Blastoff

Finally the wee wonderfuls spaceman has landed in our home along with a homemade rocket ship! I've had the space boy pattern for over 3 months and finally took on the challenge! He was actually fun and painless to make! Parker helped choose the color scheme, spelled out his initials and thinks they are both pretty cool. It's my first attempt at a "softie".

whole lotta love

I took out my sewing machine from the depths of a storage trunk a few weeks ago to hem a pair of pants and it's been on the dining table ever since. Once I actually use the energy to retrieve it - I have a hard time packing it back up and storing it away again. So I was super happy that domesticali started a flickr group to share photos of items made from fellow Brooklynite Lotta Jansdotter's book simple sewing. I do have to admit that I am terrible at following/understanding directions - whether it's for sewing, crocheting, computer manuals or toy instructions...so this was inspired by the pictures in the book. I also visited Purl in Soho and picked out the adorable tree & squirrel fabric. Thank god that I am not a quilter or I would have dropped some mad cash in that store. Since I started making fun felt decorated shirts for Parker & his friends, I've wanted to make something for myself so I was finally able to add a little felt applique that actually looks age appropriate :)

it's a book that turns into a...

Firetruck. very cool!

Wonder Pets Birthday Success

The Wonder Pets birthday party was a success and Parker had a great time. It was a homemade party because Nickelodeon has not yet produced any Wonder Pets merchandise. Not sure what they are waiting for - all of the other shows have a ridiculous amount of product. Anyway, we used red, blue, green & yellow plates, napkins, streamers, balloons, etc, had a craft area with WP coloring pages from Nick Jr & other animal stickers. I know there must be other parents out there trying to create a cool WP party so here's a list of some of the items that we created...
the "Tuck" pinata can be found here:
the fly boat:Parker's Dad made a flyboat out of the same stuff as the Wonder Pets...a red Frisbee, 3 purple marker caps, tinker toys for wheels & some other stuff from the toy tool box. very cool.
The fly boat cake & invitation:
The Games: "save the animals" Each partygoer got a chance to be like the wonder pets by searching into the tree to save an animal. The tree was stuffed with a variety of animals - from wind-up to plush. The "tree" started out as a cardboard box and I must admit it turned out better than I had imagined. I covered the box with brown paper and cut different size strips of various green construction papers & card stocks to make the branches. We also had a red WP cape and the idea was that the kids would line up and one at a time put on the cape and save and animal but it was more like a simultaneous rescue mission. Here's a peak at the rescue:
"Pin the wheel on the fly boat": We didn't even get to this one but here's a look and we printed out the wheels from the nick website onto sticker paper.The Gift Bags: Wonder Pet stickers printed from the official web site, a couple inside and one on the front of the brown paper gift bag, there is a cool little WP book binded together with yarn which I printed from the web site & the bubbles have a custom home printed WP label .
The decor: our building's community room always needs color. My friend Fran blew up pictures of each of the WP and made these cool portraits - which are not the decor in my little man's bedroom...It was an awesome party - Thanks to Teamwork!