In Case You Missed LiEr’s Festival of Lights

I meant to post about this when it started but instead, I’m posting about it a week after it ended. Is anyone surprised? Nice to know that even with a new year, some things never change. : )

Anyway, LiEr over at ikatbag.com hosted a fun series all about lights and what you can do with them, especially when making kids toys. She had some incredible ideas herself and also rounded up a few guest-posters, including me!

Here are the projects -- click on the photos to go to each post.

Day 1: Light Boxes and Lanterns (made from a storage tub and whipped cream carton, respectively)

 

Day 2: Space Shuttle with light-up dashboard buttons (guest post by MaryAnne from Mama Smiles; I love the stuff she does with her kids!)

 

Day 3: Christmas Tree Nightlights (made by LiEr, with her kids)

 

Day 4: Carousel with Lights and Sound (guest post by Katie from matsutake; she’s got mad skillz, man! and she’s my kind of hilarious!)

Day 5: Cardboard Dollhouse (guest post by me from here; now you can see the “wallpaper” I was taking a break from in  my last post – tee hee)

Day 6: Car and Runway (another guest post by me because we were having so much fun adding lights to anything and everything; I’d wanted to make a runway, as in airport, but designer-wannabe Sophie requested a runway, as in fashion!)

 

Day 7: Bulb How-Tos, a Starlit Stable, and a Steady Hand Game (again, by the knows-no-bounds LiEr, and her daughter Emily too)

 
 

Day 8: LED How-Tos and Traffic Lights (not only does LiEr make stuff, she explains stuff so thoroughly, and entertainingly too)

 

And finally, Day 9: Trainville (a train, some stations and an amazing tunnel/bridge on a huge expanse of cardboard just waiting to be decorated with tracks and trees and who-knows-what by her kids)

 

Hope you enjoyed the show! I’m so glad LiEr included me in the line-up. Playing with lights is a LOT of fun!!!

A Cake I Didn’t Make

It was my birthday last weekend. Had a wonderful… I was going to say “day” but really it was a whole weekend of loveliness. Spending time with my family. Going out for a Thai dinner, sans kids! Enjoying visits from old friends and new ones.

And eating cake. Lots of cake! One of which was made by my girls.

Oldest did the lettering.

Middlest did the blue flowers. Hmm, no photo of that step…

Youngest did some of the white dots for the border. And squirted large amounts into her palm, copying her older sister.

Rest of the white dots—and “mmy"—were done by a sweet neighbor, her first time wielding a pastry bag. Way to go, E!

Part of the brainstorming including the idea of sticking on Playmobile figures, which they’d seen me do on Sophie’s Castle cake. Why they stuck on fern-eating goats was never made quite clear to me.

But I sure did love that cake!

P.S. Other cakes (and cake-ish substances) ingested over the weekend included chocolate cake balls, Oma’s raspberry cottage cake, and peach tarts. Yum!

Pink Doll-Size Crazy Quilt

I came downstairs recently to find Sophie in my little corner. She’d sorted through my stash of scraps, looking for ones of interest, and was arranging them…

…and measuring them as needed. (Slightly sticking tongue out improves measurement capabilities tremendously.)

Looked like a great time to make a crazy quilt with her. So we cut out a backing piece – so we’d know what size and shape we were trying to get to – and then started sewing pieces together. She’d pick a fabric and point out where to put it, I’d help her figure out how to place it, we’d sew it on together – me doing most of the fabric-guiding near the presser foot and her doing most of the pedal-pushing to get the needle going and stopping.

With just about a quarter of the top left to fill up, she decided it was time to play outside with her sisters, so I asked her if I could finish it up, and lucky for me, she said yes.

Once the top was complete, I ventured into stipple quilting again, which I haven’t done since the Crafty Raven game “board” more than three years ago. Hmm, I should probably get a darning foot for my machine, eh? I managed to stipple-quilt the whole thing without stippling my finger under that totally exposed needle, but I do NOT recommend this technique…

She likes it because it’s pink (and she made it). I like it because each of the tiny scraps reminds me of projects past (and I made it with her).

So now Snuggle Bear has something to keep him warm at night.

Aprons and Snickerdoodles

{Disclaimer: my children do not always look like this when we bake together. Furthermore, we don’t bake together nearly often enough, probably because I often make the process un-fun with my obsession over measuring accurately, not spilling, and other such standards that are ridiculous to demand from young children… I’m working on that.}

I did enjoy this particular baking session, making Snickerdoodles, which we “had” to do after Sophie and I made the apron I alluded to at the end of this post about Ken’s rainbow cake. (Apron we made is shown above; the snowman apron was a gift from our neighbor a few years ago.)

Once the batter was all mixed, we set up a nice assembly line: I made the dough balls (shown below left) and then the girls rolled them smooth, covered them with cinnamon sugar, and plopped them on the pan.

Back to the apron, it was a McCall’s pattern (M5997) that caught Sophie’s eye last time we were at the fabric store together.

Cutting, pinning, fitting pieces together, I explained things as we went and she seemed to understand and picked things up quickly. For the sewing parts, she operated the foot pedal and usually did the back tacking at the beginning and end of the seams; I did most of the guiding of the fabric under the presser foot, though she was doing some of that too (when I wasn’t being obsessive about straight seams… I’m working on that one too).

One small irritant: when I held the bodice pattern piece up to Sophie, it looked too wide. Did I alter the pattern and cut the fabric piece to be more narrow? No! And sure enough, when the apron was all done, it was too wide for her little torso. Grrr!

So following the advice of a friend, I just put some gathers into the waist area. The vertical gathers don’t play real nice with the horizontal gathers at the base of the V neck, but it’s good enough.

Most importantly, Sophie loves it.

So why did we have to make Snickerdoodles next? Specifically Snickerdoodles, not just any old cookie? Because Sophie likes to follow the “constructions” on the pattern.

And those cookies in the pattern picture sure do look like Snickerdoodles! I love discovering how her mind operates. : )

Ribbon Bunny Costume

Sophie’s been busy again. This time, she pulled some ribbons from our gift wrap baggie, used all her might to put some staples here and there, and ended up with a minimalist Bunny costume, just in time for Easter.

She did come to me near the end, for help with attaching the pink parts of the ears. But the rest was all her. Wonder what happened to make Bunny so mad… : )