Apologies and Legwarmers

When I was really small, I had a book that I kept at my grandparents' house called "Wilma's Busy day," and my grandmother still laughs about having to read it over and over. It was about Wilma Flintstone, who spent an entire day trying to get a bath, but as soon as she put a foot in the tub, she'd get interrupted by the phone or the doorbell or something. I had a Wilma week this past week- I tried to do a blog post at least a dozen times, but as soon as I'd sit to write it, Baby M. would need me or the phone would ring or I'd realize the time and have to be somewhere in 15 minutes. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!

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Since the cold weather arrived (months ago now), I realized something I had no reason to even think about before, but it drives me crazy... why don't they make tights for little boys? It first occurred to me when Baby M. was christened, and I was looking for something for him to wear under his christening gown. We ended up going with a pair of plain beige Baby Legs to keep his little legs warm. Since then, there have been lots of times when we've gone for walks or it's been particularly cold when I would have loved to put some kind of legging or tights on Baby M. underneath his clothes to keep him warm, but I've yet to find any boyish tights in this city (I did buy him a pair of plain black ones, though). When I lived in the U.K., tights for little boys were an everyday common thing in kids clothing stores, and my nephew has a bunch of pairs from Ireland, so in the end, I found some cute pairs online (both striped; one gray and navy with a panda on the bum; the other green and brown with a lion).

In an effort to avoid spending $20 and up on baby legwarmers for her boys, my sister came up with a super easy and cute way to make them from a pair of long adult socks, which you can find in boyish colours and patterns (my sister, by the way, could have her own crafty blog if she wanted to, but says she'd have to call it "The Half-A**ed Crafter" since she has limited patience... LOL).

Here's how to do it:

Find a pair of knee socks- they're easy to come by at Wal-Mart or the dollar store.

Cut off the foot part at the ankle, just above the heel.

Cut out about a 3.5-inch section in the middle of the foot part.You won't need the other two pieces.

Fold the foot section in half widthwise, so you have a ring like this:

Put the ring on the end of the sock, the two raw edges at the bottom and lined up with the raw edge of the sock. If there's a pattern on both pieces, match them up as best as you can. A lot of patterned socks have a solid colour foot, so you won't need to do this.

Without turning the sock inside out, sew along the raw edge. Then turn the ring part - which is now the cuff - down.

If you like a wider cuff, cut the piece of the sock foot longer than 3.5 inches.

Et voila! Easy-peasy legwarmers that your boy can wear underneath pants to keep his legs nice and snuggly (I had to interrupt a very important phone call to snap this pic, as you can see). :)

For the end of Celebrate the Boy month, I'm going to do two giveaways: one for a pair of baby legwarmers, the other for another Munkeh! Leave me a comment telling me the best part about being the parent (grandparent/aunt/uncle, etc.) of a boy and which prize you'd like to have, and I'll use the random number generator again to pick two winners on Wednesday at 5pm (3:30 pm ET). If you want a chance to win both, feel free to leave two comments. :)

For me, the best part about being the mom of an adorable little boy is being able to watch him grow and learn... it's amazing to see him go from being born without the ability to focus his eyes properly to a baby who amazes me every single day with something new and brilliant he knows how to do. Of course, his little baby cuddles are the most awesome things, too. :)

Tutorial: Baby Boy Birth Announcements

Hand-making cards is something I would love, love, LOVE to be able to do. I've tried, tons of times, but can never get them the way I want them- they always end up looking a little too scrapbook-y, not to mention I'm rubbish at cutting straight lines. When I first saw the cards Meghan, whom I know through a friend, had made, I was in awe- they were Christening invitations, and were gorgeous. I've since seen Christmas cards and birth announcements she's done, and they're unlike anything you could ever find in a card shop. Her style is minimal, classy and beautiful.

I had already asked Meghan if she would do a guest blog post for me for Celebrate the Boy month when I saw her display at the Get Baked! art exhibit a couple of weeks ago. This lady did a series of 99 beautiful cards, all with a cupcake theme: some were sparkly, some had googly eyes, and some were even SCENTED like vanilla cupcakes! Needless to say, they went over a treat (get it? Gah, sorry :P), and during the slower times of the show, the other artists persuaded Meghan to give us a mini card-making class.

For this tutorial, she's chosen to show us how to make a baby boy's birth announcement - no straight cutting required! - and says the same technique could also be used to make birthday party invitations. I've already got her booked to make Baby M.'s birthday party invitations... six months from now.

Meghan has her own blog, http://www.driventoink.com/, and her fantastic hobby is also her day job, since she's store manager of The Paperie, here in St. John's. Without further ado, here's Meghan...(click on each of her photos to see the larger version)

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Hi everyone, I’m super excited to be a guest blogger this week on Mushy Peas! I guess you might like to know a little bit about me… my name is Meghan and I’m addicted to stamps. Luckily I am able to feed this addiction by working at The Paperie, our very own locally owned and operated scrapbooking and rubber stamping store right here in St. John’s! I have been making handmade greeting cards for the last seven years and three years ago I made my first attempt at baby announcements for my friend Ally.

At Ally’s first baby shower I gave her a little IOU for birth announcements but last year I got a bit more creative for her second daughter and created two portfolios with 12 blank announcements in each one. Here’s a masculine version of Ally’s baby announcements that I created especially to “Celebrate the Boy” this month!

This first picture shows the finished set. To create the portfolio to house all the announcements I used the handy-dandy AccuCut die-cutting machine at The Paperie – see the step-by-step picture tutorial on my blog. I decorated the cover of the portfolio using a few layers of cardstock and rubber stamps. The little ark image was a rubber wood-mounted stamp by A Muse Artstamps which I stamped on a scrap of white paper and then punched out using an Oval paper punch. I coloured in the image with Copic markers and adhered to the front of my portfolio with 3-D foam tape.

The phrase “Boy oh boy” was an acrylic stamp which came in an A Muse stamp set with a bunch of coordinating stamps, as seen in the picture above. Unlike rubber wood-mounted stamps, acrylic stamps are mounted on a clear acrylic block so that you can see exactly where you’re stamping – this is handy when you’re trying to get exact placement. All colouring and stamping should be done prior to assembly with double-sided tape.

Here’s what the inside of the portfolio looks like…

I printed the wording on all of the cards before folding them and adding the image to make things go a little quicker…

Here’s what the finished announcements look like, inside and out….

These announcements are so great to have on hand for a friend's shower. They can be decorated in any colour and if the sex of the baby is unknown you could always go with a yellow or green colour scheme and just say “We’re proud to announce the arrival of our new baby!” Search the Internet for inspiration when trying to come up with the wording – the possibilities are endless. And if you’re not feeling particularly crafty, you can always give me a call!

The 10-Minute Baby Bib

Baby M. reached a big milestone this week- eating solid food! So far he's had pureed organic sweet potatoes (tomorrow we're going to try avocado), and he loves it! We had no trouble getting him to eat from the very beginning, and now he even squeals in delight when he sees he's about to be fed. He only had a couple of big bibs (tons of little spit-up bibs), so I made him a few. They're super easy to make- literally took me about 10 minutes to do one while M. was napping. I used some dinosaur-printed flannel I already had from when I was making him fitted diapers before he was born, and I used a piece of the waterproof diaper liner fabric (PUL) for the back. You could also use terrycloth (an old towel, even) or microfibre for the back.

I used one of the bibs Baby M. already had as a template, and cut one shape from the flannel, one from the PUL.

With the right sides of the fabric facing each other, I used the machine to sew the two pieces together, leaving an opening at the bottom of the bib. I then turned it inside-out.

Then I used a fancy-schmancy applique stitch on my sewing machine to just topstich around the edges of the bib (tucking in the edge that I had left open). A regular stitch would work just as well.

And then sewed on the velcro: one piece on the top of one side of the neck; one piece on the bottom of the other side.

If I were making these to sell, I might use a bit of matching trim/bias tape instead of the topstitch, but it's cute both ways.Serves its purpose well in any case. Here's my little sweet-potato face putting it into action:

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The Get Baked! Art For Your Sweet Tooth art show was supposed to start tonight, but was postponed because of the raging blizzard outside. Instead, it's starting next Friday, February 12, at the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre, with the opening reception (featuring a cupcake buffet!) at 7:30pm. It's running for the whole weekend. That means I've got an extra week to put the finishing touches on some pieces; yippee! I ended up doing more than I first thought: the two applique/embroidery pieces, some miniature wall art pieces, and some cupcakes made from recycled sweaters and needle-felting. With some help from my friend Adam of Electric Twilight, who's a fantabulous graphic designer, I also did a photography series that's a visual recipe for vanilla cupcakes... instead of written quantities and directions, you follow photos (i.e., a picture of a cup of milk, etc.) to make the cupcakes. We put it together into a little book, and made 25 copies, which we're selling at the show. The best part about doing that project was that I had to make the cupcakes to photograph!

These were the final products, which were shared with my nephew, Little E. He says "cupcake" like it's two words ("Tara! Look! Cup! Cake!"), and it's so adorable, it was worth making them just to hear it. :)

 I recently learned, while poking around online for inspiration for a good recipe to use, that cupcakes came about because baking large cakes was difficult over a hearth, and usually came out burned, so people in the 19th century started baking them in teacups, which was quicker and easier. When I lived in the U.K., I never heard them called cupcakes... over there, they're "fairy cakes;" maybe because they're small enough for the fairies to eat. Cute!