Pencil and notebook holder

During my little blogging break I made two colored pencil and notebook holders for my nieces. My sister provided this adorable material and she was happy to hand the sewing part over to someone else. With (A LOT) of help from my mom and her amazing sewing machine, we put these together. It really didn't take too long to do. I used the instructions found here, but added a few things like handles and a stitch at the bottom so the pencils wouldn't go down too far. I have some material to make one for M&M, I'm just waiting on a sewing machine. My mom is sending her old one down to me and I'm really excited to have one in my home so I can go and sew whenever I feel like it! When I make one for M&M there are a couple of things I would change from the instructions like putting the ribbon to close it more in the middle and making the pocket inside not as tall.

DIY Christmas Chimes

A few years ago my sister-in-law introduced us to Christmas chimes. We had a lot of fun with them trying to play the songs together. This past Christmas my dad made a set of chimes for each of us kids and our families. I've been so excited to use them this year.

What are they you ask? Well, I will try to explain them the best that I can. They are pipes cut to different lengths. When hit with a stick they make different keys. A picture may help at this point.
My dad has them labeled as to what key they will play. They are also labeled with a number.
Each sheet of music has the numbers on it that need to be played for the song. Make sense? I hope so. The picture below will probably help.


These are a lot of fun to do in a group even with young kids. You can either copy the songs and hand them out or I have seen them transferred onto one of those huge pads of paper that are used in classrooms. My dad even made the sticks with the red balls on the ends.

I have many Christmas songs to go with the chimes but there are also other songs as well. (See below)


Now, my mom sent the directions to me over e-mail, but I have never shared anything over the blog before and I don't know how to do it. Can anyone tell me what to do? I will update this post once I figure out how to do that. Then if there is enough interest I can see if my parents have a digital copy of the songs so that I can post those as well.

Quiet book pages

The past two weeks have consisted of trying to make a quiet book. I found many blogs that had pictures of the quiet books they have made, but not a lot of them had patterns for the pages I wanted to do. So I first had to draw out all of the patterns myself before we (my mom and I) could even think about putting it together. That's why it's taken me so long. I read other blogs where they say they see a cute idea on a blog and then whip it up that night and post about it the next day. I've decided I am not one of those people that can do that, which is okay. It just takes me longer to get anything done. And well, the fact of the matter is the quiet book is far from being done, but it is done enough to post pictures because I just couldn't wait. I will have to finish it when I go home for Christmas in a few weeks. But here are some pictures of 6 of the pages.

Color matching balloons and button on flowers

Clothesline with mini clothespins and dress-up people

Noah's Ark zipper, shoelace tying, and buckleAs you can see I still have some minor details like a face for the little people and a shoelace for the shoe, but it's getting there. The animal finger puppets for the Noah's Ark came from IKEA.

If anyone wants to put one of these together sometime and needs patterns or help, just let me know because the patterns were the biggest headache and took the longest time.

Here are the links that I used to get ideas from:
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/quiet-book-ii.html
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/quiet-book-i.html
http://craftingchicks.blogspot.com/2009/09/tiffanys-quiet-books.html
http://www.quietbook.blogspot.com/
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/some-more-quiet-book-pics.html
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-quiet-book_25.html
http://itybtyfrogcreations.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-quiet-book-pics.html
http://naptimejournal.blogspot.com/2009/05/quiet-book-pagesyou-asked-for-them.html

Boo sign craft

This is a Halloween craft that I did for myself. I used Mod Podge for the first time ever! I admit that I was a little scared at first because I didn't know what to expect, but now that I've done it, I'm hooked. If was so easy and I loved the result.

I made this Boo sign because it seemed really simple and I already had some of the supplies. I found the idea here. This is as far as I have gotten because I'm a little stuck.


The letters are just sitting on the plaques right now because I don't know how to attach them together. The blog doesn't say exactly how to do it. I'm guessing some sort of glue, but what kind? Wood glue, tacky glue? I also don't know what to put it on to hang it up. Does anyone have any ideas?

Projects Galore

I made a list of things that I want to make in the side column. This is mostly for my benefit. I like having a list of things in one place that I can refer to easily and what I want to see is just a click away.

I love scouring blogs and websites for cute, easy and for the most part cheap projects. The problem is most of these things require sewing and, well, I can't sew and I don't have a sewing machine. I have come up with solutions to both of these problems. My mom is coming next month, like I've mentioned before, and she is bringing her brand new sewing machine so that she can teach me how to sew. We will be working on Quiet books. My project for now is to cut everything out to get it ready to sew when she comes. I really want a sewing machine for Christmas. That would solve problem #2. We'll see if I get it. ;)

Here is a copy of the list on the sidebar:
Quiet Book here, here and here
Play Garden
Felt food here, here and here
Felt ribbon ball
Mail Center
Car Cozie
Crayon Roll
I Spy bag
Mini I Spy quilt
Table Playhouse
Tutu
Camera Strap Cover
Decorative Balls
Gutter bookshelves

Maybe someone else will be inspired by these and be able to just whip them up quickly. These things are going to take me a long time to make. A few of them may happen in the coming months, but I'm sure it will take me years to do all of these.

One craft project down....

who knows how many left.

This painting project has been in the works for months now. I got an unfinished wooden hook rack and painted it all white. That's the way it was sitting for a while. I've gotten the crafty itch lately with looking for holiday crafts and I just had to do something. I haven't gotten it out before because of excuses like, Oh I don't want M&M to get into it, I'll wait until she goes to bed. By the time she's in bed I find something else to do, yadda yadda yadda. Last night I told myself, "Just do it!" I pulled out all of my painting stuff and went to work. I had no idea what I was going to do with it.

My creative wheels got turning...slowly...because they are a little rusty, and this is what I came up with. (Please don't look too closely and see how often I painted out of the lines.) :)

I will be putting this up in the playroom for M&M to use in her dress-up area to hang hats, dresses, bags, whatever she wants. I used a stencil to randomly draw the flowers on and then just used a very tiny brush to paint it in. There probably is an easier way I could have done it, but I actually really like to do the small detail painting. Painting like this is like a therapy for me. I haven't done it in a LONG time and it feels so good to do it again. I made many projects when I was a teenager that are sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets. Someone in the neighborhood I grew up in taught Tole Painting classes and me and my friends would go over there after school every Wednesday. Sorry, I'm just rambling now, but it's kind of nostalgic for me.

I'll take another picture when I have her dress-up area finished.

Oh to be crafty again....*sigh*. More to come!

Tot School July 20-24

Yet another week without any plans. But I have a good excuse. I am focusing more of my attention on planning and organizing a lot of things in my life. I have all of these great ideas saved up on Evernote, but I have a hard time getting them off of the computer and into real life. I have found a way that works for me and hopefully I will be putting the system into work later on this week. I am also totally reorganizing my playroom because there is entirely too much stuff in there right now. See this post to see what it looks like now. I want to make more of a creative space for M&M to play on her own because that is something she really needs to work on and I really need her to work on that as well. She is getting really clingy right now and I need a little space. But just a little. ;)

On to Tot School. As M&M brought her baby doll's highchair into the kitchen this week one of the legs fell off. So being the clever little girl she is she went back to her playroom and got her toolbox to fix it. She spent a fair amount of time using all of her tools to pound and screw the leg back on. We then proceeded to fix her tricycle. I was the mechanic for this one and she kept saying, "Sir" will you please do this or that to the bike.


I saw this idea for English muffin pizzas on this blog. We made them for lunch one day.


Then we made a homemade ring toss game. I got the idea for this here. We poured dry rice into an empty water bottle and then used pipe cleaners to make circles and throw them over the top of the bottle.

M&M had a hard time with the smaller circles so she suggested making them bigger. I just twisted two of them together to make them bigger. This made it a lot easier for her.


Then M&M asked what else we could do with these so I got different size balls and I held one of the circles while she tried to throw the ball into it. She said, "We're playing basketball!" I was impressed because I didn't think she really knew what basketball was.
I'm really getting into these homemade games and activities. They seem to spark a lot more imagination than store bought toys and they're cheap!

That's it for this week, but I have big plans for the coming weeks. More letter of the week activities.