Wednesday 28 November 2012

Summer Pants

My little guy has recently had a bit of a growth spurt and he is in desperate need of pants (trousers) that actually come past his ankles! I look at pants in the shops and they're all either boring, too expensive, or they just look plain uncomfortable for jumping & playing in... So I bought some fabric with the intention of making him some in the same way I made his pajama pants, but due to the print on the material I was worried they would look a bit too much like, well, pajamas. And then I found this tutorial and pattern for basic pants on Pinterest.

I'm impatient and don't have a printer at home, so I just traced the pattern onto some paper straight from the screen on my laptop. After I cut it out I held it up to a pair of his pants that actually still fit to make sure the pattern wasn't way off before cutting into the fabric! The fabric I chose was quite a thin summery cotton, so once the pieces were cut out, I decided to put some precautionary patches on the knees before sewing them up (as I've said before - getting the arm of the sewing machine into the leg of a toddler's pants is not one of my favorite things!)


He loves his new 'water' pants, and I think they look cool & comfortable for summer. And it was ridiculously easy - so easy in fact, that I've already started on a 2nd pair for him. :)

Now that I know how the 'basic' pants fit him, I've decided to make the next ones with a flat front
(ie the elastic is only in the back) so the top of the front pieces are cut out a bit slimmer.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Crayon Cars

For my little guy's 3rd birthday party he decided on a "Cars" theme. I thought crayon cars would be cute to put into the loot bags along with some colouring pages (mazes & activities for the older kids) and a few other little things.

I had melted crayons into shapes previously with mixed success... I had always shaved/cut up crayons into small pieces and melted them in the oven in silicone molds. The first time I tried I used the cheapest crayons I could get and when they melted the wax separated from the pigment and needless to say they were disappointing - so now I always use Crayola brand crayons.


I wanted the car crayons to be solid colours and to fill the whole mold rather than melting down into the crevices between the bits and making the cars too stumpy, so I followed this tutorial and they turned out fantastic! The mold I used took 4 crayons to fill each car (a whole pack of 24 to fill one tray), so it ended up being a bit more of an expensive experience than I expected (Crayola crayons in NZ cost about $5 for a pack of 24 - I miss the big packs of 96 that you can get in Canada for pretty much the same price!)


Once I had made the car crayons I thought they were just too cute and that we needed to do something with them during the party as well, so I came up with the idea of driving/drawing on paper roads with them. I covered the coffee table with paper and the little miss helped me to draw roads for the cars to drive along. The kids loved it. :)