Making goo!

We have had a lot of indoor days lately. I have to say it is kind of fun to just play and not go anywhere.

On our last trip to the library I found this great book. I know there are a lot of books out there on science for kids , but this one is simple and I have almost all the ingredients in the the house. 

Of all the experiments we have done so far this one is my favorite!

Making goo out of corn starch. It is truly amazing!

The book : I'm a scientist, Kitchen by Lisa Burke
She also has a backyard book that looks interesting for summer.

You start off by measuring two cups of corn starch in a bowl and slowly adding one cup of water.
It is pretty hard to mix as you can see !

Then add food coloring of your choice and keep mixing!

It is really interesting how my kids played so differently with the same goo.
My son got his hands in at once , but my daughter wanted more spoons and things to prod it with and would not put her hands in!

It was amazing to see how long they kept going. Making balls and watching the goo go from solid to liquid and back to solid. If you push your hand down on it the goo is a solid , but if you scoop with a spoon it becomes a liquid.

FUN!

A Sweet Mermaiden doll.

Be still my beating heart!

I am so in love with this little mermaid, I love her, love her, love her!

A is going to be a mermaid for Halloween (costume pictures to follow). To go with the costume I decided to make this dolly for her to carry around as company.
I came across this free download from Hillary Lang's book: Wee wonderfulls. She also has a great blog with fun pictures of her creations .

This was a fun, easy project to make. The pattern was very clear and clever! She is small, just as long as my hand, so you do need a knitting needle or such to get all those corners turned out and the stuffing in all the right places.

 I did not have flannel for the body , so I cut up an old pillow case . I love the vintage velvet for her hair. I also think it is easier to turn inside out than corduroy.

I am not very good with embroidery, but I managed to make her face look OK!
If you have time I would recommend you try this lovely project. Took me just under two hours. Great weekend project.

Finding yellow on a very dull day.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post I am following Poppytalk's Autumn colours week.

Today's colour is yellow. Boy was that hard to find on this dull, wet and potentially depressing day!

Nothing to see outside but wet cars!

So I took a wander around the house and this is what I found. 

Yellow

                  A drawing of his sister            Modern art                           Their bedroom

And finally the big surprise in my bedroom. This lady never lets me down me!

Wee Wonderfuls

While reading my blog list this morning ,  I came upon these wonderful dolls made by Molly from the Purl Bee.

WOW this wins the" cuete" award for the day!

I love the Pearl Bee blog for just this reason. Lovely inspriring work using amazing materials.

These dolls are from a new book Wee Wonderfuls: 24 dolls to sew and love  by Hillary Lang

I would love to make some of these dolls for my girl. I love the mermaid and also the round belly dolly in the middle. She looks like a sea creature.

Here is her blog link.  Enjoy!

Bow ties

I just finished making a birthday present for a special boy we know.
He loves dress up and can get very excited over the right kind of clothes.
Sounds like a challenge to me! And the perfect excuse to sew something different.

I made him 3 really fancy bow ties to wear. They are all different, one small and more somber(green), for maybe with a shirt, the other really playful with a dog bone print in red and white and the third a over the top, fancy , big , polka dot and plaid tie.

I opted for a band and velcro closure in stead of the real tie me I am a bow tie ties.

I love them!

Button fun

On Sunday morning, I decided to take if very easy with the kids.
We seem to be running around way too much, rushing in and out of the house to this party and that practice  and school and homework !

So after we did the latest math homework I asked if they wanted to see some buttons. Now you have to understand that I will only share some of the buttons I have with them and they were amazed to know that I have even more!  I chose the biggest tin that has the bigger buttons in them.

They has so much fun. I was great to see how they approached this task. We spoke about what is similar, how many holes some has and then started matching.
I was amazed at how good my three year old was at doing this. She can look over the sea of buttons and find two or three matches.

They both now have a jar of their own buttons next to their beds .

After we had gone through them all I realized once again that I have some buttons that will never be used, and that is Ok with me, they are really like old friends.

What we have been doing...

Yes it has been a while. I have been quite busy keeping my little girl busy.
She broke her arm and had to undergo surgery so she has been needing more than a lot of help and attention.
When I picked her up after the accident she was wrapped in the little blanket I made for her for school. This became OUR security blanket for the next 24 hours. She came out of the operating room with the blanket neatly placed over her. It really confirmed my love and need for fabric and was reminded how little things like that can make us calm and can make us feel at home even if we are not.

I ran to Savers to buy any long sleeve t-shirt that would fit her and cut off the right arm. This worked very well, except for bed time when she got very upset that she could not wear the right pants with the right top!
To keep her very comfy and me busy creating, I made 2 pairs of comfy, flannel pants. I love these so much and keep wondering why I don't sew for myself. She loved pinning the pattern with her "good' hand and she really loved putting these on.

Her recovery is going really well and we are all looking forward to getting the cast of and getting on with life.

The fabric is from Jo-Anne and the pants pattern is just a "copy" of pants we have. I gave the pants a extra wide , double cuff, I think it makes them look all grown up.

Fabric snack bag

Finally!
I have been looking at this project since Dec 2009. It was going to be part of the pile of Christmas presents for Mr A but just never got done.

I have been trying to wash and reuse plastic bags for a while but cant really get into it. Maybe just lazy, so I hope that using this fabric bag will help the environment and this way I can do my small part.

I bought a kit from Spool Sewing . It comes with interfacing, fabric and velcro and the very important instructions . I have to admit to making a few mistakes....but was able to correct all of them. The one change I did make was to sew on a long strip of Velcro in stead of just two tabs. I think it will be easier to close.

Now I would love to make more. I think I will need at least 2 more in case of some very bad spills and maybe a fun oilcloth one if the fabric gets too dirty. I wonder how this will hold up in the wash?

 I might also experiment with attaching a handle just so the five year old hands can pick it up easier and faster.

I feel like making fabric baskets for the entire house, soooooo many possibilities!

Butterfly party

Allow me to show you what we did during the blizzard on Sunday. Our little one turned three. So hard to believe that three years ago she came into our lives.

She was very sure that she wanted a butterfly party. So this is what we did.

The goodie bags had butterfly stickers , a small book, marker butterfly

spinner and a star shaped crayon. These came from the amazing Stubby Pencil Studio.

We had butterflies hanging from the ceiling cut from craft paper. We decorated hats with butterfly stickers and I found these great coloring sheets from Dover puplishing that after you colour them you can hang them on a window and they look like stained class.

I got the idea for these sandwiches from a old Martha Stewart magazine. It is just wrapping paper and double sided tape! Looks great but not a lot of work.

The cake was a 4 layer red velvet cake and had candy, butterflies and a lovely " Vintage By Crystal" dollie as a cake topper.

We had a great time!

Fabric bags

After many attempts to try printing on paper I finally did it! I found myself one day painting with the kids and came up with this funny robot face. Another week passed and and one night there was a moment and I finally printed it out. It was really simple. Paint,scan,print,rinse and iron.

I used store bought and ready to print fabric but you can also use freezer paper and back your own fabric.

 Now I want to do MORE!

I sent this bag Colorado way to a lovely friend I have know for the last four years. He has a love for organizing so I also included this (really easy to make) pencil/marker holder.

This idea is from The Creative Family. I will for sure make more of these!

After making the robot bag I had to make another and send it along for his brother.