Summer is waning, slowly. It's still a million degrees outside, but the leaves at the ends of the tree branches are changing, flowers are fading, and seed pods are falling. I'm itchy itchy itchy for my favorite season to begin.
On my mind are apples and pumpkins and nutmeg, cable-knits, hot tea, frost and fog, chubby squirrels, beautiful running salmon, sleepy dark evenings.... I'm too excited.
Inspired by little hints of fall I created this month's mobile... at the end of the month! It may be a bit early for an autumnal theme, so perhaps this ought to be September's mobile instead. But I'm ready for it now, so here it is ^_^.
Kirah helped me with this one. On our afternoon walks we have been finding a lot of interesting little things on the ground. Clusters of acorns, nuts, flowers, etc. Too bad I can't bring home the ladybugs, sea-foam green moths, shiny gold beetles, striped salamanders, terrifyingly gigantic orb spiders, rolly-poly potato bugs and armies of feisty ants that Kirah loves to try and squish. Well, maybe not too bad. They can stay outside and we will visit them often. But the little treasures she find from trees and plants fill up her pockets and make it back to the house and pile up with the rest of her toys.
I draped her mobile in soft circles of yarn and tucked some of her little seeds and things into the curls. I topped it off with some umbrellas of mustard colored felt.
So, Kirah may have a sort of woodland chandelier over her crib right now, but we'll still be squeezing in another beach trip or two before summer is over!
Playing around with more tissue and paper flowers. These ones have a purpose this weekend, but you'll have to wait until Monday to find out what that is!
The matroyshka doll was reclaimed from my mother's house this week. It was given to us by Russian pen pals our family had during the 80's and 90's. Nice to see something again that I loved as a child.
Last weekend Hubby, Kirah and I got to go to one of my favorite beaches in the Seattle area. It's a beach my family has been coming to since I was a baby (and maybe before that, who knows?), and, like most of the beaches along Puget Sound, it is not very sandy.
As a kid who grew up island hopping through the San Juans in the summers I recognize the value of a good rocky beach. Who needs soft sand to lie on when there is so much to do? Gently overturn rocks at low tide and you will find tiny crabs, starfish, beautiful snails, and maybe a sea cucumber if you're lucky. Watch the surf as you walk along and you may snag some welk or periwinkle shells, shiny agates, or colorful sea glass. But at our favorite beach it's the driftwood we're interested in.
From the time my sister and I were small we have loved leaning against a giant log, relaxing in the gravelly sand, and building tiny houses out of the little driftwood sticks that we find all over the shore. It seems silly, but it's fun and even as adults we can't go to the beach without starting at least a modest house.
The technique is simple, really. Take a quick walk around, gathering as many little sticks and pieces of bark you can find, along with any pretty stones, dry seaweed, seashells or whatever else you come across. Stake out a good little square on a sandier part of the beach, and start building. Create a small structure, then decorate as you see fit.
Together we have probably made 50 or 60 of these little houses in our lives. I can't wait until Kirah is big enough to not get frustrated with toppling towers and has the patience to sort through the beach for just the right pieces. This is a great activity for kids who are a little older - we don't want pebbles in mouths or up noses. ;)
We always like to add little details like fish ponds (with a bottle cap, or clam or crab shell to hold the water), rock gardens, seaweed covered trees, and so on.
This one is the first house my husband built with my sister and I, before we were married:
As you can see, he's a natural - he has 2 stories!
I hope if you have a great rocky beach in your area that you'll try this out next time you go. We always get lots of passers-by who stop and check them out, so be prepared for a little attention! And if you do make some houses, please snap some pictures and send them my way! I'd love to see what you come up with!
Father's Day is this weekend, and plans and gifts are still up in the air. I really am awful at this whole getting-things-done business. Disorganized as I may be, I do at least have a card made. Not a huge accomplishment, considering how easy it was, but cute nonetheless.
This year's Father's Day card was made in the same style as last year's birthday card for my husband.
Yes, those are her footprints. The green one is so much bigger than the pink one! She grew so much in just a year!
As I said, these cards are super easy to make.
1. Coat your baby's foot (or hand) in a non-toxic, washable ink for rubber stamps, and press firmly onto a blank card.
2. Stare at the print, trying to find an animal shape, until you drive yourself so crazy from looking for what isn't there that you actually see an animal instead of a footprint.
3. Use a sharpie or a craft pen to draw details - but don't go overboard. You still want to be able to see the print.
4. Come up with something clever to write inside. The inside of the pink card says "from your little bunny", because that's one of our many nicknames for Kirah.
Now I'm off to find a gift to go with it!
Let me introduce a new monthly feature on this blog - Mobile of the Month.
I get bored of things easily, as does Kirah, so we change up the mobile that hangs above her crib at least once a month.
We originally bought this
Kikkerland photo mobile to hold art cards from Wee Gallery
The nice thing about this mobile is that you can hang ten papers from it vertically, or attach two clips to each paper and hang 5 horizontally so that your photos or images are facing down into the crib. The art cards are great for little babies because their bold, black-and-white pictures are easy for newborn eyes to focus on.
Now that our little one is a lot bigger, we have moved the mobile higher - out of her reach, and we experiment with different designs to give her something fresh to look at all the time.
This month I was inspired by a Pixar design. In the movie Monsters Inc. there is a scene where Sully crams Boo's toys into his locker, and then tries to flush them down the toilet to hide them. One of the toys is a colorful fish mobile. Unfortunately I was unable to find a decent screenshot, but if you own Finding Nemo you can see the same mobile hanging above the fish tank in the dentist office.
A cute fish mobile seems perfect for the beginning of beach weather, so I decided to make a similar one.
I cut out 10 fishies from one template that I made. Then, using crayons, I drew the same design on all of them, font and back, using different contrasting colors.
Kirah likes them. She says "Fishies are swimmin'!" and makes whooshing noises. She especially likes for me to hold her up so she can smack them with her hands and make them "swim".
These little fishies are going to stick around for a while, but check back next month to see what we come up with!
Let's kick this off with something cool!
Plenty of the fun crafts Kirah and I do together are things my mother did with me and my sister when we were little. If only I could remember everything we thought was great back then. Thankfully I do remember some things, and I can always call my mom to ask about the specifics.
By the time seester and I were in pre-school we had amassed buckets of crayons. I don't know how we talked our mom into buying so many giant boxes of something we already had a ton of, but once I moved out after high school I had a physical time line of the last 18 years of Crayola's design and color changes. Being an absolute connoisseur of art supplies I can tell you all about how upset I was when they dropped the pale pale lavender, or how my favorite new color name was "macaroni and cheese". Et cetera.
My mother had come up with a way to deal with all the little broken nubs and stubs of much loved crayons. She melted them down in muffin tins, making little round lumps with different colors on all sides. They were fun to experiment with and were the perfect size for little hands. She would spend one day making bunches of them, and then would send them off to Montessori with us for the teacher to keep in the classroom. It was a brilliant way to keep them from taking over her kitchen cupboards.
I attempted this craft with Kirah this week and though I was lacking in the proper pan and wound up ruining a perfectly good petits fours tin, the result was a batch of cute, technicolor crayon babies that my little girl was fascinated with.
Fun, right?
So here's how you do it.
You need:
Mini-muffin tin(s)
Wax Paper
Crayons, paper removed, broken into pieces less than 1/2" long
Heat oven to 300°F. Line each well in the muffin tin with wax paper. Make sure you do this very well, because if the crayons melt through a tear your pan is toast. Fill lined wells with crayons, coordinating colors to your fancy and being careful not to overfill.
Bake for about 10 minutes, keeping a watchful eye. You'll want to start checking every minute once the outsides are melted but the centers still have crayon shaped lumps. You're going to want to take them out of the oven right when those centers melt so that the colors don't all mix together into ugly brown. This is the point where Kirah told me we were making crayon soup.
Pop them in the freezer for a few minutes and let the wax cool. Once they're solid simply peel off the paper and start doodling!
Have fun!
