Helping Mama organize our embroidery floss collection. We have a birthday crown to make for a little girl who turns three years old in exactly one month. I know, I can’t believe it either. Look how competent she is. I frequently forget that she’s only two years old. For a month longer, anyway.
Reading together before bed is, by far, the easiest way to put her to sleep.
Another post in our First on Friday series where we share a new activity from the week.
Neither the toddler nor I had ever decorated a gingerbread house before. A friend gifted us this already assembled gingerbread house, so we were all ready to go!
In actuality, David and Miss Leyba decorated this tree. I mainly cheered from the sidelines and photographed the event. (I also may have washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen, if I need to disclose everything. Ahem.)
David squeezed the frosting (with Miss Leyba helping by holding the bag too — she has to be involved with everything) and Miss Leyba applied the candies all by herself (another big concept around here these days!).
The ants (common to Northern California cause our winters aren’t cold enough to kill em!) waited approximately 12 hours before storming the castle, possibly a Spritzer Leyba world record. I was sure they’d find it in an hour or two.
This morning we waved, said, “Goodbye Gingerbread House! See you again next year!” as David dropped the whole thing in the trash bin.
Nevertheless, the experience of decorating the house was SO worth it.
We’re looking forward to doing it again next year!
Another post in our First on Friday series where we share a new activity from the week season.
We’re not quite finished decorating the tree, but will we every be? I am starting to think the answer is no. We could always sew more, dehydrate more, craft more.
I look forward to many more years of ornament making. We’ve had such a wonderful time decorating our first full-sized holiday tree. This experience has bought us such joy and peace.
More pictures, instructions and inspiration for our ornaments:
+ Bird ornaments (from Skip to my Lou)
+ Beaded wreath ornaments
+ Felted stars, wooden stars, and felt hearts
+ Dehydrated orange slices (try dehydrating ruby red grapefruit for a beautiful pink color!)
Another post in our First on Friday series where we share a new experience from the week.
You may be thinking, “What?! Another craft post?!” I know, I know. We have very limited content on our blog this week. What can I say? That’s what we’ve been up to and we’re having a blast.
Today we tackled some beaded ornaments inspired by a recent Kids Craft Weekly, an email newsletter that features simple, creative and fun projects for kids. (If you’re interested in crafts, you should subscribe. I always smile when I see a Kids Craft Weekly sitting in my email inbox.)
For over a year now my daughter has loved to string things, but until this week we mostly focused on building her hand dexterity and self-confidence by stringing larger objects, such as these fantastic Plan Toy Geo-Beads
At our local craft resale shop I recently found a giant bag of brightly colored (mostly) wooden beads in large and small sizes and had a “we must buy this!” moment (not hard when it was a steal at $3 and supports our town’s senior center).
We started stringing the beads on pipe-cleaners, an easy first step for toddlers. We made simple wreath ornaments and jingly bracelets (with bells!).
(Yes, we’ve been cooking up potato pancakes! We’ve been crafting, cooking and celebrating nonstop. You should see the pile of dishes in the sink.)
My daughter loved beading. She found delight in trying something one way and then taking the beads off to do something else. With the alphabet beads, she liked trying to spell words (such as her name) and giggled as she laced individual letters saying, “S, for [her friend] Sadie! D, for Daddy!”
I enjoyed watching her work and seeing the evolution of her color, shape and size combinations. I found her work always interesting, quite creative and certainly full of beauty. A very special day.
