Random

Today my kids sat on the floor munching kettle corn while I tried to make lunch. We finally sat down to lunch around 2:00.

I have been busy all week making more super hero capes because a local store is going to carry them on consignment. I have a nervous, butterfly feeling in my tummy just thinking about it. It is hard to open yourself up to the possibility of failure.

Moments like these remind me why I love being a Mom.

This past Wednesday I was sick and feeling crummy when my beautiful necklace came in the mail. It made me wish I felt better so I could wear it out and show it off. Love!

My daughter and I made a bunch of these ribbon wands. So much fun to make and tons of fun to twirl and dance with. . .
Ahem, not that I would know about the dancing and twirling part.

After cutting the dowel rod into 12 inch lengths we sanded off any rough edges and then using mod podge we put pretty scrap-booking paper around the rod to make it pretty.

What random things have YOU been doing????

Little Gifts of love

My niece has been sick for about a week and they decided to admit her to a hospital because they weren't able to figure out what was going on at our local clinic. She has a high fever and a rash so I think one of the things they are suspecting is Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever which is apparently passed on by ticks. Hopefully they will figure it all out soon so that she will get well.


My children and I were brainstorming yesterday about what we could do for her. I decided to make her an eye spy bag. Hopefully it will make the long hours at the hospital a little more interesting.

For the back I used printable fabric made by June Tailor to make a list of objects to find. My printer was NOT happy and I had a terrible time trying to get it to print correctly. Any tips???

Yelling at it didn't work.

The kid's all colored cards for her. They used pastels which can be messy, but I love the vivid colors. It was interesting to see what each of them came up with. Princess's card was full of love and wishes for her cousin to get better.

A. invented superheros that are supposed to ZAP the illness away.

Super P. drew a picture of my niece and him hanging out together.

And Pumpkin. . .well what can I say, she just colored with her whole heart.

Doll Blanket

On Saturday, Princess begged me to do a craft project with her. She reminded me that she had embroidered a little dog a while ago (oops! I just noticed it was all the way back in March that she started this project. . . She has been very, very patient waiting for me to help her) to make a doll blanket for her favorite doll Jennifer and wanted to finish it.

I decided the easiest way to make the blanket would be to sew the front and the back together with no batting or quilting involved. So she stitched the two sides right sides together and then left an opening to turn. After that we pressed it and then top stitched all around to close the opening.

Both Jennifer and Princess are very happy with how the blanket turned out.

Here is the embroidery that she did on the front. This is not her first embroidery project, but her skills have definitely improved.

I'm hoping that I can come up with a lot more sewing projects for this summer, but we will have to wait and see. I'm thinking this skirt should be attempted next. Any other ideas?

• If you haven't entered the giveaway yet you can go here to do that. The giveaway ends tomorrow morning whenever I manage to crawl out of bed.

Monkey See Monkey Do

I have recently begun to notice that my children like to do what they see me doing. A couple of examples:

I absolutely adore reading and will actually forget about the rest of the world and not even be able to hear people talking to me while I read-just ask my mother if you don't believe me.☺ I will often see A. pick up a book to read just for fun. I love seeing him do that. He learns so much from reading even the dumbest fiction books. Often he will ask what a word means because he has read it in a book and we get to have our vocabulary lesson right at the dinner table.

Little Pumpkin is only 2, but when we sit at the kitchen table to do our phonogram review (we use Spell to Write and Read in which you learn 70 phonograms) she likes to repeat the phonograms too. She speaks exceptionally well and to be honest a little bit too much. I truly think it is because she has heard these foundation blocks of our language over and over since she was itty bitty.

WARNING: A 2 year old who can express her thoughts clearly can be a bit daunting to parent. Yesterday she told me "But its not my fault!" Huh??? What in the world do you do with that???

Princess wants to do the crafty things she see me doing. I have been doing a lot of embroidery lately (I'm really starting to enjoy embroidery-so relaxing!) and so she has started her own project. I must admit to not being too excited about putting down my own embroidery to help her get started because I thought she would need a ton of help, but she is doing really well. She has only stitched her project to the sheets on my bed one time! Not too bad considering her teacher has done something similar several times before.☺

It makes me wonder what would happen if my children caught me reading my Bible more often or if they saw me being kind or going out of my way to be generous to someone who needed help?

Ribbit Ribbit

Super P. has been asking to sew something with me for several days, but I was having a hard time coming up with something we could make together. He has a LOT of pillows that he has made so we clearly needed other ideas.

A couple of days ago, I remembered that the Purl Bee had a frog pattern so I hopped (HA!) on over to their site to see if I could find it. If you want to make a frog with your children here is the link.

I printed the pattern on sturdy card stock and traced it onto the wrong side of each fabric that the kiddos chose.

Even the older children couldn't get my Gingher scissors to work for them (too big maybe????) so they found smaller scissors that worked okay. Cutting fabric with paper scissors just seemed wrong to me, but it worked.

Princess and Super P sewed along with me while sitting on my lap. We might have to come up with another plan when I have no lap left in a couple of months.

A. is 9 and felt like he could do the sewing himself, so I made sure he had right sides together, marked where to start and stop so he wouldn't forget to leave an opening, marked the locations where he needed to pivot with the needle down by putting dots on those turns. I was pretty impressed with how well he did by himself.

I hand sewed the beaded eyes on the frogs. A. had other ideas so he drew eyes on using fabric markers.

We filled most of them with rice because that is what we had, but one was filled with lentils and the kids all like how that feels better.

And here they all are:

Now we just need to think up some fun bean bag games. Anyone have any ideas????

Random bit of January

This January has been something! We have had snow, frigid temperatures, and gorgeous hoar frost. And I'm sorry to tell you that I have not one picture of any of it to show you.

This month we have spent a lot of time in front of our little portable electric fireplace just trying to stay warm and cozy. Pumpkin has fallen in love with movies like "Black Beauty" and "Mary Poppins" (whom she calls "Miss Poppins"- polite little thing isn't she?) I love her synopsis of "Black Beauty": "Black Beauty run fast! (and then she pants like a horse running hard) Oh, no, not the sheets!!! Joe went plop." Then we all laugh hysterically and she tells the story all over again.

Princess and I have been trying to learn how to knit using this DVD. If you don't know how to knit and you don't mind a little perkiness, I would recommend it. Princess is doing quite well and has impressed me. Yes, there have been mistakes a plenty, but she is also feeling quite good about learning. I'm thrilled that she will have a wonderful skill that will last her a lifetime. I'm trying to finish a knitted scarf for hubby that I started *ahem* last January. I'm still not very far on it so he probably won't be able to wear it this year either. Ah, well. . .

Today I braved going shopping, which is something I've been kinda reluctant to do with feeling yucky. Mornings, strangely enough are the time when I feel the best, so I braved our current damp, soggy weather and bought groceries. At the Dollar Tree I found these foam, magnetic Valentine crafts for the kiddos. They have been having a lot of fun with them this afternoon.

Hot chocolate with a ton of marshmallows is a must have for any winter craft project.

I thought the foam would be stickers, but was disappointed to find out they needed to use glue to put them together. Glue is fine for the older ones, but there was no way I was going to let Pumpkin get her hands on glue. She gets into plenty of trouble as it is without knowing about the joys of glue.

This is one of Princess finished projects. Kinda cute if you ask me.

On a completely unrelated note, something else that I just tried today for the very first time was Nutella. Oh my! I think I'm in love.

Handmade Gifts

Little Pumpkin's birthday was filled with lots of handmade gifts. I have already given a peek into this first gift. The older kiddos decided that they should make a dolly blanket for Pumpkin. We spent one day coloring squares of a thrifted white sheet using Crayola fabric markers. After you iron them they are supposed to be colorfast. I am not a quilter, although I would love to be, so I fumbled my way through piecing the kid's artwork with sashing. I have no idea if I did it right or not. We didn't add batting so we just sewed it right sides together and then turned it right side out and top-stitched around. Princess did the top-stitching. She is starting to get the hang of using a sewing machine and its fun to watch.

We added a label on the flannel backing with signatures of the artists.

I made Pumpkin a poncho which kind of reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in pink. I used a discontinued pattern and then altered it by cutting it up the front and adding three inches to each front piece to fold under to make a facing for the buttons/buttonholes.

Because the fleece was a plaid and I wanted the plaid to match up, I had to add three inches to the back also. I wasn' t really planning on that little detail so I was getting pretty frustrated (okay. . . extremely frustrated ), but finally decided to make a pleat in the center back to allow for the extra 3 inches.

I ended up really liking the pleat because it adds to the Sherlock Holmes look we've got going on here.

Pumpkin also really liked the drawing pad/ crayon holder. She was mostly quiet during church, and I think mostly quiet is pretty good. Hopefully it will continue. . .

What are your favorite gifts to make? I'm starting to think about Christmas and would love more ideas.

Getting Ready

Here's a sneak peek of what the kids are working on to give to Little Pumpkin for her 2nd birthday. Last year the kids had very grand ideas for gifts that involved a lot of a certain mommy's time, so this year that mommy wised up and came up with an idea that all the kids could work on together saving the mommy's sanity. Well, hopefully. . .

Learning to Sew

I find so much joy in creating things for my family that I want to pass that love onto my children. Sewing is one of the skills that I think is so important to learn. Even boys can benefit from having some knowledge of sewing. Coming up with doable first projects can be difficult. My mom made a boa scarf for all of the girl grandchildren one year for Christmas It would be a perfect first project because it is really flexible and forgiving.

To make a boa scarf:

• Measure the child that is going to wear the scarf. The scarf should reach to the wrist so measure from one wrist around the back of the neck to the other wrist. (or just measure to the back of the neck and double the measurement ☺) For Princess H. the measurement was 45". This measurement will be your length.
  
• Decide the width of the scarf. We made Princess H's scarf 9"wide. That turned out to be plenty wide it would have been better to have it 6-7" wide. For a toddler like Pumpkin, I would guess 4-5" wide would be plenty.
• Cut three fleece rectangles using your length measurement and your width. (in our case it was 45" long x 9 " wide ) You can use three different colors and that is very cute (school colors maybe???) or just use one color which is what we did because that's what we had.

• Stack up the three fleece rectangles and pin the outer edges to help hold it all together and mark the center line going down the length of your scarf.

• Depending on the age of the child learning how to sew decide how much help to give. A. is 9 and had no problem sewing all by himself. Princess H. needed some help, but that might have been partly because we used our treadle machine so I helped her. Sew straight down the line you drew in the middle backstitching at the beginning and end to secure the stitching.

• Stitch again approx 1/4" on each side of the stitching already done so you have three rows of stitching altogether.

• Cut from the edge of the fleece through all three layers toward the stitching lines down the length of the scarf on both sides to make a fringe. We made cuts about 1" apart, but you don't have to measure. Don't cut through the stitching. I had to do the cutting because three layers of fleece can be a bit much for a child. 1" cuts made a chunky looking scarf. If you want the scarf to look more finely textured make the intervals between cuts smaller.

• After you have cut the fringe on both sides hold up one end and shake so the it gets nice and fluffy.

There you have it! If you have any questions about this project feel free to ask. Have fun sewing!

Birthday Time!!!

Princess H. is 7 today. I have such mixed feelings about her turning 7. Being 7 definitely means she is officially a big girl and there is no hiding it. That makes me sad. But oh, I am so proud of her and the beautiful girl she is becoming. She is riding her bike without training wheels which is an amazing feat. She is learning to be brave when she gets hurt and although the tears do sometimes come she presses on. She is an emotional girl which can be exhausting in trying to parent her, but her emotions also keep her soft and tender on the inside ready to help a hurting brother or sister, ready to sympathize and loving to hug.

Her coming birthday brought with it a flurry of last minute crafting of special gifts to make her birthday memorable. It is important to hubby and I that our children learn to give what they can and not rely on Daddy and Mommy to buy the gifts they give. Usually, they color special pictures or cards, but sometimes we think up something fun that they can make. Super P and I decided

to make Princess H. some homemade play dough for her birthday as a gift from him and Pumpkin. Princess H. has been asking for play dough for quite a while and I never got around to making it. We came up with the idea to add glitter to the play dough to make it a wee bit more fun/messy for Mama. They have been happily playing play dough this morning.

Do you recognize this dress? Yep, its the play dress -just as she requested☺

Here is the recipe for play dough if you want to make it for your own special little ones:

✿✿Play Dough✿✿
1 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups flour
1 TBSP. alum
2 TBSP. vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
Food Coloring/Glitter

Mix dry ingredients together. Add water and knead until soft and pliable. At first you might panic thinking you did something wrong, but hang in there and keep kneading and it will become just right. Knead in any coloring/glitter that you want. Store in a ziplock bag. It will keep probably a week or two. Of course, you would not want little ones to eat the play dough, so keep it out of reach of kiddos that would do that. Enjoy!!!