Adaptability, Moms DO Play Video Games, & Getting Crafty

My Month of Adaptability

Wow! It’s been a while since I have been able to blog, but I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to sit down and write. This blog post may seem a little all over the place, but that’s been my life lately. If this month had a theme name, it would be ADAPTABILITY!

Each week’s schedule seemed to go out the window from what our family had originally planned and written on the calendar.

I’m definitely a “Type A” person, so I like to have everything written out, organized, and discussed before going into a new week. I’m up for the occasional change or spontaneity, but this month literally had a sudden change every week.

Boy, did my “Type A” personality get sent for a ride!

I won’t go into all the details of the chaos, but we had some drastic, unexpected changes in my husband’s work schedule. And I was suddenly applying and training for an online teaching job, which I’ll discuss in a later blog post. Praise God, I got the job!

Needless to say, a date night or two was canceled and my mother in law was called several times to babysit due to work conflicts. Thankfully, she’s been willing to help us out quite a bit lately. I’ve always appreciated having family close by, but especially with a child now, I really appreciate the extra help!

 

Moms Play Video Games?

Instead of going out on date nights, my husband and I did find some time to relax and play some video games together. It used to be something my husband and I did together regularly before having our son. But, I gave it up because I was completely exhausted by the time the end of the day rolled around. My new routine became watching a show on Netflix and falling asleep while my husband often played a game or two in the basement before heading to bed.

Since I took the time recently to get in a little game play again, I realized just how much I missed it, as well as what I was missing out on by not playing hardly ever in the past year.

I first realized that it was one of the activities my husband and I did together that we both enjoyed, and I hadn’t put in the effort to play at all (or at least not very much). I’m not saying we should be playing video games every night, but playing video games together has been an easy way for us to connect and spend time together. And I still want my husband and I to spend quality time together even after having our son.

It’s been a little crazy at times, especially this past month, but I always want our relationship to be a priority. We’re in this for a lifetime!

Video games have also been a big stress reliever for me; I find that I always end up laughing hysterically at some ridiculous thing I did while playing, and I like the competition that comes with game play.

Maybe this makes me somewhat of a nerd, or maybe someone will read this and be shocked that a mom plays video games. Gasp! But, there’s no age or gender limitations that come with playing. Who knows, maybe there are other moms out there like me playing too. And someday, I hope to be that grandma that’s still playing video games with her husband, kids, and grand-kids.

 

Random Computer Update

I have a new computer now, yippee! Believe it or not, all my other blog posts I wrote from a computer where the “period” button did not work.

How did I complete my sentences, you ask? Well, let’s just say I had to do a lot of copying and pasting. You can imagine how frustrating that would have been, but hey, I got used to it over several months, so now I’m getting used to using the “period” button again.

This new computer rocks! We ended up going with a Lenovo Yoga. I can’t say enough good things about it, so if you’re looking for a quality computer, I would highly suggest this one. Thanks to my friends and family on Facebook and elsewhere for your suggestions.

 

Beyond Cuteness- Crafty Halloween

So, if you know me very well, you will know that I NEVER do crafts at home. With Halloween on the horizon, I had the idea that I was going to make my son’s Halloween costume this year. I was convinced I could make a costume for much less than the $30 or $40 costumes at the store. He’s only 13 months old, so any costume he’d wear this year wouldn’t fit in the future.

Thankfully, I came across the Bombshell Bling blog where she had created two separate ghost costumes- one for her 4-month-old baby, and another for her 3-year-old son. The costume seemed super easy to do, especially for someone like me who doesn’t sew all the time.

This is how mine turned out on my son.

Super cute, right?

I found several YouTube videos that helped me learn how to create the hat from the same fleece fabric that I had used for the poncho ghost costume. I will link those here and here. I used a combination of both YouTube videos to create my hat. I ended up only using one layer of fleece material, but I did sew mine by hand.

You can find further directions below. I forgot to take pictures as I was creating the hat, and I normally don’t do crafts (like I said), so I apologize ahead of time if my directions aren’t very clear. Hopefully, the videos and the Bombshell bling blog will also help for anyone interested in creating a similar costume.

 

What You’ll Need:

• 1 yard of white fleece fabric (possibly more if your child is larger)
• 2- 8.5 x 11 sheets of black felt
• Fabric Glue
• Sewing Scissors

Ghost Poncho:

• First, I cut the white fleece fabric so that it hung down evenly over my son. I measured the fabric so that it hung down to his ankles on both his front and back side. The lengths of the fabric for his wingspan also went out to his wrists.
• I then folded the fabric in half on a table, and used a small glass to draw a half circle on the fabric where the head would go through, and cut around the half circle markings. I ended up having to do this twice on two different cut outs of fleece because my first cut-out was too large. Please be aware that the fleece stretches really easily, so the hole you cut doesn’t necessarily need to be as large as your child’s head size; I made mine slightly smaller and it stretched to fit over his head.
   
• I then kept the fleece fabric folded in half and cut the square edges so that they were rounded.
• I then used my sewing scissors to go around the edges of the fabric to cut strips of the fleece about one inch wide, and about two inches in length. I think I could have made my strips slightly thinner (you’ll see what I mean by this in the next step).
• Because I had wider strips of fabric, I chose to only tie every other strip all the way around the fabric. I knotted every other strip unto itself, so it wasn’t tied to any other strip. I noticed that if I attempted to tie every strip, it became too difficult, and the fabric would shrink up to be too short. Since my child is still crawling, this shrunk up the fleece fabric just enough above his knees, so that he can still crawl around while wearing the poncho. If he was walking, I may have measured the fabric slightly longer to do the strips.
• After the strips were all done, I cut out the face for my ghost after tracing a design on the black felt fabric. I then used the glue and placed the felt fabric face in the middle of the ghost poncho.

 

For the Hat:

I watched the YouTube videos listed above. Like I said before, I did end up sewing mine by hand, but the hat didn’t take more than 20 minutes to complete. It was very simple with the right head measurements.

• Measure your child’s head size.
• Cut the fleece material so that the stretchy side of the fleece is used for the width of the hat and not the length. This is very important so that the fabric will stretch width-wise when putting the hat on your child’s head rather than length-wise. I cut my fabric roughly 1-2 inches shorter than my child’s head measurement because I knew the fleece would stretch. I probably would do the exact measurement next time I make a hat since it does fit pretty snugly.
• For the length of the hat, I measured 12 inches, and cut. Once again, this will differ depending on your child’s head size. I kind of ball-parked the measurement based on how I knew the hat would turn out.
• Lay your fleece material width wise across the table and fold it in half. Make sure the inside half (the two fleece pieces that are touching one another), are the sides that you would like showing on the outside of the hat. Once you have done that, you will use your needle and thread or a sewing machine to sew the two pieces of fleece together- sew right along the edge of the two pieces connecting. SEW LEAVING 2 INCHES AT THE TOP PART OF HAT STILL OPEN.
• You will then flip your hat inside out. The side you just sewed together should be on the inside of the hat.
• Your hat should be length-wise now, and you should be able to fold the ends up twice at the base of the hat (the opposite end of the open flap where you didn’t sew).
• From the excess fabric that I cut off, I cut a long sliver of fabric to be used later for the top part of the hat.
• On the opposite end of the folded part of the hat, I took my scissors and began to cut strips at the open end of the hat where it wasn’t completely sewn all the way up. My strips were roughly a ¼ of an inch wide, and I made sure the ends of the hat were cut on the sides as well.
• From there, I took my excess fabric that I cut off in step 7, and tied it around the white fleece strips that I just cut in step 8. I made sure to poof out the hat a little bit, just below the strips, and I tied the excess fabric so that the knot was in the back of the hat. I then cut off the extra fabric left over from the knot so that it was no longer visible.

 

I’m really excited for my little guy to wear his outfit for Halloween, and the total cost was no more than $10 to complete!

 

I warned you this blog post would be random, but if you made it this far, I commend you for reading. Thanks for stopping by the Fish Full Life Blog, and don’t forget to subscribe!