Ack! There's a Monster Eating my Head! {A Carnivorous Hat}

My oldest son, Weston had been eyeing all the funky winter hats. He especially liked the ones with ear flaps and the strings or braids hanging down with pom-poms.

Well, I aim to please! Coming up with a handmade gift to make him for Christmas was easy peasy.

I flew by the seat of my pants with this child-eating hat though. No one was more surprised than me when it actually turned out so good!

First I found a printable pattern for a hat with ear flaps (sorry! I can't remember where I found it....I was in the haze of holiday midnight crafting...) I cut the hat from a fifty cent sweater....yep, that's right. 50 cents!! I know. So cool. And, boy it was a pretty ugly one. I think the sweater is much happier being reincarnated into a hungry monster hat.

So, after I had the lining and outer hat pieces cut out, I added a row of fleece teeth and stuffed striped knit horns.

I braided three strips of fabric....two strips of the striped knit and one strip of green fleece and sewed those in before I put in the lining. Once it was all put together I added the eyes and the fleece pom pom to the top.  For the pom poms on the braids I unraveled the sweater. 

Weston....you look a bit too happy for one who is getting their head eaten though, dontcha think?

Ok. There's a little more terror. Thank you. (This shot was taken right after he opened it on Christmas morning...er....more like afternoon by the time we got home from church and back to the opening of presents! :)

Hmmmmm....we took a lot of pictures, didn't we? Well. We were having fun....

Oh my. This boy is so much fun. He didn't want me getting his jammies in the pictures at first. But then he decided he didn't care.

While making this hat, I had to plop it on my head every so often and race to a mirror. Then I'd giggle in happy anticipation of Weston opening it. And, boy....that was an awesome moment. He was THRILLED! That monster, Floyd (as Weston named him) perched on his head for probably three days straight. 

How-To {Tuesday} Give Your Children Superpowers

Zoe was invited to a cute little superhero birthday party on Saturday and I thought it would be fun to whip up some fun superhero masks for the birthday boy. 

These were so easy.  No! Really, they were (friends are always giving me a hard time about saying everything is *so easy*)

I found the templates at Homespun Treasures (as well as a whole ton of other awesome tutes). I've made masks for Halloween before so I was familiar with the technique but I gave the instructions a quick glance over.

I decided to make mine a little different.  I used knit so I wouldn't have to do the satin stitch around the edge and...erm...well, that's pretty much all that was different I guess!

So, first off, I printed out patterns.  I adjusted the shape of two of them, making them bigger and giving the one more of a cat eye look.

Then I traced patterns onto the non-shiny side of really thick interfacing.

I fused this with the iron to the wrong side of my fabric, using a scrap of fabric between the iron and interfacing.

Following my traced lines, I cut the masks out. And then cut the eye holes out, too.

Then I ironed the other side to another piece (wrong side) of fabric. I hadn't bought double sided interfacing(at least I don't think it was...), but I noticed when I ironed them the first time, the interfacing kind of stuck to the scrap cloth I'd placed between the interfacing and the iron.  It peeled off easily but I thought this would be easier then trying to just pin the layers together and it was.  So much easier.

Next I trimmed this layer of knit down to the mask shape. 

Ack! Aren't they so cool?!  I love them. I wonder if wearing a superhero mask would go with my own style? Hmmm, would that look odd?  Me, walking the aisles of Wal-mart sporting a pink mask? Maybe I'd be able to get through the place Super fast. heh heh.

Ok, so then I measured how much elastic I needed by having one of my sons hold the mask up to his face. I peeled back the stuck, but not really stuck side of fabric where the elastic needed to go and slipped the ends of the elastic into the sandwich on each side of the mask.

And then all that was left to do was to stitch around the edge of the whole mask, including the eyeholes, trim the thread, wrap them up and slip the pink one on my sweet little superhero. 

I was in a hurry to get the party and forgot to take some pics of the other masks! Snap.

This was such a fun and easy (and cheap!) birthday gift! I need to whip up some more of these masks to go in our dress up box.  I think we need one in every color! And, of course, one for myself.

I think I'm need a purple one.  Maybe with yellow lightening bolts on the side. 

Christmas Chaos

(ahhhhh!) I can't get my pics where I want them! okay...moving on....)

So, because we're slightly nuts, we decided to do a mostly handmade Christmas. Here are some of the highlights...

That first pic of Sam and his super cool monster beanbag game that Weston had a blast making for him!

And then there's Zoe holding the funky mouse I made for her. I had such fun making it! But she's hardly played with it since she opened it. So sad!

I made Ryan a magnetic scrabble board so we can always be playing a game together!

Weston has been playing with us, too. It's really fun.

I had really been wanting something to help organize my dangly earrings, so Ryan came up with this cool thing. It's just what I wanted (he left it unfinished because he wasn't sure if I wanted it stained or painted. I think I'll paint it black and hang it in my bathroom)....

Ryan also spoiled me with a gift card to Jo-Ann's and a pasta machine! Okay. That sounds strange, eh? Well, I really wanted the pasta machine so I could try a new craft....polymer clay pendants! Hmmmm....they're much cooler than they sound.

That "handy" board there in the corner is a wood hot pad that Ryan helped Sam make. Now Sam will always be holding my pots! (He's our little helper...he LOVES to help us)

Weston helped Ryan make me a wood knife holder to sit on the kitchen counter. Very cool! When Ryan asked Emmett what he wanted to make for me, he said, "A notebook!" :) Ryan got a binder and Emmett filled it with paper. Then he drew a picture for the front of the binder and wrote a sweet letter for the back. Unfortunatly I misplaced it! I wanted to share his letter....I'll have to edit this when I find it.

One of the best gifts our family recieved was from my mom. She made us this gorgeous flannel quilt. It's so soft and perfect for snuggling up with the family and watching Spongebob (that was how we first used it anyways!)....

Sam, our little hero, was happy to open this gift that I whipped up for him just a couple days before Christmas...

Weston LOVES playing chess and he's in a chess club at school. So, I stenciled him a chess shirt. He LOVED LOVED LOVED it! I was so surprised at the reaction it got. He promptly put it on and proclaimed he would wear it every Wednesday to school since that is chess club day. This made me quite happy.

Also, for one of his gifts, I put together a beginning sewing kit for him in a manly tool box. I put in supplies (scissors, measuring tape, pins, felt, etc.) and a beginning sewing project book. Christmas day he made a little felt mouse. He's so good!

Emmett had been wishing for a dinosaur shirt. This is what I came up with....

Emmett modge podged this board for Weston to hang in his bedroom. He picked out photos he thought Weston would like, like shots from his baptism, a silly pic of him and his cousin, Natassha and other fun pictures.....

The boys helped make this bow holder for Zoe...

And then here's the whole gang proudly displaying some of our favorite gifts (I was so concerned with getting all the kids situated that I didn't think about holding up MY favorite gifts, but if I had remembered to grab them, I would have been holding the earring board Ryan gave me and the quilt from my mom)...

Zoe got that sweet little rocking chair from Santa. She loves it. When she finds Sam sitting in it, she screams and pushes him until he gets up. Ryan is wearing his wicked cool tye-dyed shirt that Sam made for him (Weston and Emmett tye-dyed him some socks to match :). Oh, and I also stenciled him a couple of funny shirts. One said, "Never trust a man with a mustache." And the other was a picture of a man with furry arms and it simply said "The Second Amendment" ha!

Originally we were all wearing the jammies with monster snowmen on the front that I made for us, but Ryan and the boys put their new shirts on. Oh, and Zoe is sporting the little corduroy coat she got with a new outfit. She loves that coat and insists on wearing it with many many outfits that don't possibly match! Like...red velvet! ha!

Oh! One of the best things we ever bought was our gift to the whole family. We bought a 9-in-1 game table. It has pool, foosball, air hockey, baseball, chess....and many others. WE'VE LOVED IT! It's been such a great thing for our family.

We had a really great Christmas! The boys many other gifts, but I was so happy to see their joy over the handmade gifts. And they loved making them for each other even more.

We had such a great Christmas break. We went sledding and played games and laughed and ate too much. We read books and watched home videos and drank hot cocoa and had candlelit dinners. I was sad to see the boys go back to school and Ryan go back to work, but very grateful for the wonderful memories we made.

OH, and I must say....we opened so many great gifts that I couldn't mention them all, so, thank you to our friends and family for spoiling us. You all always do too much....

especially the cheese grater from my brother. ha!

(okay...actually he gave us a COMPUTER he built. Can you believe it?? He gave us a COMPUTER! very cool. BUT he wrapped up a fancy shmancy cheese grater for us since the last time he was in our kitchen he saw that our's was woefully inadequate.)