A Sad Story About Advent Calendars and Rejected Toilet Roll Inners

Last year, you may recall that I got Conquering Christmas off to an eggcellent start with this Advent calendar. Around two weeks ago, I began to plan for this year's creation. I started saving toilet roll inners and calculating how to lay out 24 sections of toilet roll inners as a triangle shape to resemble a Christmas tree. This infographic shows the intricate plans that I made.

However, Z1 and Z2 saw Advent calendars in a shop and now they want them. I tried to remind Z1 how much fun we had making last year's but to no avail.


Giant Lindt ball with
mouse for scale

I am seriously contemplating making this one for me - 'twould be perfect for rationing out my Lindt balls from the giant Lindt ball that Husband kindly gave me for no reason at all and I could use up those toilet roll inners I've been saving.


Would pumpkin seeds be big for spiders?

Z1's plan

Mine, Z2's in the middle
& Z1's at the back

The first thing I must say is that Z2 was not impressed with the idea of hammering cookie cutters into his pumpkin. I really thought he would be as one of his first and favourite sentences for a long time was "I'll fix it with a hammer". However, now he is very big and three whole years old and he definitely wanted to use a sharp thing. Thankfully, the Dollarama pumpkin carving tools (oh yes, I have specific pumpkin carving tools, this is serious business) are not so sharp that I was concerned for his digits so he was allowed to wield one.
 Secondly, I should explain the title of this post. This was a question asked by Z1 during the course of our pumpkin carving. I was a little baffled by it so I asked her to clarify. It turns out she was imagining that the stringy bits of pumpkin guts that we gleefully hauled out with spoons and fingers were spider webs. As a result of this thought, she was wondering whether a spider the size of a pumpkin seed would be considered big. I decided it would be medium.

Z2's pumpkin, please do admire the eyebrows

 Thirdly, it is worthy of note, I feel, that the eyebrows on Z2's pumpkin were entirely his own doing - he poked the holes and wiggled that carving tool around sufficiently to make them. He had help with all other features. Z1 also mostly took the role of artistic director on her pumpkin. The bluntness of the Dollarama carving tools not only makes them relatively safe for big three year olds, but also makes it fairly hard work to carve a pumpkin with them. Perhaps next year I shall upgrade my tools.





 

Z1's pumpkin

The last thing which I feel I must mention to make this post complete is that I went to the trouble of removing pulp and string from the seeds in order to roast/toast/bake them as snack. Z1 had tried some last year when one of her teachers did this and it does feel awfully wasteful, even for the spookily good price I bought these pumpkins for, to throw away such bounty.  Initial feedback was good, Z1 asked for more and said they tasted like popcorn. However, the next day Z2 specifically requested, out of the blue, that he not have pumpkin seeds for dinner and Z1 did not eat any of the seeds which I packed, with some degree of satisfaction, for her lunch. I quite like them but I feel that some of them may be destined for the rubbish bin after all.


 

Black tops, bat wings and toilet trips

Having been to Dollarama to buy "bat teeth" and "bat ears" (actually cat ears and vampire teeth but I reckon with the wings, they will pass as bat ears and vampire bat teeth. I was prepared to make the bat ears also but these will do nicely and we got a bonus cat tail too) and having picked up a remnant of mostly black suit material for $2.99, all that was missing for the making of the bat costumes were the plain black tops. The outing to get these was postponed until Sunday after a lengthy Saturday afternoon nap on the part of Z2.

Map does not include detour to shop with lots of sparkly things where NOTHING SHOULD BE TOUCHED as I was a bit dizzy by then and can't remember where it was




Going to the shopping centre (or mall, if you will) requires, of course, plenty of preparation - the pre-car journey toilet trip, the setting down of the rules (no, we will not be buying any toys in the Rainforest Café but we can look at the fish and the pretend animals; we are going to buy plain black tops and look at tea for me, there will be no other purchases though we may get some kind of snack food if you are good), the route planning within the centre to ensure maximum efficiency... Actually, no, I did not route plan but that was mainly 'cause I didn't know where my fancy tea shop was. Also, even if I had route planned, it would have been quickly scuppered by Z2's announcement that he needed to go to the toilet and the fact that the first set of toilets we went to had a ridiculous queue so we had to go in search of some others. However, happily, we did find plain, black, long-sleeved tops in H&M as hoped. Hurrah. (However, the teas I wanted were not available which was

rather a devastating blow. Or, you know, slightly disappointing.)



What me? I forgot to dress up,      Mwa ha ha ha, I am
just wearing boring old black                 a bat!                 

Now, once the tops were purchased, Z1 was keen to make the costumes right-now-this-very-second. While I couldn't quite satisfy that request what with us being in the shopping centre and all,  I did get started once we got home and I even let her try it on when I had only done one wing. While doing the first wing was quite exciting and doing the second wing was rather satisfying, I now have to motivate myself to do two more wings for Z2's top and continue to foster their commitment to being bats this Hallowe'en. The advance planning bodes well for the former but will be a little trickier for the latter.







Conquering Canadian Camping - Illustrated by Z1

Please take a moment to delight in the details of Z1's drawing of camping - the zip for the door to the tent, the torch hanging from the roof, the blue, bubbly air mattresses, the toasting of the marshmallows!

Sad Sunflower Story

Oh people, I am sorry to have to come here and tell you that I think our sunflower shade circle is not to be this year.

I could blame the caterpillars or slugs who seem to have made a meal of a few of the seedlings that did manage to push through
but I really feel that I must take the blame on this one.

Firstly, I didn't really prepare the ground for planting. I didn't shave the area cut the grass to define the circle so that trampling feet would avoid it and to ensure that enough light would shine on the ground to warm it and nurture the seedlings.

Secondly, I dug with a spoon. A spoon, I tell you! I should have used the proper tools which would have been more effective at digging sunflower seed-appropriate planting holes.

Finally, despite Z1's excellent planning and helpful diagrams, I did not carefully space the seeds and make sure they were evenly distributed around the circle. I did things hurriedly and haphazardly and my punishment shall be no shady, sunflower circle for me or the Zeds this year. Alas and alack.

Having said that, there is one seedling doing quite well, reaching up tall against the odds so I think we shall have a solitary sunflower. This strong sunflower will shine as a beacon to remind us that next year, if we prepare and plan AND execute the plan correctly, we could be the proud and happy cultivators of a shady, sunflower circle fort.

Diagrams and digging

The idea of planting a circle of sunflowers as a sort of shady den for the summer came from Pinterest though I had seen and loved a sunflower maze in Dublin Botanic Gardens and loved it. It just hadn't occurred to me to translate it to my very own garden until Pinterest.

I had spoken about it quite a lot and the Zeds and I tramped out the circle in the long grass on Saturday. Husband then cut the grass so we got to tramp it out again which was a good thing as the Zeds are big fans of running, skipping, marching and jumping around in a circle. I got a bit dizzy.

Z1 then took it upon herself to draw a diagram to plan the circle out. We currently only have a temporary fence on one side of the garden so crayon drawings are allowed. The parameters she planned to illustrate were the size of the circle and the height of the sunflowers. She also had a separate table where she planned how often the sunflowers would need watering. Apparently they will require watering 6 times on Mondays. This was a very serious project.


On the right, you can see that the upper circle has a tick and an arrow - this is the required size of the sunflower circle. It also has 2 flowers in the middle which show the location of the circle as there are two orange flowers on our lawn. The circle below has been crossed out as too small.

In this diagram, you can see the height she wants the sunflowers to be (8 units, units not specified) and, in the righthand panel, you can see she drew a picture of herself for comparison. As she is about 3 feet tall and the sunflowers can apparently grow up to 10ft tall, she may get her wish of the sunflowers being twice her height as illustrated.

We had misplaced our trowel when the time came to plant the seeds so we made do with a spoon. Z2 was napping and Z1 took charge of choosing the seed for each hole and watering each seed after planting. Now we must wait and see if they grow or wether the birds ate the seeds immediately after we planted them.
 

Good and bad things resulting from Sunday's gingerbread

 As I mentioned before, we made gingerbread on Sunday afternoon. I got a couple of comments and, in replying to them, I realised I hadn't mentioned some significant parts of our gingerbread experience. I have divided them into good and bad things.

Good thing: The baking gingerbread made our house smell lovely.

Bad thing: We really needed a nice smell to cover up the smoky smell that had been caused by me putting the butter in the preheating oven to soften it and then forgetting it. Dripping butter in a hot oven causes a lot of smoke.

Good thing: Our smoke alarm wasn't in the kitchen when the butter incident happened (don't worry, it's back where it belongs now) so didn't add to the smokey stress.

Bad thing: The oven handle came off while the oven was preheating which meant I had to fix it with a screwdriver while wearing oven gloves. This was a little perilous and quite annoying.

Good thing: I managed to fix it without swearing (audibly) and without burning myself or the Zeds.


Good thing: The gingerbread really is rather tasty and we have some  leftover dough still in the fridge to make more.


So, overall, the good outweighed the bad.

Resting on my laurels and planning for the future

In our covered porch today

As I type, our marvellous marbles are a week old and buried in the worst snow in 5 years. Sorry, no, that should have been THE WORST SNOW IN 5 YEARS. Ah, the meeja media, they have enjoyed working themselves up to a frenzy about the snow we are having today with promises of storm reports and second by second weather reports. Admittedly, we trekked to the bus stop only to take one look at the main road with u-turning, stuck and skidding cars and return home. In fact, husband actually got on a bus for a minute or two before realising it was foolish and he should work from home too.

Our covered porch in July
(with Z2)

Anyway, yes, our marvellous marbles are still there though some of them cracked a little from freeze-thaw action and the like. Husband thinks they are wondrous and I know of at least one family who have copied the idea so I have been resting on my laurels and we have been craft-free since last Friday.

However, the cogs in my brain have been turning and I have several ideas gradually emerging.  In fact, given that we have a snow day today and I am working from home, we may have to get cracking today and back on the craft wagon. Oh, the craft wagon, such a thing to behold. I imagine it looks a bit like this.

The Craft Wagon

Breaking news: Z1, on this day, the day of the worst snow in Toronto in living memory the last five years, has asked to colour in my craft wagon drawing so craft-free week is officially over.

Rainbow Scarf Revealed

I mentioned my plan to knit a scarf before here so thought it only fair to update you on how it went.
This was the blueprint:

And this is what it looked like before:



before

And this is after:

after

It was more difficult and less perfect than I expected. I knitted a few scarves a few years ago and was mighty proud of them so went into this project with my blueprint and my planning and some confidence in my learned-from-the-internet knitting abilities. I still like it quite a lot and Z1 seems to too so that is good. It's definitely a "Unique Handmade Item where variations in colour and texture only serve to highlight that it's one of a kind."*
*Translation: Please ignore any dropped stitches and the inconsistency in width of stripes, it was made with LOVE, dammit.



Bed-Hopping (or why there may not be crafts done today)

 

As a result of this night of bed-hopping, Husband thinks we need to replace Z1's mattress as it's not very comfortable. I think.......zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I know why they sell eggs by the dozen

It's not something I had really pondered before - why eggs come in dozens and half-dozens rather than any other number.


Thinking about it now, I suppose it could be that boxes of five would be awkward which is why ten wasn't chosen as the base number. However, I like to think the true reason was that somewhere, many years ago when such things were being decided, someone realised that one day I would want to make an Advent calendar with my Zeds and that two empty egg cartons that formerly housed a dozen eggs each would be perfect for this purpose.


I am still mentally refining the precise way in which our egg box Advent calendar will work but I am fairly confident it will be a thing of beauty. (I keep vacillating between "egg carton" and "egg box", sometimes feeling that "carton" is more North American and sometimes feeling that it's just the right name - thoughts?)

(Here's the real answer according to the internet. If I'd googled before writing, this post might never have existed.)

How blogging has changed me OR I've become one of THOSE people

Two things happened this weekend that illustrate to me how this project, and keeping this blog, have changed me. So, without further ado, I have illustrated them for you (inspired by Amber Dusick who has shown me that Crappy illustrations can actually be rather wonderful and has also made me laugh out loud a number of times )

The events were:

1. We finished a box of cereal

2. Z1 said she would like a rainbow-coloured, non-itchy scarf after we passed a yarn shop with its fence all wrapped in soft and colourful yarn (The shop was Lettuce Knit which is online here but in Toronto in real life )

So there you have it, blogging changes your life and recycling habits.

SHOCKING UPDATE: On the very day I published this post, we finished another box of cereal and I went to put the empty box with the previous one but my beloved husband had thrown it out. The horror!

Useful guide to understanding this blog

I position myself around the "swearing and minor injuries possible" box on this important spectrum.
I have very talented siblings who can draw and write poems and sculpt recognizable elephants but these things are beyond me.
I do, however, have quite a positive attitude to things that I do manage to make. I'm definitely not a perfectionist about it all though I do quite enjoy having the Zeds as excuses for when things don't look as if they were made by an actual grown-up lady. You should know, though, that when things don't look quite as good as they could, there is every possibility that my own lack of skills rather than the Zeds' childish lack of coordination and dexterity is to blame.