Halloween Fun and Sewing

The Halloween fun was in full swing here today :)

I had been putting off carving the pumpkins we had picked because we have a rogue bear on our property again right now and I didn't want to take a chance that we would carve them and he would eat them! But with Halloween already tomorrow we couldn't wait any longer so I set up an outdoor carving station for the children this year :) We dragged out a couple of saw horses and an old table top I keep for crafting and put them in the backyard where they could muck about as they cleaned their pumpkins, making as much mess as they like and I didn't have to worry about it getting stuck to the kitchen carpet *grin*.

So much ooey gooey fun!

While they scooped I picked out all of the seeds. I can't wait to roast them tomorrow in the oven with a little bit of sea salt and olive oil. Yummy.

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With all of the messy scooping finished we moved back indoors where it was much warmer and finished carving their faces. I can't help but giggle every time I see this one that my 5 year old did :) Those eyes are hilarious! I can't wait to show you the one my oldest son did this year to, but he has asked me to wait as it's surprise for the rest of our family and he doesn't want to take a chance that someone will see it on here ahead of time :)

A couple of years ago we started making Halloween gingerbread houses and they are so much fun to build. Who says gingerbread is only for Christmas!

Of course you can never have enough candy corn for this sort of project. Just don't eat to many of them. Those little triangles of sugar are SO sweet. I had to count out just a few for each of the children or I knew they would free range in the bowl and I didn't want them to eat to many :)

After all the pasting of the icing, sticking gum drops, licking fingers and squabbling over who used to many sprinkles we had one great Halloween house.

All three of my children asked for hooded cloaks this year so I spent most of today repurposing old fabric that we found at the salvation army into hooded cloaks :) We don't go out trick or treating but we do like to dress up so usually I just go and buy them some fun costumes after Halloween is over and they are on super discount but this year they wanted to dress up for our party so mama had some sewing to do.

All of the pieces of fabric were different sizes and weights and I didn't have a pattern so we did a lot of cutting and measuring while each one laid on top of their material *grin*. I just love this heavy brocade with it's greens and golds that L picked out. It is heavy and silky and it just seemed like the perfect material for a cloak. Unfortunately there wasn't quite enough to make it ankle length but I think it turned out well just below the knee :)

And I love the hood! Oh my, I think I need one to *grin*. Her tiny head just gets swallowed up in it as she peers out and she loves it :)

I had hoped to get some of my party food prepared today but no such luck :) So tomorrow I will be a slave to the kitchen until time to unveil my horrific creations LOL. What are you doing for Halloween?

Hugs,
Rosina

Give Life To Outgrown Clothes ~ Make Your Own Cloth Napkins

I'm slowly phasing out all of the paper towels and napkins out of our home, replacing them with cloth napkins and the stash of flannel in my sewing cupboard is finally getting put to good use making lovely soft napkins that the kids love to use :)

But I started thinking about what else I could find around the house to reuse and give new life to in the form of napkins. With three kids growing like weeds there's never a shortage of to tight pajamas or ones that accidentally got snagged on something and blew out a knee *grin*. So instead of throwing them in the rag bag I dug them out, washed them all up and headed to the cutting table.

By snipping off the waistbands and cuffs and cutting out all of the seams I was left with 4 panels. Slightly odd in shape but very usable!

With my rotary cutter & ruler I trimmed them up so that they had nice straight edges. A few of them had ripped knees so I had to trim them a little shorter but out of my 4 year olds pj's I was able to get a good sized 6 x 13 inch rectangle out of most of the flannel panels.

I don't get to use my serger very often so I was excited to be able to stitch, trim & hem all of the sides in seconds *grin*. Boy does that thing zip along! And it just happened that Sew Mama Sew blogged about making napkins using a rolled hem stitch with a serger so I got to brush up on my technique with her handy tutorial :)

The only drawback to using my serger is those darn thread tails that it leaves behind. A quick fix is to either trim off those tails and dab fray stop or another liquid sewing glue on the corners to hold the threads together permanently or sew them in like I did in the above photo.

I thought that since they are going to get a lot washing with all of the dirty hand wiping that I'd make sure they were never going to come undone. So I took an embroidery thread with a large eye and threaded the tail through the end and then ran it back through about an inch of stitches :)

I love it! New life to old pajamas keeping them out of the landfill and those favorite pj's that your kid insisted on wearing every night to bed because he loved them sooo much are back *grin*.

Have fun reusing something out of your outgrown stash of clothes :)

~ Rosina