How to throw a Pirate Party!!

My boys are 8! Can you believe it? I sure can't 

They had been asking for a couple years to have a friend birthday party. This year I finally consented. With twins I wasn't sure how it was going to work. Would they agree on the party theme? Would they agree on guests? 

They didn't. Yip wanted pirates and Yap wanted soldiers. They agreed, without much argument, that this year Yip could choose and next year we'd do Yap's soldier party. I did lay down the law on the party guests though. I wasn't inviting every boy they knew. They each invited two guests; we'll start with six little boys. Heaven knows these two boys keep my house busy enough. 

The boys and I worked all summer getting things ready for the party. We spread all the work out through the summer.

Arrrggghhh!!!

The cupcakes!! 

Yum! Shark Bait!! I got to tell ya, that watermelon shark was so much fun to do! 

We had pin the peg leg/hook/eye patch/parrot on the pirate game drawn up. 

We had all the fixin's to make their own pirate hook. Then we made an aluminum foil ring and the boys played catch the ring on the hook. 

Thanks Mom and Sue for all the wine corks, they made the perfect rafts :) 

We had pirate beards all ready to go along with black sashes, cardboard swords and skull bandannas. 

Don't they look awesome?!

We raided DR's closet for the pirate shirts.

DR even joined in the fun! But....he looks a bit more like a biker than a pirate! 

Hmmm, a Purdue Pete Pirate!! LOL 

 I had hinted for the last couple months that we would have a surprise guest. Meet Dillen! Dillen is a high school senior and has done some babysitting for us. The kids absolutely LOVE him because he wrestles with them and of course lets them go to bed late! 

We were ready! Once all the guests arrived and were suited up in their pirate attire we headed off to the high seas....

...in the driveway! 

Our grocery store down the street saved us a couple of boxes the watermelon came in. So we painted them up like the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchmen, put the blue pool full of water in between and a plank over the top. Each ship was filled with cannonballs (wads of packing paper wrapped in masking tape).

Boy did they enjoy their "sea battle"! 

After the swords were completely soaking wet and the cardboard swords were flopping and falling apart we headed inside for cupcakes. 

Eight candles are a tight squeeze on a little cupcake. 

Eight!! Dang! 

Then off to play pin the pirate. We made sure everyone was thoroughly spun and dizzy :) 

Perfect peg leg positioning there Yip! 

He cheated by the way and was peaking under his blindfold! 

Then a pinata! I think the pinata was the most expensive thing I bought for the whole party. That thing just would. not. BUST!! We wacked it for heaven knows how long. Finally I took a utility knife and sliced it quite a few places and that helped. 

Yahoo wasn't left out! She was right in the middle of all the action.

Dillen is an awesome guy! He bought Yip a KNex set and Yap a Lego Pirate ship. Not only did he buy them each a very cool present he stuck around until bedtime and helped them each put together their model! Thanks a bunch Dillen, my boys really look up to you. 

All in all we had a great 8th birthday celebration! 

Happy Birthday! 

Recycled Art at the AMoA

DR and I have learned that rather than taking one long vacation that two or three long weekend trips through the year work best for our family. With young kids getting drug here and there, missing naps, staying up late in hotel rooms more than 3 days of a vacation gets exhausting for everyone. I'm hoping that when the kids get older that vacations may get longer and further away. Anyone care to comment on what my future vacations may hold? 

Anyway, this weekend we went to Amarillo, Texas which is about a 4 hour drive from home. One of the places I really wanted to go to was the Amarillo Museum of Art. 

My favorite artist is Georgia O'Keefe and she spent her early years as an artist teaching and working in Amarillo. Most of her early work were small watercolors before she moved onto huge oil paintings. I've seen the big ones but I'd never seen any of her early watercolors...and the Amarillo Museum had TWO!! I was so excited. As soon as I stepped through the museum entrance I asked where they were.

Ggggrrr....one was out on loan and the other, being almost 100 years old, was rarely displayed to the public. But I did come away with a free poster of one of the paintings...good thing it was one of my favorites!! 

I forgave them for denying me the O'Keefe though after going through their collection. They had a fabulous Asian Art collection and had a really neat exhibit by local artists of recycled art. Here's just a few of em'. 

Spider made out of curlers, wires and florist eggs. I'm not sure what a florist egg is but I assume it's the big yellow thing used for it's body. My mom hates spiders...I wonder if she'd like this though? 

I want a chair like this!! The seat is woven with old leather stamped belts. Anyone have some belts they want to send me?? I bet it would even be comfortable to sit on. 

What a gorgeous rooster painted on an old window! 

The museum was three levels and each level was a circle with railings to look over into the center of the museum. From this empty middle hung this sculpture. The pom poms were made from newspapers and colored tissue paper hung from fishing line that was strung with drinking straws. There are also chains (attached to the rails) made from wine corks. I love this exhibit!! It makes me want to start raiding trash cans around town! 

This one is probably my favorite. Have you ever read about Mother Teresa? An amazing life! This is made entirely from found objects, even the paint was found or bought at garage sales. In the upper left are the words, "I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use. -Mother Teresa". I feel like that sometimes. 

I think this one is probably DR's favorite. I'm trying to talk him into helping me construct a tool family for our front yard complete with likenesses of me, him and the kids. He just rolled his eyes at me. What? That isn't such a weird idea! 

This exhibit got me thinking and I'm wondering what I can scrounge together creatively into a fabulous work of art. I may have trouble though..DR has forbid me to start stashing away junk for possible uses. I already have some ideas brewing though! 

Marker Monday - The Textbook Purse

Literally...this is a textbook purse...made from an old Biology text my sister found in a used book store. My sister Ruby made this for our other sister Rose for Christmas. I'm jealous...I want one. I don't need another purse....wait, sure I do! I'm a woman. Don't we always need another purse?

Do you have any of those old big college textbooks laying around? Those would work great for this project.

And my sister found the best fabric for a microbiology text. It makes me think the inside is crawling with living little critters.

Here are the video directions my sister used. But I found two different sets of directions online that seem similar; here and this one with pictures.

I really want to make this purse! Now I'm on a quest to find the perfect book, fabric and handles.

Hmmm....should I go with an art text? Or a cookbook or....oh I know! Wouldn't it be great to find a big book of fairy tales or other great big kids book and use it as a toy tote for church? Time to raid the kids' bookshelves.

Are you as excited about this purse as I am? No? That's alright, I always knew I was a craft nerd.

How to Make Your Own Cloth Diapers.

I love cloth diapers! With my twins I used the old fashioned prefold with pins. I liked them because I wasn't always having to go buy diapers. Washing a load of diapers was a lot easier than hauling two infants to Wal-Mart for diapers, let me tell ya!I also felt good about keeping HUNDREDS of diapers out of a landfill. However, those old prefolds weren't much fun. They leaked on occasion and that wasn't fun when there were two messes to clean up!

When I learned I was pregnant with my daughter, I knew I wanted to use cloth diapers with her but I also knew the old kind wasn't going to work in my busy household. I cruised the internet and found a lot of wonderful patterns to make your own fitted diapers and diaper covers. For the diapers I relied mostly on this pattern. After a bit of trial and error, I made a few adjustments which I will get to in a minute.

I attacked my closet, my husband's closet (sshh, don't tell him), my fabric stash, cheap (and ugly) walmart fabric and the local consignment shop for all the fabric used. The pattern does say that you can use old knit t-shirts but I didn't just because I don't like to use stretchy fabrics but that is just my preference. Overall I used a variety of cotton, flannel, fleece and wool(for the covers). For the inside soaker part of the diaper I actually used the cloth diapers that I had already but you could easily use bath towels. I cut one diaper in half and used it for two diapers. They have worked great! My daughter is 11 months old and has been in cloth diapers since her umbilical cord fell off and I HAVEN'T HAD ONE LEAK with these diapers. Often I can't even SMELL a dirty diaper with these. How amazing is that?


The diaper on the left is size small which I started putting on her after her umbilical cord fell off. I was afraid the diaper would rub it too much so used the fancy disposables with the belly button cut out. She only wore the size small for 2 months because I didn't attach the velcro in a way to extend their wear. It probably didn't help that she was over 9 lbs. when she was born...not exactly a size small kid!

I didn't take a shot of the mediums because I gave them away to another mom but I think you get the idea of the sizes.

The diaper on the right is a large size which she started wearing about the age of 10months. I am anticipating that this size will last her until she is potty trained.


Here they are open...duh, didn't really need to tell you that did I? I did add longer pieces of elastic down the leg openings and across the back. I used 3/8" elastic; 1/2" might work well too. I found 1/4" just wasn't strong enough to gather together all the layers.


This is the major diversion I took from the pattern. The pattern called to place the velcro tab inside the diaper (left) but when you do that the diaper isn't as adjustable. With the large diapers (right) I placed the soft velcro tab so it extends outside the diaper. By doing so the tabs will overlap when closed when the baby is smaller but will grow with the baby and will be able to wear the diaper for much longer. I also make sure I used a larger size velcro since at the age she was wearing the large diapers she is so much more active and the large velcro helps keep everything securely in place.


After much searching I found this great pattern for the diaper covers where I could print off an actual pattern for 5 different sizes. This is by far the best diaper cover pattern/instructions I found anywhere.



Do make sure that you felt any wool sweaters you decide to use a few times before you cut them up to make these covers. I didn't felt mine enough and they shrank a whole size and I was unable to use the first few I made.

If you are thinking about using cloth diapers and entertaining the idea of making your own..don't let these patterns scare you. They aren't that hard and they are SO CHEAP to make! With a little creativity and imagination you can obtain most of your fabric for free. I'd love to see any diapers you make and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I'd love to help! Good luck!