Awana Verse Board

I'm so glad this finally made it from inside my head out onto my wall! Heidi is halfway through her second year in Awana Cubbies, but I felt like we were just sending her there each week to eat some treats, have some fun, see some friends, and--oh yeah--recite a Bible verse that we'd only reviewed with her once or twice, sometimes even just in the car on the way to Cubbies! I figured it was time to start being more intentional a la Deut 11:18-21. So among other things, I wanted the weekly verse to be big and out where we could easily see it and talk about it and learn it together as a family...

So then starting my quest for a large yet cheap/free picture frame to use. Not so easy to find, especially during winter, a.k.a. non-garage sale season. Then while pulling things out of our crawlspace in an effort to declutter, I found a blast from my past: a puzzle I'd assembled, glued together and then framed during my "Aren't black&white photos of kids with red-tinted roses SO cute" phase. Puzzle ended up in the trash, frame ended up on my work table.

Rather than describe the design iterations and the roadblocks I ran into (due to the fabric I chose, the frame assembly, etc.), I'll just say: Hopefully, one day I'll learn to do things the simple, easy way the first time around, rather than doing about 314 complicated steps, realizing after all that painstaking work it still isn't coming together as envisioned, so throwing it together in disgust and impatience, and then realizing I'm just as happy with the quickie result. Arrgh.

But oh, what a treat it's been these last few weeks. 1) It's partially red and anything red makes me happy. 2) It requires weekly rewriting and handwriting stuff each week with my big fat dry erase marker makes me happy. 3) It's started some great conversations between my kids and me and seeing into their minds and hearts like that makes me happy. And 4) It's a big bold reminder of God's Word, not just for my little memorizing Cubbie but for my husband, for me, for anyone who enters my home! Which makes me exceedingly happy!

The Crafty Raven Game

I love Haba. They produce some of the cutest toys using such wonderful materials. And they also make some great games. Like Orchard. Which was soon renamed The Crafty* Raven in our house. (*Note: that's crafty as in artful and sly, not artsy and creative.)

And every time we played it, I thought how fun it would be to make all the little parts. So for Christmas, my niece got a home-made version of Orchard The Crafty Raven. Oh, what a crafty** bonanza it was for me: (**Now it's crafty as in artsy and creative...)

• weaving little baskets out of felt
• fashioning little fruits out of Sculpey clay, wooden beads (hidden inside the clay), black leather, and clove pieces
• sewing a mini-quilt-type-thing to be the game board. (I pretty much copied the size and layout of the original game, but I have to say it, I love my colors so much better than theirs!)
• formatting a cute little instructions sheet
• cutting a 9-piece raven puzzle out of cardboard, then decorating it with black fabric and yellow puffy paint (Heidi drew the raven for me!)
• decoupaging a dice so it has the appropriate symbols as well as a box to contain everything
  

Could one single project have included more areas of craftiness?!?

And (other than needing more clay), with the leftover supplies, I have enough to make one for us too. Woo hoo! Maybe I can offload the original on ebay then...

A Fort

Today, I'm taking a little detour from the usual crafty-type creations featured on this blog and showing what I made today with the help of my little sidekicks. Because just as I hope my girls will learn sewing and crocheting and woodworking and such, I also hope they will become very adept in the fine art of fort-building.

Little Goose Costume

Hmm, this is probably my last "First Halloween Costume" to crochet, at least for any child born to me. Since both her sisters have little animal nicknames, it was only a matter of time before Lucy got one too. She has become our "Little Goose." Partly because of who she has as an Opa--I still remember him calling my friend in 6th grade "Lucy Goosey"--and partly because she smiles ALL THE TIME, even when there's nothing much to smile about, which makes me smile too and say "Ya silly goose, you!"

For the hood, I followed the contours of the Little Bee hood so I knew it would fit. Every perfectionistic, must-follow-instructions bone in my body fought against the "just wing it" approach, but if I'm ever going to come close to creating the beauties Mom cranks out seemingly effortlessly, I've got to get over my "need" for patterns and instructions. The bill took me a few tries but I'm really pleased with the results. Three cute little crocheted "hairs" for the top, two big black button "eyes", some ties for under her chin, and the hood was done.

Big thank you to Mom for crocheting the webbed-feet booties!!! I think they would've taken me too many days and way too many pull-out-and-start-overs. And I'd thought about trying to crochet some kind of bodice and/or tail and/or wings, but in the end decided it would be just as cute--and WAY less time-consuming--to just put her in her fluffy white sweater (an example of the aforementioned beauties that Mom cranks out).

Happy Halloween! Honk, honk!

Laundry Bins

A while ago, I decided the reason I don't do laundry on a regular basis is that I don't have laundry sorters near the washer and dryer. If I had a container for each type of load (so I could run that load as soon as the container was full rather as soon as we were completely out of clean {fill in the blank}) as well as a place to fold the laundry, why then I'd be a laundry-doing machine! Honest!

So I started looking online and finally found the answer to all my laundry-avoidance problems:

Perfect!

And then I saw the price:

$87.99

And I needed two of them (or 4 sorters: hot/whites, warm/lights, cold/darks, no fabric softener/towels&such). With S&H, it came to $203.93. For laundry sorters. Um? No!

So after some measuring and planning, a trip to Home Depot, some sawing and drilling and screwing and nailing, another trip to Home Depot, some re-drilling and re-screwing and re-nailing, some more measuring and planning, a trip to JoAnns, some sewing, and about 8 months total(!!), I had my laundry sorters.

At some point, I plan to paint them white and add some oilcloth to the tops so they're easier to keep clean. In the meantime, I got some laundry to go do!

P.S. I had been keeping track of how much my materials were costing me but I lost that little cheatsheet long ago. But I can tell you this much: it was a lot less that $203.93. Plus I got the added satisfaction of making something myself.