Posts tagged ‘children’

My dear friend, Mary, has joined up with www.BringEliHome.com to raise money for a very worthy cause. Eli is the victim of parental kidnapping and is being held illegally in Turkey since 2010. Sara, Eli’s mother, has been fighting to get him home ever since.

Well, like I said, Mary has joined with Sara to raise money for her travel and legal fees through the sales of her crochet hat pattern, the Bring Eli Home Hat.

Besides being a fantastic cause, it’s also a fantastic hat pattern. Here’s me wearing my fuchsia version (which Mary made). It’s a perfect casual hat, awesome for bad hair days, and very very versatile. I plan on making one to use up some rainbow wool that I have left over from a previous project.

So, check out the links. Say a prayer, and buy the pattern or make a donation. I can’t imagine being away from my sweet girls for a week, let alone a year. Let’s help bring Eli home.

Sub-titled: Much Belated.

But we went right from Easter to Crafty Mart around here and I had a hard time keeping up. I think I missed a week’s post. Sorry about that. Those of you who follow us on facebook (link over there ——->) know that I have decided to scale back my posts to once a week. Therefore you’ll probably find more info in each post and I’ll be able to spend a bit more time with my kiddos.

I tried my darnedest to get some good pictures of the girls in their Easter Dresses. But, goodness, it is really hard to get three children to stand still. It’s even harder to get three girls who love their spinny dresses to hold still. And yet even harder to get them to hold still in their spinny dresses long enough for a clear shot in indoor lighting because it was about 40 degrees and raining. Blah! But this will have to do!

Olivia’s is my favorite. I spent the most time playing fabric against each other for her dress and I gathered the under skirt to make it much fuller and princessy. Since hers is the biggest each girl will get the chance to wear that dress, so it got the most attention to detail.

The other amazing thing we did this Easter was head over to Rob’s parents’ house to dye eggs the Martha Stewart way. We wrapped them in cut up silk ties. They turned out absolutely amazing. We had so much fun seeing them when we unwrapped them I think we dyed at least 3 dozen eggs. Maybe 4. It was a real shame to eat them.

Yesterday was Pi day, 3/14 for 3.14. And though I may be a craft-nerd now, I used to be an everything-nerd and so celebrating Pi day was kind of a fun idea. My kids are only 1, 4 and 6 so it was really confusing for them as I tried to explain the point of Pi, but I did manage to get Olivia to recite the formula for the circumference of a circle.

I made homemade pizzas, which I love to do on quick dinner nights. I make the dough in my bread machine while I run afternoon carpool and we all make our own pies when we get home. It’s like craft night and dinner time all in one.

To incorporate my theme we used the slices lines of the pizza to explain the radius of a circle. And the crust could represent the circumference. All the cheese represented the area. I might not be a bad homeschooling mom after all. Too bad my kids are so social, they would drive me nuts if they were here all day.

In other news, I am sending off my book proposal to a publisher. I have been procrastinating out of fear, but my good friend told me that this was my opportunity to start my wall of rejection letters. Gaining a wall of rejection letters is just as good as getting the deal, so I’m taking the plunge. Maybe I’ll make a collage of my rejections…

In other other news, I picked a pattern for the girls’ Easter dresses. I received a copy to review of Sewing Clothes Kids Love by Nancy Langdon and Sabine Pollehn  from their publisher. I haven’t made anything from it yet, but I am pumped to give it a go for my girls dresses. The projects are quite enticing! So after I get my proposal in the mail I will start cutting fabric. I’ll make Cressida’s as my “muslin” before I make it for the other girls that way if I mess it up it will be on less fabric!

Olivia is in Kindergarten, which means that our whole family is blazing new trails. She is reading and making friends. I am being asked to be the craft mom for holiday parties.

OK, her accomplishments are a little more ground breaking than mine. True. But I do have to struggle to keep to my ideals of crafting– upcycled, useful, valuable, beautiful, etc.– while making a craft that 24 six year olds can do in 15 minutes. And it’s a bonus if no one cries.

Which reminds me! Have I ever shared my ethos on children’s crafting? People have often asked me to teach crafts to children. Upon seeing what I have planned to do they tell me that kids can’t do such and such. I’ve sewn with 3 year olds, made stained glass with pre-schoolers, and finger knit with Daisy Scouts. And I believe that kids can do all of it, just not as well as an adult can do it. They may not finish. It might not be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It might even get thrown away on the way out the door. But if the children were able to keep themselves busy doing the work you gave them, and no one cried, it was a well planned craft. The kids could do it, and they learned something new. End rant.

Well, for the Valentine’s Day party I designed these little magnet clips for the kids to make. We used felted sweaters for the hearts, glued them to clothes pins with magnet strip on the back. To decorate the hearts I punched out heart shapes from my Zero Landfill wallpaper books and the children added their pictures. No one cried, and all the clips looked great hanging on the white board while they dried.

I can’t wait until the next party!

Remember my gift recommendation book list? Well, I was able to get a copy of Emily Martin’s Paper Doll Primer for my girls for Christmas (the last copy at our local Barnes and Noble, though I bet it is reordered by now) and we’ve been playing with it alot.

Let me tell you, this book has really reached my expectations. I love how the dolls are on card stock pages so that you don’t have to reinforce them to keep them nice. I also love the old-fashioned tabs on the clothing to fold over the edges of the dolls. That’s how I remember playing with my paper dolls as a kid.

Each doll has some back story so that you can build off of Emily Martin’s imagination for your playtime. Of course you can just make it all up as you go along as well, which is what my girls are doing. They received another doll book for Christmas, which they like to play with just as much as Emily’s book, but I don’t find any inspiration in the bright overly cartoony drawings in the other book and much prefer playing with my girls when they are using the Paper Doll Primer book. I can honestly say I even enjoy cutting out the dolls (the other book the dolls pop out) and choosing which outfit to put on the dolls. They are all clothing items I wish I could wear myself.

The only downfall to the book is the large section of clothes in the back of the book come on double sided pages. I cut out a skirt for our doll, and when I looked at the reverse page I noticed I had cut into a dress I would have liked to use later. If she releases a second book, or a second edition of this book, I would likely buy it if that problem was remedied. Over all I am blissful over our purchase, and am looking forward to more books from the dear Black Apple.

Today we had a snow day so I had all my girls home with me for the first time in months. We spent the day making paper ornaments and a nativity scene with my wall paper from Zero Landfill. I wish I could show them to you today, but having all three with me was a little more over whelming now that they’re used to school and I didn’t sit down until after dark and the lighting stinks. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow I guess. So instead I will show you these new ornaments I made for the girls at the Craft Akron anniversary party two weekends ago.

I struggled with whether I should make them all the same, or if I should go ahead and do them each differently since I was planning to give them all at the same time. I don’t like how sometimes gift giving can turn into arguing when there are three sisters involved. But in the end I went with different takes on the same theme, which was gold and maroon with musical notes and scrolling letters.

To make these we dripped dye into a glass bulb and poured glitter into the bulb and shook it up to coat the walls. Then we glued a fanned circle of scrapbook paper to the front of the bulb and embellished it with a disk of paper.

Everyone loved their ornament and we hung them on the tree right away. And thankfully no one bickered.

Boy, it’s been a while since we posted a good ol’ tutorial. But man does life get away from you when you’ve got a Kindergartener. Now we’re two weeks out from Christmas Break. How did that happen? So, since it’s almost Christmas Break, that must mean it is almost Christmas. And therefore we are decorating the tree!

This year I am having the kids slowly add ornaments throughout Advent. I thought it was a good alternative to just getting all the ornaments out and rushing through putting them on the tree. The bonus of doing it this way is we are making a bunch of new ornaments instead of just using the same ones we’ve always used. This tutorial will show you how to make the “wrapped candy” ornament pictured in the middle of my tree over there. It’s a very kid friendly, and almost free project using things commonly found in your house. And, they’re very cute! Read more »

Played in Playroom

Just in time for winter (OK so it’s been done for a few weeks, but it’s hard to take a picture of a playroom since it always looks like a bomb has gone off in there) we finished the basement playroom.

We painted the cinderblock walls with waterproof paint and sealed the floor with garage floor epoxy paint. Then we repaired a good deal of damaged drywall with mold resistant drywall and put up vinyl wainscot on the walls. Our total cost for materials is in the $700 range, and the time put into it is about 30 to 40 hours.

Then we brought our step 2 play structure from the backyard and put it down there on top of foam floor mats. I hope to get a used Wii from craigslist to put down there with our hand-me-down TV, too. Basically, I’m going for “indoor play world.” Now when I say, “go play downstairs!” there is something for them to do.

Oh, yeah and our treadmill is down there, too, so I have no excuse not to run this Ohio winter.

Remember the hat I made for Olivia, and then promised to make her a matching sweater? Well, here it is!

Sorry for the quick-before-school photo!

It’s not perfect, but it’s complete. And that is really saying something. This is my largest finished knitting project to date, which shows that I have really grown comfortable with the craft, since I don’t like doing frustrating things for a long time. I am looking forward to gifting some really lovely hand knit items for Christmas this year.

This is a big one. My daughter is a Daisy Scout. My mom was my Girl Scout leader for 5 years, and it is one of the best memories I have of childhood. We learned to build fires, camp in 3 feet of snow, ride horses, sew, and change the oil in a car. I would work on badges in my free time just to fill up my sash (did you keep that, mom?).

And now it’s Olivia’s turn. The craft for this week is one that might make me tear up. I get to sew the troop number and Girl Scout badges on my daughter’s first vest.

Last night at our meeting we worked on the Promise, and learned to finger knit using those fun little knitted loom loops. Some of the girls really got it quickly! Olivia made a bracelet/headband for her doll, Rachelle. If anyone out there in Crafty-Land has some Girl Scout activities experience, let me know, I want to make this experience fun for everyone.

Does anyone out there remember the Girl Scout Promise? Three fingers up!