Birthday Apron

Tyler asked me to make him an apron for his birthday. Something that was a little more grown up and that fit him better than the old Diego and Cars ones that he has hanging up in the kitchen pantry.

 

So I found a pattern in my stash that included child sizes and away I went. Since it was only going to be a single thickness of fabric compared to the double-sided reversible aprons I normally make, I decided to go with something thicker like twill.

 

I chose a grey twill for the apron and found some matching Angry Bird ribbon to embellish the pockets.

I've never used twill before and it quickly turned into a nightmare. It's not super thick like denim, but still...my sewing machine could not sew through multiple layers of it (hems and such). I had to go to the store twice to get new needles and struggled so hard just to finish what would normally be such a simple project. More than once I wanted to throw the whole thing in the garbage, but giving up just wasn't an option.

I finished it up over the weekend...and may I NEVER sew with twill again! It came out nice though, don't you think? Well as long as you don't look too closely at the seams. It wasn't a surprise gift or anything so Tyler was able to have it as soon as I finished.

And yesterday he put it to use making a half batch of Surprise Muffins.

The surprise being the giant piece of strawberry hidden in the middle of the muffin.

They came out looking nice, but a little bland for my taste. We should try the hidden strawberry trick on a more flavorful banana muffin. These were just plain flour, butter, milk and egg....kind of tasted like a pancake.

St. Patrick's Day

Since St. Patrick's Day fell on the weekend this year, we were able to spend the day together and enjoy dinner as a family. I still went grocery shopping though, as I usually do on Sunday mornings and picked up the last few items for dinner: red new potatoes, asparagus and shortbread cookies with shamrock sprinkles for dessert. 

 

And of course I had the crew dress in green so nobody could pinch us...although you could still probably pinch Rick since his shade of green hardly qualifies.

This year I got a 4 lb corned beef from Costco and it came out great, but probably about the same quality as the more expensive flat cut briskets I've bought from Safeway and Albertson's in the past.

I got the meat in the oven kind of late, so we didn't sit down to eat until closer to 7:00, but it was well worth the wait. Yum!

In Pursuit of Victory #2

Last year Tyler won the Easter coloring contest for his age group at the grocery store up the street. Remember how his prize was a gallon tub of ice cream and a 2-liter bottle of soda? It was the craziest prize I'd ever heard of, but for Tyler...a dream come true.

 

So here we are a year later and it's time to enter the contest again. Last time Tyler colored his picture casually, without much thought, but now that he has a title to defend, he's in it to win it.

 

His plan is to turn in the most colorful picture the judges have ever seen and by the looks of it, he's well on his way to accomplishing that goal. He's going to work on the finishing touches, turn it in by the end of next week and then wait to see if his hard work pays off.

The Guppy

For the last several months or so, Tyler's class had been working on an organisms unit in school and when they finished it up, all the critters went up for adoption. We had the choice of adopting a millipede, snail, guppy or a pill bug (roly-poly). I reluctantly gave permission to adopt a millipede, but then got a call from the teacher saying that Tyler had changed his mind and wanted a guppy instead.

 

Well I couldn't say a guppy was any worse than a millipede, so I gave the okay.

 

Then I went and picked up the two from school, just because I wasn't sure how a fish would go over on the bus.

Back at the house, I put the guppy in a large vase, temporarily, while we figured out a better solution. I put it right next to the beta in the kitchen and I'm pretty sure they enjoyed each other's company.

We've since put together the extra 2.5 gallon tank we had in the garage and moved the guppy into the office. Everything seems to be working out well and the cats certainly don't mind the new roommate.

Edible Melty Beads

Tyler has checked out every single Origami book from the school library and now he's moved on to cookbooks. Last week he brought home a book called Eye Candy and it's all about making cool things with candy like gumdrop monsters, fruit roll roses, lollipop disco balls and more. He immediately decided to make the licorice twist butterflies, but had to wait until I could find a package of rainbow Twizzlers.

 

I found the licorice at Safeway and did the prep work today while he was at school, cutting up the strips into 1/4 inch pieces.

 

Then using the pictures in the book as a guide, he made a butterfly and a dragonfly.

And just like with melty beads, I had to get the iron out and melt the pieces together so they would hold their shape. Not bad, huh?

White Pass

Over the weekend we went to the White Pass Ski Resort for their annual winter carnival. It's a two day event with a giant snow castle, snow tubing, carnival games, live music and fireworks. In the past we've always gone on Saturday, but it's usually super busy so we decided to try Sunday this time. I guess it was a little less crowded, but not by much.

 

We got there right around noon and ate our sack lunches in the car before heading over to the castle for some tubing.

The problem with our plan, however, was that Kyle hadn't had his morning nap. Ideally he would have slept in the car on the drive over, which was an hour long, but he didn't, so he was super grumpy. He didn't want to have anything to do with the snow, the cold, the tubing....none of it.

Poor Kyle Bear. I think he would have been much happier inside the lodge, next to a warm fire, reading some books.  I ended up going back to car with him so he could nap while Rick and Tyler did some more sledding with our own sleds from home.

 

 

Mini Cathelete

I workout 5 days a week. On Monday I always run 3 miles on the treadmill and Tuesday thru Friday I rotate through my different Cathe workouts. Kyle has been right by my side ever since he was a newborn baby. At first he would just watch, but more and more he is getting my equipment and trying to copy the things he sees.

He constantly grabs my slide and glide disks and tries to use them.

Warrior lunges coming right up.

Followed by some bicep curls.

And don't forget the mountain climbers on the disks.

Look familiar....

Tyler did the exact same thing when he was a little squirt, only back then I used FIRM videos.