Homemade Friday: Heart Garland

I've been wanting to decorate for holidays a bit better than I have been.  There's Christmas, of course, but most other holidays pass by without too much fanfare. 

I also haven't wanted to spend any money.

So since Valentine's Day is coming up I thought I would make my house über cutesy and adorable.  Because everyone needs some hearts, right?

Plus I was getting tired of the fall leaf garland that I've had up in my kitchen since fall.

See?
 

Time to go!

The garland worked so well with the leaves that I thought I'd give it another go with hearts.  And I was especially lucky because I had all the supplies on hand and didn't have to buy anything. 
 

My wallet thanks me.

I started by cutting my pieces of red felt into four pieces, making them about 3x5 each.  Then I found a heart picture, printed it out, and traced it over eight pieces of freezer paper. 

I cut the hearts out, then ironed them onto the pieces of felt with the shiny side down so it would stick.  And I think that no matter how many times I stencil this way I will never stop being delighted by the entire process.  It's easy!  And cheap!  And it puts a heart (or a bird!) on something that wasn't there before!

I failed to realize, however, that by using red felt and white paint the felt would essentially turn pink.  I was okay with that, but I really wanted white.  So I painted a couple of coats and ended up using the entire bottle of white craft paint.

Once the felt pieces were dry I peeled off the freezer paper and hot glued the pieces to garden twine that I'll have you know I braved the ice-covered backyard to go outside and get so I could finish this project today and have something to show you.

I'm a giver, is what I'm saying.

I didn't actually measure anything because I only have a limited amount of free time and I also have an enormous waiting list for knitting patterns.  So to save time I just eyeballed it.  I think it turned out okay.

 
However, I have gotten smart and didn't include Sebastian in this project.  If I had I would probably still be finding paint in my hair.  I did all of it during naptime because Adele is sleeping and Sebastian has discovered a love of playing on the PBS website and I have discovered a love of having a few minutes where someone isn't yelling "Hey Mommy!  Hey Mommy!  Hey Mommy!"

Homemade Friday: Halloween Garland on a Stick

Yesterday Sebastian was searching for something to do, which basically entailed him walking behind me saying "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

I'd been thinking about making a Halloween craft with him and thought that this might be a good time.  Actually, what I really thought was "If it will get you to stop whining my name so much, then FINE. LET'S CRAFT."

But that's not what I said.  Obviously.

We started a little late and so had to rush through to get done before Adele woke up.  So that means that I let Sebastian watch me cut out ghosts and pumpkins and bright blue bats because we didn't have any black felt.  He did decide what the faces would look like on the little Halloween shapes.  And he did keep picking up my needle I used to attach thread and telling me how sharp it was.

A word of advice if you decide to make something like this: Don't take it outside on a windy day to take pictures.  Otherwise you will get photos like this:

And then you will spend 10 minutes untangling it.  As I had put in the effort, I felt it only fair that Sebastian forgo his need to use the bathroom and let me continue to take his picture.  Here he is complaining about needing to pee:

And this is after the bathroom break and after I gave up getting an outside photo and way after Sebastian was done with the whole silly craft:

I hung it over our window in our back room/play room:

And here's how it looks from outside:

And here's how I felt about untangling all of those strings multiple times because of wind and various excited 4 year olds who wouldn't hold still and stop swinging the branch around:

Sebastian likes it, though.  He says it's part of our haunted house.

In case you were truly interested in what I did, I cut out shapes by hand - pumpkins, ghosts and bats - using felt.  Then I drew faces with a sharpie - either happy, sad or scary, whichever Sebastian wanted.  We went out into the yard and found a big stick, then I attached all the shapes to the stick with black thread.  I didn't measure anything, as you would expect.

When Chris got home he noticed it right away and said "Hey, that's neat!"  I'm assuming he meant "Hey! Looks like you actually did something today!"

But I could be over-analyzing ...

Homemade Friday: Puff Paint! Sort of!

As you can probably tell from my post yesterday I am always on the lookout for ways to make myself feel like less of a failure as a mother.  One of the best ways to do that is to craft with the kids.  Sebastian is pretty good, though a bit rambunctious and he loses interest easily.  And Adele, of course, would much prefer dumping all of the supplies into the floor and stomping on them while simultaneously smacking you in the face and spitting on your shoes.

But every so often I decide that that day is the day I start being like all the mothers on all the mommy blogs and start creating beautiful, intricate, educational pieces of art with my kids.

(Ha.  HAHAHA.)

So this week I had one of those days.  I found something online that looked pretty cool and relatively simple for Sebastian.  I didn’t even try with Adele (see above) so we waited until she took her nap.

I even got everything out and prepared early so that when it was time for the crafting to begin I didn’t have him waiting around and whining while I set up the supplies.

See?  Preparation wins everything.

But when it was time, Sebastian wasn’t nearly impressed with my mom skills as I wanted him to be.  He was kind of more interested in his apple.  But he suffered through it because I made him.

I got the project from Disney’s Family Fun website.  Basically you put some glue on a piece of card stock in whatever design you want, then cover it in salt and shake off the excess.  Then you put drops of food coloring mixed with water on the glue/salt mixture and watch it spread around.  You’re only supposed to put one drop at a time, but Sebastian was a little overenthusiastic in his color dropping, so we had some puddles.

But it was a cute idea, even if I got more out of it than he did. 

Here’s my picture.  It’s an apple tree.  I forced him to work on this one as he was pretty much done with the process midway through the first picture.

Motherhood: Forcing your children to craft with you to create beautiful memories of you making them do things they don’t really want to do.

Homemade Friday: Bunnies that may or may not be possessed

Because it wouldn’t be a major holiday unless I was staying up too late sewing an awkward, misshapen, weird-eyed bunny rabbit.  Or something thereabouts. 

You’re welcome, children.

Yes.  I did.  The night before Easter.

I seem to have a, shall we say, history with doing things like that.

I’d seen this pattern from Growing Home a little bit ago, featured on Design Mom’s blog.  As soon as I saw it, I kind of knew in the back of my mind that I’d be sewing it for the kids for Easter.  But I didn’t let myself think about it, because it, for some reason, seemed a little silly.  I don’t have a lot of free time, and trying to sew with either of the children around would probably result in a stitch sewn through someone’s thumb.  Sebastian has always been good, but Adele is at the stage now where she wants to be a part of what everyone is doing. 

If I’m stirring something on the counter by myself she’s fine.  But if Sebastian pulls his chair over to help, she’s climbing up on it, too, which usually ends in Sebastian yelling at her, and me yelling at both of them to get out of the kitchen.  Now that I think about it, I kind of feel bad for little Babash.  He used to be able to help me so much, and he really enjoyed it.

Bummer.

Anyway, I kept the idea of the bunnies there in my mind, behind all the other things I needed to think about, not the least of which was hot gluing Adele’s Easter basket I made her last year back together because one of the children got a little too rambunctious when playing with it.

But on Easter Eve I knew I was going to make the bunnies.  It’s just that the pattern looked so easy and fast!  And it was.

Notice the HAND SEWING that was required.

When Adele was napping and I bribed a ridiculously tired Sebastian to try to nap by saying that maybe if he tried to sleep, the Easter Bunny would leave him something a little early.  He didn’t actually sleep, but at least he was up there away from me for awhile.  This gave me a little time to rummage through my fabric and buttons to find what I needed, cut out the bunny pattern and even start sewing a little bit.

I finished it later that night, after everyone had gone to bed.  I said I stayed up late because I took a break from sewing to eat a quiet dinner with Chris and watch TV, but really this pattern could have been finished in no time, a couple of hours maybe.  Or maybe a little longer if you take the time to wash and iron the fabric you use ahead of time.  I didn’t as I was on a deadline that I created for myself by not starting the damn things when I first thought about it.

Adele’s has the white ears and Sebastian’s has the brown.  They seem to like them, even though the button eyes seem to be pleading for someone to help them escape some tortuous experience.  Maybe if I make them again I’ll use black eyes, but that was all I had.  And I want you to note that I sewed those buttons on myself, even though that’s usually a task I outsource to my mother.

Sebastian is convinced his is the Easter Bunny.

The best I could get of the kids on Easter morning. 
Sebastian refused to dress up.  But he loved his new
measuring tape that lasted a whole day before he pulled
the tape completely out.

 

Has nothing to do with the post, but she's kind of cute.

(Sebastian just came in and saw these pictures and wanted to know 'who that man is who's making the Easter Bunny.'  Way to go, Mommy.  Both for almost ruining the Easter Bunny and for having man hands.)

The construction paper egg wreath that almost wasn’t*

Sebastian is supremely excited about Easter coming up, which is evidenced by the fact that when he asked me to decorate the house on Sunday evening and I said we’d do it later because I was trying to recover from a Saturday evening without the kids and with a couple of bottles of wine, unbeknownst to me he marched upstairs by himself, got the box of decorations out of the closet and either carried or threw it down the steps.  I was outside so I’m still not entirely sure how he got the tote downstairs.  Luckily I have about two decorations so it was pretty empty.

So after setting up a little egg tree and a couple of rabbit candles, I figured it would be a good idea to find some kind of craft to make.  I headed to pinterest last night after the kids went to bed and spent a good hour hunting around.  (I know it’s been said so many times before, but holy hell time just disappears when I’m on there.)

I actually didn’t find what I wanted, but I did find this website, which is remarkable in that this woman seems to have an endless mental capacity for developing fun things for her little boy to do.  I am exceedingly jealous, and will probably also steal most of her ideas. 

But that’s not where I got the idea for what I did.  I got that from here.  I obviously didn’t follow the craft exactly as it was presented because I didn’t like the way the printable eggs looked, but it did give me a starting point.

While Sebastian was at school this morning I set about cutting out a ton of construction paper eggs.  I probably could have let him attempt that himself, but he gets easily frustrated if something doesn’t work the way he wants it to and I’m not sure he’d be satisfied with a subpar egg.  Plus he’s been extra sensitive lately.  (I think he might be sick again.  Let’s all whisper-read that so maybe it won’t be true.  And it shouldn’t be true as he’s still on his antibiotic for his strep, but I did forget to send the kids’ medicine when they went to see their grandparents this weekend.  Cause I’m an awesome mom.)

While I cut out the eggs and paper plate Adele yelled at me for not letting her play with the scissors and also ate the scrap paper.  I let her because I only got 5 hours of sleep because someone decided to wet entirely through her diaper, pajamas and sheets.  I was too tired to care, is what I’m saying.

When Sebastian got back from school I thought he’d be excited about the project I’d painstakingly laid out for him to do, but as the aforementioned possible sickness and also probable sleep deprivation from listening to his sister scream probably already led you to realize, he was not.  No, all he wanted to do was watch a show.  When I refused, he offered to make the egg wreath and then watch a show.  I also said no to that.

Mad because she wants to play with the glue. 
Also, don't look in my messy cabinet.  It's impolite to judge.

And so after much screaming and tears and a long time-out in his room wherein he put his pajamas on, which is what he always does when he’s sent to his room to cool down (maybe pajamas help keep him comfortable, which in turn helps him calm down? Possibly?), he finally decided that maybe making the wreath might be kind of neat.  (I just realized that it sounds like he was punished for not wanting to do the craft.  He wasn’t.  He was punished for pitching a fit because I wouldn’t let him watch TV because he has limits on that sort of thing.)

And he did enjoy it.  I put some glue on the plate and showed him where to put a couple of eggs and he did the rest.  It took about two minutes, if that.  Since I had some eggs left over I tried to get him to make another one, but he was done.  He wouldn’t even hold it up and let me take a picture so I let the bunny do that, which he’s convinced is the Easter Bunny.  His uncle and almost-aunt bought it for him last year and he pulled it out recently and has hardly let it out of his sight.

It’s a fun little craft, provided you have a preschooler who is not possessed by a demon, as mine seems to be lately.  Maybe we’ll try it again on another day that isn’t so fraught with drama.

The finished product.  With bunny. We will hang it up with pride.

*I realized after I posted yesterday that it was my 200th post.  It was … decidedly unworthy.

Homemade Friday: Cinnamon Ornaments

My wrists will probably never recover from all of this knitting that I can't show you.

Actually, that's totally not true as I've done much more knitting than this in a much shorter time frame.

But still.  Ouch.

I think I have such problems with them because I have giant, monster hands and tiny, dainty wrists.

So anyway, there's my complaining for today.  On to the craft.

These ornaments are so easy and so sweet and as a bonus make your house smell like Christmas.

The recipe says to mix together a cup of cinnamon and 3/4 cup of applesauce until it makes a dough.  I will say that I added just a little bit of water because it wasn't coming together like I wanted it to.  Once it's come together, roll it out between two sheets of wax paper, freezer paper, parchment paper, anything to keep it from staining your countertops.

Let the kids have at it and cut out different shapes with cookie cutters.

And if you're like me, try very hard to not be OCD about where the cutters are placed on the dough.

Remember, it's for the kids, not you. 

Put the ornaments carefully on a cookie sheet and poke a hole through them with a straw for the ribbon placement.  Bake at 200 degrees for a couple of hours.  I've overbaked them both times I've done it, and I'm wondering if baking them just enough will keep them from breaking so easily.  Or maybe that's how they're supposed to be. 

Once they've cooled tie a ribbon, or in my case yarn, through the hole and hang them on the tree!

(Bonus if you've got snail and hedgehog cookie cutters  The hedgehog is my favorite.)

Homemade Friday: Foil hand prints!

(I have to add the exclamation point to make it seem more exciting than it actually is.)

A couple of months ago while hanging around the kids section at the bookstore so Sebastian could play with the train table I stumbled upon a craft book for kids.  It has instructions for making masks and toilet paper roll flags and some other decoration-type things.

I know I could probably find much better and more visually appealing kid crafts online, but there was something about this book that got me feeling nostalgic.  I had something similar when I was younger and I thought I could have a good time with Sebastian making neat stuff.

Plus it would be awesome to have something else to do besides making Thomas the train take endless trips over the hill on the wooden train set.  (He only goes over the hill so he can fall off of it, you see.)

So I bought the book, impractical though it was.

One of the easiest items to make in there, especially for the little guy, was a set of hand prints made out of foil.  And it is exactly what it sounds like.  He holds his hands on the foil and I trace around it then cut or tear them out.

Basically it's more something for me to do rather than something for him to do.

Because I need more to do.

About a month ago on a particularly random day I brought out the book and the supplies and got to work.

Anyone know how difficult it is to make a 3 year old hold his hands still while you trace around them?  But nevertheless we got the hands traced.  Sebastian, who is normally extremely adept at cutting paper with scissors, was not allowed to cut the foil.  I just didn't think that would be a good idea.  Plus it was really important to me that those hands be as straight as I could make them.  You know, for Sebastian.

At this point he wandered off with his own scissors and a piece of construction paper because I wasn't sharing, I guess.  And I was left to glue everything myself.  I take that back.  He did run the glue stick across one hand, but then lost interest, probably because I wouldn't let him glue the fingers.  I didn't want them to rip off, you see.

(I realize I have issues.)

So the hands were glued and I wrote his name on them and we hung it on his bedroom door.  And in spite of his seeming lack of interest, every time he passes by them he comments on them.

Those are my hand prints, right?

Right!

We cut them out, right?

Absolutely.  We did.