Sneaky Momma Trick #1001

As long as some of the rice is white, they don't seem to notice that some of the rice is brown. Mwa-ha-ha!

Tutorial: How to Repair Kids' Adjustable Elastic-Waist Pants

Will was about four the first time I ran across a pair of adjustable elastic-waist pants in her size at Goodwill.

Brilliant!

I LOVE these pants for kids. They look like normal jeans or cords or slacks or what-have-you, and the length is the length that you'd expect for the size, but hidden inside the waistband is a length of buttonhole elastic, and on either side of the casing--a button!

No more Husky or Slim, no worries with hand-me-downs, no baggy waists for the kid who just had a growth spurt, and the kid who actually cares about such things doesn't have to wear "baby" pants that are obviously elastic-waisted (I told her she could also call them old lady pants, but still...).

These pants can be tricky, though, because if that button works its way out of the elastic, or (more likely) that kid who cares about such things tries to adjust the elastic herself and leaves the elastic off of the button, AND it goes through the wash, then the elastic will get lost inside the waistband, rendering it useless.

Here's how to fix it! 

(Apologies for the terrible quality of the photos. It turns out that the gloomiest, stormiest, darkest days also happen to be the best mending days!)

Take hold of the other end of the buttonhole elastic and pull it all the way out of the waistband:

If the buttonhole elastic looks worn or has lost its stretch, replace it. 

Pin a safety pin through the elastic, about 1/2" from one end:

 Use the safety pin to help you feed the elastic into one of the openings in the waistband casing--

--and then all the way through:

Now keep that elastic buttoned on BOTH ends this time, will you?

P.S. You can also add a waistband to any existing garment, sew a couple of buttonholes and buttons, and DIY a pair of adjustable elastic-waist pants. 

The Rainbow Fairies' Favorite Candles

Are anybody else's kids as rabidly into the Rainbow Magic series as my kids are? Willow's been reading them since back when she first began to read, which means that my Sydney may very well have been weaned on them, and is now just as obsessed as Willow ever was.

The Rainbow Magic books are notorious between the adults in our family for putting the both of us straight to sleep when we read from them. Syd, who can't yet read, of course, checks out piles of them every time we're at the library, and since there are no audiobook versions of the Rainbow Magic series yet (GRRR!!!), Matt and I find ourselves reading them out loud to her. Every day. For hours. It was our little joke that in the summertime, I'd always read to Sydney out in the backyard in the hammock, with a nice pillow and a summer-weight blanket, and when I'd finished the book, Syd would climb out of the hammock, give it a little push, and send me off on a nice afternoon nap.

Everything is rainbow around here again these days--the fairies, Syd's design for this year's Trashion/Refashion show (more on that later), the play dough that we're making today, the Kool-aid-flavored bubble gum that we're also making today, and all our candles. As I was out in the yard last week in the suspiciously mild weather, taking photos of some new etsy listings, I took a second to update my rolled beeswax rainbow fairy candles listing:

For no other reason than that taking yet another photo of these little fairy candles is one more excuse to bask in their yummy, tiny rainbow-ness.

Rainbow Rolled Beeswax Waldorf Ring Candles

Completing a custom order a couple of weeks ago, I was called upon to research the diameter of candles used in traditional Waldorf birthday rings.

Having FINALLY discovered the right number, I whipped up a set of rainbow rolled beeswax candles the perfect size for a Waldorf ring:

These Waldorf ring candles are twice as thick as my birthday candles, and twice as long as my fairy candles. I'm hearting them so much that I'm starting to think that I my girls REALLY need a Waldorf ring to put them in.

Rolled Beeswax Rainbow Birthday Candles

I've had it in my head to make a simple set of birthday candles in rainbow colors for quite a while, and I do believe that I've had them made for nearly that long, but winters are so grey in Indiana that it can seem a long time between those sunny days that I love so much for product photography.

And although these unseasonably mild, warm, sunny days that we've had lately have given me nightmares of a post-apocalyptic global warming collapse in which we're all forced to migrate south on foot, pushing shopping carts full of canned goods in front of us, these entire days that the girls have spent playing with toy ponies and Duplos outside, or kicking a soccer ball around with me at the park, or having the kind of mid-morning playground playdates that we've haven't done since summer sure are making me very, very happy, as is the opportunity to get plenty of product shots done.

And that's why I've done something nearly unheard of this Fabruary: I put a brand-new listing up on etsy!

rolled beeswax birthday candles, rainbow set of seven

At least Global Warming is productive!

Super Bowl Village People

Matt loves football, I'm generally fairly down with being a tourist (even though I DON'T love football), and the girls just get dragged wherever we go, so off we went to hang out at the 2012 Super Bowl Village, just up the road in Indianapolis, one day recently.

You get a welcome right up front--

--and ample driving directions downtown--

--which is a good thing, because just in case you were relying on turn-by-turn driving directions from Mapquest, you should know that some of the streets have been, um, festified:

There are a lot of activities downtown that cost money, but are also pretty cool--even I would have liked to go to the Super Bowl Experience to see the championship ring collection, and I DEFINITELY would have done the zip line--but it being Matt's day, and being that Matt's favorite thing to do in the world, other than watch football, is not spend money, we stuck entirely to the many free activities (okay, I would have bought a zip line ticket anyway, but they were all sold out for the day by the time we walked over there).

We posed:

We watched the ice sculptures being made:

We watched participants struggle through the Hundred-Yard Hamster Wheel, cheering them on with the cry, "Be the hamster! Be the hamster!":

And we goofed around on the football field set up just outside the stadium, just under the zip line with people passing hollering overhead every minute or so:

We didn't do everything, no, but we did pretty much all the free stuff, our Matt had a good time on his idea of the perfect budget, and we got away with plenty of time to hit the Children's Museum of Indianapolis and Trader Joe's.

Super Bowl Village, done and done!

Coloring Pages and Fine Motor Skills

We've been doing some "formal" handwriting study these past few weeks. It's true that this particular area of study is not so much child-led, since it comes from me noticing Willow struggle through writing something, only to end up frustrated that it took SO much work and was absolutely illegible, and taking the lead to insist that it's time. As a seven-year-old who's been reading since she was five, it's obviously been clear for years that her handwriting needs work, but she's never wanted to, and I've never pushed--until now. I'm feeling that now is finally the appropriate time, however, because when I did insist, Will did not argue.

My Will. Did not argue. The child who will throw a huge tantrum when I insist that she wear pants to the grocery store, or stop reading so that we can get ready to go to the ice cream shop, did not throw a tantrum about weeks and weeks of daily handwriting practice. Amazing and illuminating to behold, that is.

It's quite possible that Will simply didn't possess the level of fine motor skills necessary to pursue neat handwriting until recently, and pushing her would have been much more frustrating (for everyone!) and taken much longer to accomplish than it will now, when she's clearly mentally and physically ready. If she had been in public school, imagine how unhappy she and her kindergarten and first grade teachers would have been with each other!

I'll save the actual handwriting for another day (although if you're curious, I'm doing it myself and using Startwrite 6.0 to create custom copywork). What I wanted to tell you is that in addition to the copywork, I'm sneaking into the girls' days lots and lots of drawing--

--and lots and lots of coloring pages:

The kids are both thrilled about it because every day, they can tell me what kind of coloring pages they want--horses, dangerous mythical beasts, cats and dogs and unicorns!--and I'll find them online and print them out. For whatever reason, the kids haven't asked for and I haven't strewn coloring pages in a while, so they're novel again, and apparently hugely enjoyable, because the kiddos whip out pages and pages and pages each day.

Coloring pages? They're fine motor practice. My Syd, who's been scribbling with a perfect tripod grip since she could hold a chubby crayon, and has had neater handwriting than Willow for years now, colors in each little section with precision, but I've long noticed that Will prefers to paint great swaths of colors across the page, nearly regardless of borders and guiding lines. I've never pointed it out to her, but I've gradually noticed over the past few weeks, as we've been doing both handwriting copywork, drawing lessons with Daddy (more on that later, too), lots and lots of coloring pages, and also lots of these  that I purchased back when Sydney was a toddler who didn't know her numbers up to ten (vastly easy for the children now, and yet they still come back into favor every now and then), that her coloring in has become more precise. Her work isn't yet what you would call "inside the lines," but it's approximately so, these days, and her crayon movements are shorter, closer together, and more conscious of detail.

Mentally and physically ready for detail, my kid. We're also starting book reports this week, because when you're ready for detail, you're ready to perform critical analysis, mwaa-ha-ha!