Dragon boy and monkey britches play in the snow

Also known as THE INVENTION OF CHEEKWARMERS

What the heck are cheekwarmers, you say?

Well, a short time ago I was asking myself the very same question.

For months, any time it was remotely chilly while we were outside, G would ask for cheekwarmers! I said sure, sometime we will have to make some, thinking he would forget about it.

After 50 more requests for cheekwarmers from my little guy, I decided it was time to do something about it. So I gave him a piece of paper to draw me a picture of what cheekwarmers looked like.

He quickly drew two circles and handed it back to me.

Hmmmmm.

I told him we could glue velcro on his cheeks to stick the cheekwarmers to, but he didn't like that idea. So a few online searches later and we came up with this:



He picked out the fleece from my stash, cut the teeth out from white felt and helped me stitch it onto the red minky. Then he helped stitch the whole mouth onto the fleece and stitched the ends of the fleece together to make a tube. As you can see we also had to cut a slight scallop at the top of the tube so that it would go up to cover his nose but not impede his sight...hard enough to keep your balance bundled in snowpants, coat, boots you only wear a few times a year, etc.! The great thing about fleece is you don't have to finish the edges, so this was a very simple project!

After the cheekwarmer was finished, we of course had to make a matching hat. He thought it needed to look like a dragon because of the large menacing mouth full of sharp teeth, so we again made a tube, sewed a curve at the top of it to mimic the curve of his head, then cut some triangles and stitched them inside the curve. Added a band at the bottom to hold it on his head, and we were finished!

Dragon boy loves his cheekwarmers, I love that it keeps his neck and face warm and toasty, and we all love the miniscule amount of snow that fell last night so we could go out "sledding" before school this morning (sledding meaning mom and dad take turns running and pulling the sled behind us in figure eights on the lawn).





And this one just because she is adorable. Wish I could take credit for the monkey hat! Too cute!


Since we were making hats, we also made this princess crown stocking hat for G's best friend B. She loves all things princess and we thought this was appropriate! Now Z wants one...