Little Things

A new obsession...

Now that the weather has turned a little bit cooler, and we're back into a routine of some sort, I've developed a new obsession as of late - sewing! My dear Dad gifted me with a new sewing machine this summer, which I have been wanting for so long. It is so much fun to have a new medium to play around with! I started off by making these flags to celebrate the boys sharing a room (and bunkbeds), and then moved on to making a birthday crown for my nephew Riley's first birthday. My ideas so far have come from Amanda Soule's wonderful book, "The Creative Family", which has tons of great ideas for fairly simple projects. I need simple right now. I'm such a newbie sewer that I still want to throw a party for every line of stitches I sew...  

 

 

 

Check out these delicious fabrics that I am (slowly) making into napkins (and a table runner, if I can figure that one out!) Oh, the joy of doing something new! Such fun! 

Bucket of Dirt (I mean, Cake!)

How's this for an awesome idea for a birthday cake? You bake a chocolate cake, then break it into pieces with your hands. You buy a box of Oreo cookies, then grind them up in a food processor until they are just powder. You buy a box of chocolate pudding and make it. Finally, you buy some gummy worms, frogs, fish or centipedes. Then the fun begins! Take your favourite beach bucket, and layer it, alternating cake, Oreo's, and pudding - with worms and friends thrown into the mix, too, of course! What do you have? The grossest, dirtiest, most popular birthday cake a four year-old has ever seen!!

This is what Min and Eric made for Jonah's fabulous skating party this weekend. It was a hit - the party, and especially the cake! What kid doesn't love to eat dirt with worms???

 

The Placemat Project

It's been a busy week! Among other things (like work, school picnics, and, you know, survival) Max and I have been making a few presents for cousin Jonah's 4th birthday - which is tomorrow! Here is the most popular one (at least with Max!)  - the placemat project.

Max went through his stacks of hockey cards and chose his favourite one; ones he thought Jonah would like the best. They are all Canucks. We then took the layout to our little copy place and made a colour photocopy on thick paper, added the "J" and a Canucks sticker, and then had it laminated (also extra thick). Ta-da! We're hoping Jonah loves it as much as Max does.

Max was the one who came up with this idea, after staring at the placemats I made for him and Sam a few Christmasses ago.

These ones are the same idea, although I did a layout of photos and pictures of things they like on Photoshop first; then printed it and laminated it. They made great gifts that year, as I made them for all the cousins. I like them because they are so easy shmeezy to make, and are also something the kids can look at every day. And they DO love to look at themselves...

The (almost) matching table...

Well, we did it! Last week I wrote about the chairs that I painted when Max was 18 months old. Now, just a mere four and a half years later, they have an (almost) matching table to get pushed into! It took us a little longer than I thought it would (doesn't it always?), but we are all quite pleased with the final result.

We did the masking tape trick for the top so that both Max and Sam could participate. (If you don't know about this trick, you should try it! Just put masking tape across a surface or wall, criss-crossing it over and over so you get lots of nice triangles and shapes. Then the kids can paint the shapes different colours or patterns, staying within the masking tape lines. When you take the tape off after the paint is dry, you get lovely symmetry!)

My boys, it seems, like to paint with their clothes off (I had to insist on the underwear).

Things were going along beautifully for about 7 minutes: two boys in perfect harmony painting to their hearts content. Then Sam started getting a little too comfortable with the paintbrush, and it suddenly dawned on me that the house was really not safe with Sam armed with a paintbrush full of yellow acrylic paint. So I pulled the plug and got him to help me clean all the paintbrushes instead. Max and I finished things up when he was sleeping peacefully in his bed. (I dream of a room one day where it really doesn't matter what Sam does with yellow paint).

As the final touch, Max wrote the boys' names on the sides with a sharpie marker. At first, he looked at the chairs with the "dream", "laugh", and "play" on them, and said that since I wrote my favourite words on the chairs, he wanted to write his favourite words on the table ("He shoots, he scores"; "Roof Daddy"; and some long sentence that involved a guy who had a really good rebound or something.) But then he thought it would take him too long to write all those, and he was getting pretty tired, so he said he thought writing "Max", "Sam", and "Ben" was a better idea.

I was secretly thrilled. You see, those three little words are my REAL favourite words in all the world.

happy chairs...

 
 

  

These chairs are Max's "happy chairs". I painted them for him when he was about a year old, on a solo "creativity weekend" that I took myself on. I rented a little house on the Sunshine Coast and painted, wrote, went on long walks by the sea, and cooked lovely meals for myself all weekend long. I returned feeling refreshed and inspired, with these little happy chairs in the back of my car, with the intention to paint the matching table the following weekend.

Five years later, the table is still unpainted.

Today I was in Max's room and I looked at his happy chairs, pushed in to the sad-looking table, and vowed that I would paint that table with him soon. Maybe this weekend? Then I thought that if I blogged about it, maybe that would give me more incentive to do so. We shall see!

In any case, the table and chairs are just little wooden ones I bought at Ikea (although it looks like the ones they sell now have fiberboard seats, and aren't all wood). I used acrylic paint, and didn't even varnish them; they have held up well so far. They have all my favourite words on them: relax, play, dream, create, begin, ponder, imagine.

Now if only I could find a minute to sit down on them and relax myself...

a book of promises...

 

When my favourite niece (ok, she's also my only niece) was born, we made her a little "Book of Promises", filled with wishes and hopes and promises for her as she grows up. These little books have become a "thing" that our family does for new babies, weddings, "big" birthdays, and anniversaries. My sister-in-laws and I send out a mass email asking people to write a few paragraphs about the person we are celebrating, and they email their thoughts to us. We then print out everyone's words, frame them on colourful scrapbook paper, and assemble them in little books (we like the little Kolo books best).  Sometimes we accent them with Roger LaBorde stickers (shown above), which give the books a little texture and dimension. All together, they make a beautiful gift: something that (we hope) will make a grown-up baby feel very loved one day. That's the idea, anyway!   

Here's what the email generally says to get people on the right track:

"Hello all! We are making a special "Book of Promises" for little Lily, who will soon be here among us, and we'd like your help! If you would be so kind, please send us an email with some promises for Lily, and we will print them out and put them together in a lovely pink book with lots of fun girly paper and ribbons! Your email can be as short or long as you like (well not tooooo long), and should include some promises that you would like to make to Lily or her parents, either for when she is a baby (“I promise to give you lots of kisses and to take you for walks so your parents can get some rest”) or when she is older (“I promise to always give you a pink cup, if pink is your favourite”). If you need more info please email me back and I will elaborate.  If you want to include any other words of wisdom for the little one, please feel free to do so! Please send them to me by the end of next week. Thanks so much! I know that one day Lily will really appreciate your words, when she is old enough to recognize how incredibly lucky she is to have all of you in her life!"