Playing Snape and Olivander

One of the tasks I have this August is to prepare for Henry's big Birthday party. I don't throw big birthday parties with lots of friends and such for my kids usually. So far each of my kids has had very small parties with family and sometimes with friends. Sophie had a big friend party for her sixth birthday with tons of kids, a theme, party games,  presents and everything. Ian too had his big Indiana Jones party when he turned 6 as well. Henry turns 6 this year and is planning quite a celebration. He has chosen to have a Harry Potter theme and has quite a large imagination as far as what we are going to do during this party. I have been racking my brain and searching the internet for things we can do for this party.

 So far we have tried out some potion making things so we can have a little potions class. I bought one of these Magic Science kits and gave the projects a try. The boys had a great time doing each of the experiments. Luckily there was included enough of most of the ingredients so I can do the projects again. So we will certainly have a good time throwing things together to watch them react.

 I searched for wands online and couldn't find any inexpensive enough for me to be able to get one for each of our guests. I did, however, find a tutorial for making wands out of paper.  I decided to give it a try. At first I started to make only 4 of them but after rolling up the first few I decided I might as well just make 15. That should be enough for all the guests at the party plus a few.

 First you just roll up the paper. This is just normal 8.5'' x 11'' paper rolled so that one end is slightly smaller than the other. I used lots of Elmer's glue to make sure the paper was well coated and the edges stuck down well. I let these dry for a few hours but ended up putting the whole tray in the warm oven for a about 20 min. They came out nice and dry and pretty stiff.

 I then took my little glue gun and filled in the two ends of each of the rolls and then embellished them with rings, twists or just globs of glue to add some texture and a bit more strength to the wands.

 One nice sunny and breezy afternoon I took the wands outside and spray painted them a nice brown color. I left them outside for a few hours to let the paint smell dissipate.  Now I know why Michael's keep their spray paint under lock and key. That stuff stinks! I am glad I did all these at the same time. I don't want to have to spray paint again any time soon.

At this point the wands were all the same color and looked sort of like chocolate.  But I broke out my box of acrylic paints and went to work distressing them with a variety of colors. My kids kept wanting me to paint them bright colors. They hadn't caught the vision of these actually looking like wood.
 

I did add some purple, red and greens into the mix along with the browns and blacks. The brown ones turned out better in my mind but the kids liked them all.  Each wand turned out very different from the others in shape decoration and color. 

 I don't know if I am quite done yet with these wands. There are some that turned out really well and others I am still not happy with so I may go back and touch them up a little more or add some gold paint to give them a little pizzazz.  But hey I think they look really great. It is amazing what you can make with paper and glue.

 Sophie really wanted a vine covered wand like Hermione's wand and this is what my version turned out like. It is a little more green colored but Sophie was happy with it.

 This little guy is happy with the results. I sure hope all the kids will enjoy their wands at the party. But since the only thing I didn't already have  on hand and that  had to spend money on was the bottle of spray paint (which I bought with a 50% off coupon) I am thrilled with the results.

I have a frog mold so I can make chocolate frogs. I think I will have to give them a trail run soon so I can make sure I know what I am doing.  That will be a yummy experiment. Has anyone ever made a caramel filling for this type of thing. I can't do peanut butter because some of the kids that will be invited have nut allergies? I am sure I can find something online.

Seriously what did people do before the internet and blogs where people shared their tips and tricks?

A Small Project

 Molly got a very cute baby doll stroller for Christmas. She LOVES it. It travels around our house everyday. It carts around dolls and stuffed animals and sometimes blocks and trains. But it is an always present part of our lives.

About a week after Christmas the little plastic fabric seat started to rip on the edges. I knew trying to mend with needle and thread wouldn't work. The plastic would fray even more.  I even tried adding some iron on patches to add some strength to those edges. But they don't seem to work either.

It was time to make a new one. I took the old frayed one and drew up a pattern. I then looked in my sewing stuff to see if I had something that would work. I settled on some old scraps from a pair of gray sweats that I had cut off to make capris. The cut off part was just the right size to use. I had some navy blue binding tape so used that to edge it and for the straps. I wish I had had elastic in blue or even black but I only had white.

I think it turned out alright. There are flaws but I have never been a great seamstress. I am just happy to make things that are functional. This is surely functional so I think I succeeded.

It isn't very frilly or particularly feminine but I don't think Molly seems to mind.

Lets hope Henry doesn't decide to take a ride in this one like he did in the last. I think that may have something to do with why the old one didn't last very long. I think I better keep my paper pattern. I have a feeling it may come in handy again.

Instead of blogging...

I haven't had much to say this week. I have been busy..... along with all the normal school and Mom related things required of me, I have been busy making blankets. A few weeks ago my Dad and Brother came to stay with us one night so that they could get to the airport early the next morning. We were scrambling to find blankets for our guests. We have piled them onto our own beds and didn't have many left for any visitors that may come by. A state I felt we needed to remedy. So I hit a good sale on yarn and started a large crocheted afghan.Ian picked the color and he choose a very nice raspberry red color. It looks very nice with the pattern I decided to do. I have made a number of baby blankets in this stitch but never a full sized, big blanket. But it looks very nice. I am on my last ball of yarn and should be done soon. I have been keeping my hands busy while the kids watch a movie or listen to audio books each afternoon and then again and night when I need something to keep me awake while trying to finish a movie with my husband. Usually I fall asleep 15 minutes into any movie we start unless I have my crochet hook going.

I cleaned out my closet a few weeks ago. I took out all the clothes that I wear regularly but were already starting to feel tight and put them in a box to make room for my maternity clothes which I will be needing shortly. In the process I also made a stack of all the pants, shirts and skirts that I haven't worn in over a year. They are the ones that are either out of style, don't fit or that have some flaw like a zipper that doesn't stay up. I hated to see all those jeans and pants go to goodwill so I came up with a different plan. Since we have a need for more blankets I thought I would use those pants to make a quilt top. I finally got around to cutting them up into squares last week and then this week I have been busy sewing them together.

Since some of the squares still have the pockets on them, it was decided that this quilt would be Ian's. He loves pockets and complains when I lay out a pair of pants for him that don't have pockets. When this happens he feels the need to wear a little pouch from the dress up box to hold his treasures in. So the pocket quilt was for Ian. I took the kids to the fabric store to pick out a fabric for the back. We went to the flannels that were on sale and Ian picked one with neon pink, yellow and orange dolphins on it. It is his quilt and you can't beat 50% off so we bought it and it became the underside of his quilt. I have spent the last few days quilting this blanket. I finally finished the edges today. It is all machine quilted so didn't take too long. Although, I now know why they have denim needles for the sewing machine. I broke about 4 needles while trying to quilt this before finally deciding to head back to the fabric store to buy denim needles for my machine. It went much more smoothly after that!

Here is the finished product. Ian is very happy with it and loves the pockets.
He is thrilled to sleep under his new blanket tonight. I am happy to have that project done. I am not a quilter. I have only made one other quilt on my own. And don't look too close because the square's corners don't all line up and the quilting lines are a bit wavy. It certainly isn't going to win any awards but we now have another blanket.

While at the fabric store, one of the many times we went the last few days, Henry picked out some Halloween fabric that was 75% off. Henry has a thing for skeletons and the color orange. We ended up bringing it home, so I guess I will be making him a quilt next. But I think I will take a break for a little bit and just read a book or something.