Spidey PJ Pants

We have a serious, serious love of superheros around here. W was just barely three when (in August) he declared from the backseat, "For Halloween, I want to be Spiderman. With muscles. (That's him there, in the requested costume which he wore CONSTANTLY until it fell apart. Then he got another one the following year. Which he wore until IT fell apart.)

Now nearing his sixth birthday, his love for Spidey has not waned. He loves other superheros as well, but his heart belongs to Spiderman. To that end, I have collected all things Spiderman for years - and I buy gobs of Spiderman fabric when I find it in sale, or when I find a version of Spiderman fabric we haven't seen. Enter the 5 yards of this Spiderman-themed fabric I bought at the Quilt Show two years ago. I was going to back a quilt with it, but never got around to it.

At the moment, W's growing out of his long pants at an astounding rate, and thus we've got a serious shortage of pajama pants - so I got this fabric out of my stash (like in February) months ago to whip up some jammie's for him.

Well, I finally got around to some "whipping" last weekend - and here is the result:

 I will post more on the process of making the pants later. Here is a link to the kids pj pants tutorial from My Cotton Creations.

CGM Picks: Gifts for Kids

As as mom, and co-owner of a small (by modern, American standards) home, I've shyed away (read: refused to own) a play house that lived in our real (small) house.

This tablecloth play house is ingenious. If my son weren't already 4' tall (and if our dining room wasn't in storage for reasons to be discussed later), I might buy this.

I always liked "toys" that encouraged imaginative play - this looks like a great option. My only complaint is that it doesn't come in more traditional boy-ish colors. My almost-six-year old refuses to use pink as it's a "girl color". Whatever.

Other picks from the Gilt Groupe kids sale today:

 The doorway puppet theater and the portable beanbag hopscotch - adorable. Again, the former encouraging imaginative play and the latter an oldie but goodie - I loved hopscotch as a kid. Maybe, I still do ... should look into that.

Note: Clicking the links or images will take you to Gilt where you must request an account or sign-in. It's easy - everyone can do it!

Disclosure: I am a member of Gilt Groupe and shop / buy from them regularly. They offer all members the opportunity to participate in their referral program, from which I may receive up to $25 compensation if you join & purchase from Gilt via CGM.

Homemade Kitchen Cleaner

I am never buying kitchen cleaner again. I had recently converted to Caldrea cleaners, because (a) I'd found a ton of them at a local TJ Maxx for el cheapo, and (b) they were the yummiest smelling, eco-friendly-ish cleaners I had found for less than $9.99/bottle at William-Sonoma, oh, and (c) the bottles/lables were pretty cute, and I'm a packaging whore, and that matters to me.

But - I had also recently stocked up on all the necessary ingredients for making pretty much any home cleaner that I would want to make - I have all the requisite essential oils, glycerine, vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, borax, etc. So, when I started to run out of my last bottle of Caldrea Plum Nutmeg (which was the least yummy smelling of the bunch) I made some of my own.

First, I started with this book The Naturally Clean Home: 150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning by Karyn Siegel-Maier.

In it is an ultra easy recipe for an all-purpose kitchen cleaner/degreaser she call's Lemon Blast Cleaner, which calls for:

• white vinegar


• borax


• lemon juice


• eucalyptus, lemon, lime or orange (I used eucalyptus) oil


• liquid Castile soap

Cirrus seed extract (I use grapefruit seed)

Now, I'm not going to give you the exact recipe - becuase it's not mine. It's from the book - but if you buy the book, or get it from your local library, you'll need the above items on hand. I found that this receipe worked fine, but smelled nasty. I thought it would smelly like lemon and eucalypus - but it was like sour vinegar.

So, I added two full droppers of Lavender essential oil, at approximately 10 drops per dropper, and another full dropper of eucalyptus oil. And, the result of THAT is the best smelling cleaner I have ever had the pleasure to clean with. AND, it SERIOUSLY cleans the counters. It cuts grease and food and everything else from the stove to the counters. I use it on our granite countertops and they absolutely don't have a streak on them.

Love. It. LOVE. IT.

Boxing Day Baking

My son won't eat vegetables. I mean, he'll eat baby carrots or the occasional broccoli floret under duress (or promise of ice cream). But, generally speaking we can't make the kid eat veggies. And, yes - he will sit at the table all night, forgo all sorts of dinner and treats in lieu of eating the smallest bite of asparagus. Seriously.

But, he loved my brother-in-law's zucchini bread, so we JUMPED on the chance to make more - considering that he didn't realize that he was in fact, consuming a vegetable (squash is a vegetable, right) disguised in bread.

Yes - I am counting zucchini bread as vegetable consumption at this point. It was an easy recipe for zucchini bread which I found at the Food Network. It's a Paula Dean recipe, and is NOT low fat ... but is also not particularly unhealthy, either. Now that we've made it once, I will play with adding zucchini and nuts to up the nutritional value, mix white with whole wheat flour (instead of using all white as the recipe calls for) and may add baby turkey to it - oh yeah, I just said that. It sounds nasty, but put it in pancakes. You'll be surprised - moist and delicious, and you can't taste the turkey (really) at all (much).

Take: 2

I want to just go back and delete the post from August 24th, where I lay down a 365-day challenge to myself. Because if it were never written then I would be sitting here on October 1st feeling like a failure for having totally blown my own challenge (which I was totally serious about, btw) on day 2. Yeah ... that's a "2". As in, #2. As in, the number which follows #1.

I'm beating myself up for weakness. Apathy. Failure to take care of myself. I find that this beating myself up crap is effective at exactly one thing - nothing.

So, let's just try this again. Not 365 days, but one day. One minute. One foot in front of the other. Right now, time to do something wonderful. So, right now - what am I going to do?

It's getting late, 8:51 pm MT (I'm in Denver) I have a terrible sinus infection and after many (MANY) homeopathic remedies TOTALLY FAILING I gave into the siren's call from the NyQuil and am hoping to pass out into sweet unconsciousness REALLY. REALLY. SOON.

But, before that happens - a few goals for the next 24 hours ...

Health & Wellness

(1) Drink 64+ oz of water (probably more since Denver is turning me into a raisin)

(2) Track. Track. Track. (That's Weight Watcher's speak for "write down all your food and activity and try to stay within your daily points (read: caloric) allowance".)

Memory Making

(1) On Tuesday, start a "Hands to Remember" folio. Granted, Wyatt's first day of Kinder is a month + behind us. But, I really like this idea.

(1a) Post pix and blog about this project since all I seem to do anymore is think about craftiness and never actually get crafty.