One Down Two to Go!

I survived Velvet Vs. Satin Challenge 2011 with minor wounds. I seriously do not like sewing with velvet.

The bat wings were on the agenda all along, but the hat was a last minute addition thanks to Dana. Once I saw her costumes I knew I had to make a hat.

 Aside from the whole velvet is the devil thing, I love this hat. As many of you may recognize it is the Cozy Winter Hood from Oliver +S. I made the ears a little more pointy and I added a Widows Peak along the brow line. I made the largest size and it fits Luca fine but the strange thing is that it also fits me. Hmmm.

I'm debating whether I should make one for Vinny just in case on Halloween he has a change of heart and decides that dressing up is tres chic. He's fickle that way.

I used a velvet that I bought at my local craft/fabric shop and a duchess satin for the lining from Fabric.com. The sequin elastic (used on shoulder and wrist straps) was also bought locally.  

Smile!

Yesterday I was reminded about our first trick-or-treating when Luca was just 9 months old and Rocco was 26 months old (ironically the exact same age Vinny is right now).

This is the only photo I can find of that night. Luca is a little pumpkin and Rocco is Batman. Interesting that I am reminded of this night while I struggle to make bat costumes for both Luca and Vinny. Vinny wore his robot costume last year with no problem. This year is different. Well, it's a whole new year and in toddlerhood that's a long time. I'm ok if he decides to just wear his regular clothes.

You see, just a few short months before this photo was taken our world was rocked. The entire story deserves a lengthy post or two, but the short of it is, we went 19 months NOT KNOWING OUR FIRSTBORN WAS BLIND!!! Are you fucking kidding me?

As we excitedly got the kids dressed and ready to join the crowds of children roaming the streets in search of candy we pretended everything was fine. About ten minutes into the evening it hit us both at the same time. I'm not even sure what did it. I remember seeing a few other toddlers racing up to people's front doors. I remember a little girl dressed as a fairy. I clearly remember the smiling faces of adults. We weren't smiling. I'm pretty sure soon after I took this photo Chef was crying. I was crying. We didn't need words... we just went home.

 I will one day write it all down. I guess right now I just want to say that we are far from that black hole now. Actually our universe doesn't have a black hole anymore. Rocco loves dressing up as much as other kids and he adores trick-or-treating. Although he does need help finding the doorbell! Our total acceptance of what he is has made our life complete.

Smile! life is pretty amazing.

Halloween

Vinny doesn't do dress up. No hats, masks, wings, ears, gloves, capes. Nada. Well as it turns out Halloween is in just a few days. We have decided that since he looks up to Luca so much they should both have the same costume. Good thing she's not a princess this year. She actually chose to be a bat and requested a homemade costume (bugger). Rocco is going as a race car driver but since Vinny kind of looks at him as a rival these days I'm not sure he wants to dress like him. 

So all I've gotten finished is bat masks. A bit wonky but Luca is pleased. Hers has the cat eyes and she kindly modeled them around the house trying to get Vinny on board. He tried his on and then promptly removed it. 

Next I get to sew velvet and satin bat wings. Yes you read that correctly and yes, I have a walking foot for my machine. I'm pretty sure Vinny will have nothing to do with the mask or wings on Halloween. I'm actually going to sew his wings in the underarm and side seam of a black shirt so he can't take them off.

{Do you see poor Gerald in the background? He's still unfinished}

I was really freaking out earlier today about his total dislike of all things costume. I mean what kid doesn't love to play dress up? I was frantically texting Chef at work trying to figure out an alternative costume that he will wear. I even took him shopping today to see if something struck his fancy. There was an adorable dragon at Old Navy for 75% off but he screamed when I tried to put it on him. I went to three stores before I figured out the whole sewing bat wings into the side seams thing. On the way home I texted Chef (for the hundreth time) about my revelation. He put it quite simply.... "Remember our first trick-or-treating when Rocco was first diagnosed?" In other words SHUT IT!

Holy crap I sure do remember that night. Come back tomorrow and I'll fill you guys in on that part of the story.

I had no idea

Oh people of the world. If you had only expressed your love for these most adorable underwear a little stronger I may have listened and made them sooner.

I seriously love how cute little two year olds look in scrappy big kid underpants.

I've made four so far and then I got a little bored. Good thing the little dude is nowhere near potty training so I have time to stockpile. Sure, he'll pee on the potty when I put him there (which is never), but forgetaboutpoop.

This One

This past weekend we went to one of those pumpkin patches that is more like an amusement park. It was fun(ish). $85 later and zero pumpkins purchased the kids were tired and hot so we decided to leave and go to a small pumpkin patch near our house the next day to buy them. 

Luca found a nice not too big not too small pumpkin

Rocco needs to feel every damn pumpkin they have (even when there are 100's), but we're totally o.k. with that. 

What to say about this child of mine? I am not kidding when I say that out of an entire field of pumpkins he finds this. There was no changing his mind that this was his choice. 

As I was taking pictures I was mildly embarrassed, but clearly not too embarrassed to post them to Le Internets for the world to see.

You hear those crickets?

KCWC coming to a close and you can hear crickets coming from my sewing machine. Actually I was too lazy to re-thread the serger for these pants (black is currently on it) so I just pinked the edges. Whoo hoo for old style sewing.

It's been a less than productive sewing week. I really wanted to get so much completed, but I lacked a proper plan and ended up cutting about 12 pair of adorable little boy undies (for the little boy that is light years away from potty training and currently out of anything to actually wear). I is smaht.

I have no idea what the fabric is called. I bought it from Etsy a while back. I loved it because it has San Francisco, Chef and I lived there for a few years before we were married... and it has Rome, quite close to the town that we were married.

Since this fabric was purchased to make a Summer pant and we are headed into Winter, I lined it with white Kona cotton. I guess I would have preferred to use a flannel but I didn't have a solid that coordinated and I wasn't about to head to our local fabric craft shop to find some. Did you know that even JoAnn's is about an hour drive for me? Also all the lovely little brick and mortar fabric and sewing machine shops have closed down in my area. We have one quilting store but they carry quilting fabric that just isn't my cup of tea.

{image source}

I'm not sure what this style quilting is called, but there are a lot of examples like this on the walls of that store.

Crossbreeding

In Vinny's world the zebra and lemur 

are 

a perfect match 

as demonstrated by their intense kiss

He carefully explained that if there are such beings as a ...

zorse

zonkey

and a

zony...

surely a zemur could exist

Seriously though, for some reason I found myself Googling hybrid animals. Clearly I have too much time on my hands.

Guest Post

Today I'm showing a few variations of pintucks over at Elsie Marley. Here's a preview of one of my favorite new little ideas. I'm thinking I'll have to try this again during next weeks KCWC.

I'm really excited to see what everyone out there in Blogland makes for the challenge week.  I always find great new ideas that I want to try and this year I'll be able to keep things organized by Pinning them. Yay Pinterest!

Some New Duds

I made these pants a few months ago. I'm not sure if I ever made them public (ie: shown on this here blog). I like them muchly. Kind of based on Dana's pant you can find it here.

Here is an example of "matching plaids". Ever wonder what that means? I. Did. Not. Match. Plaids. It's o.k. The pants are ca-ute anyway.

These photos were literally taken as I chased Vinny around the yard as he yelled "no" in reference to my camera.

Am I sick to absolutely love everything about that photo?