Gold-Leafed Pillow

I’ve been wanting to make a pillow to match my curtains for a long time.  When I first move to the village I hated the 12' wide x 6' long windows so I put in curtains everywhere to get a little privacy.   I couldn’t find anything in my price range that even remotely looked good so I decided to dye some broadcloth.  It wasn’t as deep as I would have liked but it was adequate which is what I needed (and will need for another 6 months or so).  Anyway I planned on making a pillow in the curtain color to contrast with my bedding but never got around to it.  I wanted to bead it at first but after trying iron-on appliqué with the Halloween Costumes that I made this last year, I thought it would be really fun to appliqué leaves on a pillow for my room.  Luckily, while I was watching Martha one day, she did a reverse appliqué pillow with the perfect template!  I didn’t use her method, but I used her template and I love it!!!

 

I did it with the leftover scraps of gold lame that I had ironed onto iron-on webbing and then I ironed them on and then sewed them on (as the adhesive does not adhere long to lame).  I used a matching thread to the pillow which I think gave it a lot of depth. Personally, I think it’s gorgeous!

Here it is on my chic bed in our lit’ ol’ apartment.

Busy Book—Preschool Skills

I finally finished my “preschool skills” busy book. It kept getting pushed aside for other projects but after seeing it on my “projects pending” list for WAY too long, I finally gave it top priority and finished it in a couple of days. Here it is in all its homemade glory!

 Cover

I did the cover in this cute understated material that contrasts with the cover of the other busy book that is still colorful and fun.  I love the snap closure because it makes it less likely to “drop” its contents.

 

Alphabet pages

I wanted to use these cute buttons I found for maybe $1 on a Joann’s Clarence rack.  So I had the brilliant(?) idea of using them as the labels for my shape pages.  I traced cute pictures onto white muslin and then afterwards realized that iron-on transfers would have been soo much easier…oh well, you live you learn.

 

  

 

Shape Page

This was a fun page to create though (of course) now I have even more ideas that I could have used.  This is one of Christian’s favorite pages, I think it’s great that he knows what a parallelogram is!

 

Number pages

This is very similar to the alphabet pages except that this one is numbers.  I found some very cute brads from Oriental Trading Company that I used for the “tallies”. It would have been nice to have this ready a couple of months ago because Christian is quite good at recognizing numbers already.  It will be useful when Vivian is ready for it.

 

Addition page

This idea was taken from one of the many other busy books I looked at online when I was trying to think of ideas for my busy books.  Yes, there is a stain on it from fabric markers leaking when a certain three-year old was drawing on a paper above this.  This is my least favorite page but it’s pretty fun to watch Christian figure out the sums.  Plus it does familiarize him with math notation at a young age so it won’t seem quite so foreign when he first sees it in school.

 

 

What’s the Weather?

This came from my memory of a chart that my mom had on the wall for years in our playroom.  It was always fun for me when I was small to look outside and figure out what the weather was for the day and mark it with the hands.  I think that the idea originated from the Joy School manual. It’s my done in my own scribble with fabric markers so I’m sure it could be much cuter.  

 

 

Season and Calendar pages

This is the page that was the most intensive to put together.  I had caught on to the iron-on transfers by the time I reached this page so that wasn’t the problem.  It was the bazillion squares that needed to be sewn around.  So basically I put it away and hadn’t pulled it out for a while.  Guess what though? It really wasn’t that bad.  I sometimes get so intimidated by things that really are not so terrible once you get into the swing of things.  I did myself a favor with this page though and bought the sticky backed Velcro rather than sewing it on…it just worth my sanity to do that many squares! This us by far Christian’s favorite page. Of course, it is the most advanced page and much more on his level so that accounts for it but it’s pretty fun.  All the pieces on the Seasons page are pretty much movable except for the Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn labels.  I thought of doing it by the year but I felt that learning the seasons and the months in them was probably more easily grasped for preschool age children.  It’s funny what interests kids because Christian has a blast just putting the numbers in order starting with the one on a different day.

 

Tick-Tack-Toe Game page

Here is Jared’s favorite page.  Funny huh?  He keeps trying to talk Christian into playing Tick-Tack-Toe (rather than Life which is the game Christian always wants to play) with him.  I think it’s hilarious.  As you can see, I made it with my boy in mind who’s favorite everything at the moment is green… I did a survey the other day for Fisher-Price and I was supposed to ask my child what picture they liked best.  Of course he picked the picture with the most green.

I’m so glad it’s finished.  It would have been nice to have finished it last year for a 3-year-old but it still is entertaining for a 4-year-old.         

Valentines Dinner

I decided to start a new tradition of making a Valentines dinner for our family.  I had some incredibly (corny) funny ideas of what to serve.  First we had a salad with hearts of Romaine, then I had two Cornish game hens with rice stuffing with sautéed mushrooms and car(e)rots  with dill and to give a nod to cupid asparagus spears.  I know terrible huh?  It was great fun. 

   

Felt Roll-Up Kitchen

Around Christmas time I became intrigued with the idea of making felt food so I searched the internet like crazy for ideas (only to find shortly after that my mom was gifting fake food for Christmas).  In my searching I found this blog called Balancing Everything with a darling pattern for a felt roll-up kitchen!

Of course I had to add my own little touches which I did by embroidering the coils on the burners and adding words to the knobs and putting in a drain (what’s a sink without a drain?)

 

Here it is in all it’s embroidered glory!

 

It’s such a great idea and is totally portable so Christian can play with it on practically any flat surface and at the end of the day it rolls up for easy cleaning!

Most importantly, Christian Loves it!  

Noah’s Ark Play Mat

One day in December when I was searching around the internet insanely finding more projects to try.  I found this darling pattern for a Noah’s Ark Play Mat at  www.freepatterns.com to make out of a blanket with some felt pieces and then some felt finger puppets to go along with it.  I of course was a little disappointed that there actually was no Noah included (or his wife either) so I made my own pattern up for both of them and then when I found some awesome striped chenille pipe cleaners I decided to make my own pattern for the tiger as well.  I also took this pattern to the next level by sewing everything rather than gluing it as it says to in the instructions.  It would have taken a lot less time if I had glued. I made two of them, one for my niece who just became a big sister and one for my son who just became a big brother. It is much more durable than it would be if glued and hopefully will provide hours and hours of fun play for both of them and maybe their siblings too.

  

Here’s the ark.  If you look at the pattern, I changed pretty much everything about the color scheme but I like mine better.

 

Here are the finger puppets.  Very colorful I must say.

Here’s everything together.  I really think they turned out cute!