Pirates and Pixies

No small bones about it, I'm foisting my interests all up on my Kid. It started innocently enough: NBC was showing Peter Pan Live (and I wrote all about it). Then, he got into Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Then, as part of our prep-watching for our upcoming vacation to Disney World, we watched Disney's Peter Pan for one of our movie nights. It was all over from there...

And I love it.

So, when he asked me to make him fairy wings so he could play Tinker Bell, I couldn't say no. We took a trip to Michael's to pick out some flowers and paint, and I finally forgave Jake for having wire hangers in his closet. (He's getting better, but there are still a couple. I struggle not to go all Joan Crawford on him, but it's what keeps our marriage interesting.) I used this tutorial, which was pretty darned clear. My one note: even though I used Q-sized stockings, they compressed my hanger-shapes, so they wound up thinner than my original design. It's cool; he loves them, and so do I!

The Kid had asked me for "black and white stripes with orange squiggles and flowers," and I think I delivered. It's definitely the most Tim Burton-y, Halloween-y thing I've ever made! He's been flying around the apartment for the last couple of days, and I get to be his Peter Pan. Not complaining!

So, then.

I realized if I could make fairy wings, I could probably make a pair of swords for swordfighting, too. The Kid has been initiating swordfights with everything from chopsticks to plastic cucumbers to rubber snakes. Jake and I hadn't had The Play Weapon Talk yet--it had never come up. But both of us figured, if The Kid uses safe foam swords to play pirate, how could we argue?

Especially because I'm a craft-nerd who already had all of the materials, and didn't have to buy anything...

Tutorial after the jump.

A Very Crafty Holiday: an overview

I'm a big fan of TV. Like, huge. (Picture me saying that as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.) Before The Kid came along--and when he's not home--I have the TV on non-stop. It's my background noise when I'm doing whatever it is that I'm occupied with; there are only a handful of shows I actually sit and watch.

I do try to stem my couch potato impulses when I'm hanging out with The Kid, and not have the both of us posted in front of the TV all the time. To be honest, he probably watches a total of two hours a day...don't judge. :P

Not defaulting to turning on the TV was much easier when I worked outside of the house. Spending a full day with The Kid was an event, and it was treated as such. When you only get two full days a week together, why would you spend it watching TV? But now, I have to make a concerted effort to come up with fun and nourishing activities. And it turns out, I love doing crafts with my kid! (I probably could have told you that before, but now it's confirmed.) "Becoming more comfortable with arts and crafts" was on my resolution list a few years ago, when I realized that to effectively teach Creative Drama to young kids, I was going to have to give them art projects. I think I've been pretty successful on that end!

Here's a roundup of some of the crafts The Kid and I have done together for the holidays...

Glued circles and rectangles to a piece of blue paper to make snowmen!
(I can't believe it hasn't really snowed in A2 yet! Did I just jinx us??)

Made and decorated gingerbread cookies!
(Cookie recipe from Cook's Illustrated; amazing sugar frosting recipe from The Kitchn.)

The old preschool stand-by: dreidel suncatchers!
(Basis for this activity from The Artful Parent; I used watered-down glue instead of liquid starch,
because my grocery store didn't stock the starch. I also put the wax paper inside a dreidel cut-out.
Because Hanukkah.)

I went into The Kid's class to teach them about Hanukkah. Guess what I did with them!

We made peppermint marshmallows! They. Were. Excellent. And somehow, we still have some.
(Recipe from A Beautiful Mess.)

We made some ornaments for our tree. Meet Santa and Jewish Guy!
(Basis for this activity from Red Ted Art. I looped some embroidery floss through Santa's cap to make an ornament.
Jewish Guy used pretty much the same technique, using blue paint for his body, and a small felt circle yarmulke.)

And we made a handprint snowman ornament using a kit made by a parent in the 4s class at The Kid's school!

Whew! It's been an artful month! I think doing art with The Kid is so much fun. It allowed us to explore both of the winter holidays we celebrate in our family in a tactile way. Springtime crafts soon?

A Very Handy Halloween

The Kid and his Halloween inspiration.

We talk about costumes a lot around here. The Kid has recycled all of his past Halloween costumes into dress-up clothes, which he wears pretty darned frequently, along with the ones he's picked up as gifts along the way. (In fact, as we speak, he's wearing his pirate costume from two years ago, which fits him much better now. He's not being a pirate, he's just wearing the costume.)

A while ago, he told Jake and I that he wanted to be a construction worker for Halloween this year, which came as no surprise. But he already has a construction worker costume, and we wanted to get him something new. You know, ignoring our budget, for special-ness.

And so when he told me that what he really, really wanted to be was Handy Manny--a character he loves so much that he started calling my parents Abuela and Abuelito for no other reason--I jumped on it. "OK," I told him, "If that's what you want, we're Doing This Thing."

Handy Manny plays "pin the eye on the spider" at his nursery school Halloween party.

I set up a secret board on Pinterest (Did you know you could do that?? It's amazing for remembering things you don't want anyone to know about...like your kid's Halloween costume...) and got to finding costume pieces. There are actual Handy Manny costumes for sale out there, but I'm a dramaturg, and my kid was only going to wear pieces the character would actually wear, god damn it. No one wears a shirt with their own face on it. The great thing about Handy Manny is that he's just a guy who wears regular clothes, which meant not only that we could source pieces from The Kid's actual wardrobe, but that most of what we bought could be worn again and again in non-costume ways.

The downside to dressing like a regular-cartoon-person is that when you add a puffy coat for a Michigan Halloween, your kid kind of looks like...a kid in a down jacket going door-to-door begging for candy. But there were definitely a few people who approached him and asked if her was Handy Manny, so that was really cool.

So, if you ever find yourself in possession of a three-and-a-half-year-old who wants to be Handy Manny more than anything else in the world, here is how you do it:

The foundation of the costume was jeans and a couple of shirts we already owned. No earth-shaking purchase there, but it gave us the darker-green sleeves and collar Manny had. And, really, I wasn't going out to buy a new pair of jeans.

Then, we had to add Manny's unique elements.

We bought these shoes from Target, which have paid for themselves several times over. The Kid calls them his "Manny shoes," and he's worn them so many times. They're already a little worn on the toe, but they're super-comfy and utilitarian.

I got Manny's hat on Amazon, being sure to follow the customer comments and buy the child-sized one, even though my kid has a huge head. :) Since Manny keeps a pencil behind his ear, I sewed a plastic one to the hat with embroidery floss, making sure my stitches were tight enough that the pencil wouldn't fall out, but loose enough that we could remove it in case a kid running around with a pencil behind his ear proved dangerous. I also made the artistic (read: safer) decision to point the eraser forward, even though Manny wears his the other way 'round.

(One person did think he was Ash from Pokemon because of the hat. Generational differences, I guess!)

Manny's tool belt came in the form of a $0.77 apron from Home Depot. (Seriously. $0.77. Also, I miss the "cents" key.)

Because Manny doesn't shill for Home Depot, I embroidered up a patch with our favorite tool and the slogan of Handy Manny's Repair Shop. I made it an iron-on, so no actual sewing was necessary.

And--of course--we stuck google eyes on all of his tools. :)

It was an incredibly successful day of trick-or-treating in downtown Ann Arbor, and evening spent with friends outside of Detroit. More importantly than the candy haul, The Kid loved his costume!

A Room of His Own

The Kid's garage, complete with trucks, books, and costumes.

Back when we were preparing for the move, I asked The Kid, "If you could have anything decorating your room, what would it be?" His answer was immediate:

"A garage!"

"You mean, like the parking spaces we have on the floor in the living room?"

"No, like, a shelf where I can park my trucks."

And so the wheels set to turning. I wasn't going to go out and buy a garage for The Kid's room; we had plenty of shelves that could be repurposed. But, of course, me being the Type-A wanna-be crafter I am, I didn't want to just put a shelf in The Kid's room and tell him that's where he had to put his trucks every night. It had to be something special. I set to planning.

The Kid stayed with my folks while we moved so he didn't get underfoot, and so he had a place to sleep while our furniture was in transit. We wanted to make it a priority to unpack his room first thing, so that when he got to Ann Arbor, he had a place of his own, even if the rest of the apartment was an absolute mess. Which it kind of still is.

The decals went up first thing! Even if The Kid had no furniture, he'd have some trucks in his room.

But as his arrival day approached and we still didn't have any furniture, we were getting anxious. Would we have time to set up his furniture? And would I have time for the craftiness I wanted to do on his garage? (I didn't want to tell him "Well, this is your room, but this shelf is going to look totally different once I have the time to do it..." and then procrastinate my way to not fixing it. I know myself pretty well.)

So, thank goodness the furniture arrived a couple of days before my parents and The Kid. Jake got the call that the movers were two hours away while we were sitting in a theatre watching The Edge of Tomorrow; we were supposed to get 48 hours notice, and so assuming the furniture wouldn't come for days, we went on a movie date and made plans with local friends. Surprise! We canceled all of our plans, and the next day, I ran out to Michael's to get my supplies.

I spent the majority of the next day out on our deck crafting. (I can not express how excited I am to have an outdoor space!) It was a beautiful day for garage-making, and I'm absolutely thrilled with the way this turned out, especially since I had no plans or directions, no Pinterest inspiration, just what I was seeing in my head.

Since I had no directions, after the jump is the step-by-step for what I did, in case anyone else wants to do something similar. Or, if you're just curious.

Take a Seat

There are certain things that are true when two semi-adults blend apartments. One of those true-isms is that someone will wind up with furniture about which she's (oh, um, I mean they're) not wholly fond. When Jake and I moved in together almost ten years ago, he was mostly happy to toss the furniture from his studio apartment in favor of mine.

But there were The Chairs.

The Chairs had lived with Jake since 1999, and were the very definition of institutional-chic. Like, they looked like they belonged in a hospital waiting room, which is not exactly the look anyone is really going for in their home. Except for a 19-year-old college boy, who may-or-may-not have gotten them extremely inexpensively.

And so they were sequestered to our bedroom, buried under laundry and piles of books, and only sat upon if both of us were putting our shoes on at the same time, and someone needed a surface to perch on for a second. In the midst of The Great Purge, I decided that there was no way these chairs were moving to Michigan with us. I hated them: I hated the color of the wood, I hated the look and feel of the upholstery. There was no way these chairs were getting loaded onto a moving van and getting shipped 800 miles away, just to get buried again.

Unless I made them different chairs.

The practically-free status of these chairs made them perfect candidates for experimentation. I figured, I could teach myself upholstery and painting/staining (via Pinterest, of course!) and if they turned out looking awful, well, I wouldn't have sunk a lot of money into them, right? So, I set off to research, as is my wont.

First consideration: what color should the wood be? I looked into Chalk Paint, but ultimately decided that I didn't love any color enough to commit to opaque paint, and that I'd rather let the wood show through. That led to a trip to Strosnider's with The Kid. Oh, how I love my neighborhood hardware store! I bought sandpaper, a brush, and a dropcloth, my mini-consultant helped me choose a stain color, and we were good to go.

Next, of course, I had to choose the fabric for the upholstery. After far too many hours browsing on Fabric.com, I finally bought five samples. Five minutes with my mini-consultant after I got the shipment, and I had chosen Premier Prints Suzani Summerland/Natural. (No, I don't let The Kid dictate my life, but the boy has an eye for color and pattern!)

Then, I just had to...um...do it. It took me several days, since I could only do so much while (a) I was at home, and (b) The Kid was sleeping or able to help me. And I was seriously proud of the outcome! The pseudo-before/after is at the top of the post, and the how-to is after the jump!