Category — Craftiness

I can’t believe it’s already time for another weekend post!

Thanks very much for those of you who were kind enough to comment here or like/share/comment on the Facebook page. Today I clicked on the Time Magazine Cover link before I caught myself, and then I had to set aside a People magazine at the dentist’s office–the Adele story was safe, but after that, things degenerated. Sigh. Well, I’m trying my best.

We dropped by M’s Girl Scout Leader’s house today, where the fabulously super-motivated woman, who babysits a bunch of kids, was leading the children through this adorable Mother’s Day craft. I had to take a picture.

I’m pretty sure that the lovely tissue-paper flowers are entirely grown-up-made, but the basic container is a cardboard box with wooden popsicle sticks and craft-store wooden cut-outs that the kids could paint and glue by themselves. So if you weren’t so crafty, you could just buy (or pick) some actual flowers. Anyway, I thought it was a good idea if anyone’s still searching for something. There’s also the simple-but-cute decoupage vase. I’d ordered something crafty-oriented that arrived at my house after I’d given up and just sent Mother’s Day cards. Naturally.

Here’s this week’s KidsOutAndAbout.com newsletter. It may interest some of you to know that it contains a giveaway for a week of Tiny Tots Tearoom Camp (among other interesting tidbits). As usual, click on each day for more listings.

Multi-Day/All Weekend:

• Tulip Festival 2012 Here’s my summary from before: We’ve gone to Tulip Fest with the girls repeatedly. It’s a mob scene, but they always have fun. They love the playground, the ginormous bouncy-bounce-slide inflatables, the animals to pet, and the kids’ shows. Cute W and I occasionally hear the music from a distance and spend a few seconds wishing that we could just watch bands and drink beer, but then the girls do something really cute, like when J kept shouting “Hello” to a goat like she expected him to carry on conversation, and that’s fun, too.
• 2012 Baby Animal Days at Indian Ladder  Also super-fun, and a mob scene
• Saratoga City Ballet Carnival of the Animals Anyone been to this? Opinions?
• Hairspray at Schenectady Light Opera Company I like both Hairspray and SLOC, so I’m tempted by this one. It’s next weekend, too.
• Got Kids? Sale
• Hair at Cohoes Music Hall

Friday, May 11th:

• Clifford the Big Red Dog – LIVE at Proctors. Proctors has announced their 2012-2013 season and it looks awesome. Family alert: gift subscription, maybe? Or whole family to Mary Poppins for my birthday?
• Pre-School Story Hour with Pam at the Open Door Bookstore
• Wiggle and Giggle at The Children’s Museum at Saratoga
• FETCH! Lab: Blast Off and Hidden Power Demos at Schenectady Museum & Suits-Bueche Planetarium
• Favorite Author at THE WONDER ROOM
• Family Music at My Place to Play
• Star Watch at Grafton Lakes State Park

Saturday, May 12th:

• 20th Annual Indian Kill Fishing Day & Open House
• Take the Migration Challenge (drop-in program for kids) at Albany Pine Bush
• Creative Art Day at the New York State Museum
• Guided Hike at Up Yonda Farm
• Moss Walk at Mine Kill State Park
• RCHS History Walk: Great Fire
• Twinkle, Twinkle, What’s that Star? at CMOST
• WSL School Carnival at West Sand Lake Elementary

Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 13th:

•  Mother’s Day Special at FunPlex Fun Park in East Greenbush
•  Free Admissions for Moms on Mother’s Day at the Farmers’ Museum — This is an awesome place–I reviewed it over on KidsOutAndAbout.com.
• Albany Institute of History and Art‘s FAMILY FESTIVAL—Mother’s Day
• Mud Pond Hike at Moreau Lake State Park

I just realized that I forgot to post about M’s favorite activity during our Mother-Daughter Camp-out: fairy houses!

One of the dads had encountered amazing fairy houses in his travels. (A little closer to home, you can find some fairy houses at the Berkshire Botanical Garden.) He and his daughter were excited to share the fairy joy. The younger girls (3rd graders) jumped on it first:

He’d brought along this Fairy House book by Tracy Kane:

She’s got a whole series of them, along with a website with tons of information and photos.

The girls caught on quickly and built like crazy. The dad’s daughter displayed the kind of technical expertise that comes from experience:

Now, you might recall that J’s been a consistent supporter of All Things Fairy, including two fairy themed birthday parties (the second of which involved making homemade fairies and lovely fairy gardens) as well as constructing fairy habitats and corresponding with fairies on her own.

I feared that M would consider herself somewhat too sophisticated for fairy houses. But she and her friends jumped into their construction projects with gusto. Practicing engineering and artistry outside: what’s not to like?  True, she and her friends weren’t serious believers like the 3rd-grade girl who spent Sunday morning displaying the precious gift of dried fairy wings that had been left at her fairy house overnight (to my jaded adult eyes it looked like a helicopter, but I could be wrong). Still, M and her friends had a wonderful time. If I hadn’t dragged her away, I think that she could have worked on it all day.

Once we arrived home, M and J started creating a whole village. Our setting is a bit less rustic, so they incorporated a few non-fairy elements, like this big ol’ cinder block:

They had a lovely time. I think you could take a couple of photos and sell them as castles or forts if your kids aren’t quite as fairylicious as my girls are.

I spent most of the day at The Arts Center of the Capital Region for their Write Here conference. One of my favorite parts was a program about writing and sharing poetry with school-age children. It was led by Jill Crammond from Miss Jill’s Artist Studio and Ralph Fahrenstock from Bethlehem Children’s School.

With Jill, we did some activities that combined art and writing. She passed out little slips of paper with words on them, and we were supposed to add one more word to create little mini-phrases, then let those mini-phrases conjure up pictures in our mind. Then we made some Matisse-inspired collages with cut-outs.

Cute, right? What a satisfying craft, really.

We were encouraged to write down any words or phrases that came to mind as we were cutting out and arranging shapes. Weirdly enough, words did, in fact, come to mind.

Poems were written. None will be shared at this time.

Oh, wait. But here are some that actual kids wrote during the activity.

And for those kids who are feeling a bit stumped, they can go fishing in a bowl of words to come up with something.

Ralph took over with all sorts of tips about teaching poetry starting with the first one, “Don’t use crappy poetry.” Then he offered a couple of examples of non-crappy poetry, including How to Eat a Poem and Variations on a Theme By William Carlos Williams. Then he had other suggestions for getting students to play with words, like taking a poem, blowing it up, cutting the individual words, and letting the students come up with their own poem. Or taking a poem that’s written in an indecipherable foreign language and asking them to “translate” it (here was the example he used-it seems somehow disappointing, now, to have the English translation so readily available). Or taking a line from a famous poem and asking students to continue the poem from there. He was also a huge proponent of having each poem read his or her poem aloud. There was a little talk about the performance of poetry in general, with a shout-out to a personal favorite of mine, Taylor Mali.

It was a creative departure from the rest of my day, and it made me feel inspired to go teach a class. But since I don’t actually have a class,  I’ll just blog about it. And possibly work some extra poetry into the read-aloud rotation. Also, I foresee construction paper clippings all over my carpet in the near future.

Cute W specializes in tasty breakfast carbs, so we just had to impulse-buy the Mini Donut Maker that was at Target the week before his birthday.

Over the weekend, Cute W made our first donuts. He just used the basic recipe in the instruction manual. The donuts are so little that each one is just a tablespoon of batter.

They emerged cute and tasty:

For a basic glaze,  I tried this Food Network recipe (from Alton Brown, not that I know who he is since I don’t even have cable), and it didn’t work out too well. It had great reviews, but mine came out gritty, even though I started with powdered sugar. Maybe I wasn’t patient enough about stirring it slowly?

Whatever, man. I’ve got a life to live. I can’t stir all freaking day. I threw in some butter, which improved it, but not enough. Next time we’re going to try the Krispy Kreme recipe. I was going to link to an official recipe, but their website is acting funky. Here’s another one, though.

Cute W also bought Nutella to use as our chocolate frosting, and we had sprinkles, too. I know, I know: I was just talking about how I am such a Good Mother because I refuse to allow my children to eat sugar cereal for breakfast, and here I’m touting Nutella and sprinkles! What can I say? I’m a Woman Of Contradictions. . . .

Plain, chocolate-sprinkles, & gritty-glazed

The donuts were tasty and charming. The girls are already scheming to set up a Donut Stand on Niska-Day.

Would you believe that after all that advance prep I managed to realize, 5 minutes before the party was set to start, that I’d forgotten the Rice Krispies for the cupid hair? So I literally ran (because I’d walked up to the school) back to my house and drove back, then explained to the children how to apply cupid’s wings while sweating profusely. Valentine’s Day is so much less romantic than it used to be. . . .

Anyway, I just remembered a tardy suggestion for Valentine’s Day, especially for those with young kids: an internal date, no babysitting required. Come to think of it, we haven’t done this in a while, so we need to do it, too.

The girls each received a Creativity for Kids: Petite Sweets Soap kit today. I’d had them tucked away for months, ever since I’d seen them on clearance for $5 (usually $15), I think at New York Toy & Hobby back in July. Basically, the kit includes soap “clay,” so it’s easy to mold, and there are decorative items like bath salts, glitter, and little flowers. The craft was a big hit, and the results were such pretty little soaps that I found myself wishing that I’d bought all of the kits, because these would make a great activity for kids to make a special gift for a mother or grandma.  The clay was a bit dry, so we needed to add water, and it would be nice if you could easily reseal the little plastic bags, but overall, it had lots of things I love in a craft: unusual material to make it seem special, plenty of variations possible for creativity, and a super-satisfying end product.

Here are J’s soaps:

It was a busy day with Grandma and Grandpa including an 8:25 am soccer game (sounded terrible until we saw a friend who had played “the early game” before us!) which included a goal and an assist for M, rehearsals for Cute W and M for their show at church tomorrow, a cooking project, the movie Big Miracle (wholesome and enjoyable, but a little sadder than expected because I didn’t remember the story at all), some shopping, and dinner out.

Between shopping and dinner, J started to lose it. It would be understandable if she were just plain tired, but she had chills and a headache, so I fear that she’s getting sick. We’ve been driving around in two cars to fit everyone (not environmentally friendly, I know, but when relatives aren’t visiting we’re guzzling less gas than those minivans which I’m too scared to drive anyway). So I aborted the mission and J and I ditched the restaurant and came back home to cuddle in bed. Now I’m wondering if tomorrow morning we’ll a) have a nice healthy J, b) have a sick J and I’ll miss the show entirely, c) have a sick J and I’ll pull a babysitter out of the ether, or  d) have a sick J and I’ll leave her alone just long enough to drive over and watch the one song that M’s singing with the junior choir). Clearly, I’d prefer option a. Sigh. At least Cute W has a video camera.

Anyway, the cooking project was actually an attempt to figure out our edible craft project for M’s Valentine’s Day school party. M’s 4th-grade teacher wanted to try these cute cupids from Family Fun. I said “Sure!” when what I was really thinking was that they were slightly too ambitious (the two different colors of decorator’s gel shared by 21 children, the piped frosting, etc.) and also that I didn’t like how Aryan the cupid looked in our multi-ethnic class.

So I pondered how to address these concerns. Because I am freakish that way. Perhaps I should have said no. But that’s not sporting.

First, I made frosting in two colors–vanilla frosting with a bit of food coloring to make it pink and brown chocolate frosting. I figured that kids could choose and/or mix. I also got Cocoa Krispies in addition to the Rice Krispies for hair options.

One pleasing innovation was  these heart-shaped Peeps for the wings. Half a heart is even better as a wing shape than a marshmallow. This was Cute W’s idea. He’s so clever. I think that I’m going to cut them ahead of time, because otherwise I’d have to provide multiple pairs of clean scissors for 21 4th-graders. Again: ambitious.

I also decided to blow off the decorator gel. We decided that Twizzlers would work for the mouth, and we experimented with chocolate chips, M & Ms, and TicTacs for the eyes. Oh, and I got gummy hearts instead of foil-wrapped, because I couldn’t find foil that was plain red without a words to advertise something, and besides, who wants wrapped candy on their cupcakes? We’re blowing off the piped-on hand entirely. Just not happening.

The girls and I each made one cupid cupcake to test the difficulty and ponder our eyeball options. Our results: a preference for chocolate is apparent, but we actually each mixed both vanilla and chocolate. We went with different eye techniques, none of which were entirely successful.

All in all, these cupcakes make me laugh. It’s a bit like when they show you the advertisements for a Big Mac and then the actual Big Mac. Except in this case it’s the adorable cupcakes prepared by the food stylists at Family Fun vs. cupcakes prepared by actual children of mothers who are not willing to buy little tubes of icing. It’s a clever idea. The wings worked much better than I’d expected. And of course, a parent could make a full batch of those adorable cupids at home with some decorator gel and piped icing and then show up at the school party pretty much feeling like The Most Awesome Parent Ever.

But we’re all about class participation. We’re all about process, not product. Which is pretty clear from the picture. Oh, also? They’re tasty.

Valentine’s Day fever has hit our household. Both girls started working on their Valentine mail boxes today. At our school, kids are supposed to make these at home and bring them in along with valentines for each child in their class.

The paper was flying. We had some American Girl products that I’d bought when they were 40% off, and they’ve been super fun for crafting. First, there’s a huge pad of scrapbook-style paper , which the girls have been using for pretty much everything but scrapbooking.  I’m even more enthusiastic about the American Girl Paper Posies Pad, which has punch-out flowers and other shapes with small adhesives that allow crafters to stack stickers for artistic effect.  They recommend it for ages 8 and up, but I think most 6-year-olds would be able to remove the slightly delicate shapes from the paper. But my favorite part is that some of the punch-outs have little messages, and they’re all so lovely and affirming, like “Challenge yourself. . . Stand tall. . . Grow. . . Change your world. . . I can do anything. . . Dare to be different. . . Friendship matters. . . Be kind.” Today I couldn’t restrain myself: I made a little flower with “Be Brave” in the middle.

Anyway, here are the creations:

J's Valentine Flower Box

There was minor drama concerning J poaching some of M’s origami paper from an origami kit we got her Christmas 2010. I would have been more sympathetic if I’d witnessed M making a single origami item, like, ever. And she got another kit as a gift since then. Luckily, J craved a gorgeous piece of silver foil paper, and I happened to have an entire roll of gorgeous silver foil. It was nestled safely between waxed paper and plastic wrap in a drawer in my kitchen. If you’re wondering exactly where this appears in the final creation, well, frankly? I am, too. Sort of doesn’t seem like it was worth sobbing over.

M's Castle of Valentines

M was quite pleased with her box. J loved it, too. J asked M, very persistently, which box she liked better. M struggled valiantly to be both honest and kind. It was heartwarming to behold. She said something about how they were both really gorgeous, but of course she was emotionally attached to her box because of the time she’d spent planning and executing the project. So she liked hers better, but not because it was superior, just because it was hers. “And if I were you, I’d probably like yours better,” she concluded, clearly relieved to have navigated the treacherous terrain.

Sweet J turned to new project. What about Isis the Cat? Surely Isis needs valentines? She added some decorations to a miniature basket for her, then wrote out a very small valentine. “Don’t you want to make Isis a valentine, too, Mommy?”

Valentines for Isis

Of course I did.

I’m pretty sure that we’re going to the store to buy some valentines tomorrow. I think we’re all crafted out.

So I mentioned that a couple of weekends ago I was helping out with some craftiness at my church. I had organized two crafts:  felt ornaments , which we’ve done before, and wire-wrapped ornaments. I got the idea for a wire-wrapped star from this Family Fun how-to, but it was not as easy as it appeared. Basically, I was supposed to wrap 18-gauge wire around a star cookie cutter, and then kids could use lighter-weight wire to wrap around the star and make it pretty. Wrapping the wire was a pain in the neck, especially since I wanted to make a bunch for lots of kids to do. Cute W helped by putting some nails into a board, which made wrapping a bit easier, but it was still labor-intensive, and the stars weren’t too pretty.  Of course, I was figuring all this out the night before the event. Ugh.

I decided to wing it and go a little bit more free-form with the craft. First, I Googled and found directions for making these awesome and pretty word ornaments.  Luckily I had a variety of wires to use for the craftiness. I ‘d bought the thick, sturdier 18-gauge wire, but I also had 22- and 24-gauge wire. If you’re looking for wire like this, you’ll usually find it near the jewelry-making section at craft stores. Basically, the lower the number, the thicker, sturdier, more difficult to bend, and  usually more expensive the wire will be. Here are some of the ornaments that we made:

For me, the 22-gauge wire was great for just tooling around with shapes, but it probably wouldn’t have been able to have another wire wrap around it–you’d need a thicker “base wire” for that.  It was fun to just play around with it. Like, that little silver shape next to the heart seemed like a pendant for a necklace that I might buy.

A grown-up added beads to make this Christmas-tree-shaped ornament in just a few minutes:

Cute, right?

I had some leftover wire, and since then, the girls have been delving into it some more.  In fact, I had all of my leftovers set aside, because I planned to make a couple of extra-nice ornaments for the blog. But I didn’t share this plan with girls, and before I knew it, they’d commandeered the leftovers for their own craftiness:

Here are a couple that they made all on their own:

M made the musical note with craft wire, and the bird and matryoshka dolls are made from cut-outs that I’d prepped for the crafting event. They came from this unbelievably adorable  book, Fa La La La Felt, which will make you yearn to craft immediately. Many of the crafts are ambitious, but luckily, they can be taken down a notch to accommodate the patience and skills of children. And/or this blogger.

In fact, I feel a bit guilty, because in the book there are these bee-you-tee-ful matryoshka ornaments that are sewn together with a little batting to give them body, and I did a modified version, and then my kids stole the pieces and modified them some more.  Same deal with the bird: in the book, it was a lovely dove with a coordinating floral-patterned wing piece that I’d planned to make, but one of the kids just had a rick-rack and button party all over it. So these are cute, but the ones in the book are gorgeous.  And absolutely do-able, just not do-able for me right now when I’m also working on Christmas shopping and helping kids with homework and  keeping up with the blog. I was sad that there wasn’t one of those “Look Inside!” options so that you could see the Many Splendid Crafts in the book, so I poked around a bit and located the author’s blog, which is going into my Google Reader.

The wire crafts are going to be part of this year’s Crafty Girl Party. The book is on my Christmas list (hint, hint).

And by “holiday,” I don’t mean Christmas. I mean the next important holiday coming up: Thanksgiving.

Last year I posted about our Thankful Tree. We love the Thankful Tree. For years, it’s been a humble little construction paper-twig tree, like the original idea from Family Fun.

But this year, with that heavy snowfall, we had several branches just lounging all over our front yard. I couldn’t resist an upgrade. And then the twig was so pretty that it seemed a shame to hang those cut-out construction paper leaves, and I remembered that I have one of those fake-leaf garlands. Because while I am not generally a shopper, I am a sucker for a craft store seasonal bargain bin. Voila:

I really needed a cool, rainy day. My house is unbelievably disorganized, so it was lovely to spend most of the afternoon at home, picking up clutter and moving it all to slightly more satisfactory locations. The girls even took it upon themselves to tidy up the basement playroom. Although the verb “tidy” is misleading, giving you the impression that the room is now (adjective) “tidy,” when really it’s just possible to move about without stepping on toys and trying not to curse in front of the children. For the record, I frequently say, “Fudge!”, “Oh my stars!”, and “For the love of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” I was a dork pre-kids, but they’ve helped me to achieve a whole new level of dorkdom.

Anyway, a couple of random pictures:

Every time I drive by one of these big stone signs (they have them for Rte. 87 and Rte. 7, maybe others), I get irritated. Seriously? How much did these stupid signs cost? And usually they’re within about ten feet of the regular old highway signs which, incidentally, all colorful and reflective and easier to read. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love, love, love the good old-fashioned architecture from long ago, when they made schools and post offices and train stations gorgeous. But this is so basic and boring. I mean, it’s okay, I guess, but I have a feeling that if I knew how much these signs cost I’d be appalled. Or am I becoming a curmudgeonette in my old age? Am I the only person who unreasonable considers curmudgeon to be a masculine word?

Another picture:

Hello? How did I miss that duct tape is now available in fabulous colors and patterns like purple, turquoise, and Hello Kitty? Holy cow, I am fantasizing about the possible duct-tape-related crafting opportunities. And if you need help getting started, check out this website. Of course, here’s where I differ from all of these people. I pause in the store (Target), considering fabulous crafts, and then slowly, regretfully, move on. Apparently there’s a small-but-effective population that buys the stuff, creates awesomeness, photographs it, and uploads it. All of which makes me torn between admiration and alarm. Like, couldn’t people use all of this creativity to make the world better somehow? Same with planking. But who am I to cast stones, right? I’m blogging about duct tape.

Okay, I have to kvetch about Facebook. It sort of freaks me out. And not in that scared-for-my-privacy way that freaks everyone out, because I am past the stage when people can really take compromising photographs of me (thank you, FB, for not arriving until after I graduated college). No, what drives me crazy is that when I go on the Capital District Fun page, it tells me over on the side, just like on any page, how many of my friends “like” Capital District Fun. And what’s ridiculous is that it’s always different. I’m a pretty passive FBer, and I don’t push the blog on my personal account. So I have about 60 “friends” who also “like” Capital District Fun. Except some days it’s 59, or 57, or 58. Which, obviously, I don’t really think that I have all of these people who are “liking” and “unliking” me all over the place. I’m sure that most of them joined up once to be supportive and pretty much forgot about it. And yet, seeing that number going up and down unnerves me. Because, you know, when people “like” me, they pop up and I can see who they are (I never actually contact anyone because it would seem alarming and stalker-ish, I think). But when someone decides that they don’t “like” me anymore, they just drift away, sort of like friends. Oh, crap, I’m imagining people reading this and going, “Great! It’s safe to unlike Capital District Fun now!” Agh. I’ll try not to look.

Enjoy the cool evening breezes, everybody.