So Busy, Better Back Track

These past few weeks have been super busy.  I went out of town for about a week to see family and have a girls weekend.  Isaac has been getting pickier about what he eats and has been testing his limits even more.   He still won't use a spoon to feed himself and has decided he doesn't like chunks of chicken...the little turkey.  Hopefully we'll be able to change that attitude soon, before all the travel starts.

I was looking through projects I have done, some pre-blog, and realized I should back up and go over some of those.  I don't have tons of pictures for them since it was pre-blog and I wasn't thinking about the possibility of needing any pictures.  Today we'll look at the "butterfly feet" project.  We did this one last year for our mom's on Mother's Day.  I thought sharing it might help inspire me to figure out what we should do this year.


This was the inspiration behind the idea. I found it on Pinterest and thought it would be a good idea to do while Isaac was still little.

Now, for this project I went and bought 2 canvas squares and Crayola Finger paint.  I thought that would be the easiest to clean off our 4 month old. I had Eli start, we did one foot at a time and did both pieces at the same time.  I let him choose his colors, then we chose Isaac's, and I chose mine accordingly.  Since we had the top and bottom different colors, I painted it on his foot.  A few tips, paint everywhere, even if you have high arches.  Try not to paint the entire toe is you want there to be differentiation between the foot and the toes (so that it actually looks like a foot).

Eli doing his feet. The paint doesn't really drip, but be sure to put down a drop cloth in case you accidentally step or lose your balance.  Then you won't be mad at yourself for getting paint on the carpet.

Isaac got to hang out in the laundry basket.  I put a blanket in so he was more comfortable and propped him up in the corner.  We did the project just before bath time and put him in a sleeper sack.  It was the easiest way to disrobe him when it was his turn, and we only had to rinse his feet before his bath.

I did my feet before we did Isaac's to make sure that mine would fit.  His were little and could go anywhere.  We got a little too much paint on his toes, oops.  It does take two because he wanted to pull his feet up so it took one of us to hold him, and the other to help him make a foot print.

 

You can see it after we all had our turn.  We decided there wasn't enough room between our feet, so we put Isaac's in the middle above.  Below is a closer picture.  In case you didn't notice, Isaac's colors are those created by mixing Eli's and mine.  I choose green on top to make Isaac's a darker green when mixed with blue because Eli and I didn't want to have the same color and we didn't want one of Isaac's to be purple.

I took a sharpie and drew in the bodies.  The size and shape were determined by the amount of space between our feet and the way out feet were shaped.  After I wrote "Happy Mother's Day 2012" and signed it. Sorry, didn't get a picture of that.  This project was easy enough, but I just don't have any ideas for this year.  Isaac is old enough to resist to make these projects more difficult, but not quite old enough to understand directions to participate.  I might think of doing a paint project with him if it was warm enough outside, but we got snow this morning so that probably won't work.

 

I'd gladly listen to suggestions and feel free to use this idea! Next week (with luck) will be another back up project before I get too busy.  Once travel hits, posts will be scarce but I should have some great pictures to share after at least a few weddings!

Stretching Shoes Part 2

So, I said I was going to post about an alternate way of stretching out those tall, cute shoes.  Well, I had planned on doing that last week and guess what?! I was busy getting ready for Easter and Eli and I got the flu...at different times.  Isaac hasn't gotten it yet, so I'm hoping he doesn't catch it.  It only lasted a few days for Eli, and about 4 for me.  Isaac is the only one of us that got a flu shot, hopefully that will be a good thing.
Anyways, this way of stretching really is better if you only need to stretch it out a little.  I used it after I had let my shoes sit for a few days and they shrunk a bit.  It is handy because if something does happen, you can do it again.  You will need a pair of socks, your shoes, and a hair dryer.  I used regular socks because I didn't need to stretch them too much, but thicker socks can be used.

You will wear your socks and use the blow dryer to heat the area that needs to be stretched out.

 

Below I point out the area that I concentrated on (and Isaac helps :)).  I mainly needed to work on the toe area, so that is where I concentrated.  I know from experience that the heels tend to stretch out more and fairly easily on there own, so I didn't want to focus on them too much.  You will heat them until the fabric is pretty warm, in order to help loosen the fibers.

 



 

You will want to wear them around with the socks on until the fabric has cooled down.  I sat for a portion of the time since I was playing with Isaac, but I just made sure to wiggle my toes every once in a while.  The fibers will be loosened slightly from the heat and the socks will help stretch them with a little extra room.  Don't they look gorgeous with socks?

 

 

You can see that the top part of the shoe ended up being a little too loose.  It hadn't been too much of an issue but it was also too close to the area I was concentrating on to avoid heating it.  Since this area was too loose, it allowed my foot to slide down in the shoe slightly.  This, of course, then caused my heel to be loose.  

I added an insole that only fits under the ball of my foot.  In my experience this works better than the full foot insole because it fits in the shoe better.  The full shoe insoles I have had in the past, haven't fit in the shoe where they should have nor where I needed them.

 

You can see the insole I used, and the approximate placement.  Since it is clear, I know it is difficult to see where exactly it is.  These I have used before, so the sticky backs weren't sticky any longer.  I plan on just using a little bit of double stick tape to solve that problem.

You can see that once I added the insole, my shoes were no longer loose.  My feet do get hot walking around in these shoes, thus slipping and causing issues.  I plan on just using baby powder to combat that.  Every once in a while it feels as though my heel slips a bit, I'll test to see if just using the baby powder to keep my feet dry and slip free will work.  If this doesn't work, I will test another theory.

 

Theory: If a heel is loose, wrapping a rubber band around it to pull it closer together and using the

hair dryer to heat it.  I'm thinking that since the heat loosens the fibers to be stretched out, it should loosen the fibers and the rubber band should pull them in tighter.  If you have any loose heels and test this theory, let me know how it goes.

 

Well, that is all for now...I'm hoping to post about our trip to Helena, and a one of my long over-due topics next week.  Starting in May, we'll be pretty busy so posts will get scattered.