Epic Cardboard Adventures

For years, my great grandma subscribed to Pack O Fun magazine. I remember sitting and flipping through the pages for hours, wishing I could make my own safari jeep out of cardboard boxes.

In Epic Cardboard Adventures, Leslie Manlapig has come up with something even better. I don't think those old craft magazines ever had a time machine or a pyramid to sit inside of, complete with mummy and sarcophagus.

There are things to wear and things to play with and inside of. The book is targeted for the kids themselves and projects range from extremely simple to what looks like it would be challenging...but adaptable to whatever materials you've got around the house. If you've got some creative kids in your life, I highly recommend this one!

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own.

Clothing the Boys

I just made a discovery that changed my life for the better.

If you've read my blog before, you know that I have active young boys who love to play outside and who are very hard on my quilts. I'm sure you can imagine what they do to their clothes.

For years, I've been hearing stories of these moms who buy quality clothes on ebay or at the consignment shops and then resell them for the same amount once they're outgrown. I can't keep my own clothes that nice for six months or a year, let alone my children's clothes! (I'm also absolutely terrible at packing away outgrown clothes and then pulling back out at the right time.)  Clothes are the last thing I want to lose sleep over and pretty close to the last thing my sons care about.

We pick up stuff at the thrift shops when we can, but there isn't a lot out there in their age range. My theory is that I'm not the only one whose boys destroy their clothes before outgrowing them. My daughter, on the other hand, found all of the cute clothes all the time, for dirt cheap. She still does.

The other problem is that, new or used,  everything has a character on it. Thank God for Minecraft and Five Nights at Freddy's and zombies because my boys who don't care about clothes do have very strong opinions about Batman or Minions or whatever else is exciting everyone but them right now.

Now on to my fabulous discovery...

Did you know that the Dollar Tree sells t-shirts? 

They sell t-shirts that will fit my younger sons. For a dollar. Last month I went through and picked up half a dozen...and then tucked them away for those days when we're going out and need something that isn't ripped or stained or stretched out of shape. I'm using the Dollar Tree shirts as their "good" shirts. This means they can wear the shirts they like every day and when we go out to an event we don't have to worry about offending someone with zombie or video game themed shirts. Or getting a favorite shirt stolen from the locker room at Swim N Gym, which happened a couple of months ago. Shoes and pants and underwear and glasses are easier (even if they're more expensive) to replace than that favorite shirt from our last vacation.

As long as the shirts fit and are a decent color, the boys are happy. I've got the idea that we could try freezer or bleach stenciling on them, but that hasn't happened yet. And they might as well wear them until I get around to it.

Putting New Skills to Practical Use

Last Christmas, we bought Teenage Son an accessory kit to use with his GoPro. (Ours came from Costco, but I found the same thing on Amazon.)  

The set comes with a drawstring nylon bag. I wanted him to have something more durable and easier to get the parts in and out of. An ill-fitting pair of jeans, one of those heavy-duty zippers I thought I'd never use, and fifteen minutes later... 

WHY did I resist zippers for so long? The other options can be fun, but it sure makes life easier if you can sew one when the occasion calls for it.

Makes me wonder what skill I'll be excited about a few years down the road. Buttonholes?

Messy Fun With the Boys

The plan was to make Galaxy Playdough, but after I tracked down the glitter and the black food coloring and read the instructions again, I realized that I do not have the patience to go back to the store for cream of tartar or to cook playdough on the stove....so we used our usual glue/water/borax mix and added the food coloring and glitter to that.

I do the measuring, the boys do the mixing, and I don't get bluish green hands. And once the slime is mixed it's an outdoor experience to keep it far away from quilts and carpet and couches. We're all happier with that system!

I'm linking up with WFMW at Giving Up on Perfect.

Another Skein of Green

I found that last skein of green yarn that I was looking for. It seems jarring, but when I look at actual pictures of creepers the shades of green range from very light to very dark. Guess I should ask my resident gamers what they think.

My thought is that I need another shade of light green to add to the mix.

Creepy Crawly Things in Our Back Yard

When I was a little kid, I'd look in the yard for pill bugs. There were usually some under the big wooden spool on the porch. Now I'm a homeschooling mom and know that the actual name for pill bugs is woodlouse and that they're crustaceans....and I've got sons who can't be bothered with little bugs because they've got bigger things to hunt.

(Yes, this guy was in my yard. And about four feet long.) 

The boys are also smarter about it than I was and have put out a piece of metal flashing so they can predict exactly where the snakes will be.

A couple of  times a day, the youngest one will go out and check and there's usually someone under there. So far, most of the snakes are quicker than he is.

I'm not a fan of reptiles myself, but I do appreciate that they eat the mice and  moles and other critters I love even less. So they're welcome in my yard. And the kids know that, while the snakes at our house aren't poisonous, they ones in Arizona and Utah probably are.

We're All Set to Make a Mess

Years ago, the library had a selection of books with instructions for making different doughs and clays and goods and slimes. I kept checking them out over and over, always meaning to buy our own copies.

Now there's Pinterest and I don't need the library or a book. A quick scroll through my Pinterest or Facebook feed will show me the possibilities of exploding ivory soap in the microwave and then using the soap to make ghost mud or mixing white glue and borax to make silly putty or the million and one other things that I've pinned to try when my boys are bored.




I've got a whole board of things pinned. These days, my problem is pulling together the supplies. So many of these projects claim that you can do them with what you've already got in the kitchen, but if I use up all of my dish soap or corn starch making fun projects, I'm going to paint myself into a corner and not have what I need for actually making dinner or washing the dishes. It's a twenty mile drive to Walmart, so I try not to do that.

I bought corn starch and baking soda from the bulk bins at Winco, which left me with leaking platic bags of I'm-not-sure-what-this-is.  Not the best plan. A couple of weeks ago, I finally pulled out some big mason jars and filled them with baking soda and borax and corn starch and put actual labels on them.  Now it's all here when we need it and I don't have to worry about pilfering the kitchen or identifying mystery bags. I also had a big bottle of cheap dish washing detergent, but I used that up when we ran out of the stuff that's actually suitable for washing dishes.

Flexagons and Puzzle Balls

The boys and I made Flextangles. They're kind of a little bit like those cootie catchers we all made in grade school, but a lot more impressive. After I found them on Pinterest I made one as a trial run, then Leif made one. When Quinn made his, he decided to use the four sets of diamonds to illustrate a story. Have I mentioned that I'm amazed by my sons?

These little things are absolutely fascinating. It's a folded paper tube that thinks its a kaleidoscope! Which, of course, makes me wonder if I could translate it into fabric. I can imagine how the diamonds would fit together, but I'm not sure if interfacing would make it too stiff or not stiff enough...or what if I used fusible web and left the paper inside?

I clicked over to Pinterest and did a search for puzzle balls to see if someone else had already figured it out. I found tutorials for the traditional Amish puzzle ball...and then I found this...



The book is Amamani Puzzle Balls by Dedri Uys and I don't have a copy of my own yet, but I've got it in my shopping cart to add to my next Amazon order. I still don't know how to crochet, but this is the sort of thing that's going to motivate me to learn.

There is AN OCTOPUS! (And the pattern is free on Ravelry.)  And there's AN OCTOPUS MADE FROM FABRIC!!!  I might be getting a bit giddy at this point, but these are so cute I can barely stand it.

I'm linking up to WFMW. 

I Knit A Shrunken Head

I love the things that short rows can do!

The facial features of this little bag are formed with short rows and a couple of strategically placed cables. I couldn't for the life of me figure out the embossed stitches that form the lips, so I improvised and placed a couple of stitches to hold them into position.  That works, although I wish I could've figured it out the way the pattern was written. I'm still debating whether to tie the lips with twine. 

Tsanta is a free pattern I found on Ravelry. The yarn is Red Heart Super Saver left over from other things. 

Youngest Son has claimed the bag and is keeping cheat codes for his Nintendo games in it.  It's fun and morbid, in a whole Ripley's Believe it or Not sort of way.  I'm trying to tell myself that all of those shrunken heads we saw at Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and Marsh's Museum last summer were probably fake anyway. And wondering if I could knit a Fiji mermaid. 

Creeper Ornament

I've been wanting to make a Minecraft something for my boys and, with Christmas quickly approaching, and ornament seemed like a good idea. It's larger than I like my ornaments to be, but it's as small as I could go and still piece the little squares. They finish at a half inch. 

If you decide to try this, be warned that the pieces are tiny and there are a lot of them. But, unlike the Dutchman's Puzzle ornament, there aren't half square triangles. That makes it sound almost easy!) I tend to singe my fingertips when working with bits this small, which explains why my corners don't match. I sacrificed accuracy to save my fingers. 

Start by cutting 1" squares from solid black and at least two different greens. You'll need twenty black squares and forty-four green squares. I'm sure I'll be doing more stuff with pixels, so I just cut a bunch.

Piece your squares into sixteen itty-bitty four patch units as shown. The black squares are important.  My resident game programmer tells me that the placement of the greens doesn't matter. A creeper is supposed to look mottled like a bush.

Press your four-patch units and lay them out into a creeper face. It looks huge at this point, but half of that fabric is going to disappear into the seam allowances. This thing has a lot of seams.

Once my face was together, I pressed it flat and layered it with a square of batting and a square of solid green fabric. I squared it up with my rotary cutter and zigzagged around the edges. I didn't want to add the bulk of binding.

This post is linked to Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Link a Finish Friday, Tatertots and Jello,

DIY Blank Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw puzzles continue to be a huge thing around our house and now my little guy wants to design his own. We bought a blank jigsaw puzzle from the educational supply store -- and that was fine -- but they only come in three styles: huge pieces, medium size pieces, and reasonably small pieces. If we did that more than once, every puzzle would have the same shaped pieces.

What fun is that?

So it was back to the Dollar Tree for a couple of inexpensive puzzles and on to Walmart for some white spray paint because I couldn't remember if I had any light grey left over from the Coke bottle jet packs. If you've got outgrown puzzles and a can of paint at home, it's a free project. And who can argue with those?

This is the kind of project that's so easy it almost doesn't need instructions. Put the puzzle together on a piece of cardboard. Take it outside and spray with light coats until you can't see the original design.
For our first try, I separated the pieces first because I was afraid they'd stick together. Don't do that. Because even if you lay them out in careful rows someone will get over-enthusiastic and mix them up and even a 24 piece puzzle is enough to tax Mommy's brain when every piece is solid white. The paint won't glue the pieces together.

If your little artist makes a mistake or changes his vision midstream, just take the cardboard back outside and repaint it. Our puzzle now has six or seven layers of white paint because he started with pens, smeared the design (one of the perils of being left-handed), and repeatedly changed plans.  That may just be my favorite part of this whole thing. The puzzle may never get finished and probably won't get reassembled, but it happily filled his afternoon.

And did I mention that the Monster High puzzles at the Dollar Tree, even if they're too girly for my son's taste, are shaped like coffins?

More Puzzles

Remember that jigsaw puzzle that I bought a couple of weeks back, against my better judgement? Based on previous experience with my older kids and other puzzles, I just knew that it was going to be a disaster. 

I was dead wrong. 

This is our second puzzle, which I picked up at the Friends of the Library Bookstore for fifty cents. The two youngest, with a little help from me, put it together over the course of two afternoons. It's missing thirteen pieces -- and had two extra pieces from an entirely different puzzle  -- but the boys are okay with that. We're blaming the previous owner. 

Puzzle number three was  hard. The pieces were too small and didn't stay very well together once they were matched up, and older siblings messed up our careful sorting once or twice before we decided to give up on that one. Lesson learned -- 500 piece puzzles from the Dollar Tree aren't a good purchase. 

We're doing much better on our current puzzle:

The plan is to coat the puzzles with glue after we finish them. I never in a million years would have guessed the jigsaw puzzles would make my eight-year-old son so happy! Or that he'd be a fan of Charles Wysocki and Thomas Kinkade. 

Safer Than Golf Balls

Inspired by Youtube, my son has decided to learn to juggle. Because I'm not going to live with flying golf balls in the house, I offered to sew him some bean bags. And because the yardage that was closest to my sewing machine (and that wasn't intended for something else) was yellow, I decided to add some applique and tie them in with the whole Super Mario obsession.

For more finishes, check out  Sew Much Ado, Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?,  , and Freedom Fridays, Wonderful at Home, and Inspired Friday.

A Handy Appliance That Will Scramble an Egg While it's Still Inside its Shell...

Otherwise known as a trouser sock from the Dollar Tree.

I've got boys who love Weird Al songs -- particularly Nature Trail to Hell and anything else that will publicly embarrass their mother. And Mr. Popeil. So when I was browsing through a book from the library and found instructions for scrambling eggs in the shell, I was pretty sure we'd have to try it. The instructions we sort of used are from Instructables.

Basically, you put an egg in a stocking leg and spin it until the contents are all mixed up. It's not quite as dangerous as it sounds -- after a good half hour of spinning, my two youngest boys only managed to break one egg when the spinning sock got too close to the spinner's shoulder. The socks are so tightly woven that there was almost no leaking. After that, the project moved out onto the lawn.

Once the eggs are thoroughly scrambled, you boil them.

Our results were uneven. My egg (on the right) didn't scramble at all, possibly because I didn't get much of a turn before the boys were ready to try for themselves. Quinn's second egg (on the left) was strangely frothy. Leif's egg (on the bottom) was absolutely perfect, but hard to peel. Which might be due to my utter lack of  egg peeling skills.

Because I skimmed through the instructions in the book instead of going to the website and reading the full version, I missed the step where you  use a flashlight to check if the eggs are actually scrambled or not. My boys spun until they got bored and hoped for the best. If Quinn hadn't broken his first egg, I think it would've turned out golden, too.

The whole thing led to happy boys and a discussion of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, which my boys didn't know, and the goose from Jack and the Beanstalk, and centrifugal force and how after Mom rinses egg goop out of the sock for a second try, water droplets will fly out and spatter the boy who's spinning it.   It also turns out that the Ronco Egg Scrambler is a real thing, which kind of boggles my mind.

Repairing a Snake in a Can

I don't get the appeals of snakes in a can, but my boys do. And, much to their delight, the Dollar Tree has them for sale. Not to my delight, this version not only crinkles, it squeaks. (You might remember how I feel about squeaking snakes, although the last one I had to deal with was alive.)

I had nothing to do with the destruction of the squeaking snake spring, even though I was happy to see it go. I did get out some green fabric and, using the broken one as a pattern, sewed a new sleeve for it. This one doesn't crinkle or squeak. 

I like this one much better. I'd be tempted to sew new sleeves for all of the snake springs in the house if I didn't know the boys liked crinkling them in and out of the cans so much. 

Melted Ice Cream Bread

When I first saw something on a homemaking blog about melted ice cream bread, I was confused. Why on God's green earth would you spend money on perfectly good ice cream if your only intention was to melt it to make weird bread? Aren't there enough wonderful quick bread recipes out there?

Then my boys were watching the show None of the Above, where the host sets up an experiment and you're supposed to choose the result from a list of possibilities. Then they explain the science behind what happened. My boys have watched so many episodes of Mythbusters that they can usually guess the answer, but I'm the only one who knew what would happen if you mixed flour and melted ice cream and put it in the microwave.

It works the way it does because ice cream contains everything that's in bread except for the flour. At least that's how my nine-year-old explained it to me. So we headed for the grocery store to buy the cheapest brand of ice cream I could find and some self rising flour, then checked the Internet for recipes.

We wound up using 3 cups of melted strawberry ice cream and 1 1/2 cups of flour and baking it at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. The instructions I was following said 30 minutes, but I left it in until a sharp knife came out clean. Ice cream bread should follow the same rules as banana bread, right?

It worked. Sort of. I really wouldn't recommend it as more than a fun science project for the kids because it didn't taste all that good and there are so many really good quick bread recipes out there to try. According to the articles I read online, you should use the best quality ice cream that you can find, with the fewest artificial ingredients. I think I'll just bake my next loaf of quick bread from scratch!

I'm linking up to Mom's Library, WFMW,

treasure chest snap bag tutorial

Quinn asked me to sew a bag to put his little stuff in and I wanted to make something a little more involved than two squares and a draw string... and I had a new Sizzix die that I bought at an estate sale a couple of weeks ago...

It was a bag to hold his little treasures, so why not make it a treasure chest? And I didn't want to fiddle with a zipper, so why not make it a snap bag?



Supplies --

12 2x9" strips of brown fabric
1 scrap yellow fabric for lock
1 scrap dark solid brown or black fabric for keyhole
20x10" fabric for lining
20x10" piece of batting
fusible web
2 7 1/2" long pieces of metal measuring tape


To make the lock, I used the Sizzix Styled Labels die. This is the first time I've used a magnetic die. The shape inside the blades is open, and there are smaller magnetic dies that you can position in that space.

(That's where I made my mistake -- even though it very clearly says on the front of the packaging that the keyholes are included, I missed it. Instead of making Quinn wait until I got a second die, I cut the keyholes by hand.)



The Sizzix works a little differently than the AccuQuilt cutters. There are two cutting mats. One goes on the bottom, then the die, then the fabric, then the second mat.



I backed my yellow fabric with fusible web and ran it through the machine. Then I backed a small piece of solid fabric with fusible web and cut the keyhole. Fuse the keyhole to the yellow piece. If you don't have the die, a rectangle of yellow fabric would work, or you can find clip art of a similar shape and cut it by hand.



Sew the twelve 2x9" strips of fabric together along the long edges to form a panel. The first strip on either end will be folded under to create the casing, so don't use your favorite fabric in that position. The lock will go on the fourth strip from one end, so make sure the strips there are dark enough to make it stand out.

Once your panel is pieced (this would be a great way to use up some brown strings, or you could use a solid piece of fabric), layer it with the batting and lining and quilt as desired. I used a quilting pattern that I hoped would resemble wood grain.

Trim sides and ends. I zig-zagged around the edges to make the inner seams a little more finished looking and keep the little Lego guys' hands from getting caught on fraying fabric.



Cut two pieces of metal measuring tape, each one 7 1/2" long, an inch shorter than the width of the fabric panel. Because this bag is for a little boy, I decided to completely encase the metal pieces in scrap batting instead of just taping the sharp ends. You'll want the rounded out side of the measuring tape facing the inside of the bag -- I marked my batting on the right side so I didn't get confused when I put the tape into the bag.





Fold the strip at the end of each panel down towards the lining of the bag and sew along the edge to create the casing for your measuring tape pieces. Slide one piece of measuring tape into each casing.



Fold the bag in half, right sides together and sew along each side from the bottom fold up along the open edge of the casing. Be careful not to sew through that metal measuring tape -- my machine didn't like it very much! Turn right side out.



If you want to make your own bag, come back Saturday for the Quilter's Blog Hop. I'll be giving one of my readers the die cut fabric shape for the lock (you get to cut your own keyhole) and a set of brown strips identical to the ones I used in Quinn's bag, along with the batting and lining they'll need to make their own.

This post is linked to Create and Share at Trendy Treehouse, The Mommy Club at Crystal and Co., Too Cute Tuesday at Funky Polka Dot Giraffe, Handmade Tuesday at Ladybug Blessings, Tuesday Tutorials at the Kutz Corner, and Elm Street Quilts.