Wordless Wednesday

pushing her friend

running over Daddy

cozy coupe = pure joy!

I Love Thrift Stores!

Look what I scored on today at my thrift store! An awesome table and chair set for E!! I love that it is total old-school Fisher-Price.


E was so excited, she had to color at it right away as soon as we got home. I was debating between two table and chair sets and I'm so glad I got this one. It has the blue plastic edging all around the table - no crayons will fall off!! I will be so happy to add this to the basement decor once our remodeling down there is finished. It does look a little out of place in my front room. That should be finished in a month or so (once I finish painting so we can get the carpet laid). I can't wait to have a toy room down there!

What's on tap?

I've been spending a lot of time browsing ravelry recently, looking for new knitting projects. I spend a lot of my knitting time making longies for E, but I'm getting bored with them and want to try some new projects.

I started on this fairy from Knitty for E for Christmas. I have the body done, but I have to figure out how I want the hair. I think I want strands of hair rather than knitted hair. I'm just not sure exactly how one does that.

I'm also working on my first pair of socks! I picked an easy beginner pattern to start, the Super Simple Sock Pattern. I can't wait to have cozy knitted feet.

I found this Stripey Toddler Cardigan pattern for E, and this sweater pattern from drops for my husband. Now I need to find something suitable for myself!

As far as sewing, I'm working on some jumpers for E using McCall's M5416. I'm not sure I like the pattern yet or not, it has a lot of fabric. It should end up being pretty twirly. The current one is a super cute owl corduroy I got at JoAnn's. I'm also going to try a couple of other patterns - one has a couple of pleats in the front, and another has a tunic-style neckline and a tie back, but they're all pretty much the same, little A-line jumpers to wear over tshirts and jeans in the winter and by themselves as sundresses in the summer.

Other items on my to-sew list are pajamas for E, a skirt for myself (once I get brave enough to try zippers again), and the next round of felt foods. It's the breakfast round, and I think I'll be doing poptarts and maybe hardboiled eggs.

When I get some time, I'll be putting in a running list on my sidebar to help me remember what I'm working on, and so everyone else can see what I'm working on as well.

Now . . . . back to those socks!

Tot School: Oct. 26-30

E is 21 months

We had a busy week of Tot School! E and I continued with our pumpkin theme this week. I got to all of the activities I wanted to do with her, pretty much!

Learning Toys/Trays:
Transferring pom-poms to an ice cube tray, putting one pom-pom in each hole. Hopefully we can work up to using a spoon or tongs, but right now she gets mad if she can't "pet" them!
Pouring wooden beads. It was funny, she had to take one or two and transfer them by hand first, and then pour the rest. So she had something to aim for?
Puzzles. Mommy is trying SO HARD not to help! She needs to learn to do it on her own.
Sorting shapes in the Fisher Price box. E was being such a goof this day. She'd put the shape in a wrong hole and go "nope!" Then do it again and again to all the wrong holes. Then she finally would push it through the correct hole and say "there it goes!"
Reading Basket/Alphabet:
We kept our pumpkin books this week. We used the jack-o-lantern images in them to choose the faces for our pumpkins this year!

We also continued on with letter P this week, doing several more pumpkin activities.

Pumpkin Theme:
I made some pumpkin size cards, and we worked on sorting big, medium, and small. I also added dots to the cards so we could work on counting one, two, three; but we never got around to that part.

We read The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs and turned our pumpkin from last week into a jack-o-lantern.

We also played a game I have seen on several blogs, tossing balls or beanbags into a bucket. This week we used our Halloween pumpkin basket. E didn't really toss them in, more like dropped them. But she loved the game and we played it several times this week.
Arts and Crafts:
Well, of course we carved our pumpkins! I chose the scary face from the book Pumpkin Circle, E chose the happy face from Where is Baby's Pumpkin? And Daddy just wanted a silly face. Mommy had to carve them all, but everyone helped with scooping the goop out and sorting out the seeds to roast.
For open-ended art this week, the theme was pumpkins, so we did pumpkin painting and pumpkin prints. You can see more about this in my post here.
Photo of the Week:
Of course, my favorite photo this week is the picture of my absolute favorite little doctor and her Auntie, Elphaba, getting ready to go trick-or-treating!

Open-Ended Art: Pumpkins

The theme this week for open-ended art was pumpkins. Open-ended art means just what it says: Give the kiddos the supplies and let them go at it. It is purposefully unstructured.

We did two different pumpkin art projects this morning. (Yes we did both of them this morning, E just loves to paint!)

First, we painted a small pumpkin. We mixed our colors so we had a whole palate to choose from, and then I turned E loose with the paintbrush. Our pumpkin ended up seeming rather large to a 1 1/2 year old, so we compromised. Mommy painted one side of the pumpkin and E painted the other. I was trying to show her different ways to paint with her brush: spreading on the color, stripes, but once I got to the poka dots, it was all over. She LOVES to paint polka dots.

The second pumpkin art project we did was pumpkin prints. I guess they had leftover pumpkins from the Halloween festival at work, so I picked up a few. I cut one in half and showed E how to dip it in paint and make prints on the paper. We didn't get around to apple printing this fall, so it was something new for her.

And here are our finished projects! To see more open-ended art visit Mommies Wise Little Bookworms.

Wordless Wednesday

Craft Corner: Embellished T-Shirts

Yes, these were a project for yet another swap over on Craftster! 10 tees for a cute cute little boy. And even more exciting, he and his mommy and family live only a few miles from me! Usually with these swaps, I'm mailing things across the country or even to another country entirely! It was so nice to be able to meet the little cutie that I made these for. We met up at McDonalds last Friday for chicken nuggets, playtime, and t-shirt trading.

Here they are!

First, the stenciled shirts:

dump truck, Level 1 Human (from Warcraft), the Black Pearl
Jack Skellington, NES controller

And the appliqued shirts:

squirrel, elephant, rocket
Mom tattoo, robot

And a closeup of the cute robot monster guy - I had to simplify this pattern a lot, the original used 23 different pieces! No way was I going to do that!
And now I am done with swapping for a while! I need to get going on Christmas gifts, and I have a stack of fabric to make jumpers for E. And I want to knit some socks, and E needs another pair of longies. And my sister needs help with a window seat cushion. And . . . . :P