Wordless Wednesday - Leaves!

Bleachable Moment.

So when I read this writing prompt from Chlorox:

Spending time with friends and family can lead to fun and memorable moments, but also some very messy ones. Tell us about the messiest moments that you’ll always remember!

I immediately thought of all of the many pictures I have of my kid covered in paint: 

Pics range from April 2010 - last month.

And all of the many times that I have let my love of art and my excitement that my daughter is so into drawing and painting get in the way of common sense.  Like that time she drew on the dog:

Proof that it's a bad plan to leave a 19 month old alone with a box of markers.  Or that we have the most tolerant dog ever.

Or that time we dyed Easter eggs in September:

Now she wants to dye them anytime we make hardboiled eggs.  Kid likes color as much as her mom does.

 You know.  Cute stories.  Not gross stores.  But sill "messy" stories.

But then?  My kid got sick.  Real sick.  Flu sick.  The kind where you wash every set of sheets you own twice with in 24 hours sick.

And then I remembered what a true bleachable moment is.

Half asleep on a splashzone of  towels.  Spoiler Alert:  the towels only kindof worked.

A bleachable moment is when you are in a fit of rage storming through your house clorox wiping everything in your path.

Because even though I had washed all the gross laundry, cleaned the toilet and the rest of the bathroom, scrubbed the rug & couch, washed the floor and aired out the house something STILL smelled like puke. I believe my tweet about sums it up:

i've scrubbed everything that i can - couch, floor, carpet, etc. but the living room still smells vaguely like puke. #burnitdown

She's feeling better now but the puking continues.  No fever.  No dehydration scares.  Just random projectile vomit.  The doctor's advice?  Just wait it out.  Awesome.

I did eventually find the source of the puke smell, though:

I don't even want to know why the dog smells like puke.  No good can come of that investigation.

And yes, I totally used wipes to clean the dog.

I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls. To learn more about the messy moment program, check out www.BleachItAway.com. Sharing your story on the Clorox fan page gets you entered for the chance to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can grab a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

Baby's First Haircut

Disclaimer:  Some of these photos are a bit overedited and uneven.  I recently discovered the CoffeeShop Blog's free actions for Photoshop Elements and I"m still getting the hang of them.  They are a great add to my usual Pioneer Woman Actions, though!

So on Saturday our little man had his first haircut.


I could get all sentimental or be all sad but really?  It was beyond time:

He passed the cute crazy baby hair sometime around Fourth of July when my brother commented that he looked like a hockey player.  Since then his mullet has become as long and free as one you would see at Walmart.  In 1990.  Also he had this weird stick-y up part in the back that kindof made him look like a rooster:

I debated just chopping off the back myself but babies flail alot.  So we took him to our local barber shop (the one at Kamms Corners.  I can't find a website... or even a name but Matt's been going there for years) and let the professionals fix him up.

I don't usually go for the black and white but with the stripes and the barbershop thing I'm kindof digging it.

The end result?  ADORABLE. 

He looks so much older.  Like a little boy and not just a baby.  Although perhaps some of that is contextual:

I may only be 6 months old but I'm better at this football thing than half of the Browns.

Yay for haircuts!

Peter Pan & Tinker Belle Halloween.

First of all to get this out of the way... did I try to make the Prudent Baby Tinkerbelle costume that everyone has been Pinning?

Yes.

Did my toddler completely and totally refuse to wear it?  Of course.  But at least I realized that it wasn't going to happen and bailed before I spent too much time finishing it.

Did she also refuse to wear the tutu without some tweaks?  Obviously. 

IT'S TOO FOOFY.  TINKER BELLE DOESN'T HAVE WHITE.  PLEASE TAKE THE WHITE OFFA THERE.  PLEASE.

My toddler is the most picky client ever.  But the end result?

Flipping adorable.

And honestly noone would be able to see the costume under her coat anyways.

Peter pan came out pretty adorable, too:

I used the tutorial from Make It and Love It with a few tweaks.  I didn't have a feather or a buckle so I made those from felt.  And the sword is a bit different than she describes.  Hilarious, though.  Totally made the costume especially since he brandished it so well:

Heh.

Trick or Treating was superfun times this year. 

She was so, SO excited about the candy:

And I got a family pic with the kids in their costumes and our pumpkins:

And even a few with both kids together (holy logistics, batman!):

Although I think next year I will be alot more tempted to just buy a damn costume.

Oh and in case you were wondering what Matt and I were for our friend's Halloween this year....

People who were awesome in 1991.

Yes those are Hard Rock pins and fanny packs, Yes that is a hypercolor sweatshirt, and Yes that is Crystal Pepsi. Or a vodka tonic in a Pepsi bottle I relabeled.  One of the two.

Happy Halloween!!!

A bag of Tulle and Wine.

So I've seen the new sew tutu tutorials all over the interwebs before and I figured that it would be the perfect quick 'n dirty Tinker Belle costume.

And after the Maleficent debacle I needed quick 'n dirty.

So I showed up at my friend's house for Knit Night (a group of my girlfriends gets together once a month and "knits" aka drinks wine and eats pizza.) carrying a couple packages of elastic, my tulle stash, and a giant bottle of wine with no other plan then I NEED TO BE DONE WITH THIS OMFG PASSTHEWINE.

The result?

Jennifer got a new hat.

I think I need to roll with tulle and wine everywhere I go from now on.

Without turning this into too much of a tutorial - because seriously there are SO MANY of these out there.  Google "new sew tutu" and you will be INNUNDATED.  Here's what I did:

I cut the 1/2" elastic into a 21 inch length.  I figured my daughter has about a 20" waist and I wanted some overlap.  Then I safety pinned it into a circle.  Probably sewing it would be better but whatevs.

Then I cut the tulle into 4" strips.  Since cutting tulle makes the baby Jesus cry I cheated and rolled the tulle into tubes first.  Then I cut those tubes into 4" pieces.  It doesn't come out perfect but it is SO quick and easy.  (hey there's a video for this already online!  Check itout.)

Then I put my elastic around a stand-in toddler waist:

What.  you use what you've got.

And looped the strips of tulle over the elastic in a slip knot (the same video shows this)

I kept going until the pizza got there and the result was pretty darn awesome:

I even had enough tulle leftover to make my friend's daughter her very own tutu:

Now I kindof want to make one in ever color of the rainbow.  And one (or 7) for myself.  

I'm not totally convinced it's going to work for Tinker belle, though... I have something else in mind for that.  Yes.

My mommy is insane.

Maleficent for Halloween.

So a few months ago Sleeping Beauty was on in the background while my toddler and I were looking at her photo album.  This picture from last Halloween came up:

And so I asked her "what do you want to be for Halloween this year?"

She responded without missing a beat: MALIFICENT.

And so it began.  From then on any time I asked her about Halloween she said definitively:  MALIFICENT HALLWEEN.  Later it expanded b/c when I asked her what her brother should be she told me BLACK BIRDIE.  Because, of course.  Maleficent sidekick is her black bird just like my daughter's sidekick is her brother.

Riding around the living room in a laundry basket is WAY more fun with a sibling.

 I was ALL OVER this costume idea.

Of course I decided to make these costumes because they don't exactly make Maleficent in a 2T.  Also I'm insane like that.  So we went to the fabric store (still one of her favorite places to go) and she vetoed the fleece I picked out "NOT VERY SHINY." in favor of this:

Shiny fabric, over a month to make the costumes, and an idea that was both hilarious and awesome?  Totally on top of this Halloween thing.

AND THEN.

I made this wonderful, lined, spectacular, shiny Maleficent coat:

And she refused to wear it.  What the what?  I didn't think too much about it and continued to make this awesome hat for her brother:

And we had so much fun putting it on him and getting him to crow like a bird.


Hilarity all around.

But she still wouldn't wear the coat.  Finally I resorted to bribery and got her to put it on thinking once she was in it we'd be good to go:

I DON'T WANT TURN INTO A DRAGON!!! GET THIS OFFAA ME!!!

And then that night she had nightmares.

I AFRAID MALIFICENT DRAGON.

Awesome.  I win at parenting.

Also:  CRAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPP

And just to rub some salt in the would my son grew out of the birdie hat less than a week after I made it for him.

Now she's saying that she wants to be Peter Pan because HE A NEEAH (Neeah is how she says her name and what she calls all redheads.)

I never noticed Peter Pan had red hair before.

The baby she wants to be Tinker belle.  Right.  I think I convinced her to switch - her as tink and baby as pan but still...

I'm less than a week away from our first costume event, I have out of town guests coming this weekend and therefore no time to work on this, and I refuse to just go buy a costume because I'm way to far down this path to turn back.

I'm going over to my friend's house tonight with a bag of tulle and wine.  Hopefully this will result in a Tinker belle costume and not just a hangover.

Sob.