"I spy" Christmas ornaments

Each year at Christmas my kids exchange homemade ornaments with their cousins instead of presents. This year we made "I spy" ornaments. Another 1st grader mom and myself came up with the idea, and she wrote the poem on the tag:

I spy 2 snowflakes, a star from the night,
A golden ring, and a Christmas light;
A holly leaf, a snowman, a little white dove,
2 bells, a present, and a heart full of love.

We are making them with our daughters' first grade class at their Christmas party on Friday.
They are super simple to make. I ordered the empty craft ornament balls (4-inch) off of ebay. I then filled one side of the ornament with Polypellets (1c.) purchased at Walmart. I then put in 10 small Christmas-y items: confetti snowflakes;heart, holly leaf, and star beads, "gold" ring and tiny dove (from the bridal dept at Hobby Lobby), miniature Christmas light, and present (from Hobby Lobby's miniature doll house dept), 2 types of small bells, and a snowman button. I glued the 2 halves together, tied on the tag and a ribbon, and that is it. They have been a huge hit.

Holiday Projects

Just a couple of things I have done lately.
I saw the specimen jars on someone's blog, we had a lot of fun putting them together. Notice the bionicle in one of the jars.
I am also working on a Christmas ornament. My first version was quite plain. The second is fancier, but I can't tell if it is cute or looks like a drag queen (due to a lack of available paint brushes, I painted it with q-tips and toothpicks)

Family History

We had a great HFPE meeting last week on keeping our family history (along with a fantastic dinner). Different sisters were asked to bring in and then talk about how they keep their family history. One had a collage of family pictures along with some sweet notes written by her husband to her in their early marriage. When her children were on missions, she also kept a copy of all emails and letters she wrote to them, and those they wrote to her and printed them out (there were pictures along with them) and that was a record of their missions. There were several scrapbookers, to various degrees, personal journals, family journals including one which contained only "happy" things. A journal of Christmases and family traditions. Another idea was to have a baby's first year calendar on which to jot in those small squares what your baby did in their first year. The limits of space and 1 year time were big advantages. I showed the "big book about me"s that I do each New Years for each of my kids. I take those inexpensive photo albums (4x6") that I pick up at Target, and insert photographs, lists of likes, trips taken, etc. also pictures the kids have drawn, including a self-portrait and sample of handwriting, for smaller kids I trace their hands or use footprints. I use a lot of clip art and stickers to go along with their lists of likes and favorites. They love looking at them year round, in fact, I have to hide them to keep them in tact.

lunch bags

The morning of Ethan's field trip, I realized that the only paper sacks I had, had Strawberry Shortcake on them. Not cool for a 3rd grade boy. So we went through his old Lego magazines and used them for a new look. The only problem is that he then saved his lunch sack, carrying it around all day so he could keep it.

Baker's man

It is amazing how 1 cup of flour can multiply when you add in a 20-month old.

Ethan's Creature

I finally got around to finishing Ethan's creature- Dionyx. This time I used felt and fabric paint (his drawing get pretty complex). Once again, he is thrilled to have his drawing come to life.

Riley fairy

My kids are all great artists. Recently while my husband was out of town for work, the kids each drew him large pictures. I loved the picture of Riley and her dad as fairies, and so I decided to try and re-create her drawing as a doll. She loves it, and I am fairly pleased with the results. Next one the agenda is Ethan's sea creature.

Block-a-month

I finally finished my center blocks for the block-a-month quilt I started last year. As you can tell, I am a pretty big fan of fall colors.

a note from Ethan

Ethan, my lego-obsessed son, left me this note last night.

Just about finished

I am finally almost finished with redecorating Riley's room. I finished these ribboned curtains Saturday night. I think they turned out quite nicely and were very easy. I started out sewing on the ribbons, but have a few issues with thread tension, so I switched to using fabric glue. This was very quick and very easy. I let Riley choose the ribbons (which I had been gathering for several months) and their order. Simple and cute!

Truffula Tree

With the ending of school fast approaching (tomorrow), Riley decided she wanted to make a special gift for her kindergarten teacher, a Truffula tree (from Dr. Seuss's The Lorax). After brainstorming awhile, I think we came up with something pretty good.
Materials: Styrofoam ball, fuzzy feather boa in your choice of colors, 3/8" dowel, sculpey (yellow, green, black), wooden platform, craft glue, sewing pins.
To start with, we poked a pen into one end of the styrofoam ball to make it easier to handle. Then we covered the ball with craft glue. Next we poked a pin through one end of the boa and stuck it in the top of the ball. next we slowly wrapped the boa around the ball, keeping the rows as close together as possible. when we came to the end, we put in another pin. (anywhere that I worried about how well the boa stuck, I used another pin to reinforce). Then I cut 2 4-5 inch pieces of the dowel. I rolled a piece of sculpey (color didn't matter here) to match the width and attached it to the end of the dowel. I then rolled the dowel/sculpey combo with some smooth and flat yellow sculpey, smoothed it out, then added some small thin slices of black sculpey to try and get that scribble quality that is found in the book. I bent the "trunk" to match the trees in the book, baked it, and put the dry boa ball on top. I covered the wooden base with green sculpey and baked it. After it had cooled, I drilled in two holes for our two trees and used screws to attach the trees (screwing into the dowel) to the base. We did snap one tree while trying to get it attached, but that is what super glue is for. I will make a Lorax this summer when I find the right materials. Riley's teacher loved it.

Kitchen Towel Apron

I came up with this pattern as a gift for my daughter's friend's birthday. Very easy. I found some cute kitchen towels on clearance after valentine's day. I cut off the top corners of the towel to give it an apron shape (you could use another apron as a pattern), leaving the rest of the sides, top and bottom alone. I then took a package of extra wide double fold bias tape, left enough tail on one end for tying, sewed it to the cut edge, left a large enough loop to fit over a child's head (measure this), sewed tape to the other cut edge, and left an equal tail on the other side. DONE! I added a contrasting pocket on the first one I made, just for some extra fun.

Twilight

OK, so I am a closet Stephenie Meyer fan. I just saw the trailer for the "Twilight" movie, and am pleasantly surprised. Now, if only the 4th book would come out...
Here is a link to the movie trailer: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.fullscreen&videoid=33429578

Fabric Book Covers

I wanted to make my son's journal more appealing, hoping that he would be more likely to write in it when I came up with this idea. For his I used a pair of jeans he had torn out at the knees, lining it up so I could keep the pockets, which are great to keep pens, pictures, and other momentos.
The general instructions are:
1. measure the outside of the book you want to cover ( I measure with the book closed). Add 1/2" to both the horizontal and vertical measurements.
2. measure the inside flap of the book, add 3/4 " as above, cut 2.
3. Press one side of inside flaps under approx 1/2" and stitch.
4. Line up inside flaps with outside edges (raw edges together) of outside cover. Stitch outside edges on both sides.
5. Trim corners, turn right side out, and press.

For the white cover, I quilted a small sunbonnet sue for a bit of added interest. I also added a piece of ribbon to be used as a page marker. To finish the edge around the binding I cut a rectangle of fabric about 2"x 3", turned under the bottom edge and stitched it, then placed a piece of ribbon on the top edge between the two layers and stitched it along with step 4, above.

trip down memory lane

Yesterday I put in an old home movie for the kids to watch while I got ready for church. I couldn't believe how quickly they have grown, so I just had to put up a pic of Riley and Ethan from about 4 years ago to remind myself how quickly time flies.

graduation

My littlest brother, Parker, graduated from UW this past weekend (B.S. in Animal Science), that's him behind the girl in the blue scarf who actually is looking at the camera. The kids all did quite well during the ceremony, no yelling like at my other brother's (Josh). My baby sis, Brittany also had her baby- Lorenzo "Zo" James- blessed, so the whole family was gathered. Good times!

fleece baby blanket

Here is a sweet baby blanket that I came up with. I something similar was given to a friend of mine, but when I couldn't find a pattern online, I came up with my own. I started with 1 yard, squared, of a fleece that I liked. Then I took one of my small metal crochet hooks (the kind used for doilies) and I used it to punch a hole in the edge every 1/2" apart, about 1/4" from the edge. Then a took a skein of very fuzzy yarn and my H-hook and put a single-crochet (sc) in each hole, followed by a chain (ch), then a sc in next hole, ch, etc. all the way around, I closed it with a slip stitch, then for the next round used a double-crochet (dc), ch, dc, ch, etc. all the way around. Since I rounded the corners a bit, I used a couple of extra chains in those areas to keep the edging lying flat. My pattern isn't very precise, and can be easily modified to fit your taste.

My little clown

Last night the kindergartens at Riley's school put on their spring circus-themed program. She was an adorable little clown and did a fantastic job of singing half a dozen circus inspired songs. She is the one in the flowery dress and white sweater.

Yes, my B.S. is in nutrition

So... Kiechel leaves for work by 6:15a most mornings, this means that the kids are usually still asleep when he leaves, but this morning the oldest 3 were up at 5:45 for some odd reason. This means they were up when Kie fixed his lunch, which means they were up to first of all beg a bowl of cereal off of him while he ate, but they also beg off rather large piles of potato chips that he was putting in his lunch. They rounded off their delightfully healthy meal with a brownie, their fhe treat from last night that they didn't get to eat because we finished with our activity too late in the day. NICE!

Organization

I aspire to be organized and frequently make little stabs toward that goal. My latest- I came across where someone had used a shoe organizer like this for their kids' art supplies, so I thought it would be great for my crafty things. I plan on getting a 2nd for the laundry room door to keep batteries, chargers, etc. separate and easy to find. If only I can keep Carson (1) out of them.

ok, so I realize that this is my 3rd blog of the day, but I did want to post this last one while I still have a bit of time. I made this super sweet messenger bag for my little girl out of 4 coordinating fabrics. The ruffles hold the flap down, no need for hooks or buttons. Much sweeter than your average bag purchased at the store. I based this bag off of one I saw in a Mary Englebreit magazine.

Riley's closet

My project this past week was to turn my little girl's closet into her own (pink) reading nook. I took out all the clothes/shoes and painted the walls a shade of pink she chose (iced berry). Then I screwed 4 hooks into the corners of the closet and hung a string of twinkly Christmas lights on them. I found a large floral print pet bed at TJ Maxx and put that on the floor along with a (clearanced) soft Valentine's Day rug. She loves to go in there to read, nap, or just take a break from her 3 brothers.
I am now in the planning stages of designing an explorer-themed closet for her brothers.

A beginning

Hello. I am new to this whole blogging thing, but it looks like it could be fun. I am the busy S.A.H.M. of 4 (Ethan-8, Riley-6, Mason-4, and Carson-1) who runs marathons and all kinds of crafting.