Honor & Strength & a Big Imagination

My little warriors asked to be Spartans this year for Halloween. Only problem is that Spartans pretty much wear nothing more than a pair of leather undies and a red cape. Precisely why my youngest found this so appealing! 

Even if we could get past the idea of basically streaking through the neighborhood for Halloween, which might work in Georgia, we happen to live in Colorado where we could easily have 6" of snow on the ground by All Hallows Eve! Tighties and a cape aren't gonna fly.

All I could think of doing to warm them up, was to buy a muscle suit until I ran across a tutorial for this. Can you say GENIUS?!?!

I'm not gonna lie. I looked at all of the pictures and then sort of made it up as I went. A scrap piece of material, stuffing, layered it inside  50 cent t-shirts from the thrift, drew lines with a ruler and sewed along the lines. Much easier than all that cutting!  I added a little darker color paint to the creases and added a belly button and I was a hero! 

Ok so I wasn't a hero. The 6 year old woke up the next morning with a huge grin on his face scrambling to try it on and the 8 year old said, "I'm so not gonna wear that!" (Are we seriously there already?!?) Oh well. We can layer real clothes under all of this and it will only make them stronger looking!

Cereal boxes, elastic, glue gun applique and some bronze spray paint. I learned this from some over the top, overly creative helmet how to on instructibles. 

"Ain't nobody got time fo dat!"

So I ordered the shield/sword combos which were totally worth the $12 on Amazon and the Spartan helmets which were totally NOT worth the $12 on Amazon and ended up being pretty cheap. 

"Honor and Strength" is the saying on the shield. I think these were so cool with the spot for the sword to fit into the shield. You know like for when you are marching and you need to carry a spear too...

Choir robes from thrift for the capes.

And a cut up leather skirt that my mother sent me (Sorry mom. I looked for Annie Oakly accessories to go with it to no avail but I still got three Spartan costumes out of it!)

Curtain rods from thrift. And I might add, the 8 year old is taking this picture pretty seriously even though he said he'd never wear those muscles...

You might be asking, where is the third Spartan? He is actually going to be a Roman soldier (so they have someone to fight, naturally) and since he already has bulging muscles I didn't make him a muscle shirt and I am totally making him wear the leather briefs version of the bottoms! (That will have you checking back for another post! He he.) And as you might imagine, he's not really all that in to dressing up on random nights more than a week before the big candy binge and sparing in the courtyard in front of a bunch of college students. 

Happy Halloween!

Sewing!

I am not much of a cooker. You all have posted some Yummy sounding recipes lately. I tired to make a new recipe tonight - beef and potato casserole. But half way through I managed to slice the tips of TWO of my fingers off; only leaving me to call Preston to quickly get home, bandage my fingers, and finish the dinner I was graciously trying to make for Him. He knows very well - I am no Martha Stewart. In fact, its better if I just stay out of the kitchen all together. However, give me a room with a sewing machine and I can go to town.

I love sewing. I had sewn a lot before Kale was born, making a nursing wrap, all of Kale's cloth diapers, liners, wash cloths etc... While he was so little I hardly was able to get much done. For some funny reason, I thought I would get a ton of stuff made, and even my scrapbook done when I was on maternity leave. Little did I know, it was going to be all I could do to get some sleep, laundry, and house chores done. however, now that he has gotten a bit older I have managed to find more time to sew, as I have learned to juggle him and everything else.

Recently I have been making a sun dress; I hope to wear down at the Baby beach blast over memorial weekend. It's been my first time ever using a pattern. I'm not quite done with it; but with my grandma, and a few more hours, it should be finished soon. Aside of making the dress I have been ripping out some baby bibs, and wet bags. (This way in my sewing I can feel like I've accomplished something).

I needed a new wet-bag for our cloth diapers - something that was big and could hold two days worth of diapers before I did the laundry. I made this one, and it has been awesome!

Also, Kale has needed some more bibs. I thought we had a lot, actually more then enough. However, I was wrong. Between eating solid foods, and all the daily drooling - I can't keep any of our 20+ bibs clean. So I made some. These turned out great; and they were practically effortless. I did snaps on some and velcro on others. I picked out some printed material for one side, and the other is a plain chenille. (which is so soft!) The best part of these bibs was that I had SO MUCH fun making them. So anyway that's what I have been up too lately.