Dinosaur Birthday Crown {free pattern}

To keep our party for Big Brother simple, the only thing I actually made was his special-request "dino hat."

I think he liked, since he hardly wanted to take it off! It was pretty simple to make and very cheap (we had all the felt already!).

Today I have a free pattern for anyone else who needs a dinosaur birthday crown for a little birthday boy! Ready to get started?

Dinosaur Birthday - on the Cheap!

Big Brother looked forward to his birthday for weeks. Multiple times a day I would hear:

"My birfday's comin' up."

"Is it my birfday yet?"

"It's awmost my birfday."

So we talked about his birfday a lot. Whenever I asked him what he wanted to do he would say "I want dino hat, and dino cake, and dino ice cream." That was it. So we definitely needed to go with a dino theme, but we didn't want to throw our life savings into it. This was our solution for a dino birthday on a budget.

We celebrated his actual birthday on a Friday (when we gave him a DIY zoo pass and took him to the zoo) and then had a party with a few friends & family on Saturday. Let's start with Friday. We actually kind of banked on him forgetting it was his birthday (probably the last year that will work). Daddy took him out for donuts first thing in the morning while a couple aunts and I went to work decorating. This boy may love balloons even more than dinosaurs so our splurge was a helium balloon kit for about $25. We added a couple packs of dollar tree streamers and tried to make as much wow factor as we could for the little fella.

I also found these inflatable dinosaurs at dollar tree and added them to the set up:

Plus a homemade dinosaur birthday crown as requested (using felt from our crafting stash).

And dollar tree party hats all around. Baby Brother was on the fence about the whole thing.

Critter-Proof Cage & Garden Update

Our little seedlings are still chillin' out clinging to life in their mini greenhouse and while they wait we are trying to get the rest of our yard & garden ready for transplanting. You may remember we had quite a problem with bunnies (and squirrels) eating all of our plants last time. So this year we hopefully found a way to at least keep them out of our small salad & herb garden.

We built a simple frame and covered it with chicken wire so the little furry fiends can't get in. It's made with 1x2s 1x3s so it's pretty lightweight. We just lift it off of the garden when we need in for planting or weeding. I realize "garden" is a strong word here. So far we have chives & sage that popped up from last year.

To build it we started with two square sections like this. The ends are 1x3s (because we had them left over and they were long enough) and the long sides are 1x2s we purchased for the project. We made it just big enough to sit on the sides of our raised bed, but if we did a bed that didn't sit against the house we would have made it a little larger fit around the outside of the bed and sit on the ground.

We screwed the ends together.

Temporary Mini Greenhouse for Garden Seedlings

It's been almost two months since we started the seeds for this year's garden and we're itching to get them in the ground! We basically have no idea what we're doing but figured it was better to jump in than to put it off. We've already been learning a lot along the way, and one thing we've struggled with is getting enough light for our plants. We put them in the sunniest window in our house, but even that doesn't seem to get enough hours of light during the day and the light doesn't reach the plants toward the back of the table (meaning we had to keep rotating the cups trying to get all the little fellas some sunshine). I'm thinking maybe next year we'll need some kind of light to help them grow instead? That would keep them warm because I suspect our house has been a bit on the chilly side for them.... Even so some of our more viney plants like pumpkins, beans, and zucchinis were able to grow around the window and really seem to be doing well.

But several of our other plants are still just so tiny and weak. These are cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage that just aren't doing well at all.

It may be too late to save them but we are going to try! At the suggestion of a pro-gardener friend we decided to try a small outdoor greenhouse to really get them sunny and warm. Since we don't have any greenhouse or a chance to make something if we want to try and save these babies in time for planting, we came up with this little make-shift solution.

We just put the plants into some clear plastic tubs (clear so lots of light can get through) and put an old window across the top. BOOM. Done.

Now we just keep them watered and wait. Most of the time we leave the window on top because they need to be protected from the wind & the squirrels, but on nice days when we're playing outside I take it off for awhile to try to acclimate them a bit. I don't know if it's the right thing to do. It feels right to me, but we all know I'm flying by the seat of my pants here.

If you don't have an old window, we added a third tub that had a clear lid and just put the lid on. So hopefully that works out. Now we just let these guys warm up a little and hope we can plant them in the next couple weeks!

Anyone else start seeds this year? How's it going?