September Mobile

This month we went with something simple to match the colors of Kirah's new big girl bedspread.

Pompoms are easy to make - just fold a piece of paper over a few times and cut into thin strips, stopping about an inch before the top of the paper so that it all stays attached. We used a mix of tissue and construction paper.

Clipped up on our mobile they look light and airy and fun. And to Kirah they look like jellyfish. ^_^







It has just occurred to me that it's been a while since we got her big girl bed and I still haven't posted pictures of it all set up. I'll get to that soon, I promise.

Mobile of this month or next

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!

July Mobile

Thankfully our summery temperatures have dropped into the much nicer and more tolerable 70's this week. We've been enjoying the sunshine without all the heat, and we even spent a much-needed day at the beach.



Our patio garden has been loving the summery weather and has grown to the point where my husband said "Our deck looks like a jungle...". Our spring vegetables and flowers have gotten leggy and covered with interesting blossoms and seed pods. Inspired by this, I decided it was time for a new mobile for little Kirah's room.



I dug into my stash of gift wrapping odds and ends and found some leftover tissue paper. I folded several sheets over on themselves a few times and cut out different sized leaf/petal shapes.



I pinned them up on our Kikkerland Mobile and I finished them off with some tiny bows of red thread.



Against Kirah's green walls they give a great mid-summer garden vibe to her room.

I might end up doing a variation on this again in the spring. How cute would it be with varying shades of yellow tissue and some yellow gingham bows? Or leave the bows off and do kelly green and chartreuse leaves? There are a hundred different color combos I am dreaming up now!

Mobile of the Month

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!