one on each side of a plain white piece of copy paper, and inserted into a clear page protector.  We had A LOT of old friend magazines lying around, so we made a good size activity binder for each of them.  I bought some dry erase crayons and voila! They were able to color and do the activities, then erase them and do them again.  I plan to use these binders for sacrament meeting too, swapping out activities as we get new magazines.  The last thing we did, which I saved for the last session, for something new, was to make a General Conference collage.  Remember all those Friend magazines I tore pages out of? I let the kids have at what was left of them for their collage.  Anything they heard about in conference (anything church related, really) they could cut out and glue onto a poster board.  They actually didn't finish it during the session, so we will continue to work on it after church until it's done (hopefully it takes a while!). 

Our Conference weekend still was not perfect.  I did not have perfectly quiet, perfectly still children.  But I think that through doing Conference related activities, the girls were able to understand that Conference weekend is special.  Hopefully they will continue to appreciate just how special it is as they grow!

How was your conference?

Asia Projects

Henna Hands

Afghan kites. And yes, Leah is wearing a ballet recital costume.

Paper Mache Earth


These are some of our Asia projects.  We are working our way around the world for geography and spent a lot of time on Asia.  I thought I took more pictures, but I guess not. We also made a Ger when we studied Mongolia, made Chinese lanterns, made camels for Kazakhstan, and we also colored maps and flags and made food from some of the countries.

Today we had an early thanksgiving in fernley. Cousins, grandparents and turkey, so much fun!
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone

Thanksgiving at grandmas

Our girls at play