A Seapup's Life

Finally got done with this!
Available at My T-shirt store.

Jewelry Making 101

For Valentine's day this year Ronán and I made bead & pasta necklaces for his Texas cousins, Mairead and Aine. One night we brought out the Sculpey clay and made some beads. It was fun, we added our own sparkles and shaped the beads into different sizes. I made sure to use the end of the shoelace-like string that we were going to use for the base so that the bead hole was big enough when they were baked. Unfortunately, the clay shrinks juuuust enough so they didn't fit on the strings any more once they were done.

Oh well. A few days later, I found some basic embroidery floss and we used that as the string for the necklaces. The necklaces turned out pretty well but in the future I will a) not use whole-wheat pasta because it doesn't look as nice. And b) use ziti pasta instead of penne. The penne's ends didn't fit well with each other, where as ziti would have blunt ends that would work more like beads.

Despite that, the necklaces were made with heaps of love and affection and I hope it came through when the girls opened up their packages. Happy Valentine's day Texas cousins!!


Roses are Red
Texas belles are blue
We think of you always
And miss you a bunch too!

One Yard Wonders II

I just found deep in my inbox that the writers of "One Yard Wonders" are putting together a follow up book! They are looking for submissions for the next volume. The submission deadline is April 1, 2010. I submitted a holiday project for their first book, but it wasn't accepted since it didn't fit in any of the categories. This time around the focus of the book is on projects made with non-cotton fabrics. Very interesting! I'll have to really think about what I could submit this time around. Congrats to Rebecca and Trish for the new book deal!!

More details on their website.

some t-shirts done on the fly

One lazy afternoon + cheap t-shirts + Illustrator + iron on paper = a new wardrobe for Ronán.



1) Backrubasaurus Rex









2) Toddler Frankenstein's Monster getting ready to go to sleep.







3) Ronán in a helmet, getting ready for BALL! BALL!







4) In time for St. Valentine's day

eventually some of these will work their way onto my t-shirt store

Banana Oatmeal Bread

I found a great recipe for Banana Oatmeal bread that I made yesterday when I was at home with Ronan. We whipped it up together before his nap, and had delicious warm bread ready for his after-nap snack. I'm still getting used to baking with a toddler so there aren't any photos of the mixing of ingredients (too much potential for disaster there...). But here is a photo of our finished product.

The recipe can be found at a fellow Minnesotan's blog, Chez Beeper Bebe.

This bread is SO GOOD. Holly's blog post was written with suggestions on how to use over-ripe bananas or other foods that you just don't want to throw away. The day before I had thrown away 2 over-ripe bananas and felt terrible, but did not realize you could freeze them and store for later. So her post was perfect timing for me to avoid it in the future!

Holly's recipe calls for 3/4 cup flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour. I accidentally inverted those but it seems to not have any affect on the deliciousness. It also calls for 3/4 cup of oatmeal (not instant). I only had rolled oats and even though they are kind of big, they worked fine and again did not really affect the tastiness. I would definitely make this one again! (but would use the more crushed oatmeal) :-)

Art Easel Hack

We were lucky enough to inherit a wonderful wooden art easel from our neighbors. The now teenage twin girls next door clearly loved this easel and it was fun to find that it was originally made in St. Paul, MN. One side is a chalkboard and the other side is a white board as most have. Ronan made a lot of use of the chalkboard but I felt that giving even a white board marker to a toddler is asking for trouble. So, we decided to make the white board a felt board. I cut a piece of neutral colored felt a little bit larger than the size of the board. Blake unscrewed the board and then put the felt on top and screwed it back in. It works great!!

Here I took some basic shapes and added foam letters and numbers (they had adhesive backs) on top of the felt. They stick very well and then it brings another dimension into the felt designs.

Celebrating the Boy

Browsing my Google Reader on the down-low today at work... I was so excited to see that "Made By Rae" is dedicating the entire month of February to Boy related craft projects! I agree that it is a lot easier to make crafty things and clothes for girls, so I can't wait to see what tutorials and projects they come up with for boys! Weeee!