As soon as Halloween is done with, and the mall is suddenly decorated for Christmas complete with a Santa, I lose any sense of what day, week or month it even is. Preparation for any holiday becomes a whirl wind of red, green, a lost pumpkin here and there, and random turkeys. I started some Christmas shopping, mostly for the kiddos in the family and I have been going back and forth between ‘is it too early to wrap presents’ and ‘ahhhh I need to buy wrapping paper ASAP!’ Right now, our bedroom looks like Santa’s workshop, and my handy dandy notebook is filled with gift ideas for everyone on our list, along with a budget I am desperately trying to stick to. I am excited for Christmas because Lily is at such a fun age, but I am not quite ready to decorate, shop, and be swept up in the hustle and bustle these next to months become. Perhaps some deep breaths, and a day of cleaning and reorganizing (while possibly listening to Christmas music) will ease me into the inevitable?
With the Christmas season being shoved in our faces earlier and earlier each year, we tend to overlook Thanksgiving. A day dedicated to delicious food and a day to reflect on everything in our life we should be grateful for and all the things we take for granted. If you are able to sit at a table and break bread with family and friends, give thanks. Even for just a minute. Count your blessings. Hug whoever slaved over dinner. And then hurry out the door to shop. Just kidding. I'm waiting until midnight for that...
I have been trying to do a craft or project each month (well since September) with Lily and Tristan. I’m a big fan of handprint art. It’s usually pretty cute and it’s fun to look back and see how tiny their hands were, and the kids love the tickling of the paint brush! In September we did trees with handprint leaves, October was ghost footprints, and of course, November will be some sort of handprint turkey. These are simple and fun projects that can later be turned into some sort of gift (calendar? photo book?) or decorations for the fridge. I’ve been scanning in each project so I have a copy on here and one to show off. Once a preschool teacher, always a preschool teacher.
I decided to step up my game this month and make decorations for Thanksgiving using the kid’s handprints. First, I took a baby food jar and poured some brown paint into it, covering the inside. Then I found foam paper (at the Dollar Tree) and traced each kid’s hand on yellow, red, green, and orange sheets. I cut them out, glued them together, and fastened them to the jar. We glued on googly eyes and a beak and VOILA! Turkey day table decorations, made with love from Lily and Tristan! Depending on the age (or skill level) of your little helpers, they could help with the cutting, gluing, AND painting. I let Tristan and Lily shake the jars to make sure the paint was on every inch of the inside of the jar. Easy little table decoration, only a little time spent making it, and super cheap.
Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!
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| Lily, 3 Months |
Before I started watching Tristan, Lily and I had a lot of free time on our hands. She was three months old when Jordan had to return to work and I wanted to stay as busy as could be. When my daily chores were done and she was napping peacefully, I came up with some cute ideas for ‘photo shoots’ with her to send to family and friends for holidays and just because! We did the monthly photo shoots on her giraffe blanket and in her chair, but I wanted to do more! She is so photogenic and a genuinely happy and beautiful kid (I might be a little biased on that one) that I could not resist. I found a few cute ideas on Pinterest that used towels and household items to make a scene on the floor, and then you just lay the (usually) sleeping child on them. I did this surfing one with Lily that I just adore!
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| Tristan, 3 Months |
When I started watching Tristan, he was three months old and just as adorable as Lily. I had Ashley bring over his Superman onsie and I designed a ‘city’ out of cardboard, some blankets, and toys. It was a hit! Everyone wanted to see more and with both kids. And so began photo shoot Fridays! They’ve gone from simple backgrounds and easy to photograph children to elaborate paintings, super active kids, and silly costumes but I thoroughly enjoy doing them and as soon as I send them to Ashley, RJ, and Jordan, I post them to Facebook and our friends and coworkers go crazy! It's all about having fun and being creative. It keeps my hands busy during nap, gives me one more use for the cardboard from the diaper boxes, and gives everyone a good chuckle during their day! I'll start posting more of those pictures on here very soon!
My phone has alerted me that I have almost no room left on it, once again. Could it be the 3000 pictures I have taken in the last year? Or the 893 recipes for all things yummy I have pinned and not yet made? Couldn’t be the boards labeled “Crafty” “Sew Buttons” or “Lilypad”, could it? Ugh. The life of a modern day woman. It’s that time again. Re-organizing my boards! Those without a Pinterest account, consider yourself lucky. It’s like going through your recipe books and deciding if you should keep or trash. Or looking at your DIY to do list (please tell me I am not the only one with one of those) and narrowing down the projects you want to do or have done. Or organzing old photographs back from a time when you actually sent them away to be printed out. What usually happens is I start going through and reorganizing, then I get excited and find something I want to do and BAM. New project started and the others are brushed to the side.
I opened the Lilypad board and began to delete things I have done with her, to her, and for her. I stumbled across a pin about Quiet Books. How I haven’t at least started one of these yet is beyond me! After researching what materials worked best for different people, I decided on felt, stiff and regular. I like the look of the books on fabric, but I have a feeling my darling daughter would wreck some havoc on those at this age. I have scraps from previous sewing projects and things like buttons and snaps not being used. I want to have some pages that use magnets, some with Velcro, and whatever mixed media I can find! I made a list of all the ideas I saw, adding my own twists. Then I sketched out ten or so pages I wanted to try in my handy dandy notebook.
My wonderful pretty much sister in law Becky gave me a Michael’s gift card for my birthday this year and I figured this would be a great way to use it! I took both babies on an adventure, very well knowing I could not spend all day wandering the aisles as I usually could do. We headed right to the felt aisle and there I spent almost the whole $25 card on felt. Sorry to the girl who had to ring me up!
The first page I attempted was a simple tree made from felt on a blue background. I decided to attach apples to the tree with Velcro and a basket to the ground to keep the apples in. I used the circular pieces of Velcro and reinforced them with a few stitches. I glues the background down and then decided to stitch everything to the felt, just to be sure. For a second page, I made a beehive with three flowers as the background, and using yarn, I attached three bees with pipe cleaner wings. Once again I glued everything down, then reinforced with some stitches. I originally bought the rainbow in thread, but realized I don’t have enough bobbins that fit into my machine to be able to switch them out. So the bobbin stayed white while the thread changed. Hopefully Lily doesn’t mind too much.
I am not the best artist, and I tend to free hand cut, but I like the way my first two pages turned out! I have a lot more up my sleeve and I can’t wait to work on them! Drawing out the story board then cutting out the fabric are things that keep my hands busy during nap and then I can usually sneak away to glue and sew after dinner!
Now that I'm writing about these pages, I am ready to prep a few more! Since it's a rainy Friday, I am hoping the bambinos will nestle in for a little bit longer so I can cut and plan a little more!
...cue one child crying.
HAPPY FRIDAY!
