Christmas Present

I bought my Christmas present to myself early this year. My old camera has been broken for a few months. It works but is a PITB to change the batteries or access the memory stick. It's also 6 years old. Today, I bought the same kind of camera (Sony Cybershot) for a third of the cost and it has almost 3 times the megapixels, plus image stabilization and some other stuff. I'm really excited. The old one takes so long to take pictures that often I miss the moment - the kids turned away or blinked by the time it takes the picture. The pictures are also often blurry. I'm hoping this one is a lot clearer, I already know it's faster. Unfortunately, it didn't come with a memory stick and it takes a different format than the old camera so I have to go back to the store to buy a stick. I don't really mind though - I'm happy to have a stick for the old camera as I plan to let Five have it. I bought him a kids' camera a few months back and it was complete junk. He's careful enough with it that I'm okay with him using it with supervision.

There's one more feature I love about this camera. It's HOT PINK! How cool is that? It actually matches the case perfectly so think of a pink somewhere between the two pinks you see below and that's what it looks like. I had a black case for my old camera and it made it disappear into the bottomless pit that is my purse. I'm hoping that a hot pink case will be easier to find.

What does this have to do with crafts? I'm not sure... but I take pictures of my crafts with it so I guess it counts. Maybe. I had crocheted a little baby bootie and attached it to the wrist strap for my old camera because I bought it when I was pregnant with Five. My brother and sister-in-law had the same camera so I had to attach something to tell them apart. So maybe I'll craft some little thing to hang off of the wrist strap for this camera too because I think, although I may be mistaken, that my sister-in-law got this same camera to replace theirs a few months ago. (I think hers is light pink though, not hot pink).

I'm not waiting for Christmas to use it because I want to get good with it in the meantime so that I can get some good pictures and video at Christmastime. I'll probably wrap the box and put it under the tree :)

I just gave Five the old camera and he's having fun with it already, taking pictures of his transformers. This totally makes my day :D

One's Halloween costume

I decided to make One's Halloween costume this year. I probably would have made Five's, but he asked me to make him an Optimus Prime costume with cardboard boxes so that he could really transform. Um, sorry dear. No can do. He got a Walmart Optimus Prime costume instead. Since One has no preference, and no say, in what he wears (hehe) I can still get away with picking out his costume. I looked through some patterns and this pumpkin costume caught my eye.

The pattern is Simplicity 2788, view D. It comes in sizes 1/2, 1, 2, 3, and 4. I made the hat in size large (It comes in small, med, and large) because he has a big head for his age, and the rest is size 2. I also used the booties from view A, done in the same fabric as the jumpsuit from view D.

I've used Simplicity patterns in the past and this one met my expectations. The directions are easy to follow and the finished costume looked quite a lot like the one pictured on the pattern envelope.

I could not find the suggested fabrics so I used fleece for the orange part and sweatpants material for the green part. The black applique is cotton flannel. The closure in the back of the jumper is a long Velcro strip. The pumpkin part also closes with Velcro at the shoulders. I did get some pumpkin buttons but forgot to sew them on. I plan to sew them on the top of the Velcro so it looks like a button closure but will actually be Velcro.

I had the misconception that sewing my kids' costumes would save me money. Hah! Between the pattern, fabrics, and notions, (Not even counting the hours and hours it took to put it together) I spent about $60 on this. Ouch! I paid $25 for Five's costume for comparison. The payoff is that this is much better made, will last for many years, and I have the satisfaction of having sewed my child's costume. I don't know what it is about that, I feel like I've passed some sort of milestone as a mother. I'm not sure I will ever do it again, but I'm glad to have sewn at least one costume for my kids.

Some major things that I learned while making this are:

1. I suck at fusing paper-backed fusible interfacing. Seriously. You get one shot at it and I failed spectacularly. It just wouldn't stick, no matter what I did. I ended up tearing the interfacing off and using a zig-sag stitch to applique the face on.
2. You CANNOT fuse onto fleece!!! It will MELT! (all over your brand new iron). Fortunately the inside and outside pieces are almost identical so I made the ruined, melted piece the inside piece. I freaked and grabbed some scrap fabric and ironed that, which got most of the still-molten fleece off of the iron and onto the fabric. After it cooled, Hubby showed me that the rest of it easily scraped off. Phew.
3. I suck at sewn-on applique. By this point I'd already failed at fusing the interfacing and ruined half of the fleece so I just did it the best that I could, wobbly lines and all.

All in all, I'm glad I did it. It will fit him for many years (Five wanted to try it on so I let him and it fit quite well!)

They can use it for dress up if they wish, and it was a great learning experience. And I have the satisfaction of being able to say that I once sewed a Halloween costume lol. Plus the jumper part can be used all winter. I think it looks very Christmas-y with red socks and maybe a red bib.

I did modify it to add snap tape to the inseam for easier diaper changes. I probably should have made it in size 3 so it will fit him longer.

Anna Q