A Hat, A Vest & A Monkey

Let me explain this post with a little explanation about my family: I've got four children, all married and so far we have five grandchildren that live literally all around this wonderful world of ours. Their parents have awesome careers and I wouldn't want them not to strive to be the best at what they're doing & I try not to complain, I really do. These little darlings just live so far away that it takes a while to get to them.  When my husband or I get the chance, we'll hop on a plane any day we can arrange it. That's just what we did this past weekend.

So, what does a creative grandmother do before she prepares to visit her grandchildren? 
Why, make gifts of course. This past weekend, my husband and I flew to St. Louis to visit our youngest daughter's family. It's a nonstop flight to go and see them so we decided to see how we liked quick weekend trips to her new home.  In preparation for this visit, I made my grandson a reversible hat to wear with the puffy vest I made him a few months ago and a monkey so he would have a new toy to love.

The idea for the monkey came from a comment my daughter made about how her son makes the best monkey sounds and then I found the blog mmmcrafts with a free pattern for a girl monkey. But I needed a boy monkey and I had limited fabric because I was using my leftover vest scraps. Here's what I did to change the monkey pattern: I first shrunk the pattern about 30%, added a different face using upcycled button eyes and a centered smile, plus an oval nose, I made his legs and tail longer and skinnier, left off the skirt and shoes, added a little xo on his behind & a heart carefully stitched on the monkey's body.

Our photo shoot was taken at the end of my daughter's neighborhood. It was my second time being in a corn field. The first time was probably 10 years ago when I accompanied this same daughter as a youth leader, while going through a corn maze right before Halloween. Compared to the previous time, this felt like we were really in a wild maze.

We loved our weekend trip. Too bad the rest of our children aren't a nonstop flight away!
A fun thing about this 16-month old grandson-- "probably" was his "word of the day" on Sunday. That morning, I said, "probably" and he must have liked the word because he started mimicking me.  He's got great verbal skills and it's pretty funny the words he picked up while we were there. Another was "pop goes the weasel."

It was a great weekend and we can hardly wait for our next trip to see family. Time to get the gifts I've planned finished for our next trip. xoxo Grandma