Rice play and mosaics

On Friday we had some friends over to play. I had just colored a bunch of rice, so as soon as it had cooled from drying in the oven I set it on the table in reach of the little ones. It was a matter of minutes before Emmett had run back to his bedroom and brought out a collection plastic and wooden animals and invited his little friend to play "Farm" with him. She thought that was a great idea! Claire wandered through after a while but didn't stay for too long. Elowen and Emmett however, played for about 45 minutes with the colored rice and the animals. When they finally wandered away to play something different I printed several simple coloring pages onto card stock and put out glue and lots of different colors of rice and beans and seeds to work with. Pretty soon the kids came back through the kitchen and saw everything set up differently. I explained what a mosaic was and showed them how to do put the seeds onto the glue to color their pictures. The bigger kids did everything themselves while I helped the little ones by applying the glue for them, and they did the rest on their own. They had a great time! The clean up really wasn't too bad. I just raked all of the spilled rice and seeds etc. off of the table onto the floor and swept it all up when they where done!

New Window Star Tutorial with printable pattern

I love making window stars out of kite paper. The way they seem to glow as the light shines through the translucent paper is almost magical. I've been wanting to share this wonderful new kind of window star with you for a while now, and with the end of winter nowhere in sight at the moment, today seemed like a great time to do it! (Is it just me or does this winter really seem to be dragging on and on and on. My husband and mom assure me that I feel like this every February.) Well, I guess that is why I enjoy my pretty window stars even more at this time of the year. They give us something bright and happy to look at when almost everything outside of our windows is grey and cold and hibernating.

♥Our Valentine inspired window star♥

For this tutorial you'll need paper. Each star is made from 10 individually folded stars. We used this kite paper from Palumba, but many natural toy retailers carry it. (Not an affiliate link, just informational!) You'll also need a copy of the pattern I drew up.  (The link for the pattern is {now*}at the end of this post.) I've included 2 sizes for the pattern so if you have the 6.25 inch square kite paper like we do you can simply print out the pattern and the largest size can be used with a whole sheet of paper with the least amount of waste possible. The smaller sized pattern has been made to work perfectly with the same size paper that has then been folded into quarters to make approximately 3 inch squares. And lastly you'll need a pair of scissors and a glue stick. 

First you'll need to cut our your pattern and then cut out 10 pentagon shapes for each window star you'd like to make.

Matthew helped me make our stars. This is a great project for bigger kids. 

After you have your pentagons cut out you'll need to make the creases for your stars. I've included lines on the patterns to show you where to fold the stars.

Next you'll need to make a small cut into the center section between each of the points of the star.

Fold each of the flaps you created on each point inwards to turn your pentagon into a star. 

Once you have all 10 stars folded you can decide how you want them to be arranged in you window star.

Next you'll need to place the star (flap side up) with one point facing you and 2 points facing away from you. Then you'll need to open  up one flap on the top left point as shown above and then fold up the bottom point of the star so your window star will have that lovely wreath shape. Repeat those steps with all of your stars. 

Now look at the picture above. You'll need to take the unfolded flap and tuck it behind the star to it's left. the point just below the one with the flap will then be tucked under the folded up point of the star to the left. Once you have those in place you'll want to fix them there with a bit of glue. (I really do find that glue sticks work wonderfully with this kind of paper)

Continue following the last steps connecting all of your little stars to form the big one. 

Once your window star if formed, you can glue down each of the folded up flaps. If there are any remaining flaps that don't seem to want to stay folded down you can glue them into place as well. Sometimes I do, but if they are staying nicely in place I don't worry about it. 

TaDa! You can now hang your beautiful star in the window for the light to shine through. (We use a bit of glue stick to hang our stars. It washes off easily with a bit of warm water when your ready to take them down.) 

Aren't they lovely?! I just love bright happy things. And these window stars make our winter view so much more cheerful! 

♥♥Here is the link for the pattern!♥♥ 

You should be able to open it and print it out onto a full size piece of paper to get the appropriately sized pentagons for your stars. 

Somehow I got distracted just as I was going to publish this post this morning and forgot to include the pattern link...oops! But now it's fixed...so that's good! 

Sharing with Linda for Creative Friday and Skip to my Lou.

Craftiness and trying to stay sane...

So, yeah, I'm still pregnant. So considering the fact that I don't have any adorable new baby pictures to show you yet, I thought you might like to see what else we've been up to in the past month. (After we caught up on very much needed sleep and recovered from Ethan's illness of course!)

First up, there was sewing for the baby. Since she is due to arrive (any minute now baby please!!) during the coldest season of the year I made her a car seat canopy. My little ones spend almost no time at all in their car seats, much preferring to be held in a baby carrier or sling of some sort. However I like to put them in the car seat while we are still inside the house and cover everything up so they stay toasty warm on the way out to the car! We don't have a garage to park our car inside in this house, so walking through the weather has to happen when we leave to go anywhere! I called up my friend who I made the car seat cover for, over a year ago, and asked her if I could borrow it, to try and remember how I made hers...

 Close up of the fabric I chose for her canopy. Isn't it adorable? I love the floating bunnies and little girls!

And now for the part I'm really proud of. I actually ended up recovering her car seat. 

I very loosely followed the tutorial found here, for recovering the car seat. The picture below shows "why" I had to recover the car seat. I honestly had no intention of ever taking on such a big project this late in my pregnancy, but when I pulled the infant car seat out of our storage room and took the cover off of it to wash it, this is how it came out of the washing machine! It was frayed and falling to pieces! I had followed the manufacturer's recommended washing instructions exactly, and this was the first time in the life of the car seat it had ever been machine washed. I called the manufacturer and they said that since the seat was just over a year old, I would have to purchase a new cover for it... So I thought what the heck, I might as well give recovering the thing a try since, if that didn't work I'd still have a few weeks to buy a new seat cover and get it shipped to me. Well, not only did it work, it turned out super cute! I am so happy with how it looks! Much prettier than that weird plastic-y orange! 

Logan also has been rather crafty lately! He got invited to a friend's birthday party recently and had no idea what he should get for the girl. I suggested that he make her a T-shirt with her favorite video game character on it. He liked that idea, so he looked online for an outline to print out to use as a stencil. He found the design below, printed it out and very carefully cut it out of freezer paper. He then ironed the freezer paper onto a blank shirt he got from the craft store. He used fabric paint to carefully fill in the stencil and once it was dry he peeled the freezer paper back to reveal his shirt. It turned out great! He friend was thrilled with such a one of a kind gift and he was really thrilled with the fact that he had made it completely by himself!

At the end of October our three big boys when to a costume dance party hosted by our local homeschool group. Ethan went as a Plastic Army Man also known as a Little Green Army Man. I made his costume out of a large green tarp, and just used a simple pajama pattern for the shirt and pants. My sewing machine hated sewing that tough plastic! I broke 7 needles in the construction of that thing. One of the needle points even flew off and hit me in the corner of the eye! I was ok, but it hurt! I ended up wearing safety goggles to finish it! I spray painted his rubber boots and a Nerf gun bright green and we painted all exposed skin green using a water soluble face and body paint.. (The face paint stained his skin and for the following three days he looked a bit like Frankenstein's monster! ) 

Matthew wanted to dress up as Frodo Baggins the Hobbit. So I made his cape, vest and the pants were part of a costume that I made for Logan last year. The ring and the clasp for his cloak I got off of Amazon. 

Logan wanted to go as a Gentlemanly Steampunk Scientist. So, thankfully, he already had a Velvet coat with lace trim I had sewn him last year for his costume, which still fit nicely. He was entirely in charge of creating the rest of his costume, which consisted of a very interesting hat with a "steam" engine, copper piping, and various other gears and contraptions. He also had a copper coated gas mask, that he made, in case it was needed while escaping dastardly villains armed with noxious gases. I really didn't help him at all with his costume this year, except for offering a bit of advice when asked. He took charge of putting the whole thing together himself!

I am currently in the middle of making Claire a "baby" doll for her birthday, which is coming up in the middle of December. I'll try to get pictures of it soon. I also have several Christmas presents in the works that I plan on showing as I get them completed or nearly so. But first, honestly I'd really like to have this baby! I've been having super strong braxton-hicks contractions for over two weeks now. They'll get almost regular, and fool me into thinking that this must be it this time. You'd think that with this being my 6th baby I'd know for sure if I was in labor or not, but no it doesn't appear that way! I keep getting my hopes up only to have things peter out, with no baby to show for hours of contractions, and no sleep either! So I am trying to find little things to occupy my mind and hands because while I do feel perfectly fine, I just really don't have much energy at all at this point and everything tires me out so easily! 

I'm feeling like a bit of an emotional mess, because of a continual lack of sleep and not knowing when this little one is finally going to arrive! The end of pregnancy hormones aren't doing much to help that situation either! I was in the kitchen this morning making myself a cup of red raspberry leaf tea, when Logan came in to say good morning to me. I started crying for no reason and when he asked my what was wrong I had no good answer. The sweet boy just hugged me and said "You're just very pregnant aren't you." Yes, son that is all it is, I am just very pregnant!

*Updated on 11-26-13 to add that I am linking up with Nicole here and be sure to check out this beautiful project of ours that was a very long time in the making! She is practically perfect in every way! 

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.