This whole redoing the kids room thing is taking forever to finish. It might have something to do with the three kids living in it.  It doesn't help when you paint the dresser, hate it and have to paint it again.  The After pictures are coming I promise (here is the before) it's just taking a leeetle longer than I thought.

So what are all these leaves doing on the wall? I couldn't figure out what to put on the big wall between the two windows. I wanted to get this awesome ice cream print, but the big map was on the neighboring wall and it would have been too many big things in such a small room.

I decided to leave it blank and use it like a classroom bullitin board-- putting up little crafts my kids make or things to celebrate the season.  First we had a pompom garland up (which you can see in this post) then some bats (behind me here) and now leaves. I had my kids run around the block collecting leaves, then I dipped them in wax, and we stuck them up with washi tape.  I had envisioned the leaves laid out in straight rows like a scientific collection, but the kids had other ideas.

I first saw the wax dipping thing on Martha Stewart (of course) but she uses beeswax and ooof that stuff is pricey.  Then I stumbled on this post where the leaves are dipped into plain old paraffin wax (2.99 at the grocery store and apparently you can wax your snow shovels with it?).

After about a week up on the wall, the leaves are starting to curl a bit, which is a bummer.  If you have the patience, you should probably press them over night or even after you dip them. Maybe dipping them twice would make curling less likely? They are pretty nonetheless and I think they would make a beautiful thanksgiving garland.

Part one of my daughter's 6th golden birthday is here.

When we went to the craft store for all things gold (for the golden birthday party) the gold pipe cleaners were kind of an impulse buy. It's hard to resist sparkly, fuzzy gold wire. Turns out a bunch of pipe cleaners = room full of decorations in no time. I knew I wanted to do something like  Terri's awesome wrapped pipe cleaner font project, but I skipped the yarn and spelled out Happy Birthday.  Writing with pipe cleaners is ridiculously easy (though knowing cursive comes in handy for once in your life).

Hanging them on the other hand is more difficult than it seems. There is just a lot to balance. Nothing a spool of thread an lots of tape won't fix. Taking a photo in front of three sunny windows is also difficult, so you get the child's eye view of the banner. A golden merry christmas would be very pretty I think, or even better something like this in gold pipe cleaners!

There were a ton of left over pipe cleaners, so I wrapped them around a star cookie cutter and voile! Also, crazy easy. And also would look lovely hanging all over a christmas tree. Seriously, I'm 33 and in love with gold pipe cleaners. I am so rock and roll.

Here is the banner and table on the evening of her party. The pipe cleaners and giant glittery 6 all sparkled in the light. I thought it was pretty magical, I'm pretty sure my big 6 year old did too. Oh, yes and a tiny gold bunting on the cake, because why not?

The littlest in the family is crazy for Ernie these days. He calls him oooo-nee, which is unbearably cute. So what the hell, why not make an ernie shirt? Dana even has a tutorial for one. I didn't print out her pattern, but I did look at her shirt as I cut out all the felt bits.  She adds a little embroidery, which is a nice touch, but I was feeling lazy, so I just top stitched instead. Now that I think about it my kids don't have any licensed characters on their clothes,  but the baby, well the baby always get what he wants doesn't he?

ernie doesn't mind if you pick your nose

Right before kcwc took off this year, we celebrated my daughter's golden birthday. The theme was gold, because we are original like that. It was a fitting theme, but a little odd--not a lot of golden party games (oh I found one though)--so we went a little crazy with the decorations.

The giant golden 6 idea came from this post for a fringey monogram. The fringey detail is super cool, but it also takes quite a bit of time, so I took a short cut and used wrapping paper--glittery, golden wrapping paper! I drew a huge six on the wall with chalk, taped the wrapping paper over it, and then cut right inside the line I drew.  The whole thing took about 1/2 hour + 1 1/2 rolls of wrapping paper.  It looks wrinkley in the photo, but the paper (and my baseboards and my floor and my hands and my face) was so glittery that I didn't notice until I took the picture.

The humongous glittery six looked a little plain, if you can believe it, so I added those shooty out lines all around it.  Blazzam! Then with the extra bit of wrapping paper I made a golden paper chain for above the picnic table.  You can see the crazy, glittery texture of the wrapping paper a bit better here.

The actual present was wrapped in golden wrapping paper too of course.  I think it's a sweater...

A little friend of ours turned 3 last week. I had the damnest time coming up with something to make for him. He's got a super crafty mama, so that lucky boy is kitted out with capes and bags and awesome appliqued shirts. And all the other things you would make for little boys.

I figured the dress up box could always use a few more things, so I sewed up these felt masks. I started with a mask template I made from a paper plate and then went crazy with a bag of felt scraps.  There was a lot of white, gray, and orange felt in the bag, so out came a cat, an elephant, and an owl.

I had the best time making the elephant. His ears are extra wonky and homemade, but I'm so in love with his pompom headpiece I don't care. It was sort of a last minute addition too. If I had thought of it earlier I would have dressed him up more!

Mostly I made up the patterns as I went along except I did steal the owl mask idea from Martha (she's got so many ideas, she won't notice). These were so fun to make and halloween is coming up so fast, I might have to make some more.  I might even go crazy and write up a tutorial. But which one? Or should I make something else?