How The Little Entrepreneurs Were Born

For Christmas, my sister Stacey went a different route this year than her usual gifts and sent the kids a joint Tie Dye kit, complete with a brand-spankin' new T-shirt for each of them. They have been seriously asking me five times a week, "Can we do the tie-dye kit today? Please? Can we? Can we?"

Well, finally on Saturday night, far too late for it to be sensible, I said yes. SQUEEE! Their excitement was boundless.

Mind you, I had never tie-dyed anything before in my life. Nor had Robert. So... I knew it would be a bit of a challenge the first time, and I told them not to expect grand results.

I read the directions three, no four, times before starting to tell them how to proceed. (My kids have no patience for reading the damned things themselves, and I'm a bit of a perfectionist anyway. And a control freak. So there's that.)

Sophia was first out of the gate. She decided to do a swirl pattern and quickly rubberbanded her shirt in a twisty vortex of 100% cotton. She selected her colors from the kit confidently and went right to work.

(Yes, we pre-washed the shirts. That waiting was THE hardest part, you guys. You remember what it's like to be nine, yes?)

Jack, exhibiting his characteristic blue- and green-heavy preference some more, chose precisely those colors for his shirt. He opted to do the bulls-eye pattern.

He saturated the crap out of that thing, too. It's a wonder the rinsing water ever ran clear!

Chloë immediately set about doing a rainbow swirl pattern. I was not surprised; she's a girly-girl through and through. She has also inherited her mother's Type-A, perfectionistic qualities, good or bad, and so her process was as methodical and intentional as that of the other two was chaotic.

Sophie's, which reminds me of sherbet or maybe a creamsicle, turned out awesome, no? I think she got more of a bulls-eye than a swirl, but that's okay, because it's cool. She was sound asleep when the eight-hour wait for the dye to set was finished, so she woke up long enough to rinse her tee and get Mommy's picture needs out of the way before crawling back into her bunk.

For someone who has hardly any creativity in his bones, Jack's turned out pretty cool, too! I loved it. And amongst the colors was my favorite, the teal blue-green of the middle depths of the sea, so what's not to like?

In fact, he enjoyed the creative process so well, he hunted in his pile of laundry for another white t-shirt to dye immediately after finishing the first one. I don't know what you'd call his lack of pattern, but can you tell the kid really likes the color green?

Chloë's rainbow outing turned out vivid and funky. I loved it, and so did she. Very happy with the results despite also achieving a bulls-eye instead of a swirl. (I'll have to Google methodology to determine where we went astray.)

In fact, Chloë dove into her own pile of laundry and decided to dye a matching pair of capris! I was surprised at this, since the pants were relatively new, but since she bought them herself with her earned babysitting money, I certainly wasn't going to tell her no! She donned the clothes after they were watched and dry, and yes, she looked quite the hippy. Adorable. I'll have to get a picture later today when she wears them fer realz.

All of this excitement led to one DUH! and one WOW! To-wit:

They didn't sleep pretty much at all until Sunday morning. Which means now our school schedule for the week is fecked. I'm gonna have to work on that all week long. Sweet. :\

Also, they decided to pool all their savings and some money that both parents invested in the project, to start their own tie-dyeing business! Even Jack bought into the project! We went to the hated Walmart and bought all manner of dyes and materials for dyeing, and throughout the wee hours, the kids set to work. 

I think they have decided to name the enterprise "Two Tweens and a Teen," but it's not carved in stone yet. They're all gung-ho and have dollar signs in their eyes, so I'm hoping their wares sell. I will set up and take pictures later after everything is clean and pressed, giving them space on Etsy, and perhaps Facebook, and maybe Instagram, too. We're a multi-media operation here, folks.

So this should be fun. My dad suggested we tie this into a 1960s-70s American history lesson about those transitional times, too, which I think is a stellar idea. Now to bone up on that (hey, I wasn't there)...!

Thanks for stopping by!

Fin.