Fleece mittens

It is almost that time of year again.  I looked and looked and looked but could only find one of Sully's 4 cute penguin mittens I had from last winter:(  I did find his cute newborn fleece mittens though.  So that gave me an idea....

I have lots of fleece just hanging around, begging to be used in a project so I decided to make some fleece mittens.  Heck, I even had some elastic laying around!

Step 1:  Trace your little one's hand or at least put them to work and have then trace their own hand.

Step 2:  Add approximately 3/4" to the tracing and draw a line in to use as a cutting guide.

Step 3:  Cut.

Step 4:  Trace the pattern onto your fleece and cut it out.

Step 5:  Get your elastic and cut a piece to attach to each cutout.

Step 6:  Sew your elastic onto the wrong side of your cutouts. I did this by starting to sew the elastic to the cutout and then stretching the elastic while finishing sewing the elastic to the cutout.  (Got that?)

Step 7:  Sew your cutout halves to their pair.

Step 8:  Trim off the elastic and turn right side out.

Voila!!

22

Dear Sullivan,

You are 22 months today!  You have officially entered the ever dreaded "no" phase.  Every answer you give is a no, even before I finish the question.

"Do you want a hot dog?"    "no"
"Do you want to take a bath?"     "no"
"Do you want to eat-" "no"
"Do you want to go ou-" "no"
"Do you wa-" "no"
"Hey Sul-" "no"

Even when I was reading you The Very Busy Spider tonight, you managed to slide a little "no" right after the cat asked the spider if she wanted to take a nap.

The word "no" is so ingrained into you, you never even say the word yes.  Instead, if you agree with something or actually want to do or eat what I ask you, you simply nod.  No actual verbal agreement, only a nod.

You absolutely cannot live without lots of time "ou-side" these days.

You had your first extended "vacation" from your parents.  You stayed with Gamma and Papa and you had so, so much fun.  I don't even know if you noticed we were gone.  You didn't give me much of welcome when I came to pick you up.  You simply looked over as you were watching Spongebob and smiled and nodded and then went back to your show.

You and Papa are pretty good buds now.

Look at all those teeth!

Your new obsession is the movie Finding Nemo.  As soon as you wake up in the morning, you ask "Mee-mo?"

Every day you are saying more and more.  It is so much fun to see what you pick up and notice.  To live life through the eyes of a child.  Keep learning, little one.

Love,
Mama

Hoodie Towels

Seeing as how the Sul will be turning 2 in about two months, I decided it was time to stop smashing him into his baby hooded towels (even though I love them and they are soooo cute).  I am sure most normal parents would have stopped using these long ago, but I am not normal.

As luck would have it, I came across this pin on Pinterest.

So I went to Kohls and got 3 big ones towels with coordinating hand towels and then gathered some ribbon I already had.

I followed all of the the steps as listed in the tutorial.  However, I did not do any pinning, I am too lazy for that.

Here is what I had:

Note to self:  If I were to ever make these in the future, I would try to find hand towels without that detail a few inches from the edge as I think it would look better to not have that showing.  Since posting these, I have decided to do some quick appliques over that area so you won't even know it is there.

I had to embellish them a bit more and cover up the hand towel detail.  Now this is the final product.

Holy cow, aren't they cute!  They are killing me!

I must admit, I broke 3 or 4 regular needles in my machine sewing these.  Once I burned through all of those, I found some more heavy duty needles and I was able to finish the last one without any needle breakages.

Then it was time to test them out!

Fun in the bath!  Extra points for you if you can spot the hemangioma!

Someone was not happy with the photo shoot so this was the best I could do for a shot of how long it comes down.

It actually drags on the ground a bit when he is standing.  So I figure he can use these until he is about 10.

This project gave me a great idea for a homemade Nemo costume!

NO Part 2

So where was I?  Oh yeah, we had just returned from the Garden district via a super shady, not really for tourists, route.

 This following pic is just for the hubs.  Him and his favorite fried chicken haunt, Brothers.  Hubs quote, "It is such a great value."

That night we had margaritas mexican.



The next day was our last full day so we made it count.

We walked to Jackson Square,

Cafe Du Monde,

and stopped at Molly's for bloodys and maybe a few other beverages.

Then we continued on to the Market.

Which is where I had the best crab cake in the world!

Mmmmmmmm....

This was the official beer of the trip.

The official TV station would have been the NO channel that Clayton would stay up and watch long after I fell asleep.  He saw a segment on the Greek pizza from the Pizza Kitchen near the Market so we naturally had to try it.  And it did not disappoint.

Then we walked back.  We stopped at Molly's again.

That night, we ate fancy at Bayona.  It was delish!

Then we saw some music on the somewhat seedy Frenchmen Street.

Finally, on the last day we walked the French Quarter a bit more, ate one more meal of seafood and got a pic of the two of us.

 Yes, Thundercat is biting me.

In the nook one more time.

My two favorite scenes in NO:

Shutters and gas lanterns.

All in all, it was a wonderful, much needed trip.  Thank you to my amazing parents who took Sully for us and made sure he was very well taken care of and giggled lots.  Thank you to the wonderful Shagers for taking care of Turbo and making sure she had lots of couch snuggles.  Thank you to Lita for taking care of herself.

Reunited!