Felt Halloween wall decoration

Lots to update! But a short one first.

We made a felt Halloween wall decoration today! Blue was sick this morning and couldn't go to school, so she and Baby Bear helped me find clip art images online and cut them out.  You can find a ton of great images by just Google searching what you need and adding the word "outline" or "silhouette." I.e. "ghost outline"

Print out the clip art,  pin to the felt, then cut out :)

The felt I used was a mixture of the cheap sheets you can find at Walmart or any craft store as well as the more high quality felt you buy on the  bolt (thicker than the kind you buy in small squares). We had a lot left over from other projects so this project was free for us but would probably average a few dollars if you had to buy everything.

And please excuse my sloppy backdrop :)

Baby Bear's preschool class usually has some kind of felt wall, so this is normal for her. But Blue is loving being able to decorate and move stuff around. She loves that the "spooky house" windows can even moved.

Dollhouse Furniture and Bendy Dolls

Dollhouse furniture is definitely a learning process... Mr. River insisted on making things out of wood, so it's a lot of cutting... figuring out how things would lock together, trying to make tables and chairs not wobble, etc. After a week spent of looking online for "dollhouse furniture plans" and not coming up with much that *we* could make... Mr River took to lined paper and drew out the designs. And wow is he good at it! He made the bed and chair in a "locking" design so that the pieces go together a bit like a puzzle. They're very sturdy this way without the need for nails :) 

Mr. River made the table and chairs. We found the small wooden cups and barrels and bucket at Michael's in the unfinished wood section. The pies I made out of bottlecaps using this blog for the idea. The blueberry pie is straight from the tutorial. The cherry pie, though, I just cut small circles from red felt and then used brown felt as the pie crust and I think it looks much better than the foam + cardstock. also, I didn't bother drawing around the pie crust before cutting strips, I just cut strips, wove on top, and then trimmed after it was all dry.

My favorite is easily the rocking horse :)

I made the girls "bendy dolls" as the dolls for the dollhouse. I used the size of the dolls that Elves and Angels sell for the dollhouse, which are a 1/12 scale dollhouse. So a 5-6" doll.

For Blue's birthday, I got a book on making fairies - and they're extremely straightforward and easy to make. Bendy dolls are the same idea. I looked at a few blogs to learn how to thread-wrap the pipe cleaners for a cleaner look. The Enchanted Tree has a really awesome tutorial.  A few lessons I learned on Bendy Dolls though...

1. I took two pipe cleaners and twisted them together for extra strength for the adults. For the kids, I used the "star" shape design of the Forest Fairy Crafts book, which already doubles up the pipe cleaner. 
2. Use a bit of tacky glue on hands/feet to keep the thread from unraveling.
3. The hair is tricky. If you loop it through the pipe cleaner like The Enchanted Tree does, just plan on fitting the clothes on the body from the foot up or with a big enough neck hole to fit over the head. I wasted several nights trying to figure out how to put the head on after I got the doll dressed, which is impossible if the hair is on and it's impossible to get the hair on after everything is "fitted" with head on the thread-wrapped body.
4. I found clothes patterns to be extremely annoying. Rather than trying to print and use any clothes pattern as a template, I found it far easier to just cut a large rectangle with a neckhole, put it over the doll, then trim to size. If you want an applique on the dress or shirt, just figure out essentially where it will be after trimming (i.e. in the smack middle of your rectangle), and applique it before sewing up the clothes. 
5. For pants, I used the Forest Fairy craft idea of a rectangle with leg slits and the felt is wrapped around the leg with thread. I tried sewing nice little pants, and the bendy-ness of the legs was significantly impaired because the pants didn't have much movement to them. Thread-wrapped felt pants move in any direction you want. Also, using a rectangle that is mounted over the head/shoulders for pants makes it so you dont' have to worry about them falling down :)
6. I first tried to sew on felt shoes - the little boy is the only one with felt shoes. After that painstaking process, I realized I could just thread-wrap the feet with shoe-colored thread. I feel a bit silly about the hour spent on those felt shoes now :)
7. The Forest Fairy Craft book recommends putting a coating of like modge podge on the head before drawing the eyes. This is true - permanent marker will bleed if you don't have a base coating of something on the head. We discovered it was true on the sugar/flour cannisters :) Paint probably won't matter like permanent marker does.
8. I couldn't get boys' hair to work quite right, so they just got hats. Size 3 thread with a D hook if you know how to crochet :) 
9. The baby is just a wooden peg that I first thread-wrapped, then wrapped in felt that I stitched together as a "swaddling blanket." The hat is crocheted.

For the boys' hat - work in the round. This is a super informal workup of what I did:

Rnd 1. 4sc in magic ring (4)

Rnd 2. *Sc in each stitch* around (4)

Rnd 3. *sc, inc* around (6)

Rnd 4+. Continue *sc, inc* around until the hat will fit on the head, then just sc until length desired. You want it to fit snug. 

Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas :))

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year! We have quite a slew of annual traditions that we've built over the past few years. We saw the Snow World at SeaWorld back in November. We watched the Bay of Lights boat parade at SeaPort Village here in San Diego. We went to Christmas Card Lane up in Rancho Penasquitos with Blue's friend. We saw the Living Nativity at the local church, and Blue was an angel this year! For decorations, we added a crochet and felt fireplace to our crafty wall - which I will hopefully one day get the pattern written up. We made ornaments, baked cookies, had way too much sugar, hung up our lights, and sang a ton of Christmas songs.

Mr. River had to work on Christmas day this year, but we did get to have a nice, quiet dinner together on Christmas Eve since they gave him the 24th off. Truthfully, he would rather have Christmas Eve off than Christmas since he does get to spend Christmas morning with us before going to work. 

This Christmas, we aimed to do more handmade items to give to the girls. First, we have been trying to minimize the quantity of toys that the girls have and focus on quality instead. Blue is four now, and it's easy to see that a quality, open-ended toy can invite and sustain years of play.  It grows with them and becomes more cherished as the adventures grow. We've also been trying to declutter, a lot. When Blue was a baby and toddler, she was our only kid so it was easy and tempting to want to add more toys whenever we found something that looked fun or was decently priced. And since I shop at a consignment store mostly, it was easy to buy since items rarely cost more than $5.  But as Blue got older and we added Baby Bear to our family... soon we just had so much stuff.  And although the girls played with pretty much everything, the open ended toys definitely saw a lot more play. Things like miniature animals, dolls, role-play items (kitchen, dress-up), blocks, art supplies.  We decluttered at least half of the girls' items and it actually enhanced their play since they now had more room to do it. 

So now when we add toys... it's a lot of hemming and hawwing over whether it'll add enough in fun to be worth the amount of space it takes up.  

On another level, we are deeply uncomfortable with the materialist, toss-away path of us as a culture, and we as adults are definitely not innocent of our role in it but are trying to get better. 

One thing that has definitely helped is that our girls don't really "want" much. If you ask Blue what she wants, she'll likely surprise you with a very simple answer - like "I don't know." If you pry, she may say "paint" or "a leash for my dog." Without cable/TV networks, the girls aren't exposed to commercials or product pushing. They don't really know what's out there unless we are in a store, at which point Blue transforms into a normal four year old and wants one of everything. But as soon as we say bye to the toy aisle, thoughts and wants of the toys leave her mind. So that makes it easy :)

So all of this led to Christmas and our desire for more handmade. Our original plan was for Mr. River to build the girls a Waldorf-inspired playstand, where they could play house, host a market, use it as a fort, whatever! But as Christmas drew near and I grew possessive over the "real estate" of our apartment that I so painstakingly cleared over the last year.. we realized the playstand wouldn't happen this year. Maybe when we have a house or at least more room we can look at it again. So then the plan was for a dress-up tower that would also function as a puppet theater, and I would make the girls a stuffed animal and quilt each. I already have the fabric, so it was just a matter of making amends with my sewing machine - which has been banished to the closet for the past three years.

Me and the sewing machine are still not speaking. 

So the quilts didn't happen.

And then Blue asked Santa for a little house for her little people. So our energies shifted to thoughts of dollhouses and what we could make. Mr. River became quite realistic and admitted he would not be able to finish a dollhouse in time for Christmas, so I searched online for one that looked open-ended, large enough for multiple kids to play, and was well made. I came across the Maine Natural Dollhouse from Elves and Angels and was immediately in love. I really loved the size of it, that the first floor was easily visible and accessible even when it was on the ground, the natural wood and lack of "assignment" of rooms, the design, the open-ness of it to all sides, and that it was handmade in a family-owned woodshop in Maine. More hemming and hawwing over the price of it, but eventually we decided to get it as the big gift to both girls.

I am so so so so glad we did! The quality and craftsmanship is just astounding on this and we know it will easily last through our girls' children. The size is perfect - all FOUR of us can sit around it and play. And I love the design! I was originally looking at a three story "treehouse" kind of design, but realized after looking at other pictures that you can't really see the first floor in most dollhouses.... unless they're on a table or you're laying on the floor. This one is perfectly designed. 

So that was the girls' big gift. And Mr. River and I have spent quite a bit of time making the dolls and furniture for it. 

I made the girls their stuffed animals - Blue got a purple dog (using Little Owl's Hut's pattern) that she said she wanted for Christmas over the summer (and then forgot she asked for it haha). Baby Bear got a blue unicorn (using Dawn Touissant's pattern), which she isn't quite sure what to make of it. The pressing question we all don't know the answer to: do unicorns say "neigh"?

Mr. River made the girls a wooden puzzle each, which they love!

I made them each  a pirate map for their stocking.

And the nonhandmade items they got: Baby Bear got a piggy bank (Blue got one for Christmas when she was 2). Blue got a Barbie that someone at Mr. River passed down to her. For their stockings: they each got a Melissa and Doug puzzle. Baby Bear got a Jellycat Cow that we actually bought for her *last* year but forgot to give her haha!!  She immediately squished it upon seeing it. And Blue got a kid's Timex watch so she can learn to tell time (she really wants to learn).  They also each got a new set of watercolors.

They also got the HoneyBee Game and the super cute movie Prep & Landing as their Christmas Eve gifts.

The adults' gifts weren't quite as exciting but things we definitely love! The girls got me a "kitty" calendar that they picked out, Mr. River got me a new pillow, and we got him a Survival Strap bracelet

Is Christmas Here?

The day started in the wee hours of the morning as I finished sewing a hat onto a snowman:

Then, at a far more decent hour, we finally took down our fall season wall so that we can start our Winter and holiday crafts. I have a pretty grand idea for our "tree" but I need to get to work on it. Hopefully I will have it up in a few days :)

Beyond the tree, though, we have lots of winter crafts planned, plus our ornament advent calendar.

Today, we started some snowflakes and a Christmas countdown chain. 

For our snowflakes, I got the idea off pinterest to use coffee filters. These work ok, though they're a bit too flimsy for young children. We'll probably do other ones with normal paper. Blue's scissors are missing, and her purple spring-loaded ones are not nearly as "preschooler-friendly" as they claim. So I let her use my scissors, under our sharp (pun intended) eye. She did good, but enjoyed hanging the snowflakes up the most. We put them up on the windows of the girls' room. Between those and the Christmas lights, it's looking quite nice!

While Blue and daddy worked on the snowflakes, Baby Bear did some coloring. She bored of that quickly, though, and moved onto tasting the crayons. So, we switched her to playing with the fall leaves we had taken down.

I worked on the Christmas countdown chain, with Blue helping me count. Blue is "getting" that Christmas "is coming." But is having a harder time realizing that we'll be waiting a few weeks... not hours. I think the chain will help with that, as well as making our wall even more festive :)

Tis almost the season

The holiday attire crafting has begun! If I'm to not go insane during December, I need to also start the various gifts I'm making. Hoping to do that soon, as soon as I finish the other list that's a mile long :P

These baby-legs/leggings are from a pattern I was testing for an author. They turned out super cute, though Baby Bear's chubby thighs didn't let me pull them up any further haha.

Halloween and Thankfulness

Happy Halloween 2012 from Blue and Baby Bear!

Blue had us worried she might be getting sick, and we weren't sure if trick or treating and other standard Halloween events would be going on this year. I had a full day/evening of "HouseAWeening" all planned - essentially our crafting and other activities all jammed together. But, Blue was fine and was able to go to her school parade, to her friend's Halloween party, and trick or treating! Mr. River even got the evening off early and joined us!

What a great way to end October!

We started November off with some family arts and crafts to think about, talk about, and celebrate being "thankful." It's a rare thing that we're all involved in the crafts, as we usually do them while Mr. River is at work. So we were thankful for that alone :)

Appropriately, we painted and assembled some turkeys to go up on out fall wall! Blue and I talked about what thankful means, and we both thought of things that we are thankful for - to put on her turkey. Baby Bear also had her turkey filled up - by Blue and Mr. River - of all the things she loves and is thankful for.

I think they turned out pretty cute :)

First we did the turkey bodies. Baby Bear tried to first color them, but then we turned to painting

Then we made the feathers. I first tried to cut feathers out, but they were too small to easily paint. So instead, we painted a paper first, then cut leaves from it :)

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Blue helped glue the finished feathers onto the turkeys

And then handprint turkeys!

Tada! I finished their small details and then we talked about things we are thankful for.

I think they turned out great :)

Autumn and hope

So my laptop's trackpad is broken and the laptop is getting fixed.

Until it's done, Mr. River and I are sharing the PC, which means all work no play :)

Well, a little bit of play, while Mr. River sleeps!

It does mean a lot of crochet time after I get my work done though! And I finally finished two scarves for my aunt :) An autumn scarf and a breast-cancer ribbon scarf

Autumn tree

So this is only about a month late in posting :) But at the beginning of September, we started an Autumn tree project. The goal was to make a tree that we could use as a focal point for arts and crafts we'd be making over the fall. The tree itself became a project, with several days of making leaves, gluing them on (even the ABA instructor helped), and finally putting it on the wall. 

So first, I cut out an outline of a tree and branches. Then we colored it. I didn't take pictures of this part.

For the leaves, we did all sorts of things. We used apple prints from the apples we picked. Blue fingerpainted some of them, colored some with crayons, and also colored some with markers. We also did handprints on a few. 

Finally, I cut leaves out of the painted pages, cut out the apples, and we glued it all together for a beautiful tree!