A few days ago my daughter said, wistfully, “Remember last summer when we did a craft project every day?”. My first thought was, wooo hoo! I made an actual memory for my kid! and it was a good one. Parenting win! My second thought was, dammit, how am I going to do that again?  Then I got an email from Beth (of Sew Mama Sew fame) telling me about an online summer crafts camp called the Summer Camp Adventure Club. Problem solved.

What is the Summer Camp Adventure Club? I’ll let Beth describe it:

Summer Camp Adventure Club is a subscription-based, online “camp” (an eCourse/online class) where Pre-K through 3-4 grade campers get fun, new ideas every day throughout the summer. There’s a new theme every week in June, July and August. Each weekly theme includes tons of inspiring projects, activities, journal prompts, downloads, recipes and more. Kids get the inspiration and guidance they need to work more independently to create projects they love.

Full disclosure: I was given a free month of club membership in exchange for spreading the word, but honestly I’m going to purchase subscriptions for July and August. I could be my normal cheapskate self and do it all myself (with the help of my pinterest boards), but with three little kids running and screaming around the house day in and day out, I don’t always have the brain power to think up, organize, and get a project going for the kids.  Summer Camp Adventure Club to the rescue! Come on, join the club!

Have you been following along with Jess and Kristin’s Vintage May? These two bloggers teamed up to show off handmade vintage-y kid’s clothes all month long. Many amazing bloggers have been making many amazing garments and tutorials too.  Today, hey, it’s me! Head on over to skirt as top to see more of this button up shirt made from a vintage sheets.

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While I was making this shirt, I started to think of all the other things I’ve made from vintage sheets. I used to be skeezed out by second hand sheets. All that yardage in awesome prints, though? Hard to pass up.  To over come my heebie jeebies, I wash the sheets a few times with extra hot water and let them dry in the sun. When you iron the sheets that thrift store smell appears again, but I power through knowing after I sew whatever it is I am making, I will never iron them again. All the projects above are new sheets made from old sheets (and one quilt). I’m a genius I know. We have extendable beds from Ikea, so the kids’ beds are all different weird sizes.

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Clothes from vintage sheets are much more fun. I think pajama pants from sheets and pillowcases are my favorite, but obviously I like a good floral tie too. More boy’s button up shirts from flowery sheets are definitely in my future.

Last winter we went on an amazing trip to Kauai. When we went the kids were 5, almost 4, and 1 at the time. They remember some things, but not too much. We try to tell stories about it and look at pictures from when we were there, because I’m guessing we won’t be back for a long while. That’s where these pillows come in.

Kauai is a teeny island with one main road that goes almost all the way around the island. When you are driving one way the ocean is on your side and when you turn around and drive the other way the mountains are on your side. Most directions include one or the other to help you find your way. The Hawaiian for this is mauka and makai:

– Mauka (mow-kah) means on the mountain side of the road.

– Makai (mah-kigh) means on the ocean side of the road.

The big kids each had their side of the car (the baby was in the middle). That mean one kid was mauka and the other makai. They would have argument about which was better and rub it in if they got the good side. Of course once we turned around and went home, the other one would rub it in. Some days the mountains were the favorite and other days it was the sea.

I’m not super big on souvenirs (except we got a hula girl of course), so I made the pillows, hoping it would help the kids hold on to  a bit of Kauai. The mountain is a simple green triangle. And yes it has snow, shut up it looks good. My first idea for the ocean pillow was to make it look like this, but when I sewed it up, it looked like a blue santa hat. I was working on these pillow right after I made this potholder and I was getting into the polka dot as neutral thing–as you can tell with the ocean pillow. I really love how it turned out: the day side, the night side, and polka dots all over the damn place.

I took all the homemade, wonky, gluey hearts down from the wall in my kids’ room and it looked so sad and bare. The room needed some cheering up! First I was thinking I would let the kids go crazy with washi tape, then I thought maybe we could make some paper flowers and tape them up, but then I saw this amazing wall.

My daughter and I headed to the craft store to buy some [faux] flowers. I’m usually not down with fake flowers–or even buying that much plastic at once–but I have to admit some of these flowers are very,very pretty. The weedy looking ones are my favorite. I do believe I’m the only woman in the world buying plastic weeds.

Luckily all the fake flowers were half off, so we went a little crazy picking them out. My daughter fell hard for the bubblegum pink roses covered in fake water droplets. I was not so smitten, but she was so in love. When we got home I was messing with the flowers to see if I could get them to look a bit more natural and when I pulled back the petals on the rose, it turned into this absolutely gorgeous bloom. You can see how the rose looks closed and open above.

To hang all the flowers on the wall, I cut the bunches apart with a wire cutter and trimmed most of the leaves off as well. Then marked five rows on the wall. Working from the top down I simply taped each flower up so it was in line with the one above it. My rows aren’t perfectly spaced or perfectly straight, but the it’s the contrast of orderliness and nature I was going for–that’s what drew me to the first photo of flowers on the wall. Also, it’s just plain awesome to have a field of flowers on your bedroom wall.

For 20 dollars and an hour of our time, we managed to get spring to come a bit earlier in Wisconsin. Not bad, not bad at all.

Rashida (of I heart Linen fame) contacted me a long while back to see if I would contribute to her new book, Zakka Style. Of course I said yes! I remade this project, so I could fix the pattern and change the colors a bit. I never did get around to making and selling these pocket pillowcases, but yay for my laziness because now you can make them!

The pattern really is quite easy and makes for a lovely gift. The diamonds are fiddly, I won’t lie, but you could skip them and sew any sort of patchwork your heart desires.  The whole book is filled with simple and clever little things to make. And they are designed by some of my favorite people: Holly, Amanda, Leslie, and a good deal more.

I actually made two projects for the book, but the second one didn’t make the cut. Remember this towel I made? Well, I reworked that project as well: a little bigger, nicer patchwork, and in linen. This continuous towel doesn’t fit in my bathroom and though it does look kind of nice in my kitchen, I think it would look better in yours.

That’s right, a little giveaway for this Tuesday: Zakka Style and a zakka stylish linen towel. To enter yourselves in this giveaway, I would like it if you’d answer a question for me. How do you read blogs? Do you use google reader, links from facebook, twitter, flickr, pinterest, old fashioned bookmarks, something else entirely? I want elsie marley to be easily accessible to all of you, which is easier if I know how you are all accessing it :)

psst: if the answer is facebook, well wouldn’t you know elsie marley’s got a facebook page.

Ok so leave your answer before Thursday Feb. 23 at 9am and I’ll let the robots do the picking. This giveaway is open to all my lovely readers, no matter where you live. Good luck!

 The giveaway is closed!