Sylvan Esso has been on heavy rotation in my craft room. They are an indie duo, with a self titled album that released last year. The female vocalist Amelia Meath has such an enchanting voice, partnered with Nicholas Sanborn’s mixes, they are a musical match made in heaven. I have an enourmous love for music. All genres, cultures, so on occasion, I will post what is playing in the craft room. As you read, we had the Beatles on with our sun craft, and Elisabeth Mitchell’s voice joined us at dinner.  I hope you will enjoy these tunes as well.

Here is Sylvan Esso’s live set on KCRW if you would like to hear an interview and listen to them live.

http://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/sylvan-esso

Elisabeth Mitchell is a folk artist that makes albums for children. This is a link to her latest album for a listen we do not have this latest one but enjoy Sunny Day:

http://youaremyflower.org/

And the Beatles well they need no link because um, they are the Beatles.

Little darling
It’s been a long, cold lonely winter
Little darling
It feels like years since it’s been here

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun,
and I say, It’s all right

The Beatles – “Here Comes The Sun” Lyrics inspired this little sun craft. Spring has arrived in the Midwest! This is my all time favorite song to welcome spring. I grew up in the Midwest, so you would think I can handle the weather, but living in Los Angeles just ruins one’s ability to handle any weather outside of wonderfully perfect. Ha.

Onward to crafting!

Tools for the trade:

1. Scissors
2. Glue- we used a glue stick
3. Paper- Construction paper or Card stock and also a decorative paper such as scrapbook paper/ gift wrap/specialty paper, just to add dimension and some pop.

We used yellow and orange cardstock and a lovely printed handmade paper from “The Paper Source” that my brother gave us.

4. A lid or some sort of template for your round sun base. We used a toy cookie jar lid.

5. Ruler or any straight edge to trace out triangles for your sun rays.

1. Use your lid to trace the circles on to your paper.

2. Cut them out with scissors

3. Use your straight edge to draw triangles. Cut those out as well

4. Because my decorative paper was very thin, I used the glue stick to glue the backs onto card stock to make them thicker and give them support. You may want to do the same if you are using gift wrap for example, or a thinner paper such as we did.

5. Glue the wide edge of your triangle sun rays to the back edge of the sun circle bases and let dry. If you have curling, simply place under a heavy book.

You can punch a hole and string for hanging if you wish. We simply taped ours up with some crafted paper clouds and butterflies and made a little wall scene. I will post the ribbon cloud craft in a day or two.

Enjoy the sun!

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I always feel bad dumping Easter egg dye down the drain, so every year I reuse it as a fabric dye, for small items such as muslin scraps, linen or cotton napkins etc. This year we had some cotton fabric squares 16×16 flour sack towels, a small tote bag and a few muslin scraps. You can do this several ways:

1. For a more pale, even color such as our pale pink tote bag, you will want to put your dye into a large bowl and add hot water then submerge your fabric.

2. For a spotty look, such as the green towel we 1. placed our fabric into a dry bowl, 2. then poured green egg dye over portions of the dry fabric 3. then we took our yellow dye and added it all over (we had a lot of yellow left). We swished it around a little bit. Gave it a squeeze and then pulled it out
to hang dry.

3. For our Blue towel we did step two. Add blue and purple to portions of our dry towel and then added a little hot water to soften the splotches and dilute. Swish it around, give it a squeeze, then hang to dry.

To heat set your colors iron with NO STEAM 3-5 minutes on each side.
Ta dah!
All done.

Now I will have to sketch some designs to embroider these little colorful bits so that we can make little things out of them. Yay!

3.

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Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Here in the Midwest we had a beautiful sunny day which was quite a surprise, because now we are wearing winter coats again haha, mother nature sure is hilarious. Here is a round up of all of the crafts that we created on Easter day and some cookies of course!

I decided to try painting paper mache eggs this year. They are light and easy to work with. I got them at Michaels for 40% off! The paints and brushes were on sale with a coupon so it was a lucky day indeed!

This is the first batch of mommy and me eggs. I love them!

These are the same eggs with feathers, googly eyes, glitter pom poms for tails, a snip of foam for the chick’s beak, dollar store easter ribbon for the bunny, and glitter scrapbook paper for the bunny ears. I used Tacky Glue to adhere everything. I absolutely love these guys!

More pom poms glued together with Tacky glue for the body, pipe cleaner legs lol! Googly eyes and bead eyes. Glitter scrapbook paper for the beaks This was so much fun!

The top chick is a yarn pom ball with googly eyes and felt, he looks like he is ready to party! The bottom is the whole crew on a cake stand as our table center piece. The tall bunnies were made out of toilet paper rolls and cotton balls with paper cut out eyes pom noses and pipe cleaner mouths. We made them last Easter. The paper chick on the bottom right is from last Easter as well, it is just 2 pieces of construction paper rolled in to two circle and glued together. I cut out paper eyes, beak, and feet out of paper scraps.

Then we made “cascarones” They are a Mexican tradition. You hollow out your eggs, rinse and let dry, dip into egg dye, let dry, fill with confetti and glue them closed with tissue paper squares and a bit of diluted white glue. Then you chase each other and crack them on someone’s head. We do it in our yard, it is all biodegradable and so much fun!

And finally our cookies! I scored at The Salvation Army and found this cookie cutter and press for 40 cents! And this my friends is the BEST sugar cookie recipe:

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-best-cutout-cookies-38629

Best Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

2 to 3 dozen cookies, depending on size

1 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature for 1 hour
2 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl, using a hand mixer), cream the butter and cream cheese with the sugar. Beat for several minutes, or until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla and almond extracts, and lemon zest.

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl then gradually add to the butter and sugar mixture until fully incorporated and a soft dough is formed.

At this point the dough can, and should be, chilled or frozen. If making cookies in the near future, divide the dough into 2 balls and roll each out to 1/4 to 1/8-inch thickness between large pieces of parchment paper. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Or freeze the dough balls, wrapped in plastic wrap and a freezer bag, for up to 1 month. To thaw, leave in the refrigerator overnight then proceed with the recipe.

To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350°F and prepare baking sheets by lining them with parchment or a Silpat. Cut cookies out of the rolled dough and place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake cookies for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on thickness. Let cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet, then remove to a wire rack.

Cool completely before icing or decorating, and store in a tightly covered container.

We use the Kitchn recipes a lot at home and they have never failed me! They have a cookbook now which I wish I could own, but for now I just go to their website it’s free so, yay!

There you have it folks! I hope you enjoyed our Easter in a nutshell.

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Hello everyone and happy spring! We have had a few warm days this week and I am so excited! Flowers are peeking, buds are blooming, watching the natural world transforming is such a lovely symbol of new beginnings and fresh starts. We made these banners to replace the Shamrocks we had up and they are just so delicate and lovely.

I was so excited when Michaels put these banners out. They are by “Recollections” and called “Sofia banners”. When they went on sale for 40% off I got all 3 colors and took them home. I have colorful card stock, so I decided to layer colors together and make a banner of my own creation. You can do this with any cut out paper, just place a contrasting color behind it and wow! It can really compliment the look. I loved playing with different colors and we ultimately decided on 3 and made a pattern to hang.

Supplies:
1. Card stock
2. Glue stick
3.Hole punch
4. String for hanging
5. Cut out paper, lace paper doilies, your own fold and cut creations.
6. Xacto, straight edged ruler for cutting and a self healing mat or just plain scissors.

Here is our how to:

1. In the bottom left photo you can see how I am layering the blue Sofia triangle over the lavender card stock. I used the lace banner triangle as my template, took a metal straight edge and an xacto knife and cut out a piece of card stock to size on a self healing mat.

2. The middle photograph shows the pieces all cut out. Take your glue stick (mine is non yellowing and acid free) and glue your pieces together

3. Line them up once dry, in a pattern of your choice or simply use a single color.

4. Punch your holes, thread them together and string them up!

I hope you enjoyed this craft. Have a lovely Easter!

This is such a fun and easy craft to do with the kids. The hardest part is waiting for them to dry!

Here are the materials you will need:

1. Yarn
2. Plastic container or bowl to act as a mold. We used empty yogurt containers.
3. White glue
4. Water
5. Bowl for glue

The how to:

1. Start by cutting your yarn into random strips. You can work from one long strip however, I find that short strips won’t tangle and are easier to layer on for the little ones.

2. Add equal amounts of white glue and water 1:1 to your glue bowl. Mix it up.

3. Soak your yarn until glue mix is well absorbed.

4. With your containers face down, start laying yarn all around them in a variety of directions.

5. Walk away and let dry over night or all day. It will seem like they will never dry completely because they are so saturated, but trust me they will!
We made ours in the morning before heading out for the day and when we returned 7 hours later they were dry.
Enjoy!

Hello all! I am happy to report that we are lice free and because of this first time experience with lice, I decided to put together a post called “Everything you need to know about lice for the first time mom”. I learned so much with this experience and knew very little when we got the notice from school, so I thought I would put all this info out there in hopes that it will help someone. Look for it in the next few days.

On to crafting…We made several things out of thread and yarn for this year’s Easter crafting. The first were these thread ball banners. I strung them up in the dining room, put tiny LED lights in them and they are quite lovely. Here is the how to:

Tools and supplies

1. Water balloons

2. Colorful crochet thread or string of your choice yarn, twine etc.

3. White glue and water 1:1 ratio. I decided to try out this Mod Podge stiffy for the first time. The Midwest is humid in spring/summer and I would like these to retain their shape. They were really solid!

4. Brushes for spreading glue.

5. Sharp object for popping balloons- we used a paper clip.

6. Scissors for snipping.

7. Plastic tray or yogurt containers for drying time.

8. Pretty ribbon for making a little bow

9. Crochet thread, twine, string of your choice for hanging.

The how to:

1. Blow up your balloons and tie them.

2. Add your glue to a bowl for dipping. This part can go two ways, you can either 1. Place your thread into the glue bowl and wrap wet thread onto your balloons OR 2. You can wrap your balloons with dry thread and paint your glue on with a brush or sponge. I did the latter because I tend to get tangles when I dump my string into the glue bowl, especially when working with a fine thread. Either way, it will be messy lol. I recommend starting the first layers of wrapping for your child because the thread can slide around quite a bit in the beginning and it could become frustrating for small hands. Working with a thicker tread or yarn is easier. I will post our yarn nests tomorrow.

3. Once you are all done wrapping, place your wrapped balloon on your container of choice to dry.

3. Once your balloon is dry. (We dried ours overnight.) Take a sharp object and pop each balloon! That was super fun!

4. Take your decorative ribbon and tie a bow onto the top of your ball or you can hot glue one on.

5. Using a yarn needle we treaded our white hanging thread through each bow and added a drop if glue in the middle so that they will stay in place. Once dry we hung them up! I put mini LED lights in them and they look so beautiful in the evening!

I hope you enjoyed this craft!

Happy St. Patrick’s day everyone! Are you feeling lucky? I am not feeling lucky at the moment. My daughter is sick with a high fever and cough, I received a lice notice from school via email today so I decided to check her head thinking THERE IS NO WAY SHE HAS LICE. I put her hair in braids every day and spray it down with a rosemary mint water spray so I was feeling very confident that we were safe. And then it happened….I found a nit and I almost had a heart attack. No I am definitely not feeling lucky today lol. I have laundry washing now, the stuffed animals and hats are bagged and in the deep freezer, I combed her hair with the terminator nit comb I am getting my hair checked as I type this so I think we are going to be ok. Onward to today’s craft and a better tomorrow lol!

I have really gotten into my cereal box sun catchers. This time I used a smaller bread stick box. Here are the tools for the trade:

1. Cardboard or card stock
2. Stencil, printed picture, or you can freehand a drawing.
3. Glue
4. Tissue paper
5. Sharp object for hole poking
6. Ribbon
7. Paint and paintbrush

1. I began by cutting the front and back of the breadstick box out and discarding the sides.

2. My daughter used a cookie cutter to trace the shamrock onto the breadstick box. I cut the image out using an xacto knife. I used the cut out shamrocks for a small door hanging.

3. Then it was time to paint

We just used tempera paint. Let dry thoroughly. I then applied Mod Podge over the painted areas, you can seal it with white glue or not at all.

4. Pick out colorful tissue paper and sandwich in between both layers of cardboard with glue.

5. Let dry and place under a heavy book to flatten curls.

6. Poke holes for hanging and add a pretty ribbon.

And there you have it, a pretty little shamrock hanging in your sunny window. I hope you enjoyed this how to, I certainly enjoyed sharing it with you.