I made a camper fridgie

More spookies in the house! A few years ago I got this brainstorm on how to display some of the crocheted doilies that have ended up in my linen collection from various dearly departed relatives. I dyed them black, starched them stiff, and hung them in my windows with suction cups and little plastic spiders. This way I get to enjoy the beauty of the fancywork done by the women who came before me, but I don't actually have to use white doilies on my dresser. Dorothy has enjoyed arranging (and rearranging) the spiders.

Think back twenty or thirty years and imagine your grandmother's refrigerator.  It has a little crocheted yarn shape of some sort attached to it with a magnet, doesn't it?  Fridgies are a bit of an art that time has forgotten (and maybe that's for the best), but I revived it for this little project as one of the details to finish of my camper's interior.  My camper doesn't have an actual fridge, but I've attached this one to the galvanized metal backsplash I glued up over the propane range.  Very appropriately campy, I think.

All four sides of the camper are now painted and it's mostly ready to go.  I hooked up the water as a test, and it works.  The propane range does not work but I'm hoping it's just because the tank is empty.  I've been stashing bedding and kitchen essentials in it (a camper quilt is forthcoming but not done), and today I completed the very important task of putting together a camper art bag, with supplies for sketching or painting scenes, rubbing bark, collecting leaves, and gluing googly eyes and fake hair to acorns.  I foresee many hours of mother/daughter fun at picnic tables, stringing nature finds on fishing wire and creating little woodland whimsies with the help of glitter pom-poms!  I also found an old notebook, filled it with lined paper, and tucked a pen inside.  I hope to keep a camper journal with as much or little as we care to log, as a record of our travels.

Skeletons in my...china cabinet

 It's that time of year.

 The spookies are coming out, hiding in nooks and crannies.

Dorothy and I are equally thrilled.  These picture are all scenes inside my china cabinet, where we just put out tin Halloween plates, shiny leaf dishes, and (naturally) poseable skeletons.

Brrrrrr!

 I love fall!  The first chilly days are such a rush, I have no idea why.  I really dislike cold weather (like January/February) but the preview days in fall are just gorgeous.  It was fun to bundle my family up in new crocheted things this morning.  Dorothy and Worth are wearing wool pumpkin hats and I'm in a sweater I made last year but was too pregnant to squeeze into.  It's a terrifically soft alpaca that I scored for cheap at, of all places, Tuesday Morning, then ran out of and had to pay out the @ss on the Internet for more.  Oops!  But I love the sweater.  It is based on a pattern (the Cupcake, from the Happy Hooker book) intended as a fitted, cotton spring thing, but I used a larger hook and improvised a bit to make a warmer tunic to layer with.  I hate being hot in sweaters, but this one has some breathability.

And a new hat for me, finished just today.  I used yarn that Rob bought me for our anniversary and a free pattern from Ravelry, the Bonita Hat.  I love the colors he picked out and I'm trying to pretend it doesn't itch.  I may give it a rinse in some Eucalan next time I'm washing woolen kid stuff and see if that helps.

Worth looks totally adorable in the hats I made for him last year while I was pregnant, but I'm afraid I'm having a little trouble squeezing them onto his sweet enormous noggin.  I remember looking up in a book the "average" head size of a nine-month-old when planning this winter's hats (he'll be 9 months in December), but unfortunately these are tight.  But for now I can still squeeze them on, and I love this stocking one in particular, which was worked on no particular pattern and with the goal of using up some scrap yarn.  Cutie boy!

All your camper are belong to us

Three sides are painted! The camper is looking so adorable in cherry red that I'm getting nervous about my planned embellishment.  I guess once I'm to that point I'll just take a deep breath and do it, knowing I can always paint over it if it looks sillly.

photo courtesy of icesk8r on Etsy.com

How cute are these earrings?  I wish I'd made them, but I didn't.  I found them on Etsy, and I'm going to have to forward this post to my husband so he'll get them for me for Christmas.  Or mabye this?  Who said I wanted a hitch instead of jewelry?  I want camper jewerly!  :)

And chocolate cupcakes!  The legend goes like this:  circa 1980 a four-year-old big sister was jealous of a new brother's myriad baby milestones, whereas she only had a birthday once a year.  The girl's wise mother told her that she, too, had more than one birthday--she had a half birthday that marked the six-month point in between regular birthdays, and they could have cupcakes to celebrate. So a tradition was born.  Now that little girl's own little girl gets cupcakes on her half birthday, too.  (Ahem.) So these are the cupcakes Dorothy helped me bake and decorate on Tuesday, marking the important passage to 4-and-a-half.  I'm sorry to report that I caught her acting exactly like a 4-and-a-half-year-old; eating sprinkles right from the can during cupcake decorating, told her she had to stop, then saw her crawl under the table and hide for a moment, only to emerge with very red lips and the pronouncement, "the pink sprinkles are all gone!"  I didn't let her decorate any more cupcakes, and she pitched a huge fit.  But we had a nice half birthday celebration anyway.

A before and after

photo courtesy of Fine Design Camper Sales

I'm making progress!  The weather is finally nice and I'm hoping to make big strides on the camper exterior today, but right now I'm killing time in the house waiting for the baby to wake up.  The fabric for the cushions arrived in the mail on Thursday, so yesterday I spent the day wrestling with those.  The polka-dotted fabric is a nice thick indoor/outdoor upholstry fabric that I hope will easily wipe clean, and I found it at a great price online.   We cut the table down to make more standing room in the camper, and to make nice places to sit without being crammed up against the table (for when you're say, nursing a baby and need a bit of room in front).  The piece we cut off I stashed up above, so we can still use it when the table comes down to form a big bed.  I haven't photographed the kitchenette yet, but finishing that up is also on my weekend to-do list, so stay tuned! 

We're desperate to actually get this thing on the road and go camping, but I'm afraid if I move it from its present spot in my back yard that I will not prioritize it, and then it might never get done.  It will certainly (barring unforseen circumstances) be completely done in time for next weekend, but Dorothy gets to bring the class guinea pig home next weekend, and I'm just not sure about a) camping with the class guinea pig, or b) dragging a screaming preschooler away from the class guinea pig to go camping.  I'm open to suggestions on how to handle that one.

And as an update to our costume dilemma, the problem solved itself!  Dorothy was just a tad jealous of her brother's cute rat costume and decided that she would also like to be a rat.  So one more eBay auction won (and for a good price--hooray!), and we're waiting on one more package in the mail.  I can't wait to get some pictures of my wee rat pack next month.

Trailer textiles

With the interior painting done and the weather too hot to paint the exterior, I've been spending some time working on linens.  I made these little camper potholders, and I'm a little embarrassed that they are way cuter than the store-bought ones in my real kitchen.  My real kitchen is red, too, so I might do a switch so I can use these more often!

Now curtains!  I don't know if the print shows up well in the photos, but the blue upper has illustrations of campy (pun intended) vintage travel sights, including enormous fake dinosaurs and, of course, campers.  I went to the trouble of lining these with an old white sheet for extra privacy, and so the sun won't bleach the fabric as quickly.

And a nice stack of cloth napkins, all set for the campfire marshmallow messes of the future. 

Progress pictures

We're now on Day 9 of camper ownership, and my crafty energy is all camper, all the time, until we get this thing in the woods for the first time. But we're having tons of fun already, right here at home! The photo above is to compare to my primer picture, below.

Here's me on the unpainted side of the camper, rocking the schlumpy paint clothes look and inspiring my 4-year-old to beg for a hair bandana. :)

And the painted side! It's red! Embellishment to follow...

And my sewing table, covered in camper-related prints, ready for me to come back inside and stitch curtains, potholders, napkins...maybe a camper apron even? I also found a gorgeous red 100% wool throw at a thrift store that will become part of the camper ensemble. It has a patch sewn on it right now from a company; I guess it was a corporate gift of some sort. I'm just going to unstitch the patch, and I might sew on little white wool felt flowers to cute it up (ala Soule Mama).

In a momentary pause from camper things, I'm having a little Halloween costume trouble. I found a very inexpensive and adorable used rat costume for Worth on eBay, and it's ridiculously cute on him. I love the costumes put out by Old Navy because they are comfy and washable and easy to put on and off, so I just searched for costumes made by them to get inspiration for his. When I found the rat costume I knew it was just right. Dorothy wants to be a cat, so she can chase (and eat--eek!) her brother. The problem is, all the cat costumes I can find to fit my 5T daughter look like skanky cat woman outfits, not the least bit like cats. I did find one, with the help of a friend, but it's selling for between $40 and $50, which is nuts. I paid less than $5 for the baby's, with minimal shipping. And this might seem contrary to my whole blog bit, but I really hate the idea of making one. She'll wear it once, probably, since she's not all that interested in dress-up recently, and furry fabric is really expensive--much more expensive than run-of-the-mill costumes from Target. Plus, and this is really rather annoying, my kid doesn't want me to make her one. At all. I make her things all the time; Halloween costumes should be special. (Where am I going wrong? Eek again!) She wants a store-bought costume. So the search continues...