Playground Love

Wow- my little girl turned 4 a few days ago. What a wonderful, intelligent, caring, empathetic and creative little gift she is to us. She is such an interesting little person- so serious in her play, so brave in meeting new people in her desire to make friends. So funny telling  stores and jokes in her desire to make you laugh. What a joy.  Here are some pictures of her big day, her party and some art she’s been doing in various different settings (home, pre-camp, etc.)

A at her gymnastis party:

C and me at 14 weeks! Check out that wingspan.

Inspired by Shaun the Sheep- this is Shaun and part of his flock. I don’t like to promote stuff much- but this show is brilliant!

This is our family made out of dough. She’s done this twice now- once painted and once just dough. Each time the family is sitting on the couch and watching TV. Hmm- perhaps we need to get out more?

Another family related piece- I love that she is thinking so much about family lately!

These are wrist cuffs I made for the kids to put in their goody bags- fun project and easy to put together. Helps to make me feel like I am still being creative. Lord knows I need the encouragement. Little C never naps and A is busy busy busy. I have lots of projects on the go, but the next one I need to finish is for Cousin Calia.

xok

I’m going to take this relatively peaceful time of day (Amina is playing tent with our kitchen table and blankets behind me) while I can to post some pictures of crafts I’ve been working on.

I bought a tonne of white onesies when I found out I was pregnant and have only now got around to personalizing them. Some I’ve tie-dyed, some I’ve dyed, some I’ve appliqued with fabric and some I’ve used freezer paper stencilling with fabric paint on. I think this last one is my current favorite!

Tie-dye and dyed onesies

Rockets and guitars

These ones were done with fabric and wool felt. I think that wool felt might hold up better than acrylic felt- am hoping it won’t pill like acrylic does.

Fabric paint using freezer paper as a stencil

The fabric paint is my favorite. I’m making A a  ”big sister” t-shirt at the moment using this same process. (google-it or youtube-it for a myriad of tutorials). I’ll post that one when we’re done with it. I did the stencil letters but I’d like her to decorate and make it “hers.” This is so fun and rewarding. The hardest part is choosing an image to make into a stencil. If you look under google images for “boy onesie graphics”, so many awesome and modern ideas pop out.

Anyhow- I’m officially on mat leave now- my last day of work was Friday and I am more than ready to pop this baby out. Come on baby!

xok

I’ve been into making clothes for the babe Coco lately- and this is the most recent creation: The Baby in the Hood Jacket, found in the Anna Marie Horner book “Handmade Beginnings“. I’ve had some issues with the patterns in this book before, but this one was really simple and easy to follow.

I used three kinds of organic cotton from Fabricana- I cannot for the life of me remember who they are made by- but the series is called “My Happy Nursery”. Leaves, lime green polka dots and a turquoise flannel- so soft!

Love the way this turned out- it’s done in a size 6-9 month so should be ready to be worn in Fall. Oh baby, am so excited to meet you! (and dress you!)

The booties and pants are also from the same pattern book. I used some old hemp yoga pants for the brown pants and used some of the same lime polka dots for the yoke on the bum. The booties are from an organic corduroy which is super soft. I lined the inside of the booties with an organic cotton fleece- also very soft. I ordered the cotton terry from GreenbeanBaby prior to Christmas and have been making a few other things with it, like teething toys, cloth diaper doublers/ inserts and some post- birth pads, etc.

PS- “Coco is the nickname that A has given her brother. This comes from mis-pronouncing baby Gogo from Yo Gabba Gabba.

xok

Our happy family on the beach in San Jose del Cabo- the Baja, Mexico. Lovely vacation. Love the sun!

We’ve been back from Mexico for a week now and have gotten back into a routine. M has been busy working two jobs- his really one and a fun one. The fun one has involved him in sound design and music for a friends’ web-based video game called Zombie Minesweeper- check it out!

V Day doesn’t get celebrated much around here- although A has discovered hearts and is loving decorating them. M has promised me some Kahlua chocolate mousse tonight as well!

We’ve been pretty busy creating up a storm. A has been painting like crazy and blowing through all our easel paper. It’s great watching her process though and she’s been extremely creative in telling us what each painting is (ie: apple tree, worms, clouds, sad babies, sick cats).

I got all domestic yesterday and baked some ginger snaps with A and we cut them into heart shapes.

We also did some in regular old circles and used the cookie cutter as a template and pressed down  some sprinkles inside. When lifted, the sprinkles look like a heart!

I swapped A’s art easel and art table around and I like this layout better. I think she does too!

A Ferris wheel made out of potato print hearts. I love this! I had no idea A even knew what a Ferris wheel actually was.

Water colour hearts made out of cut up coffee filters. Glued to the window using a glue stick. Neither of these ideas where mine- check out the Artful Parent for awesome art ideas. The coffee filters also work really well for making snowflakes. Watercolours get really diffused with the paper in the filter and when glued to the window, look like stained glass when the sun shines through. (sun, what sun?)

A making zillions of cards. I showed her how to paint one side and then fold the other over to take a print of it. She’s really taken off with this idea and seems to really like making “footprints” with the different colours of paints and lining them up. Perfectionist tendencies? I wonder who she gets that from!

In case you are wondering, the purge is still going strong- have started on the kitchen, which seems a monumental task and will move onto the laundry room and then the crawl space shortly. Running out of energy earlier in the day these days- only 8.5 weeks to go until babe!

xok

Our X-mas blew past us so quickly! I love Christmas again though. Having a toddler in the house makes gift giving so much more exciting and fun. A gets super excited just finding an orange in her stocking! Here are some random pictures of our holidays- Solstice dinner by candlelight, sledding in Winnipeg and making crafty bubble wrap printed envelopes to wrap our salt dough ornaments in. Enjoy!

A few posts ago, I wrote about making salt dough ornaments as gifts. A and I also created some really cute envelopes to wrap them in. I got this idea from Todd Oldhams “The Modern Kid” book full of art projects. I’ve been renewing this from the library for  a few months now because I can’t bare to part with it. While most of the projects are for kids who are old enough to do these independently, I know have a tonne of really awesome ideas backlogged in my brain and will start working on them in the New Year now that X-mas is over.

Using bubble wrap, we cut out various shapes, like stars and triangles. We used our printmaking supplies- block printing ink, brayers and a glass plate. This was A’s first attempt at block printing with the brayers and I think it went really well. I set up an inking station on her art table with two colours, then laid our our table cloth on the floor. I put out craft paper and some coloured laser jet paper and let her get to work. She used the bubble wrap shapes for a bit and then progressed to using her hands. I love turquoise and fuchsia together and was really pleased how the colours looked in this. We used the bubble wrap from the inside of packing envelopes, but the next time I do this (and I have a whole project of baby onesies lined up for this) I will use just plain old bubble wrap as the bubbles seem better formed without any kind of backing.

Once the ink had dried, I cut the craft paper into smaller rectangles and machine sewed the seams. Using a hole punch I folded the top over and punched the holes so that we could put ribbon through them. The packages looked really sweet once we had finished. Fun project to do and now that I know A can handle the brayers, we will probably try some more block printing in the future.

Left overs from our candle light Solstice dinner. I love winter solstice. There is something very reassuring and uplifting both mentally and spiritually in celebrating the return of light. Must of been pagan in an earlier life!

Decorating gingerbread men in Winnipeg with A’s Pops. Just like her mama, A gravitates to the icing more than the cookie!

A showing off her dancing leg warmers and super hero wrist warmers (made from thrifted up-cycled cashmere and mohair sweaters). Since she saw me making these at home, I had to explain that Santa asked for Mommies help in sewing these.

Sledding in Winnipeg- nice weather for once. Above normal temps all during our visit. Hurray!

Pics of the vast, frozen prairie that was once my home. Beautiful and cold.

Nice to be back. Looking forward to the New Years purge. Interested in finding out more? Check out this blog about a minimalist mom from Downtown Van. Can’t wait to get started on ridding our home of unnecessary clutter. Also hoping to finish up some various household projects like the finishing touches on A’s Zero Cost Challenge toddler bedroom make over. Oh the irony- now I’ll have to redo the whole thing to fit the baby in! Also- would like to finish up the entry way that M’s parents so kindly donated their time in patching, sanding and painting for us. And dreaming up a new, more functional sewing space. With closed storage. Got Apartment Therapy’s Big Book of Small Cool Spaces for Christmas and now the upgrading ideas just won’t stop!

Happy New Year!

xok

I decided to make an advent calendar for our family this year based on fun activities we can do together (ie: low cost) or ways to take advantage of Holiday activities to places we have membership at (Science World, the Aquarium, etc). And to do fun crafts, of course! It’s a great way to count down the days until Christmas (and still keep us in the mood to celebrate- even when we hear those horrible carols on “all-christmas, all-the-time” radio stations. Example of worst Christmas Song ever: New Kids on the Block: “funky, funky Christmas.” Heard it at chiro yesterday. Sigh. Anyhow- this will get us through the pop crass-mas…

2010 Advent Calendar

I tried to think of fun things that were realistic for our busy schedules but that were really sweet and inspired at the same time and have come up with a bunch that I think will be really great. I found a lot of inspiration for the activities and the advent calendar itself from these crafty ladies:

• Artful Parent blog

• Canadian Living

• Mayamade blog (2010)

• Mayamade (2009)

I made our calendar out of old felt pieces- acrylic, wool and melton. I cut 24 7”x 3” inch rectangles, folded them up and zig zag stitched the sides, leaving a bit of room at the top to be able to attach the banner ribbon. I glued on stickers and other fun holiday items in our wrapping paper/ gift tag box and then sewed 12 of the pouches onto each of the two ribbons. I printed out the numbers, cut them and attached with wooden clothes pegs from the dollar store. Total cost for this project was probably $3.75- which suits me just fine!

Here is what we have planned:

• make salt dough ornaments for X-mas presents

• paint toenails red/ fuschia and green
  

  Advent calendar on mirror- familiar from last weeks' Ikea Hacks post, no?

• write and mail a holiday card for a loved one

• decorate paper X-mas tree with potato prints

• put up Christmas tree

• have some roasted nuts and hot cocoa at Granville Island

• Put up Ho Ho Ho window decoration up

• make pinecone ornaments

• go to library to pick out more holiday books

• snowflake spin art

• go to Christmas Market downtown with Aunty Jenna

• Scuba Claus at the Aquarium

• make wrapping paper with bubble wrap printmaking project (a la Told Oldham’s Kid Made Modern book)

• make a drawing with Christmas stickers

• watch a holiday movie and have popcorn for dinner!

• The Light Before X-mas movie at Science World

• bake x-mas cookies

• bring a toy in for donation/ Solstice brunch party

• make a lantern for solstice

• special art project at Dimpleskins

• candlelight dinner- Happy Solstice!

• Go for a drive to Trinity Street in Vancouver to see the Christmas lights

• bring back holiday books to library

• put presents under Grammy + Pops’ Christmas tree/ Ukrainian X-mas (perogies for dinner!)

If you’d like to join us for any of these activities, we’d love some company. Give us a shout and we’ll set something up.

Happy December

xok

I always enjoy checking out the Ikea Hacks blog site for creative not-originally intended uses for Ikea products, so was quite pleased when inspiration struck for the Mongstad  mirror in our dining room.

M deleted my "before" photo so here is the Ikea one.

Both M and I love the way this over sized mirror bounces the light around in our winter-dimmed ground floor apartment but do not like the way the large black border seems to suck in all brightness. Nothing else we have is framed in black either so it stuck out a bit, and not in a good way.

After

I’d been toying with the idea of recovering in fabric or just plain painting it, but then, while convalescing from gum surgery on the couch- inspiration struck. Magnetic paint. The borders of the frame are so thick that this could easily hold multiple 5 x 8’s and many more 4 x 6’s. I like displaying photos but don’t really have nice frames or anywhere to prop them up or hang them, so this seemed like a great way to rotate photos, pretty papers, etc around and still make our space look visually appealing.

Three coats of magnetic paint and 4 coats of white paint later- we have a new mirror. We think this looks great! Beware of trying to use a weighted magnet though or trying to hang anything heavy. While the magnetic paint works, it’s not like sticking something to your fridge. Even with 3/8” earth magnets, this seems a bit tenuous for anything other than a small- mid size photograph. But since this is all we really need it for, it works for us.

Right now I am using it to hold the advent calendar that I’ve made with left over felt and winter stickers. We’re not really into advent, but I thought it might be a fun way to get the whole family into the Season this year with an activity-inspired advent calendar. More to come on Dec. 1 as we kick advent off! (I glued earth magnets to the top and back sides of the frame and then attached the advent calendar to the anchored earth magnets.)

xok

I’m not sure it it’s just a little girl thing or not, but most of  our time these days consists of playing in the play kitchen making food for A’s dolls. Most of the time we are getting ready for some one’s birthday party and need treats. I’ve been making a few pieces here and there so here is my tutorial for making donuts (ironically, these look much better than the real thing, except for Honey’s of course!)

You will need:

• 1  sheet of acrylic felt
• 1 sheet of acrylic felt in a contrasting pretty icing colour
• embroidery thread for sprinkles plus embroidery needle
• regular needle and thread
• stuffing (old pillows work great)
• something circular about 6 inches in diameter to trace ( I use A’s wooden stacking ring for a disproportionate amount of crafting these days!)

1. Lay your circles down on the acrylic felt and trace them. Make a centre point and a smaller hole- about 1.5 inches. Cut them out. You will need two.

2. Lay right sides together and sew all around the larger (outer) edge with the regular needle and thread.

3. Turn the donut right side out. Begin sewing the smaller circular edge but leave about 2 inches unsewn. Stuff all the pillow stuffing through this hole. Sew it up tight.

4. Using the same size large circular object, trace another circle and draw a hole inside. Instead of following the chalk line all the way around the circumference, I cut the circle in a wavy pattern, mimicking the drippiness of icing.

5. Take contrasting embroidery thread and make large haphazard stitches over the icing circle. This is the icing wrong side facing the camera as you can see the stitching crossing over and the knots. Sorry!

6. Using the same colour regular thread, blanket stitch the icing in place over top of the sewn up donut (sew right side of icing facing up on top of right side of donut). Don’t forget to sew the icing to the donut hole small part too!

Enjoy!

xok

I had been really wanting to work with linen for a while and was always keeping an eye out for it on my thrifting haunts but couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it when I found it or what colours I wanted to work with. Linen is a fabulous cotton with gorgeous texture and comes in a wide array of muted colours. I’ve got some strict rules while looking for thrifted fabric these days, ie: I must use it. I am running out of space to store all of my bounty (if you’d like some fabric,  please drop me a line and come and take some!)  I was looking for a linen in light grey and was unsuccessful in finding a thrifted piece. I  was successful in finding the exact shade of  grey I wanted during one of Fabricana’s linen sales though! It’s not expensive, but it is a luxury for me at this point being off of work for the summer.

So I lucked into the sale and knew exactly what I would make with it. My other rule for linen in general is that it had better be pretty damn gorgeous/ cute/ twee if I am going to use/ wear/ work with it on a daily/ weekly basis. The problem with linen is that you must iron it. I’ve recently rediscovered my iron lately as it can make your life immensely easier when sewing and assembling garments. I still have a love/ hate relationship with it when it comes to taking care of my own clothes, never mind keeping it pressed for toddler clothing. Toddler garments = lots of wear and tear + lots of food spills = lots of washing + linen = way too much ironing.

Again I broke my linen rule for toddler clothes- but damn- this pattern and frock are very cute and gorgeous and so far have been really worth the upkeep.

I ordered this apron pattern off of etsy ages ago and never got around to completing it. As soon as I saw the linen though, I knew that I would use the pattern for it. Unfotunatley, the pattern is no longer available on etsy, but it shouldn’t be hard to find one. I can share mine, but don’t feel right about posting it publicly.

I found a lovely accent fabric to go with the linen and I think it’s made a wonderful dress/ smock  top. My only caution with this one, besides forewarning you about  the collasal amont of ironing this will require (or choose different fabric), is that the bow holding everything together is quite large. You may want to plan to put this one on for a day-at-home day, but maybe not a day requiring a lot of sitting. If I was tethered into a toddler car seat with the bow pressing into my back, it might drive me crazy:)

xok

A and I have been delving into the world of nude painting lately. Well, I’m fully clothed and A is painting scantily clad. There are practical reasons for this as we all shall see….

Several weeks ago, I rediscovered Creative Children. I used to work for an art school for kids and ordered a lot of supplies from CC. A mom in my area reminded me that CC is actually located quite close by, in Port Moody across the street from Rocky Point Park. So A and I went on a mission to source out some new tempera paints and heavier stock paper for painting on.

We came back with a big boxful of lovely new art supplies and have been pretty busy creating ever since. The deck in the late afternoon has become the creating place of choice. These next projects are not for the faint of heart….

1. Get yourself a large tarp AND drop cloth. The tarp will protect any paint from bleeding through onto the surface (ie: deck) below. Use large paper. We bought a 50 lb weight paper that is 18 x 24″. I’d go even bigger if I had a place to store it properly. Right now, whatever is not clipped onto the easel is stuffed under the couch…. You will also need a set of textured roller brushes and some flat bottomed pans, lids or containers. Whatever you use, make sure it has a lip- this will collect any paint that is bound to slide around. I think next time I do this, I will just use a baking sheet and lay out the colours inside. I added bits of tissue paper and paper scraps in case A decided to move into mixed media territory. I also added some chalk pastels to play with and a paint pot with a contrasting colour of paint.

2. Take off your child’s clothes and run a bath.*

* You can only skip this part if you are planning on dunking your child in a nearby kiddie pool or hosing them down. Your child will be covered in paint and will not hold still while you try to contain them and run a bath at the same time. They will ensure maximum collateral damage is done to your clothes, your body and your bathroom.

3. Encourage your child to experiment with the roller brushes and paint pots. We have a few rollers that have squares and stars as raised images on them which leave a really neat texture on the painting when rolled into the paint tray and then onto the paper.

4. I was a bit bummed when I super excitedly introduced A to splatter painting with little to no obvious effect the other day. Imagine my delight when she decided to add the splatter paint technique to this painting! Splatter painting is just loading your brush with runny tempera paint and letting the paint drip while holding the brush from various heights onto the paper below. You can also gently arch your arm over the painting for interesting effect. This can get messy and you will want to at least quadruple the area covered in tarps.

5. Hold onto your child when they decide to step into the roller paint tray to leave multi coloured foot prints on their painting. This can get quite slippery and your child will get quite excited.

6. Have a cloth handy to mitigate any damage made from paint drips while you haul your child from the outside into the bath once they have completed their works of art

7. Groan when the tub drains and you realize you will have yet another thing to clean. Although this one is kind of fun to clean as you chuckle to yourself about what you’ve just let your child experiment with.