Real life Rosie Revere Engineer and Ada Twist Scientist

One of Mabel’s best friends is Meme. Meme lives around the corner from us, the girls are only four months apart in age, I work with her mom (we are both #scimoms), and our families are friends.

Last year for the first day of school I surprised both girls with a copy of Ada Twist Scientist by Andrea Beatty and David Roberts. Both girls already had Rosie Revere Engineer and loved it, so the sequel was a good choice.

And it just so happens that Mabel looks a lot like Rosie and Meme looks a lot like Ada.

Source: https://www.andreabeaty.com/download-citizen-poster.html

So, it seemed logical to dress them up as Rosie and Ada!

I posted about making the no-sew Rosie Revere costume here.

Ada is wearing an old Tea Collection dress and her mom did her hair.

The pictures were awesome and the girls had fun dressing up.

(I tried really hard to get Nemo to dress up as Iggy, but even bribery would not entice him to participate!)

Afterwards, the girls went out to play and the moms chatted over coffee and laughed. Fun was had by all (even Nemo).

DIY Rosie Revere Engineer Costume

If your kids are like mine, they love the series of books by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts- Rosie Revere Engineer, Iggy Peck Architect, and Ada Twist Scientist.

In advance of the March for Science the author and illustrator put out a series of posters for kids to carry when they marched. My kids wanted to carry the signs and Mabel really wanted to dress up like Rosie Revere.

Given that I’m not particularly crafty (i.e. no sewing), I set about finding an easy way to make her a dress.

I think it turned out quite well!

Mabel at the March for Science, NYC

I looked around online and found this inexpensive white t-shirt dress from Amazon.

T-shirt dress

Then I ran to the local craft store and picked up a wide black ribbon and narrow red ribbon for the bottom hem, and narrow black ribbon for the collar and sleeve. I also picked up no-sew hemming tape like this to attach it all.

Other stuff you need- scissors, baby wipes (to clean the sticky stuff from the hemming tape that gums up the scissors).

I lined the red ribbon with the hemming tape, it was a hassle because the hemming tape was wider than the ribbon, so I had to trim it and it kept gumming up the scissors. So, I’d periodically have to clean the scissors.

Once I’d lined three pieces of ribbon with the hemming tape, I placed them on the wide black ribbon. The end result looked the hem of Rosie’s dress.

Once that was assembled, I attached it to the dress. And, because I’m lazy, I only did the front of the dress, I didn’t go all the way around the back.

I then lined the narrow black ribbon with hemming tape and affixed it to the collar and the sleeves. This time I went all the way around.

A scrap of red fabric with white polkadots completed the look!

Mabel at the March for Science, NYC

So if anyone needs an easy, no-sew, Rosie Revere Engineer costume, hope this helps!

DIY Prego tomato sauce

I am a fan of Prego (“It’s in there”) spaghetti sauce.  However, it is loaded with salt and sugar and whatever else, so I don’t have it often.

However, I make tomato sauce pretty regularly and try to replicated Prego’s sweetness.  Problem- I never follow a recipe, so when it comes out really well, I can never replicate it. (Bad scientist!  Bad!)

The other night I made spaghetti and meatballs.  The meatballs were premade, but I made the sauce- and I wrote down the recipe right away, because it came out well!

This is my rendition of Prego spaghetti sauce.

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Homemade/DIY Prego Spaghetti Sauce

Actually picture of left-over sauce on tortellini from a few night later.

Ingredients:

1Tbsp Olive Oil

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves minced garlic (or as much as you want- I like it garlicky)

1 24oz can pureed tomatoes

1 24oz can diced tomatoes (with the liquid)

1 cube chicken bouillon (you can substitute vegetable)

2 bay leaves

1tsp marjoram

1tsp oregano

1/2tsp rosemary

1/2tsp thyme

1/2 tsp paprika

1Tbsp sugar

Instructions:

Heat oil in pan/pot.  Cook diced onion and minced garlic until soft and starting to brown.

Lower heat and add the rest of the ingredients, except sugar (hint:  break up the bouillon cube when you add it).

Cook on medium to low heat for as long as you like (I think I did only about 30min, while the pasta was cooking).

Before serving, add sugar and stir to incorporate.

Serve over whatever pasta you like.

Notes:  Prego from a jar isn’t chunky; however, I like chunky sauce, hence all the onion and the diced tomatoes.  If Mac wasn’t so pepper-averse, this would also have half of a green pepper diced up and fried with the onion (I miss peppers).  Chicken bouillon has plenty of salt for the entire recipe, I don’t add any additional.  You can substitute vegetable bouillon, which has less sodium.  The bouillon really helps to make the sauce savory without diluting it.  When you add the cube, break it up so it dissolves easily.

You can add whatever you like to this sauce- I sneaked in some mashed butternut squash- other ideas would be chop meat/ground turkey/ground chicken, mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, peppers, etc.

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Super simple.  Yummy, a little sweet, plenty savory, and with a miniscule fraction of the sodium and sugar in real Prego.

My DIY (never have to make it again) Advent Calendar

So I did a crafty project and I’m going to share it here.

The Instagram picture I shared with the caption, “Finished! Finally! Massive undertaking. A DIY Advent calendar of sorts. 25 tiny wrapped gift boxes full of treats.”

I made a little Advent Calendar of sorts for counting down the days until Christmas.  I had wanted one last year, but couldn’t find one I liked that I could afford.  Etsy has many gorgeous items- all kinds of ways to mark the days of Advent from envelopes to buntings, to little wooden shelves with drawers.  However, the ones I liked most were way out of my price range.  It goes without saying that they were also out of skill range!

So, I thought, why not just make something myself?  I’m not really sure how I came up with this idea, but I decided upon wrapping little gift boxes (the type jewelry comes in) with paper and putting goodies and trinkets inside, then putting them in a large vase.  Mabel (and Nemo next year) can open one box per night, leading up to Christmas.

So, here’s how I did it.  I actually had about 16 gift boxes in my house.  This is probably because my husband is really good in the jewelry buying department.  I then hit my mother and sister up for the remaining 9 boxes I needed.  If you’re doing the math, that’s 25 boxes, instead of the traditional 24- I’ll get to why later.

Even before I had all the boxes, I started wrapping.  It took HOURS and HOURS to wrap all those little boxes.  Especially because I wrapped the lids and the bottoms separately and towards the end I was kind of scrounging for boxes and wound up struggling to wrap one heart-shaped box and one round box.  If I’m going to wrap 25 tiny boxes, I’m only doing it ONCE.  This way, I can tie the boxes with string each year and never have to wrap again.  I used scrapbook paper I had on hand from making the bunting for Nemo’s Christening.  I chose mostly greens, blues, and browns.  It works for Christmas, without being ‘too Christmas-y’ I think.  You can see the before and after below.

I also had a tag-punch for making gift tags.  Since some of the contents would be date specific (details below), I needed a way to label them.  I purchased this assortment of stamps from Amazon because 1-25 would vary in width and I wanted to make sure they would fit on the tags.  (Note:  I’m super cheap and wasn’t willing to buy the acrylic block.  I was going to just use them without it, but realized that I had a lame paperweight my company gave out that was acrylic, so I just used that and it worked perfectly.  I have to say, having the block be see-through really helped with placing the numbers in the center, not going off the edge, etc.)  I used a gold stamp pad I already had (from making the Save The Dates way back when Mac and I were engaged).  You can see the 25 tags below.

So, once I had the boxes wrapped and the tags punched and stamped, it was time to fill the boxes.  I had been brainstorming ideas on what to include for a few weeks- keeping my eyes peeled when I was out shopping.  A lot of Advent Calendars just contain candies, so I picked up a bag of soft candy cane mints at the grocery store.  I chose this kind because Mabel is still too young for hard candy and I didn’t want the mess of actual candy canes!  (Also, these are my sister’s favorite, so she’s getting the leftovers!)  I also put in some Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses (these things are AWESOME- like peppermint bark!).

So I had candy, but I wanted to mix it up.  I also didn’t want to forget what we are actually celebrating during Advent and Christmas.  So, I included some of the figurines from Mabel’s kids Nativity.  Last year, my mom got her this Little People Nativity I had put on her Christmas list.  It’s great because she loves to play with it and makes no attempts to touch my porcelain nativity!  So, I put the 3 wise men in one of the larger boxes.  I then put Mary and Joseph in separate boxes.  Those boxes will be opened early on so that Mabel (and Nemo) can play with them.  Then, in keeping with the reason for Christmas, I put the baby Jesus in his own box- box 25.  Mabel can open that box Christmas morning and put Jesus in the nativity scene (assuming we bring it with us to North Carolina, where we will be spending Christmas with my in laws).

In addition to the figures, I picked up a few other goodies.  A ring pop, a push pop, a hair bow, a My Little Pony toothbrush with toothpaste (makes up for some of the candy!), and ‘Reindeer Food’ (see the picture above, it’s in box 24 so we can sprinkle it out on Christmas Eve).  I also picked up a few new Christmas books- Llama Llama Holiday Drama and This is the Stable through Mabel’s preschool Scholastic book club.  Since the books themselves wouldn’t fit, I cut out pictures of them from the book flier, clued them to tags, and put them in boxes.

I have lots of other ideas for future years.  My friend Stefanie posted about this great idea of a book only Advent Calendar of sorts.  As we accumulate more books (we already have a dozen or so) this could be a nice way to do it one year.  The reason I didn’t dole out our books that way this year was because I didn’t want to have to wait to read some of them!  Also, it’s A LOT of wrapping paper to use every year.  If I did, I’d write the names of the books and put them inside the boxes.

Other possibilities include hot chocolate packets, Christmas ornaments, small crafts, holiday movies, holiday CDs, holiday jewelry (earring, pins, etc.), cookies.  Really, if you were to print out pictures (or write out something for older kids) you could have any gift or activity in a little box (i.e. tree lighting, caroling, craft, baking, etc).

One thing that I think will be nice with this idea for Advent is that it will grow with the kids.  As they get older, I can change what I include in the boxes.

So, back to the DIY-ing.  I had all the wrapped boxes, the tags, the goodies.  I fit everything into boxes as best I could and tied them all with Baker’s twine.  I ordered this Baker’s twine from Amazon.  There is A LOT- I’m set for life in the Baker’s twine department, but it was much more reasonable than ribbon or Baker’s twine from the local craft store.  Also, I can have it on had for other uses.  I tied the string around the boxes, made a bow, then put the tag on and made another bow- that kept the tag in place.

Once everything was tied up, I filled the vase- starting with the 25, so it would be at the bottom.  The vase wasn’t big enough (if I had purchased boxes, or been more picky, I would have chosen small ones and they all would have fit in, but I’m cheap and not that picky!) so I arranged the earliest boxes around the vase.  I think it looks nice!

I finished this project on Sunday (I had time to work on it over the Thanksgiving holiday) and so far, Mabel hasn’t seemed to notice it, inquire about it, or try to open anything.  I think she got used to seeing the boxes on our dining room table as I was working on wrapping them- and every time she opened one, it was empty.  I told her that they would be filled and have treats for her, but at almost-3, I’m not sure how much she grasped about what was happening.  This is really the first Christmas where she’s more of a little kid than a baby, but not entirely.

So, that’s my DIY, reusable, Advent calendar.  I like how it came out, and I’m glad I never have to make it again!  Next year I can just fill it!  It will be especially easy if I manage to put the twine and tag in the box after Mabel opens it. Then next year I won’t even have to worry about new twine or tags.  However, with a preschooler, that may not be possible!

Any other cool ideas for marking the days of Advent?