Make It Up: Penpal Comic Book

We are on Buzzmills today with a guest post for the Make It Up series!

Make It Up is all about the stories our kids tell -- and that we tell with them -- along with the crafts and projects we create to accompany the stories. We thought the penpal project Angel and I have been working on with our boys would be the perfect thing to share!

Ben and Ian are now penpals, sending each other mail from Seattle to Nashville and back. Along with letters, they are working on a comic book. Go read our post HERE, and come back next week to see the following installment in The Adventures of Ben and Ian!



While you're on Buzzmills, make sure to check out all the other super posts in the Make It Up series, along with Jane's never ending fabulous and inspiring projects.

Thanks for having us, Jane!

Halloween Prep: Peregrine Falcon

Halloween is a-comin' and we're getting ready over here!

Henry's costume is easy: he saw the dinosaur costume that my mom had made for Ben 3 years ago and latched on to it like a lifeboat. He's been telling everyone he will be a "dino" and practicing his roar. Works for me!

Ben never fails to surprise me with his ideas and vision. Remember the Rainbow Lizard, last year? This year, he decided he wants to be a falcon for Halloween. Not just any falcon, oh no. A Peregrine Falcon. All right. So we started doing a little research this past weekend, determining colors and structure of the falcon's body and how that would translate to a costume.

Do you know the website Arkive? It is incredible! In their own words: "Explore 15,000 of the world’s endangered species. With over 100,000 photos and videos, discover what these animals, plants and fungi look like, what makes them special and why we should protect them." The peregrine falcon page provided a wealth of information.






Photos borrowed from Arkive.org

Then Ben and I got to work on sketching the costume.

Around here for Fall break:

We're on Fall break around here this week, Ian's already had a three playdates and a sleepover! A trip to the downtown library! It's only Tuesday and he's bored! I desperately need to clean and organize the house without resorting to excessive screen time! (Help!)

Enter in Alphabet Glue, Volume 9, to the rescue! The moment Annie released it I purchased it, intrigued by the mini book project and thinking about the multiple playdate/babysitting dates we have during the break. The project creates a larger, three page book that holds up to twelve mini books (the book is 8.5 by 11, the mini books are about 1.5 by 2.5 and they're inserted into colorful cardboard pockets).

Check out what Ian and a friend have been working on this morning!

A Heart in the Pocket

Happy Monday!

So, remember how I mentioned we had a rough start of Kindergarten? While school itself has been awesome and super fun, the before- and after-school hours (in other words, the "at home" and "with family" hours) became a bit emotional and difficult around the one week mark. At drop-off in the morning, Ben wouldn't let me leave, burst into tears when the bell rang, and even tried to follow me home while his classmates filed into the classroom one day.

Angel, I took your advice and offered to make a little love token for Ben to keep in his pocket. This would be a symbol of how much I loved him and missed him while he was at school, and if he was ever sad, he could take it out and think of my giving him a hug and kisses. He LOVED the idea and we brainstormed what it should be together, settling on a felt heart filled with lavender.




This was such a simple project! I got it done in about 45 minutes, while watching TV one evening. I used a sheet of red wool felt from Felt On The Fly (one of our lovely sponsors!). It is so luxurious, perfect for this type of gift. I cut out 2 heart shapes and pinned them together. I embroidered a running stitch about 3/4 of the way around the edge, then filled the heart with a little polyfill.




I had some dry lavender in a pitcher in my kitchen. I cut a few buds, crumbled them between my fingers and stuffed a generous amount of lavender into the heart along with the polyfill. When the heart felt full (aw!), I finished the embroidery around the edge to close it. I then embroidered another outline in running stitch in a different color.

That evening when I went to bed, I left the heart on the couch next to the TV remote. Ben is often up before everyone else in the morning and is allowed to watch PBS cartoons until we're up. I knew he would find the heart first thing in the morning. When I woke up, I saw a beaming kiddo holding on tight to his little love token!






He proudly stuck the heart in his pocket before school that day, and we haven't had tears at drop-off ever since! (The meltdowns when he is exhausted after school, oh yes, those still happen.) I heard from the teacher that the heart was a big hit, with Ben proudly showing it off and some of his friends asking their own moms to make one.





Things have improved quite a bit over the last couple of weeks and now the heart resides in Ben's backpack. He no longer needs it in his pocket, but it is at school with him should he ever feel sad and need some comfort. If it works for him, it works for me!


How have you handled your kiddos' tough time with the return to school? Every child is different, so I'm sure different things work for each of them.

On a different note, how are you doing with organizing and getting the house and family schedule in shape? I will be back in a couple of days with some updates on my getting-my-act-together endeavors!

Lovely Hearts

Hello there!

I am not usually one to be inspired by Valentine's Day. I tend to find this holiday commercial and kind of cheesy -- or maybe I still hold some resentment from my lonely single days! In any case, this year has been different and I've embraced the kitshy red-hearts-for-everyone lovey-dovey aspects of V-day. Ben and I made some Valentine's decorations and I created some artwork for my shop. I thought I would share some photos with you!

Last week we had a crafty playdate with friends and made needle-felted heart ornaments. Angel, we used your tutorial but since the kids were involved, we skipped the embroidery. This was such a fun project! And with a lot of supervision and reminders about the sharp needles, the kids (aged 4.5-7) did great!

Stamped Thank Yous

Dear Angel, we have SNOW!!!! It's crazy here in Seattle, well in the whole Pacific Northwest really. After Snowpocalypse 2010 (remember when I was due with Henry and freaking out about all the snow?), I think everyone has been on edge and they've been prepping us with the forecast for over a week now. Well the winter storm is here and, wow. We're going to make a fabulous snowman later today! And cookies! And hot chocolate!

Here are a couple of snowy shots from this weekend (before and during a mini-blizzard):




But let's talk craft stuff. I wanted to show you the Thank You cards we made recently.

Kid Craft: Stocking Advent Garland

Hello Angel! I loved your little Christmas wrap-up yesterday and wanted to share the ONE Christmas decoration we have put up so far: a stocking Advent garland made by Ben (with a little help from me).

I was so determined to make a beautiful Advent calendar this year but have been so busy and overwhelmed, it didn't happen. Ben has been asking about a calendar for weeks, begging me to purchase the cheap chocolate kind at the grocery store, so I decided it was time to make one, even if it is temporary!


Last week, Ben noticed the template for my Scrappy Stocking Ornament lying around my desk and asked me if he could color it. That's when a little light went off in my head. I created a coloring page for him on card stock by tracing 6 stockings. 4 pages of stockings make 24, perfect for Advent!


While I was sewing, Ben sat at the table next to me with his markers. We talked about all the special things we do during December and he drew them. Our family celebrates Winter Solstice, so several of the pictures focus on that -- making bird feeders, lighting the candle, eating mushrooms for dinner (husband's traditional Solstice recipe!). We also celebrate Christmas and many of Ben's drawings depict the magic of that holiday for him: decorating the tree, Santa and his reindeer, opening gifts with his little brother. We also talked about winter and what's special about it so he drew a lot of snow- and ice-related things.

Rainbow Lizard (Happy Halloween!)

Happy Halloween!! I hope you are enjoying the day so far with happy kiddos, fun costumes and too much candy.

Ben's preschool's Halloween Party was last Thursday and (shocker!) I was up until way too late Wednesday night finishing up his Rainbow Lizard costume while swearing at my sewing machine. But, it got done on time and my little dude was SO happy. He was so very proud of his costume and had fun explaining during the show and tell that he drew the "dee-zign" for it.


I am pretty happy with the final result but it's a good thing Halloween only comes once a year. That was a lot of work! You can see my previous posts about this project here and here.

Here's a little recap and comparison between the original drawing by Ben, and sketches by me, and the finished costume (we added the spikes on the tail after the sketches):

Jack O Lantern Garland: Kid Craft!

Friday was a gross rainy day for us. I was busy cleaning the house and doing laundry, getting ready for friends visiting over the weekend. Ben was getting antsy and asking me for an "activity". Inspired by a little jack o lantern foam craft sent by my mom, I pulled out our craft felt, some scissors and some white glue and let him have some fun.


He cut out a bunch of shapes and glued them into ghosts and small pumpkins. I then cut out various pumpkin shapes and a bunch of mouths and triangles, and let him assemble some jack o lanterns.

Progress on the Rainbow Lizard!

Hello! Quick post in the midst of Etsy shop launch madness to update you on our progress on the Rainbow Lizard costume. The last time I wrote about this, we had a "dee-zign" by Ben, some sketches by me and a whole stack of eco-felt ready to roll.

The first part we tackled was the largest: the back with all the scales. I used one of Ben's shirts to get a rough idea of the size and traced the outline on the blue felt. Ben helped me trace scales on all the different colors of eco-felt. I cut them and sewed them on, in the order he chose, on the back felt.

Halloween Prep: Rainbow Lizard!

Well, I've got my work cut out for me! A few days ago, I told Ben we should start thinking about his Halloween costume, and he told me he wanted to be a lizard. Here's how the conversation went:

Me: Do you know what kind of lizard you want to be? What color?
Ben: I want to be a rainbow lizard, it's got all kinds of colors. And it eats salmon berries, not bugs. And it can see in the dark. And it has claws that look like metal so that bugs don't eat him.
Me: Oookay. Sounds good. Do you know what you want it to look like?
Ben: Yeah. I'll draw you my dee-zign.

(In Ben-talk, "design" is 2 words.)

So this past weekend, we sat down together and Ben drew me his dee-zign from which I then drew some sketches. While I was sketching, he asked his dad for a printout of a lizard he could color to show me the order of the colors in the tail. What can I say, the kid has vision. (He's a little bossy too. I wonder where he gets that, ahem.)

Cute Bots Lunch Bag

For Ben's return to school a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make him a lunch bag. What better fabric choice for a little boy than some adorable robots?


When Ben began preschool last spring, we used a handmade but unfinished insulated bag for his snack and lunch. It was a project I'd started for the husband, messed up on, and never had the motivation to complete. It was functional but without closure or handle. Every time I packed Ben's lunch, I kept thinking "I really should make Ben a lunch bag", but kept pushing it off. With the start of school looming closer in early September, it was time to get to it!!

Link Love: Back to School, lunch edition!

Well, it's that time of year again! Ian's been back at school for a week, and it is going great so far. Does Ben start back soon?

I wanted to do a (very) quick roundup of some of MY favorite tutorials for lunch time. We love our reusable snack bags, sandwich wraps and other containers!

Tutorial: reusable snack bag with velcro closure from i have to say.

Tutorial: Super easy, fold over snack bags from Angry Chicken

Guest Post: Lunchbox Napkins (Tutorial)

Today we have a fun back-to-school tutorial brought to you by our friend Blair. Blair is a crafty mama, avid knitter and sewist. She is also an archaeologist who went to school with my husband. When we moved to Nashville 5 years ago, she introduced me to a group of mom friends through which I met Angel. You could say Blair is the reason Stumbles & Stitches exists!


When my son Ben started preschool earlier this year, Blair made him a set of awesome lunchbox napkins. They are smaller than regular napkins and feature an appliqued initial. I thought they rocked, and so did Ben and his teachers.


I asked Blair if she would write a little tutorial for us. And here it is!

* * *
Tutorial: Lunchbox Napkins
by Blair Henley Wardwell

Bracelets for Craft Hope

Hi Angel!

I have been scrambling this week to finish some blankets for Craft Hope's Project 13. The deadline is today, eek! While I get all this stuff ready for the mail, I wanted to show you another project our family completed for Craft Hope: bracelets for Project 12.


I love how Craft Hope organizes these projects. Like anyone else, I always have the best intentions to help out those who need it, but it's often hard to know where to start or what to do. Craft Hope makes it easy to put our craftiness to good use, providing specific projects for specific organizations with specific deadlines!

Ben and I enlisted the help of our friends Eila and Callaghan to make some beaded and woven bracelets for Russian orphans. We set up on their living room floor with all kinds of wooden and plastic beads and the kids did a great job!

Guest Post: Rainbow Mobile

We have a fun guest post today: a tutorial for a Rainbow Mobile to make with your kid(s), written by our friend Jennifer. Jen is a print editor and the fact that she is a Stumbles & Stitches reader keeps us dotting our i's and crossing our t's, very literally. All kidding aside, Jen is also a busy, creative and crafty mama of two. When she shared this project with our circle of mom friends, we knew it would make a great guest post. Enjoy!

RAINBOW MOBILE
by Jennifer Goode Stevens

My daughter colors rainbows. All the time. On everything. One day she took a piece of lined notebook paper and colored each line a different rainbow color, ending up with a whole page of rainbow stripes. It stuck in my head, and a few days later this idea popped in. You could use any colors, or any simple picture, really, but the rainbow turns out really pretty.

Family Tree: A Paper Craft for Kids

Hello!

I have a kid's craft to share today! Ben and I had some fun with construction paper and family photos the other day and made a "family tree".


The idea for this project came from this book of crafts from the 70's that my mom gave me a while back. It's in French, titled "What Should We Do Today?", and full of cheesy crafts involving inappropriate items like thumbtacks, matches, pins, etc. There's a full-size wooden bow and arrow project in there, I kid you not. It's funny, however, to see how repurposing- and recycling-friendly all the projects are.

Dude Shorts For Ben

Hi Angel, I hope your week is going well so far. I am taking advantage of "Ben-is-in-Preschool Day" to get caught up on projects. Before I forget, I wanted to show you a few more photos of the Dude Shorts I made for Ben with the pattern from Sew Tina!


It was a very easy pattern to follow and I used a striped cotton from my stash. I am not sure what type of weave or weight this fabric is, I remember purchasing it with my mom from the shirting section of a fabric store to make a tunic for my husband -- which never happened. It is lightweight and has a linen-ish feel.