Carrie – Page 54 – The Creative Salad

Our Favorite Book Series for Preschoolers

We love books by Cynthia Rylant. All books by Cynthia Rylant.

We adore her Poppleton, Mr. Putter and Tabby, Henry and Mudge, and Annie and Snowball series.

We love her characters and their creative, fun adventures.

We love her exploration of friendships and everyday (yet special!) experiences: setting aside a day to read at the library, camping out in the backyard, buying a new bed, attending a pancake breakfast, going for a boat ride, taking the bus to the beach, sewing a special quilt with friends (shown here).

Her stories feel honest. They are often funny and always kind.

She writes books with such heart.

Oh, we love Cynthia Rylant.

Wondering about some of our other favorite authors? We particularly love children’s books by Kevin Henkes, A. A. Milne, Jane Yolen, James Marshall, and Jan Brett.

Decorating Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls

Here’s one of those posts featuring a super fun, awesome project with a disastrous end…

After our sugar skulls dried fully, two good friends decorated their bride and groom skeletons with feathers, sequins, tissue paper confetti, and glitter glue.

Look at those skeletons buried under layers of decorations! Oh, how their skeletons made me smile.

(Above, the skeleton that I decorated. Definitely more ~~boring~~ subdued than the girls’ projects.)

After we finished decorating, we left the sugar skulls to dry on the windowsill of an open window. When we returned home a few hours later we found ants swarming (reminiscent of our Gingerbread House Ant Invasion!). Upon closer inspection we realized the ants were eating our skeletons! Oh, the horror!

(And, no, I don’t have a picture of the carnage; I was too busy rushing the project out of the house and into the trash bin!)

I’m not sure what we’ll do differently next year besides the obvious suggestion, keep the window closed. ;) Is there something non-toxic we could spray on the skulls to seal them immediately? Maybe after they’ve dried but before we decorate them? Would Mod Podge keep ants away?

What do you think we should do differently next time?

Another Fabric Dying Project

After not having a bedskirt on the queen sized mattress in the house for eight years, we decided to shake things up and finally check this one off the to-do list!

Our daughter’s bedroom before, without the bedskirt

A friend gave us a bedskirt that had been slightly stained by their bed frame.

We decided to dye it (using the same dye and process as the pink sheets project).

We left the color choice to our daughter who shocked us with her choice of purple.

Yes, you read that correctly.

She actually picked pink first, but mama vetoed that. Too much pink in that room. We needed something to complement it. I suggested orange. She choose purple. And that’s that.

Adorable!

Curious about the rest of our daughter’s room? Click here to read about how we transformed this space from a messy storage room into a playful little girl’s room.

Oh, Halloween!

We so enjoyed you.

Dressed as Lulu, aka Butterfly Girl, for Trick or Treating at the Charles Schulz Museum.

Above, our favorite little white mouse named Lilly with her close friend, a Witch Shark.

I’m feeling very thankful for fun, creative friends and a remarkably friendly and quirky community. We love living here in West County!

We had such fun!

Lilly’s Mouse Ears

A Halloween preview for you…

I’ve written before about our daughter’s obsession with a little white mouse named Lilly from Kevin Henkes’s beloved children’s books. (Remember this magnet project?)

Over the past few weeks we’ve been hard at work on her very own DIY Lilly Halloween costume.

We’ll share the rest with you tomorrow after tonight’s Trick or Treating adventure. Happy Halloween!