October Sponsors: What's New!

Happy Sunday!

Please welcome back our lovely sponsors for October: Felt on the Fly, Sew Well Maide, Drygoods Design Online and Fat Quarter Shop!

Here's the latest tidbits of fun from these fabulous businesses. We hope you'll check out what they have to offer and consider them for your holiday shopping!




Fat Quarter Shop just released their first book: Simply Fat Quarters, featuring 10 quilt patterns using fat quarters! And of course, Fat Quarter Shop is the perfect place to shop for beautiful fabrics with which to make these quilts.


You can find Fat Quarter Shop online here: Shop -- Blog -- Facebook -- Twitter -- Pinterest

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.

Artful Halloween: Book Review and Giveaway

Hello there!

It's already October 10, how is that even possible? I thought I was getting started early on Halloween costumes this year, but I have a feeling I'll be scrambling once again, ha! I'll be sharing our costume progress so far tomorrow. In the meantime, I wanted to tell you about a new Halloween book that Lark Crafts sent me for review.




Artful Halloween: 31 Frightfully Elegant Projects by Susan Wasinger is pretty awesome as far as holiday craft books go. Lark Crafts has proven to do an excellent job in the holiday category, with gems like Fa La La La Felt and Pretty in Patchwork: Holidays. Fresh off the presses, Artful Halloween belongs in the same basket, featuring a beautiful layout and a solid offering of craft projects that are creative, aesthetic and more importantly, not cheesy (which matters a lot to me, when holiday decorating is concerned!).




I already loved Susan Wasinger's work in her books Eco-Craft and Sewn By Hand (also published by Lark). Artful Halloween will surely become my go-to craft resource for October in years to come. Wasinger offers a variety of spooky projects to decorate outside as well as inside the home, along with ten pumpkin-decorating ideas! Some projects are very quick, some are a bit more involved, and most use craft supplies you already have on-hand or can easily find at your local craft store. Love that!

But instead of gushing on and on, let me show you a few examples of why I think this Halloween book kicks butt. And keep scrolling down to see a project I made from the book as well as a giveaway!!

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!

Make It Up: Stories and Stuff (by Kids and Their Parents)

Happy Monday!

We're excited to be participating in a wonderful series organized by Jane of Buzzmills called Make It Up: Stories and Stuff (by kids and their parents)! The point of this event is to encourage story telling within families, with the added fun of making something with or for your child to go along with it.

If you and your kids enjoy creating and telling stories, and inventing a world to go with them, this is a series for you! Angel and I have a little something in the works with our boys and we will be sharing it on October 23. You can see the rest of the fabulous line-up below, and how to participate yourself.





Make It Up schedule:

10/15  -- Jane

10/16  -- Mari of Inspired by Family Magazine

10/17  -- Carla of Small and Friendly  

10/18  -- Kim of Little Stories

10/19  -- Stacy of Kids, Stuff, World 

10/22  -- Brad (Jane's husband)

10/23  -- Angel and Jenny of Stumbles & Stitches 

10/24  -- Celina of Petit a Petit & family and Let's Do Sew

10/25  -- Laura of Craftstorming  

10/26 -- Linky party opens

10/29 -- winner announced and wrap up


You can read more about Make It Up here and get some inspiration tips here. And here are a few more details from Jane, plus a button you can grab for your blog.

On the 26th I will open a little linky so YOU can share your stories and creations!  I want everyone to be able to join in the fun and share their stories, whether they have a blog or not.  So, if you don't have a blog, post your picture either in the Buzzmills Flickr Group or in your own Flickr account, give us an idea of what your story is in the description and link to that.  

Won't it be fun and inspiring to see what everyone else comes up with?!

After you've all shared your stories over the weekend, I have a little giveaway to offer on Monday (10/29) which I will pick at random.  It's the new book Show Me A Story: 40 Craft Projects and Activities to Spark Children’s Storytelling.  This book is filled with so many great ways to help create stories in your family.  Check out a little sneak peak of the book here!

This is going to be fun so please join in, sit down with your families and Make it Up!  

Please grab a button and share! :)  Thanks! 

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Thank you Jane for inviting us to participate, we're excited! Story-making and -telling with kids is so much fun. They are so incredibly creative. I bet this series is going to be super inspiring.


Who else is excited to Make It Up? I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

In case you didn't see it last week, Jane guest-posted on Stumbles & Stitches with some amazing botanical sun-prints as part of our Inspired by Nature series. You can see her post here.

Inspired By Nature: Garden Sun Prints, a Guest Post by Buzzmills

Welcome to Jane from the consistently inspiring blog Buzzmills!

I first took notice of Jane's work when she entered our Feather Your Nest sew along contest last year (and won Judges' choice!). She produced quite a few unique, resourceful and beautiful projects! She presented a few topic options for a guest post for our Inspired By Nature series, and I selfishly picked this one because I want to use some photosensitive paper we have in our craft cabinet! Can't wait to try this, don't Jane's prints look amazing?



* * *
There has been a blank spot on our bedroom wall since we moved in. We have struggled with just what to put in the space. Nothing too expensive, nothing that will make it feel too cluttered.

Hmmm?

And then one day... Someone was giving away a package of sun print paper on Freecycle. Well, why not? I'll take it! I thought it would be a super fun project to do with the kids. Do you remember doing sun prints as a kid?

I let Violet and Henry pick what they wanted to put on their papers. It was fun to see them wandering around looking for just the right items.






And then we waited, curious about the outcome...




The kids thought it was pretty awesome!




It turns out that I thought it was pretty awesome too! I loved the cool blue of the paper. And the pictures have a slightly modern feel while also feeling a bit "old school" as well! So I hoarded the leftover pieces of paper ;) and made my own using flowers and herbs from our garden.






It took me a while, but eventually I made it to Ikea and bought some inexpensive frames for my new art. And so, I filled the blank space in our room.




The four pictures hanging this way mimic a window and really help to open up our small room.




The blue looks great against the pale gray of our room and with the yellow and gray of our bed and embroidery hoops on the opposite wall.










Now I have "fresh" flowers from our garden in our room every day!

And the kids have some new "nature" to add to their hallway upstairs!




Of course, there is still a bit of a blank space above the mirror to fill... In time in time... It always has to be a little bit in progress or else you wouldn't have anything to do, right?

Oh, and one more thing, before I go... Speaking of nature and art... I thought I'd share where I decided to put my Feather your Nest print from Jenny!



(Sorry these hallway pictures are not so great, there is almost zero light there, but it does look great in person!)

A perfect fit, don't you think?

Thanks for having me Jenny and Angel!

* * *
Thank YOU so much for sharing this project with us, Jane! We can't wait to try it ourselves. It looks fabulous.

What do you guys think of these botanical sun prints? Aren't you antsy to go pick up some photosensitive paper to try it out?


For more posts in our Inspired by Nature series, click the image above. If you have a guest post to contribute, we'd love to hear from you! Shoot us an email at stumblesstitches AT ymail DOT com.

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!