Semana Santa- Staying Busy!!

So, last week was Easter week.  Yes, here it's a week.  On Thursday, most kids here had off from school.  Not Eric, though.  After getting trapped inside with Eric on Wednesday afternoon because of the rain, I once again remembered why it is a good idea for me to let Eric play at the Escoleta and for me to have a little break.

During my little breaks, I've been getting a lot done.  Sometimes, though, it's not what I should be doing.  For example, today I had a lot of gardening to finish up because I'm putting in new drip irrigation tubes, and have some vegetables ready to plant, but instead started to make Eric new t-shirts.  Once I started to make Eric new clothes, I couldn't stop.  I made him a pair of shorts and a t-shirt with his name on it out of the camoflauge tank top I found the other day.
Then, I got something in the mail that I was waiting for: freezer paper.  A while back, I mistakenly asked my mom to bring me waxed paper here because I had read that by ironing it to cloth, you can run the cloth through the printer to print on it.  To make it colorfast, though, you needed to treat the fabric with a special product (one of which was/is called Bubble Jet Set).  I don't know if it still exists, because I couldn't find it in the craft stores when we were in the US, but I have since found homemade versions online.  (Once I get some alum in the mail, I'll be trying it out myself.  Meanwhile, though, don't worry, there are plenty of fun things to do with was paper too.) ;)

Some shirts/shorts that mommy has made for Eric so far

So, no, I didn't want wax paper, but instead needed freezer paper.  Ironically, it seems most people don't use it for their foods or their freezers anymore, and they supposedly sell it often in places like quilting stores.  Why?  Even the package tells you how you can use the freezer paper to help make appliqués for quilts.  Add to that the fact that, as I said before, you can use it to run a sheet of cloth through your printer, and you can make memory quilts with photographs.  So, freezer paper is great stuff.  (Yes, feel free to bring me more anybody who decides to come visit me!! Hint, hint.)

So, the fact that you can iron it onto fabric, and remove it without leaving any sort of residue makes it very useful for numerous projects.  One just happens to be freezer paper stencils.  The project involves cutting a design out of the freezer paper with an x-acto knife or box cutter, ironing it onto fabric, and then painting the cut out area with fabric paint.  Once you remove the stencil, your design remains as if it were silkscreened onto the fabric.

I got lucky, and when we were looking for things that we could use to make an Easter bunny outfit for the Escoleta, we found some old fabric paint there that they don't really use.  So, Maite lent me the paints to try out, and that very afternoon I received my package of freezer paper in the mail. (Must be a sign) So, I immediately had to try it out, and made Eric a couple of stenciled t-shirts that very day.  Between Pinterest and Google, I got some cute ideas for some t-shirts for Eric.  I wanted things that were a bit different (so no Spongebob for now), but that could be cute for a little boy.

For my first tries I ended up making him a Captain America t-shirt (from an idea seen on Pinterest) and a Blinky t-shirt which shows the pixelated eyes of the red Pac Man ghost on a red t-shirt (idea found on a Google search for t-shirts).  I thought both would be easy for a beginner.  In retrospect, though, I should have probably started with a one-color design.

I chose the Captain America design for several reasons.  First, it's a way for me to show that Eric is also an American in a very subtle way.  Second, the movie is coming out now, so it should be easily recognized and in style to a certain extent.  Above all, though, I decided on the design as a bit of a joke to Mauri because some people around here have been known to call Mauri "Capitán America," which he says is, of course, my fault.

Ironically, although I made it to pick on Mauri to a certain extent, he has decided that he wants me to make another one for him, so that he and Eric can wear matching shirts.  (Oh, and he used to mock the match-y match-y families).

For those who want to try freezer stenciling for themselves, I don't plan on making a tutorial since mine isn't a crafting/tutorial blog, and there are many, many blogs already explaining the whole process.  From my pictures, though, I think it is pretty self explanatory.  I will, though, share with you some problems that I had so that you can try to avoid the very same problems when/if you try it out yourselves.

First, I tried cutting out a printout of the designs with the printed out pattern on top of the freezer paper.  Cutting out both papers at the same time, though, was much more difficult than cutting out just the thin layer of freezer paper.  So, when I painted, you could see little areas where I had gone just a tiny bit too far with the box cutter, for example, because I had needed to use more force cutting.  Another problem I had was getting everything to line up to get the various colors down.  I had read that it is better to have only one color in each place rather than to paint a black eye on top of the face color, for example.  So, for blinky's eyes, I painted the white parts first, leaving a space for the blue of his eyes which I painted afterwards.

The problem with that was that it seems that both the freezer paper and the fabric paint tend to shrink a little bit.  So, if you want things to line up perfectly, it gets complicated.  With my next trial shirts, I found that it was much easier to iron some freezer paper onto a sheet of normal printer paper and print directly onto the paper side of the freezer paper.  Then, carefully peel that paper off and only cut out the design on the freezer paper.  Having already ironed the paper, it already shrinks down minimally, so some of the shrink factor is removed.  I hope that makes sense.  I had a much easier time painting Bert's (as in Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street) face and the Beatles on t-shirts using that method.

BTW- I made this t-shirt out of t-shirt fabric scraps.  :)

I did notice, though, that the fabric paint itself does cause a bit of shrinking.  I don't know if it was because of the fabric paint that I am using (which seems to be a bit old, so I hope that it does set well and doesn't wash away right away) or if it was because I tried to speed up the process a little by drying the layers under the hair dryer for a few minutes.  Fabric paint is supposed to be heat set to make it permanent, so it is possible that the heat from the dryer begins to set the paint faster which may make it shrink.  Maybe it would have anyway.  All I know is that when I peeled off the stencil for Eric's Beatles Help shirt, and the edges peeled off a little with the stencil, it was impossible to put the stencil back down to try to fix up the edges using the same stencil.  The painted area didn't line up anymore and was obviously smaller than the stencil.  Oh well, I think I'll be able to fix it up by hand.
What else is new around here?

We celebrated Eric's cousin Noa's fifth birthday.  I ended up making her a strawberry cake since I knew she likes strawberry ice cream and isn't a big fan of chocolate.  Plus, it made it a pink cake, which I figured she would love.  She had hinted that she wanted me to make her a Hello Kitty cake, so I did.  Once made, though, she didn't seem very excited about it.  She barely even glanced at the cake, and refused to try the strawberry cake that I made just for her.  So, I'm not sure how quickly I'll run to make her another cake.  Luckily other people seemed to like it, so it did get eaten.

Noa actually had two birthday parties.  The first one was at a small bar here in Denia that has a play area for kids with a small trampoline and a ball pool.  The only problem was that the play area was supposed to be for kids aged 4-11, and Eric couldn't bear to see all of the other kids playing when he wasn't allowed in.  Mauri hadn't arrived yet because the first party was for the school kids, and was thrown right after school was out at 5:30 PM, and Mauri had to work.  So, I decided to take Eric from the party and bring him to a nearby park to wait for Mauri to arrive.

Once Mauri arrived, he said it was dumb for me to keep Eric out of the play area, so he took Eric's shoes off and let him go in with the rest of the kids.  Surprisingly, Eric defended himself pretty well even on the trampoline part.  I was a bit worried, though, about the other kids jumping on him.  Luckily nothing serious happened.  The problem with the play area is that it is all closed off from parents, so if something does go wrong, it's hard to get to your kids to get them out.  When it was time for the kids to eat their sandwiches, Eric came running out of the play area with the other kids and actually sat down with the rest of them and started munching away at a nocilla sandwich.

After the "sandwiches," though, the kids started to play again, and the second time it was almost impossible to get Eric to come back out when the other kids came out to eat Noa's first Hello Kitty cake.  (Yes, she had already had one Hello Kitty cake when I made mine.)

Mauri had to coax Eric near the entrance, and sneak into the first part of the play area and drag Eric out.
Eric ate some cake, and we decided that enough was enough, and left the party for home.

Well, at least Eric liked mommy's strawberry cake!

The next day Noa had a party for the kids in the neighborhood where Mauri and Jose's parents live.  They had invited more family, and that is where I brought my cake.  It was a last minute decision, as I had originally been told not to make it, and then was told that maybe there wasn't enough food for the party, so I threw together the last minute strawberry Hello kitty cake.

Eric played with Noa and more distant cousin, Martin, and the other neighborhood kids.  Having received a bike for her birthday (half from her dad and half from Mauri and I), Eric inherited her old bike, a wonderfully pink princesses bike. Don't get me wrong, I don't have a big problem with gender role stereotyping.  I mean really, if you recall, I did make him a kitchen; but something about seeing my little boy playing with a sparkly pink Disney princesses bike just didn't set well with me.  So, I have taken over "Mauri's" garage again, and have the bike in pieces all over, ready to be sanded and repainted.  We'll have to see how that goes.

So, we come to Easter week.  On Thursday, the kids were to bring monas to the Escoleta to eat for their mid-morning snack.  At one point it was determined that I was going to be the Easter Bunny who would go hand out chocolate to the kids.  Somehow, luckily, I got out of it, and got away with only helping out making the costume. :)

Oh, baby Sheena was so cute... 8 years ago already!!!

I asked if anybody had a white hoodie sweatshirt, and it turned out that Maite had a new white Gap hoodie.  So, I cut out a pink belly from some of my t-shirt scraps, and we pinned it over the Gap logo.  I had made a foam Easter egg to cover up a different logo in case we needed to use one of Mauri's white t-shirts, so the bunny also wore that.  Then, I pinned a furry pom pom that had fallen from one of my scarves for the bunny tail, and we used the bunny ears that were from a dog costume that Sheena has worn several times in the past.

Eric loves the Easter Bunny!

It all worked out pretty well, and the Easter bunny looked good.  You can see how much Eric loved the Easter bunny.  (OK, in her defense, it was because Eric knew that I was about to leave him there, so he wasn't very happy).

He didn't want to eat his chocolate, but he has liked eating monas and pan quemados.

So, it seemed like things were going to go well when we decided to meet up with some of the cousins at the beach to eat another mona.  Unfortunately, Eric had a different idea about the beach.  For as much as he loves to be barefoot, he didn't want his feet anywhere near the sand, and was screaming at the top of his lungs for about the first 2 hours of being there, at least any time he got anywhere near the sand.

Eating his mona on the beach after finally calming down a bit

Towards the end, when we were getting ready to leave, the "tough guy" who had previously been screaming when nearing the sand, started to calm down a little and even ran a little bit on the sand with his shoes on.  So, I guess we're going to have to bring him there more often to get him used to it all.