Collecting craft supplies.

A few days ago we went to the foothills about an hour a way to collect craft supplies. Another fifteen minutes would have gotten us into pine-tree territory, but my sister and I had hungry kids and meltdowns are measured in minutes at that point, so I pulled off at the first likely looking campsite.

After lunch, we started to explore and it turned out to be a beautiful little place. Rocks to climb, logs to look under, a stream to play in.



Lots of craft supplies to be found. Leaves, twigs, seed pods, moss, rocks ...



We had enough time to play until the kids got cold, and they took advantage of it.






It was a beautiful place and now my sister and I have visions of camping trips next summer. Sister camping trips (hint, hint Cindy and Theresa).

And we're also stocked up on nature crafting supplies, though Hannah wants to go to a place with more pine trees for some needles. Who knows what she has in mind for those.

Yesterday we took a Snow Day.

It was necessary.

It isn't the snow. The snow is fun.

It's the 50 mph wind that comes along with the snow. You have to dress up really warm, run outside, play for maybe two minutes tops, get the obligatory first bite of snow ...

and then run back inside.

We looked for activities to keep us busy inside. Hannah wanted to do her sewing.

I did some of my own.

Gray played with his cars (natch) while Ains played her Little Mermaid game on the computer.

Gray went down for his nap and we got out the finger paints. When I was putting the plastic on the table, Hannah asked if they could paint on the floor instead. With Gray not around, we went for it.

It took a turn I didn't expect - but should have.

How did I not expect that?


Or this?
All those colors together make brown. I expected *that*. Hannah wanted to add more colors and see if that changed the brown. It was an Experiment.

A Hands-On Experiment.

Or a 'Body-On' experiment.

It's hard to carry a five year old under her arms up to the bathtub without her getting any paint on the walls. But I'm sure you expected that.

Clean-up was amazingly easy. Shower off.

After Gray woke up, and we'd fed our calves, we turned to games. Magical Creatures. In which the genie rode in a tractor. He'd kicked the satyr out.

Bambino Dino.

Old Spider and the Fly.

Which led to singing about a certain Old Woman with a very bad diet.

Then Connect Four and rediscovering Chess.

We made it through the Snow Day.

This one's for Grayson.

Kind of. It started out that way.

Gray's a tactile kid - much more so than either of my girls - so I decided to put together one of those rice/bean buckets for him.

Hannah and I poured some rice, barley, lima, and pinto beans into an old ice cream bucket and mixed it all up.

Then we went through our 'Creation Station' box (where anything still mildly useful for creative purposes goes to find a second life) and found little things to put in the bucket for him to dig out.

We arranged the items in groups by color, took pictures of them, printed the pictures out on cardstock, and stuck them with the bucket.

Obviously, Gray doesn't care too much about finding the objects on the cards (rice and beans are too much fun to dig in and, ahem, throw), so when he find objects, looks at them in a bemused fashion ("What is *that* doing in my bucket of rice and beans?") and hands them to his sisters, they squeal over which card they've finished.

It started out for him, but it's been fun for all of them.

There be monsters here!

My sister's been here for the last two days to help with a doll making project.

This morning Hannah asked if *she* could do a craft. Because I'm brain-dead from making too many dolls, I asked her if she had any ideas. She suggested painting on wood with acrylic paint. I revived my brain long enough to come up with another idea. I do *not* need to be wrangling acrylic paint while I'm stuffing doll legs, thank you very much.

"Draw a monster," I told her. So she did.

And so did Ainsley.

While they did that, I rounded up some supplies. Felt, the button jars (of course), thread, stuffing, yarn ... And then we set to work 'interpreting' the pictures.

Since we've never done this before, the girls had drawn without picturing their monsters off the paper. Now they got to pick a color, add texture in the form of buttons, embroider expressions, and pick yarn out for hair. It was such a fun process and we have lots of ideas for more texture we can add to future monsters.

I folded a piece of felt in half and cut out the front and back of the monster together. Then I laid out the top piece and had the girls match the fabric up to their drawing/imagination.

When they'd decided how they wanted their monsters to look, we started sewing them. Hannah could do a lot of the work herself - the buttons, the ribbon toes, and the smile - and I did what she couldn't.

Ainsley couldn't do much but explain to me what the different parts of her drawing were ("It's a COWBOY monster, Mommy!"), but every so often, a set of little pudgy hands would try to help me sew a button on here or do some embroidery there.

Once we had all of the embellishments and expressions added, we stuffed them. First we used all of the felt and thread scraps and then we added in stuffing.

Hannah's monster was fairly straightforward and easy to translate from paper to felt. Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project (which is cuddled up to her as she sleeps right now) ...

She had an absolute blast doing this project and has three more monsters (and another one 'just for GrayGray') laying on the counter, drawn up and ready to go.

Ainsley's finished monster is true to Ainsley Style, with a diamond necklace, a bow in her hair (between two of the three eyes), a flower in her hand, and a cowboy hat and boots - most of which I wouldn't have understood without her explanations. I cut the monster out using the outline of her drawing - I thought about embroidering the many circles and then, thanks to my ever-sensible sister, decided not to. I'd still be sewing.

Here's her drawing again ...

And the finished project ...

"She so coooot!" was what Ainsley said when she'd inspected the final project.

She wants a ballerina monster next.

Their cousin wanted a monster too. Her drawing was a bit more ambitious.

And her mother, for all of the sense she talked into me over Ainsley's monster, did a heckuva job making a patchwork monster to match the picture.

Think 'monster bird. It's so fun. Very tactile. The ribbon hair (above the black face) is so sweet - little pigtails.

When I was discussing the picture with my niece, trying to decipher heads and tails and legs and eyes (she's got several by the way - some on her head and some on her tail), I pointed to the line on the bottom of the monster and asked "What's that? Is that it's leg?" Because, you know, if it had been Ainsley's monster it would have been a leg. Or possibly a penis. "No, it's PEEING." she said. She seemed irritated that I even had to ask.

So my sister - because she's awesome - put it on the monster. When I was taking the picture of the monster, my niece asked "What's this thread?" pulling on the yellow thread. "That's the pee, of course," I answered. She dissolved into giggles.

I wonder how many more of these monsters we'll make - I have some drawings waiting on the counter, a ballerina monster in another daughter's head, and my sister has another drawing that her daughter made.

Easy, fun craft - and cuddly to boot!

Paint and horses and stables - oh my!

Too kitschy of a title?

Yeah, I agree.

We're not real big on crafting kits 'round here. Not sure why. The girls aren't too big on coloring books either, though - maybe there's a connection? Anyway, the other day, we saw these kits for making and painting a horse stable and the girls were ecstatic, so we got them.

I thought it was cool that you get to paint the horses also. The girls got their little horse book and pored through it, looking for inspiration. Then they both painted a 'paint' horse, like the one on the box.


The box only gave traditional colors for the stable, so we had to go to our paint shelf to get more exciting colors. Who wants a red and black stable? Pssh. That's for those with no imagination.

We needed to name our horses, so Hannah had me write her chosen name on a paper that she then copied onto a tag. Delphine Petal. It took two tags. Somehow Ains was able to fit Honey Pie onto one tag. It is still a mystery.
The horses seem to enjoy living next to each other.Now the stables and horses get lots of playtime and get carted everywhere. Hannah had to be convinced that she didn't need to take it fishing with her the other night.

With a dog and a little brother in the house, and receiving such constant attention, I'm not sure how long these will be treasured toys, but the girls are definitely squeezing every last bit of enjoyment out of them right now.

Flower presses are ready for our next hike.

Or the next time the girls step out the front door, whichever comes first. (You get no more than one guess on that one.)

Here's Hannah's -


Here's Ainsley's -


Here are the ones we made as gifts for friends.


It's unlikely that the flowers will press as evenly with all of those decorations on the top, but they will certainly be used more than they would otherwise, so I'll take it. If we do these again, I'll have some stamps and ink ready so that we can decorate with those instead, but this weekend we went with what we had on hand and I do think they turned out sweet.

This is the tutorial I used.