Pete the Cat

 My favorite books to read with the boys are the Pete the Cat books...

These are simplistic books about a cat strolling through his days...
but then something happens...
like he steps into strawberries while wearing his white shoes and then turn red
Or
he wanders into a room filled with books
Or
one of his buttons pops off.

But
Does Pete worry?
"Goodness No!"

"It's all good!"

"Groovy"


 When reading with the little ones, Jude loves to shout out "Goodness No!" in his sweet little voice.
Pete is such a hippy little cat and I love that he is teaching the littles that "it's all good" and things will work out no matter what happens :-)

Tamlin has also read the Pete books at pre-school and in Kindergarten.  He brought home this awesome artwork:

Such a Cool Cat!

 Here are a few other pieces of artwork (some based on other favorite books) that Tam has brought home.

Harvest winding down?

We are hoping that the gardens are slowing down....

 But the tomatoes keep coming...and coming...and coming...

Let's see what varieties we ended up with...
Roma,  Yellow Pear, Green Zebra, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine Black, Brandywine Pink, Black Cherry, Red Cherry, Orange Beefsteak, JL Blues


We harvested the carrots recently.  This was another one of those: "Here, boys, plant these" thinking that most of the seeds wouldn't germinate.  Wrong.

We have rainbow carrots: orange, white, purple, red, orange.
I think many will end up in stew stock :-)

The beans were let to go to seed for next year's plantings.

Fire and sparklers

 It was a beautiful clear night, so I asked Brian to set up a fire in the pit for us.  We used some of the wood left over from summer camping excursions.

Then Brian taught the boys how to light sticks on fire and create glowing embers...
What?!
Apartently, he thinks the boys are old enough to learn a healthy respect for how cool fire is.
Sigh.

 Nothing but sticks and marshmellows were caught on fire while we sat around in the late evening watching the glow.  PS: the marshmallows were chocolate and excellent for roasting.

 Our neighbors across the street came over to play and chat around the fire.

And we had sparklers = cool.
I love being able to spend time outside with the boys and friends :-)  Since it is September now, I don't know if we'll be able to have another one of these this year :-(

Tie dye fun

When I asked the boys what they want to be for Halloween, I got...
Not ninjas
Not pirates
Not power rangers
Not race cars
Not trains
But

Butterflies....Butterflies?!... Yep, Butterflies.
Why?  My guess is that Jude is somewhat obessed with butterflies and Tamlin went along with whatever he wanted.  Tamlin also really wants a butterfly painted on his face (I hope my paints are still good).

So, how do I make butterfly costumes?  Thank you, internet, for inspiration.
First step...fabric for the wings...I'm going with fun rather than textbook species.
We are having tie-dye wings!

Yeah! Kiddo involvement! (And adult beverages to help).

 I used a kit that I have had for over a decade (nearly 2!).  We dug out the white muslin for the wings, and then a bunch of white shirts to help use up the dye.

The rain barrels came in handy with providing water to wet the material and soak it all in the dye-set.  Then came the waiting before the actual dying.  Our neighbors wanted to know what was up, so the neighbor's little girl, Skye came over to dye one of her shirts too.
 

 After the unbearably long wait of 15minutes, the fabric was ready to be tied up with rubber bands. All kiddos help to wad  up the shirts and fabric. All the while, they kept chatting about how they were going to color the shirts and how cool it will be and what colors they will use.

 
With the fabric all banded, we were ready for the dye.

 

What a hoot! 

All the kids had fun squirting the dye all over their shirts...we had red, blue, yellow, and green...though red seemed to be a favorite.  The shirts went into bags to wait through the night before washing tomorrow evening (rain barrels again).

Then I noticed that not all the dye stayed on the intended fabrics...

 Yep, we dyed a bit of socks and jeans too...

The boys all wore gloves to help protect their hands from dye...

But socks totally failed to protect little feet :-p

 Happy Boys


Who slept well that night...

And tomorrow, the shirts were un-tied, rinsed out, and washed...



Really Happy Hippy Boys

Patches

 Sigh...
I went through Tam's jeans and I swear I pulled out more with hole(s) in the knees than were whole.

I've patched some of these pants earlier in the summer, only to find the other knee blown out now!
Sigh...

Well, I busted out some scraps and gain some inspiration from the internet.

And I had a "Duh!" moment when I read that other moms just OPEN A SEAM instead of wrestling that narrow leg around the needle of the machine.  Doh!  How simple!  This technique opened up a ton of new possibilities for making fun patches...
like smiling mouths and little monsters.  I backed them all with some fleece lined flannel for some added strength.

Tam says that his classmates think they are pretty cool.

Jude's Monster

I made Jude a stuffed monster way back for his first Christmas:

 I had also made Tamlin a monster when he was small...but Jude REALLY took to monster. That was HIS snuggly toy which he slept with each night.  He LOVES his monster...

And then it was lost.
We couldn't find monster anywhere.
We were pretty sure we had him somewhere in the house, but didn't know where. 
But we still had daycare looking for him too...
After a week of nothing, we gave up.
No monster = Sad Jude.
Well, crafty mom offered to make a new monster! Jude was for it because he was able to choose what fabric to use...He chose a train flannel and a black flannel with "firework" pattern on it.
Jude dictated how the face should look and how many ribbons should be on its hands.

Here is "New Monster"

Jude was happy.
We were happy.
And then...
We found old brown monster:

He was hiding behind a dresser.  Jude still loves him too and now wants to sleep with New Monster and Brown Monster each night :-)