Make it and Bake it

Early last week in a driving storm of freezing rain, Hailey and I braved the weather to go the craft store.   They were predicting horrible weather for the next few days and hinting at school closings so I figured we needed something to do to keep us occupied during the storm. 

 

Needless to say, the news folk were exaggerating and we never got our Snowvember and my crafting items are still sitting on the dining room table in their bags.  They beckon me every day but I am still getting out Christmas decor and that seems to suck all the energy out of me by the end of the day.

 

Anyhoo - Hailey loves to craft.  While we were at the store she begged me to get something that she could work on.  The only problem was that she didn't know what she wanted to make.  Nothing sounded fun to her.  Well - nothing cheap sounded fun to her.  She couldn't understand why I wouldn't buy her some twenty plus dollars craft kits with Christmas and her birthday right around the corner.  She didn't want a canvas.  A paint by number picture looked too hard.  This was no good.  That was boring.  It seemed like no crafting would happen for her that night until I spotted the Make it and Bake its.  The nostalgia came flooding back.  My sister and I made a ton of these things!  Hailey was intrigued by the tiny looking crystals and the fact that the craft had to go in the oven.  She was sold.  She even picked one out for Evan.

 

Needless to say, they were a big hit.  They worked diligently on them for about an hour and then we put them in the oven to melt.  I took way too many pictures of a seemingly mundane event, but like I said - it just reminded me so much of my own childhood.

 

FYI - tweezers are a must with Make it and Bake its. 

They can't wait to go back to pick out their next one.  I am thinking Christmas stocking idea for sure!

A free fall Sunday

It seems that it is rare this time of year for us to have any free time - especially on the weekends.  When we found ourselves with a whole Sunday with nothing pressing to do, we were all overjoyed. 

 

The little kids started off the day painting the canvases that we purchased last weekend as a craft project.  I tried to get all Pinteresty and art teachery and told them to paint a fall scene so we could display it with our fall decor.

 

Evan painted a porcupine on a log over a river with a fall tree in the background.

 

Hailey couldn't think of anything to paint, so we looked on Pinterest until she found something that sparked her creativity.

She made a hand "tree" with fall leaves around it.

After her tree her creativity was unleashed and she wasn't ready to be done painting. So she found a piece of paper and went to work on her homage to Frozen.

It wasn't too chilly out so the whole fam headed to the back yard to try to get some of the leaves up before the snow falls (gulp) this week.  I grabbed the camera to get a couple of pictures of my babies in the leaves.

It was a relaxing, wonderful day - I wish we had more like it!

Cozy and crafty

I ran outside dodging raindrops to empty the vacuum canister (Yay! I actually vacuumed the whole main floor) and was immediately hit by the cool air and the smell of someones fireplace.   It was like an instant transport to one of my happy places.  In that instant I was completely OK with the change of seasons and ready to embrace the fall with a gusto. 

Which is good, because there is nothing but drizzly rain and cool temperatures on the horizon for as far as the weatherman can see.  It has me ready to hunker down and get my craft on.  I have been working on the kids' Halloween costumes since Hailey has already had an occasion to wear hers and they all will don their festive attire for the Cub Scout Halloween bash tonight.  I didn't have to make anything from scratch.  Just some resizing and tweaking on Evan's costume and fashioning some brother jeans into skinnies for Miss Wee.  I think they are going to be awesome, but you are going to have to wait a few weeks for that reveal. 

I also got "pinspired" yesterday and decked out our front door.  I absolutely LOVE how it turned out.  Don't mind the front door that is in desperate need of a repaint.  Just gaze at the awesomeness that is my Halloween wreath.  The idea came from someone on Pinterest - I am not claiming it as my own.  As did the idea for the spiders.  Or SPEE-EYE-DOORS - as the kids like to say thanks to Megamind. 

So today I am planning to hunker down on the couch with some DVR'd programs to catch up on and work on Hailey's Christmas stocking.  It has only been four years or so that I have been working on it.  And maybe I will push the button for my own fire - unfortunately it won't smell as amazing as the real thing.

Memory Lane

Hailey and her daddy are going to the Father Daughter Dance at school on Friday night.  To say that she is excited is an understatement.  She wakes up every morning and asks me how many more days until the dance. 

 

We have her dress, shoes, tights and even a real tiara for her to wear.  (The theme of the dance this year is Princess Ball.)  The only thing she was lacking was a sweater or something to wear with the dress - it's sleeveless and the weather isn't supposed to be much warmer this weekend.

 

But alas, a sweater isn't very princess like...why not make her a little fur stole to wear?  Oh, me and my big ideas...

 

First I had to make myself a pattern with a little help from my princess/pin girl.

 

 

 

Once I got the pattern figured out it was really very easy.  It turned out super cute and I am thrilled with it.   Plus for the first time I got to sew snaps on to something.

 



Of course, since I never have any confidence in my sewing abilities I always go overboard on my fabric.  I figure if I mess up I will have extra instead of having to go back to the store.  So I have enough left over fake fur to make at least two, maybe three more stoles.  I am thinking I should just make them and sell them on Etsy or something. 

I have to admit that I am pretty excited about the dance as well.  It brings back memories of the Father and Daughter banquets that my dad took my sister and I to at the Elks Lodge.   I remember hardly being able to concentrate in school because I was so excited to get home and take a bath and put on my fancy dress.  My mom would put my hair in hot rollers so it would have pretty curl instead of the pin straight hang down look that I usually wore.

My nostalgia got the better of me and I went through my old scrapbooks and found some photos.  The quality is really bad due to how old these gems are and the fact that I can't figure out how to scan so I just took a picture of a picture. 

I don't know which one of these is older.  It appears I am wearing the same dress.  I think in the first one my look of unhappiness may be due to those hideous shoes I am wearing.  They look like white loafers.

This one is my favorite.  We are wearing cute sandals, we are carrying purses, we are wearing ribbon barrettes and my dad looks like he just came from a mafia hit.  You gotta love the eighties!

I still don't know what is up with my grouchy face!

I remember I loved that pink dress.   I think I got it at The Cradle Shop which was the most expensive kids store in town back in the day.

Same dresses different year.  I told you I loved that thing.  I think this was the first banquet where I had my ears pierced.  I don't know about my dad's suit.  I really like the sport coat and wish Trent had one like it to wear, but with the pants it may be a little too much.

The year of the afro.  Apparently we had discovered the power of the permanent.  Sister gets to wear the pink dress and I get a new pink polka dotted number.

Oh those awkward teenage years!  Mouths full of braces and a hideous green bubble dress that I LOVED at the time.  The balance just seems off.  Sister looks like she is going to the one room school house and I look like I am going to prom.  In all honesty, sister's dress was probably more appropriate.   Look at those hair bows.  I will tell you what though, I would kill for my collarbone to stick out like that now!  I wish I had that sportcoat of my dad's and shirt and tie - it would match Hailey's ensemble perfectly.  Can you tell I have no idea what Trent is going to wear?

Just think, twenty years from now, Hailey will be looking back at her pictures from the Father Daughter dances and laughing at her hair and dresses (or her dad's clothes) and remembering with fondness how special those nights were.

Craft fail

I saw these self portrait ornaments a while back on a blog and thought it was the cutest idea. I had a couple mini canvases tucked away that I was going to use for a different ornament project that I have long lost the link to.  It was in the days long before Pinterest existed to help me organize.

As per the usual, Evan was the only kid that put decent amount of effort into his.  I told them to fill the canvas with their head and shoulders, do your personal best, use color and detail.  They were thrilled that they got to use my special scrapbook markers.  Hopefully they weren't dried up.

They didn't really turn out how I envisioned.  Evan's was most like what I had in mind.  Though he got a little crazy at one point with the flying hot dog that he turned into some kind of a hat.  They looked kind of messy too.  I had them sketch their idea with pencil first and the pencil seemed to get all over and make them look dirty.  Plus the markers tended to bleed and run a little.  Paint probably would have been better, but I don't know how detailed they could get with paint.  I wish I would have saved the instructions from the example and not just the picture. 

Spencer's got super pencil dust on it.  His detail was good, just kind of small.  I don't know how much it actually looks like him, I think I could count the times he has worn a baseball hat on two hands.

Hailey went with the scene approach.  She is normally much better at drawing and coloring than she was the day we did this.  The three of them together were a little hyped up while they were "creating" and I think that was part of the problem.  I probably should have done it with them individually. 

So not what I had in mind, but treasures none the less.  At less than a dollar a canvas, who really cares what they do with them as long as they had fun. 

Arty Sunday

On Saturday Trent took the kids to an art competition that was going on downtown called "8 in 8".  Eight local artists had eight hours to create a piece with only materials that were provided to them based on the theme "the future".   I believe they also were allocated fifteen dollars and ten minutes in the dollar store to get some additional materials.  One thing they purchased had to be included in their piece as well as three things that were provided to them by the judges.

 

The kids thought it was one of the coolest things they had ever seen and on Saturday night informed us that they wanted to have their own art competition the next day.  Sunday turned out to be a rainy, crumby day - the perfect kind of day to get your art on.  We got out all of our art supplies and announced to them that they would have one hour to complete an imaginary creature.  (Hailey has a school assignment to create an imaginary creature so I thought we could kill two birds with one stone with this little competition).  Spencer in his sporadic preteen angst decided he didn't want to do it, he chose to work on his Halloween costume with Dad instead.

 

Let the competition begin...actually it had been going on for some time at this point.

 

Spencer and Dad making faces on his LEGO man heads.

I got into the art as well by finishing up the sewing portion of the costumes. 

Evan's finished imaginary creature.  He did a great job.   No one would ever accuse Evan of not having any imagination.

 

 

Hailey chose to go with a flat piece instead of a 3-D creature (which pretty much ruined our two birds with one stone thought).  Oh well, just another excuse to get the craft basket out.

 

 

After the competition was over, Hailey decided she didn't want to be done crafting.  She filled her palette with more paint and went to work.

 

I love the banana split she made.  This one is set for a frame on the wall.

I loved the tree with the falling leaves too.

She decided she wanted to give this hand print one to her teacher.

It was a great day.  I love days that we can just hang out at home in comfy clothes and create things.  Days like that are my happy place.