Handmade Holidays 2013...so I begin

Yes I know...It seems very early in the year to be thinking about Christmas gifts. But folks, my darling husband just told me there are only 110 days left until Christmas. That's less than 4 months! And this year I don't want to be caught unprepared. Plus in my case there are some special circumstances coming into play over the next few months which necessitate my getting things done early or probably not done at all. Not the least of which is the impending birth of our sweet little girl due in November, and family coming to stay from out of the country for several weeks in December!  Since I probably wont get much wood working done after the baby gets here I am trying to get that part of my handmade holiday preparations finished now! Sawdust and baby wearing really don't go hand in hand!

I've wanted to make a wooden Nativity set for the little ones to play with for a couple of years and I just never got around to it for some reason. I have the set I played with as a child, but it's more delicate than these sturdy wooden figures, so I really don't like them playing with it unsupervised. I have, until now, kept it out of their reach and only brought it down to the coffee table for them to tell the story of Jesus' birth and then back up it goes as soon as we're done playing and telling. But my plans for this one are to leave it within their reach all Christmas season so that they can interact with it as often as they desire!

I looked at a couple of  natural toy catalogs I have and different stores online then drew out the elements I liked best from several different wooden Nativity scenes. Next I transferred the outlines of my drawings to the wood, and cut them out with my scroll saw during two afternoon nap times last week. (I try to get the potentially dangerous crafting done while the under 4 crowd is napping in the afternoon!)  Yesterday during nap time I managed to get them all sanded and snapped these pictures outside just as the little ones were waking up from their naps. Sometime over the next couple of days I plan on wood burning details into them, and I'll probably add some nice watercolor washes to them. I haven't decided for sure whether I will paint them or not, I'm leaning towards yes, I will, but we'll see how I feel about it once I get the wood burning done... Then to seal the wood with some kid friendly homemade beeswax wood protector. And I'll be done!

Oh and I still would like to come up with a nice little stable for everyone to hang out in, at least something big enough for the Holy family and a few animals, and as always sturdy enough to stand up to years of play! Or at very least to survive Emmett's toddlerhood! He's rather a force of nature, that one! Kind of like what an insurance company might describe as an "Act of God" :-) That's it, our darling little Emmett~ our own personal Act of God! I read recently on someone's blog that a friend had described her toddler boy as feral, sometimes I feel like that might describe our child too. You'd think after having this many kids (he's #5 for goodness sake!) that we'd have this parenting little ones thing all figured out. Ha! Not really, this kid is so different from any of my other children. He is sweet, and loving, and always happy...until he's not!  He is very friendly and outgoing and extremely high needs all at the same time. At least the fact that he is number five gives me the perspective of knowing that although some days are completely draining and can feel like they last forever, time really does have a way of passing so quickly and pretty soon, he'll be beyond this stage and on to some new and exciting development! :-) That perspective is something that I am very thankful for, that comes from having gone through these years before, and really wanting to mindfully make the very most of them now, because this adorableness, and even this neediness doesn't last forever. At least not in the same ways.

Linking up with Nicole here and Linda here.

Mushrooms and Acorns

We first saw this house while it was still on the market almost exactly one year ago now. Our old house had sold, and the deal on the house we had planned on buying fell through 4 days before we sold our house. We spent hours every day on the internet searching the listings over and over looking for some place ~any place please God!~ for our family to live. I found this property one afternoon shortly after Rodrigo arrived back at my parents house from work. It wasn't too far down the road from their house so we decided to run out, drive by and take a look. I called our realtor while we were driving to find out if she could meet us here and show us the house. We knew it was a foreclosure and was sitting empty from the pictures in the listing, so I wasn't worried about inconveniencing the owners on such short notice. The realtor was busy, but she got permission from the listing agent to give us the combination for the lock so we could let ourselves in and look around.

When we pulled into the driveway, I saw the woods behind the house, and below all of those great big huge trees were mushrooms. Everywhere! I love mushrooms!

{This picture was taken on the day we came to look at this house for the first time last year} 

And those towering trees, well most of them turned out to be Oak trees! Covered in acorns!! I love acorns too! I loved the land here! The house, well, honestly not so much. Rodrigo did, he saw the potential were I just saw depressing. Mainly it wasn't a pretty little Victorian farmhouse with a turret. So at that point nothing really seemed good enough for me, but I was ready to have a place to live after more than 9 weeks without a home!

This place finally feels like it's really ours. In October it will be a year since we signed the papers and moved in. I am so happy that this is the house we bought now. Occasionally we drive past that old Victorian farmhouse, and now I am just filled with gratitude that God led us where he has. It was not an easy lesson to learn, I tried my best to convince God that He really should just let us have the pretty white house with the turret, but I am so glad now that He didn't! Letting go of what I want is never easy! But those mushrooms and trees filled with acorns, well, they still thrill me as much as they did on the day we first saw them! And now even the little ones come to find me and show me when a pretty new mushroom pops up in the woods!

Simple Weaving with Kids Tutorial

This was another post I've had in draft for a couple of years. I originally made it as a guest post for the Home-Spun Threads blog. I was going through my list of posts and found a few drafts for fun tutorials and wanted to share them on my own blog!

Today I am going to show you how to make a simple loom out of cardboard and introduce your children to weaving.

For this project you'll need the following:
Cardboard for the loom, scissors, tape, yarn and a large tapestry needle.

We used an empty cereal box for our loom. I just helped the boys cut out the back of the box and then we folded it in half and secured with tape to make a sturdier loom. The nice thing about this type of weaving is you can make your loom (And finished project) any size you want. Remember if you are working with little ones that the bigger the loom is, the longer the weaving takes to complete! Our looms where about 5 by 7 inches.

 Mark the top and bottom edges of your loom every 1/4 inch. I found it works best if you begin and end your marks about 1 inch from the edge of the cardboard.

 Make small cuts about 1/4 inch long on each mark for you to wind your vertical threads (called the Warp Threads)

Begin winding your yarn for the Warp. Do not just wind all the way around the loom.  You only want the warp threads looping over the tabs cut in the top and bottom of the loom and you do not want them winding from top to bottom on both front and back of your loom. (This is a bit difficult to explain, but in the next picture showing the back of the loom with the warp threads wound you can see what I mean.)

See what I mean? The warp threads only loop over the tabs cut in the loom and do not cover the back of the loom like they do in the front. The ends of the yarn are taped onto the back of the loom to keep them out of the way while  your child weaves.

Now the fun begins! Have your child choose the first color of yarn for his weaving and thread it onto a large (blunt) tapestry needle. We used about 4 to 5 feet of yarn and had it doubled through the needle so each child had about 2 feet of yarn to work with at a time (A bit longer for bigger kids.) Leave a tale of yarn so it can be tied off later. We taped our tales to the back of the loom before beginning weaving  so they wouldn't get in the way. Start weaving by going over and under every other Warp string.  When you reach the end of the row, come back the other way going "over" where you went "under" and "under" where you went "over" before. The yarn that goes back and forth is called the Weft string, we like to double it because it helps the weaving go a bit faster the bulkier the yarn is!

 After you have 4 or five rows completed you will need to push all of your Weft strings to the top (or bottom) of your weaving. A fork comes in handy for this.

Or you can use your fingers to tighten the weft strings!

It's easy to make stripes and change colors while you are weaving. Simply cut your weft yarn off the needle, leaving a tail and tape it onto the back  of your loom. Then string another length of different colored yarn onto your needle and tape the tail onto the back side of the loom and start weaving where you left off with the last color, always being careful to follow the over, under, over, under pattern! 

 When your weaving is complete it is time to tie up all of the loose ends. Younger children may need help tying everything off. Start on the sides tying the weft string tails into nice square knots close to the edge of the weaving. You can cut the tails pretty close if your knot is secure.

 Next slip the loops off of the tabs of your loom. We found it easiest to snip each loop one at a time and knot it, rather than cutting them all at once and then trying to figure out which ends went together!

The ends can be left like this as a fringe or they can be trimmed to make a neater edge.

My kids' finished projects. They couldn't wait for their daddy to get home to show him what they had made! 

Linking up at Made by you Monday!