Crafty Friday!

Here are a few of the crafts I've been frantically working on this week! I had send outs for a swap on Craftster called "A Package for the Kids." We all sent packages to each other's children, because they are always so excited to get mail and things for themselves. One package I sent out was to a 10 year old girl, and I'll admit, she had me stumped. She liked a lot of jewelry, which I don't make, and her tv shows and movies that she liked, well, I've never heard of some of them. I have a toddler who doesn't get to watch anything more than Elmo, Backyardigans, and Baby Einstein! But her mom said she was in need of reusable sandwich wraps for school, so I made her these:


I used this tutorial, which I found to be very helpful. I used a cotton print for the outside, and waterproof PUL for the inside. I already have the fabric and PUL cut out for several more for E and some friends who like them.

This not-so-little girl also sings in the choir at her church, so I made her a musical tote bag to take along. I really like this bag! It uses french seams, so it doesn't have a lining. And it has a really big pocket on the outside! The only thing I would do different next time is to use a home decor weight fabric like they suggest. I used a quilters cotton for the cute musical print and it's a little flimsy. I got the tutorial from here.

Finally, I sent her two stuffies. I love to make stuffies, they are always so cute! She likes Phineas and Ferb, and while I have no idea what that is, in my research I found out that it is a cartoon with some pretty cool looking characters. I wanted to do Phineas, Ferb, and their platypus (I'm told his name is Perry???), but they were taking too long to finish. I ended up with only Ferb and the platypus, I'll probably make Phineas later and send it their way. I am extremely proud of these fellows. I drafted the patterns by myself and sewed them all by hand. I did use a little felt glue for the eyes and Ferb's collar, but everything else is sewn on tight.

I'm sending the package out this morning! I hope they like it!!

Tot School Week 1 - Farm Theme

E is 21 months old

For our first week of Tot School, I chose to do a farm theme. I am planning on continuing this for a couple of weeks, and culminating it with a playdate a friend is giving letting the kids pretend to run a farm stand. I am so excited for that playdate! What a wonderful idea!!

Learning Toys:
E has been working hard on her puzzles. E loves puzzles, she's just not very good at them yet! She is getting better at getting the pieces to fit, but still gets bored or frustrated after only a couple of pieces. This shape puzzle seems to be easier for her than some of the cute animal puzzles.

We got a new game at a garage sale last week, a set of Leapfrog card games. This week we have been working on finding the animal matches with the memory cards. This is a challenging game for E, but she is starting to understand what I want her to do. I put all the cards out face up and have her stack the matches. Look, she found a rabbit match!

She gets bored with this game easily, though, and thinks it is much more fun to mix the cards up and carry them around the house!

Alphabet:
We've been working on letter B since last week. Here is our Letter B Bumblebee fridge art from last week, inspired by No Time For Flashcards:

In addition to the cute bat we made last week, we did a Letter B butterfly craft this week! Check back next week to see a post all about it. :)

Theme - Farm:
This was the first time E had worked with lacing beads. She did a great job! They held her attention for a good 20 minutes the first time I pulled them out. Here she is concentrating on threading another animal on. Look how many she did!

Once she had a few strung, she said, "come on, horsey, let's go!" and took them all for a walk around the kitchen.

Along with our shape puzzles this week, E wanted to work on her new farm puzzle. This involved her taking all the pieces off and making them walk around the living room floor, making their animal sounds. So, not much puzzle learning, but good for recognizing the animals and their sounds and being creative!

We made our own barn picture out of red foam sheets. I cut out a barn shape and cut doors in it. Then I got out some old farm animal stickers, and had E put the animals inside the doors of the barn. She loves to stick stickers!

Reading Basket:
E is definitely a little bookworm. I decided to put together books for our theme in a basket in the living room. She can pick stories to read centered around our theme and they are within easy reach when it's time to relate them to other activites.

Books in our reading basket:

• The Little Rabbit Who Liked to Say MOO by Jonathan Allen
• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Dora's Eggs by Julie Sykes
• Chuck's Truck by Peggy Perry Anderson
• Hello, Day! by Anita Lobel
• The Rickety Barn Show by Jemma Beeke
• The Rusty, Trusty Tractor by Joy Cowley
• Barnyard Dance by Sandra Boynton
• Little Red Hen by Byron Barton
• Old Macdonald by Pam Adams

Favorite Photo of the Week:

"camera!"

Wordless Wednesday

Too cute for words. Good thing it's a wordless Wednesday!

It's a FABULOUS Muffin Tin Monday!

E and I are so excited to finally participate in Muffin Tin Monday, through Her Cup Overfloweth. I work a few hours on Monday mornings, so I don't always get something put together in time. We're usually racing home and throwing something in the microwave! But today, we got off work a little early, and there was no theme for this week. So our Muffin Tin Monday was E's request for lunch: chicken nuggets, ranch to dunk them in, "grapers," carrot sticks (just vehicles to eat more ranch), water, and a jello jiggler for dessert. Please excuse the sad, sad state of my muffin tin. My nice one is too large for E for lunch. I think this one came from a grandmother or something.

Anyhow, here it is!

Tot School day 1 is going well! We ran to Target on our way home and I found a cute lacing bead set in a farm theme! E has been working hard on it, and then pulling it all around the house once she gets a few animals strung on the lace.

Happy Monday, get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather while it lasts!!!

In His Hands,
Nicole.

We're starting Tot School!

Hello again, everyone!

Next week we are starting . . . .

I am very excited to be starting some early learning activities with E. The Catholic school in our area does not have a preschool, and all the early learning schools in our area just cost too darn much! I know E is little, but she already knows all of her basic colors, can count to three (and understand what she's doing), and can recognize the letters A, B, and E. So, we are going to take some of the ideas from Carisa at 1+1+1=1 and run with them!

We went to some garage sales on Friday, and I scored on a Melissa and Doug castle set for E. I was going to put it away for Christmas or her birthday, but after I saw her playing with it, I had to keep it out. We'll see about putting it away later for her.

First, she made the king walk "up the stairs,"

And then the king and his knight had a conversation:

Our castle even has it's own dragon!!

Next week I hope to blog about the tot school activities we have been working on throughout the week. We have also been doing a bi-weekly playdate with our friends centered around a letter of the week. This week was the letter B! E and I made a letter B bumblebee to put on our fridge inspired by this post at No Time For Flashcards. Then, when our friends came over we made bats out of feather boas, cardstock, and google eyes. I would post a picture of it, as it was super cute, but it has since been destroyed by too much love.

In His Hands,
Nicole.

A Mini-Vacation (Part 1)

Yay for summer vacations! This year we took a trip in our own backyard, just 1 hour away to Estes Park. We often go up during the summer to hike Rocky Mountain National Park, but we hardly ever stay overnight (unless we're backpacking!). We rented a cabin outside the park with Grandma and Grandpa - which is just perfect when you have 6 adults and 1 toddler needing to spread out!

We got up there on the 4th of July and immediately it started POURING rain! Not a mild shower - a deluge!! It stopped long enough for us to get to our spot to see the fireworks at the lake, and then started up again with a vengeance. Poor little E was miserable! I took her back to the car in the rain to take a nap and when she woke up the weather had cleared. We even got a rainbow out of the deal. It was still pretty cold, but the fireworks were nice, as always, and E did great! No crying or being scared.




We are working on our colors right now, and I was telling her what colors the fireworks were. After a while, I heard this mumbling from her. When I listened, she was saying "blue, purple, red, green, yellow, purple . . . " with each firework that went off. It was so funny! I don't think she got too many of the colors right, but hey, points for trying! Here we are all bundled up and trying to stay warm - silly Mommy forgot socks for baby and for herself! Guess who's feet got to be covered by the blanket!










E and I both had snazzy new outfits for the 4th of July - but both were too summery for this chilly day up in the mountains and had to be covered up with jackets. I finally got around to making the spring top from Sew, Mama, Sew for me - I really like it and am planning on making at least one more before the end of summer. Emily's outfit was an A-line tank top with a button closure on the back of the neck and a pair of capris. The tank is in a cute red and blue bandana pattern, with a red ruffle on the bottom. I'm happy with it because I had to do some alterations to make it fit correctly. She's just so skinny and tall! I ended up having to make it 1/2 toddler size in the chest, but 3T in the length for it to look the way I wanted. The pants, too, were supposed to be long pants but they would have been too short, so I chopped them off a little more and made them capris. Hopefully I will have a picture of both outfits soon to show off.

More on our vacation tomorrow or whenever I get the film developed. I have a good shot of a moose on there that I want to show off.

What's Up, Doc?

Oh, my! I just realized I haven't posted anything since February!! In this post, I hope to catch everyone up on the goings-on over here since I last posted. :)

New projects!
Here is a sampling of the projects I have completed recently. It is only a sampling! I see some craft-alongs that are the "50 projects" or "100 projects this year" craft-alongs and I laugh. I feel like I finish 50 projects in a month sometimes!! But these I'm exceptionally proud of.

Felt Sushi, made for a swap, but another set is in the works for E. I am so addicted to felt food right now! I have made this sushi, a set of hamburgers and fries, salad, summer squash, and celery. I am participating in the Play Food Sweat Shop Swap on craftster.org - I have gotten so much nice play food! I have given E a little bit of it to play with, but most is getting put away to give to her for Christmas with a play kitchen - yay!























These are two outfits for a friend of mine from MOPS. I was her "mystery mom" - kinda like a secret Santa, but it lasted all year, and this was my final present to her. I got to practice more sewing skills and do some new things: rows of buttons for the shirt fronts, shorts, collars, and sleeves! Yay! I pretty happy with how they turned out, too, and I think they fit the kiddos as well. :)



Here's yet another baby gift! This one is for my cousin and his SO who had their first baby girl yesterday!! I got this gift off to them just in time! I love doing these little appliques - I really like the way the apples turned out. Those are from the Alexander Henry fabric I bought to make me pajama pants. (Which I also love!) The Japanese one is a stencil, and the baby carriage is an iron-on. It says "That's how I roll" - which I think they will really get a kick out of. I love love love these baby bibs. I have a whole pile of them to make for various friends having babies. Then I am going to make some with pockets for E.




Last to share today is the outfit I made for E. Just so you can see that I do make some things for her, as well as all this stuff for other people! The stencil is my design - so proud of it! - and I also dyed the shirt. These longies are the first ones I've knitted. They turned out pretty well, I think. So, yes, a matching set for my munchkin!




I hope to get another post up very soon - after the holiday weekend, and I should have some good mountain and hiking photos to share!