Tag Archives: Home Affairs

DIY Snowy Owl costume – success!

[su_heading size=”14″ align=”left” margin=”10″]The Backstory[/su_heading]

[su_expand more_text=”Show more (i.e. I want to read the rest of the backstory!)” less_text=”Show less (i.e. just get me to the How-to portion!)”]At the start of October, we had a conversation to start planning what costumes the girls wanted for Halloween. E2 wanted to be a mermaid again, reusing our homemade costume from last year. (sweet!). E1 at first wanted to be a fairy princess. *sigh* I’ll bet 80% of the girls in her grade will be a variation of a princess, with a significant portion being Elsa from Frozen. I begged her to reconsider being something else and threw out some random ideas, to all of which she said no.

After a few days passed, however, she came to me and said, “I want to be a baby snowy owl for Halloween.” Aha! I think I can work with this! It will can be puffy enough to allow for both mistakes in sewing AND to fit the jacket needed to go trick-or-treating outside in Toronto.

I am not an experienced seamstress by any means. I was originally considering using a glue gun to attach the feathers, but realized sewing would probably be faster, neater and more durable. So off we go to borrow a sewing machine. Prior to this, the last time I sewed with a sewing machine was back in high school home ec class where I made things like pin cushions and shopping bags. But I remembered the techniques, and had the time to plan and figure it out. I did have to spend a couple of hours reading the sewing machine instruction manual to figure out how to thread the machine and fill a bobbin.

The girls and I searched Google images for a couple of hours for ideas on how others have DIY made their owl costumes. I have to give credit to several sources of inspiration for how I ended up with my own design. I decided on making the body of the costume to have a bubble dress shape as it’s base to give a cute roundness. Thanks Google for landing me on this tutorial for sewing a bubble dress that I followed nearly exactly.

[/su_expand]

[su_heading size=”14″ align=”left” margin=”10″]How to DIY Sew my Snowy Owl Costume[/su_heading]

Continue reading DIY Snowy Owl costume – success!

The Summer of Jen – an update

When I shared the news of my leave of absence from Accenture back in March of this year, I envisioned that during my leave I would set out to accomplish goals in 5 general areas. Here they are verbatim:


  1. Career Calibration – I need to figure out where I want my career to go in the next 3-5 years, what I find fulfillment and enjoyment doing, and how to best accomplish this.
  2. Health – Physical and Mental – I’m going to sort out my exercise and sleep regime, spend as much time outdoors as I can this summer, *not* commute in the car an hour each way, and hang out with my family without having to worry about the daycare pickup time
  3. Learning and Creation – I will commit myself to publishing something at least once a month (let me know if you want in on the distribution – I promise not to post too many selfies of ). I’m also toying with the idea of teaching myself to develop an app in one of the mobile technologies. Also will devote time to actually watch some of those TED talks that I’ve bookmarked away.
  4. Community – I have neglected contributing back to my community in the last few years. I want to devote some of my time this leave to volunteer. If you know of any organizations looking for someone with my skills and enthusiasm I’d love to hear about it!
  5. Home affairs catchup – to address parts of my home life that have been neglected over the last few years, e.g. long-term financial plan, home decluttering and organization, buying drapes for the windows, actually doing some gardening

Continue reading The Summer of Jen – an update