Catch That Turtle

I have a whole list of topics to share, with pictures no less, and yet days are quickly adding up to a week and I've been finding myself nowhere near to posting.

I'm not sure if it's a post-holiday crash, or simply because we are in the midst of plague round 5 (although I'm starting to lose track, perhaps it's 6). Maybe it's the fact that my little guy has regressed to an annoyingly regular 3:00am wake-up call usually accompanied by an hour of "play with me - come on - play with me" antics (you know - when they're not really crying, just relentlessing calling 'ba ba - ba ba ba - BAAAA' and you know that absolutely nothing is wrong with them, but their one year curiosity is driving them to constantly need more more more stimulation even though it is 3:00am and only the baby of an owl should still be hooting this loudly...I digress...breathe...continue). Could it be the insane cleaning desire that follows December and makes me relish activities like taking down Christmas decorations, catching up on laundry, organizing filing and cleaning out cupboards?

Believe it or not, all of this leads me to a holiday handmade I've been meaning to share. Inspired by projects I've found in here and seen over there, I finally got around to freezer-paper stenciling for a t-shirt loving Big Daddy (36 hours before Christmas - "I've got an idea!").


The Turtle: Copied from one of the first "Hey, I actually know what that is" pictures Julia ever drew (which is why I've kept it and immediately knew where it was after all this time). I scanned it on the computer, resized it for tracing onto freezer paper, and then cut out a slightly thicker version of the lines. The real trick was capturing the spots where the lines overlapped and resisting any neatening along the way - which would actually make the t-shirt far less "neat".

The Lettering: It actually proved easier to free-hand instead of cutting out the lettering. Since I'm better with a pencil than a brush, I took a black pencil crayon, dipped it into the fabric paint and voila.

The Phrase: I came up with "Catch That Turtle" because it seemed like a cute oxymoron, but it has since grown into my favourite motto and really does seem to sums up life these days. Despite all of the choices and options to try and 'simplify' our home life, I'm still finding it a race to catch up with what should probably be the very simplest of tasks. But I keep plugging away at everything and sooner or later I know I will "Catch That Turtle".