elsie marley

These are a couple of placemats I made for one of my sisters (and if my mom can hold off telling everyone she know about this blog–hi mom–she won’t know she’s getting them for christmas).   You would think placemats would be easy, hell even my husband said so, but you really do have to pay attention.  You can’t watch crappy tv while cutting them out with your dull ass rotary cutter on your cutting mat that is way to small, or none will be the same size.  This set is saved by the pretty fabric, but I made another set (for another sister) and everything went wrong: they are too big,  I used plaid fabric so you can see every flub,  I tried to make them pretty with a decorative stitch, but it make them look old fashioned, so I made some matching napkins (I never want to hem anything again) and they look ridiculously small next to the huge placemats, oh and I had to patch some fabric together because I didn’t have enough. There is always at least one project that goes like this, where everything goes wrong no matter what you try. My mom used to call these days “E.I triple T. S.” days: everything I touch turns to shit.  So here’s something nobody can screw up:

pomanders.  I did this with my daughter and her friend last week: just push cloves into oranges or clementines; for small people cut a tiny slit in the orange so the clove goes in more easily. You can tie a pretty ribbon around them and hang them on your tree or in your closet–they smell lovely.  I was going to make letters with the cloves and spell out something festive (noel was the shortest christmas sentiment I could think of) but we started eating the oranges…

Here is something you can do if you want to eat them and another if you don’t have any cloves.

Today is Monday, so my daughter and I had a little crafty time together.  I wanted to try making a collage with contact paper for a while now.  She’s only just 2 and she hasn’t quite mastered the glue stick yet. We gathered our supplies: contact paper, tissue paper, leaves and twigs we picked up on a walk, and fabric scraps.  We slapped everything down –well, I arranged mine–on the sticky side and then put another piece of contact paper (sticky side down) on top of it all. It looked like this:

Then I cut out leaves and taped them to the window.  I think this is a good craft for the toddler set.  Tearing paper and sticky things are pretty exciting to my daughter so this project actually held her interest for a while.  Contact paper isn’t all that sticky, so the tissue paper worked best.  But if you are crazy like me and save the tiniest scrap, well they work too and I think thread would look nice.  Leaves work if they’re pressed (ours weren’t) and you get leaves in leaves at the end, which is exciting only to me.  You could, of course, cut any shape out: turkeys, christmas trees, vacuum cleaners, whatever.  When it came time for cutting, my daughter was already on to other things, but 10 quiet minutes is pretty huge.

We missed last Monday because it was an all out whine fest–getting through the day was all I could handle. So yesterday we turned on the oven, mixed up some pumpkin bread, and made sure the bowl was very clean. The bread was nothing much, but she got to crack eggs! and sift flour! and mix! and taste! and mix! And make a royal mess, but the house was warm and smelled like nutmeg and cinnamon.

I’m working on my entry for the Holiday Softie Awards.  Well really I’m sitting on the couch whining to no one imparticular about being sick and trying to motivate myself to actually work on my entry for the Holiday Softie Awards.   So far it’s working pretty well, but there are a few more components and I’m a little nervous about tackling those.  I don’t want to give it away before it’s done, but you could probably figure it out.  Any guesses?Today, of course, was Monday.   So my daughter and I did a little craft project, but seeing as we are all sick it really wasn’t much of a project.  I taped a a big sheet of paper to a table (it would probably have worked better on the floor, but I didn’t want her little brother messing with it) and we colored little scenes for her toys:  a table she could draw food on, a road for all the cars, she drew a lake and I put in a diving board and some sea creatures, and a playground.  We color all the time, but I don’t usually think of getting her other toys “involved.”  She could add new things when she thought of them and her little people ate and swam and drove all around.  It made for a nice morning of rainy day play.

Here it is the second installment of Making Mondays: a cardboard dollhouse. Sounds simple enough, butI think the project was a little over my daughter’s head–she is only 2 after all. I was inspired by the Constantine dollhouse (pictured below). It’s a lovely and simple idea, but unfortunately there isn’t a spare $145 lying around these days. So we made our own.

We started with a box, cut it apart, and used one long side and the two shorter sides. I cut a slit in each of the short sides almost up to the top and slid them on top of the longer piece of cardboard, so they were perpendicular to it. Then I tried to make the walls a little sturdier by taping the corners and my daughter pulled the rest of the tape off the roll. To decorate, we looked through magazines and cut out pictures of kitchens and bathrooms and couches and chairs, and she picked some pretty paper for the walls as well. I thought this would be the best part, but really she had no patience for it, thankfully the glue stick made up for that. And with that glue stick we slapped it all on, cut some doors and the dollhouse was done.

I think this is a good project for kids that are a little older–hell, I might just make another one myself. There are a couple things I would do differently the second time around. I think it would be nice if the house came apart and could be stored flat. This would make decorating both a little easier (you can lay everything flat on a table and work on it) and more difficult (you have to remember what walls go to what room). Also, in order for the house to be stable the shorter walls must be taller than the long wall they fit over (I didn’t do this and our house is very wobbly). And though I think it’s fun to find pictures of things in magazines to decorate the house, it would be nice if the walls were felt. You could cut couches and chairs out of felt as well and stick it to the walls–then you always would have the option of redecorating!

To see all the rooms, you can go to my flickr page. Even though my daughter was frustrated with the amount of time it took to make, in the end, of course, she loved it. And now she calls it her castle (where did she learn that word?). If there is interest I would be happy to make up a pattern (obviously with the improvements I mentioned) and have it be available to download and print.

One more thing: if it wasn’t obvious,this is my little post for Blog Action Day. Reuse your old boxes and magazines by turning them into dollhouses and Recycle them when that dollhouse falls apart.

Inspired by good + happy day’s week of organized activities, I declared Monday “making day.” I’m afraid it stops there though–I just don’t have the follow through for everyday to have a planned activity. But I always wanted to be that mom that lets her kids go crazy with art, screw the mess. But then I became a mom. And it involves a lot of mess: dirty dishes, dirty laundry, dirty diapers, dirty hands, dirty faces. So much of everyday is cleaning babies and things that it’s hard to start something that you know will make yet another mess. My daughter just turned 2 and she needs some more art making in her life and I need to say screw the mess a little more. So this morning we made potato prints: she watched as I cut the shapes out of the potatoes (”star! star!”), dipped them in the paints, and kind of got the hang of stamping, but somehow painting the potatoes was more fun, as was painting her arm and her hands and her belly, but really it wasn’t more than soap and water couldn’t handle. And there you go. Art.

If you’d like to join in Making Mondays (or any day really) do! Comment and tell me what you and your littles make together. Or make a date for next Monday.