Preparations are afoot

While I may not have got further than the one bat costume that I reported on earlier in the month, I have managed to keep Z2 on track mentally to be a bat this Hallowe'en.

We have bought pumpkins - three: one each for Z1, Z2, and me. They were only 88 cents each which was spookily good value, I am sure you will agree. Husband is away this weekend so will miss out on the carving though I think he'd very much enjoy it if he got down to it.

Hallowe'en extravagance

I set Z1 the entirely unnecessary task of washing the pumpkins while Z2 napped on Sunday. We have set them on our steps as decorations, not yet in their full, carved Hallowe'en glory. We also have one black tinsel cat, one black tinsel spider, one strand of black tinsel with purple spiders, one hanging bat decoration and one hanging ghost decoration on our front porch. We are positively understated compared to most of the houses in our area who have decorated for Hallowe'en, with the house in the picture being the outright winner in terms of extravagance and exuberance for the celebration.

I have been pinning away a few templates of ideas for carving these pumpkins. These, I must admit, are mostly for me. I am much more excited by pumpkin carving than I thought I would be, something I discovered when I carved my first pumpkin in my first autumn over here in Canada.

I plan for Z2 to use his wooden hammer to bash cookie cutters into the pumpkin to carve his. I understand that this may be one of the points where my pumpkin carving extravaganza may not go to plan.

The sweeties to be given out to trick-or-treaters have been purchased and placed strictly off limits to all members of the household.

Pumpkin carving is scheduled for this Sunday. I will, of course, report back.

Black tops, bat wings and toilet trips

Having been to Dollarama to buy "bat teeth" and "bat ears" (actually cat ears and vampire teeth but I reckon with the wings, they will pass as bat ears and vampire bat teeth. I was prepared to make the bat ears also but these will do nicely and we got a bonus cat tail too) and having picked up a remnant of mostly black suit material for $2.99, all that was missing for the making of the bat costumes were the plain black tops. The outing to get these was postponed until Sunday after a lengthy Saturday afternoon nap on the part of Z2.

Map does not include detour to shop with lots of sparkly things where NOTHING SHOULD BE TOUCHED as I was a bit dizzy by then and can't remember where it was




Going to the shopping centre (or mall, if you will) requires, of course, plenty of preparation - the pre-car journey toilet trip, the setting down of the rules (no, we will not be buying any toys in the Rainforest Café but we can look at the fish and the pretend animals; we are going to buy plain black tops and look at tea for me, there will be no other purchases though we may get some kind of snack food if you are good), the route planning within the centre to ensure maximum efficiency... Actually, no, I did not route plan but that was mainly 'cause I didn't know where my fancy tea shop was. Also, even if I had route planned, it would have been quickly scuppered by Z2's announcement that he needed to go to the toilet and the fact that the first set of toilets we went to had a ridiculous queue so we had to go in search of some others. However, happily, we did find plain, black, long-sleeved tops in H&M as hoped. Hurrah. (However, the teas I wanted were not available which was

rather a devastating blow. Or, you know, slightly disappointing.)



What me? I forgot to dress up,      Mwa ha ha ha, I am
just wearing boring old black                 a bat!                 

Now, once the tops were purchased, Z1 was keen to make the costumes right-now-this-very-second. While I couldn't quite satisfy that request what with us being in the shopping centre and all,  I did get started once we got home and I even let her try it on when I had only done one wing. While doing the first wing was quite exciting and doing the second wing was rather satisfying, I now have to motivate myself to do two more wings for Z2's top and continue to foster their commitment to being bats this Hallowe'en. The advance planning bodes well for the former but will be a little trickier for the latter.







As summer melts into autumn

Back to school and slowly waning warm weather has been keeping us outside and busy in various ways. I make no apologies for soaking up every last drop of warmth and sunshine as the evenings and mornings grow darker.

That is not to say that craft and creations have come to a halt. There was a delicious apple cake which Z1 directed, funeral portraits for our dearly departed fish, a pirate hat for Husband from Z1 and we are currently planning for bat costumes* for Hallowe'en. 

I don't mind shop-bought costumes but I do maintain that there's a certain charm in homemade costumes that just doesn't happen with bought ones. Watch this space.

*links to other bat-mentioning posts, not brilliant bat costumes, you will have to wait for them.

Sad Sunflower Story

Oh people, I am sorry to have to come here and tell you that I think our sunflower shade circle is not to be this year.

I could blame the caterpillars or slugs who seem to have made a meal of a few of the seedlings that did manage to push through
but I really feel that I must take the blame on this one.

Firstly, I didn't really prepare the ground for planting. I didn't shave the area cut the grass to define the circle so that trampling feet would avoid it and to ensure that enough light would shine on the ground to warm it and nurture the seedlings.

Secondly, I dug with a spoon. A spoon, I tell you! I should have used the proper tools which would have been more effective at digging sunflower seed-appropriate planting holes.

Finally, despite Z1's excellent planning and helpful diagrams, I did not carefully space the seeds and make sure they were evenly distributed around the circle. I did things hurriedly and haphazardly and my punishment shall be no shady, sunflower circle for me or the Zeds this year. Alas and alack.

Having said that, there is one seedling doing quite well, reaching up tall against the odds so I think we shall have a solitary sunflower. This strong sunflower will shine as a beacon to remind us that next year, if we prepare and plan AND execute the plan correctly, we could be the proud and happy cultivators of a shady, sunflower circle fort.

Diagrams and digging

The idea of planting a circle of sunflowers as a sort of shady den for the summer came from Pinterest though I had seen and loved a sunflower maze in Dublin Botanic Gardens and loved it. It just hadn't occurred to me to translate it to my very own garden until Pinterest.

I had spoken about it quite a lot and the Zeds and I tramped out the circle in the long grass on Saturday. Husband then cut the grass so we got to tramp it out again which was a good thing as the Zeds are big fans of running, skipping, marching and jumping around in a circle. I got a bit dizzy.

Z1 then took it upon herself to draw a diagram to plan the circle out. We currently only have a temporary fence on one side of the garden so crayon drawings are allowed. The parameters she planned to illustrate were the size of the circle and the height of the sunflowers. She also had a separate table where she planned how often the sunflowers would need watering. Apparently they will require watering 6 times on Mondays. This was a very serious project.


On the right, you can see that the upper circle has a tick and an arrow - this is the required size of the sunflower circle. It also has 2 flowers in the middle which show the location of the circle as there are two orange flowers on our lawn. The circle below has been crossed out as too small.

In this diagram, you can see the height she wants the sunflowers to be (8 units, units not specified) and, in the righthand panel, you can see she drew a picture of herself for comparison. As she is about 3 feet tall and the sunflowers can apparently grow up to 10ft tall, she may get her wish of the sunflowers being twice her height as illustrated.

We had misplaced our trowel when the time came to plant the seeds so we made do with a spoon. Z2 was napping and Z1 took charge of choosing the seed for each hole and watering each seed after planting. Now we must wait and see if they grow or wether the birds ate the seeds immediately after we planted them.
 

Birthday party and beetle planning

 Z1 will be 5 this month and we are having a birthday party for her. Husband and I are providing the entertainment. I will take charge of cake and Pizza Pizza will provide the pizza. A community centre will be providing the battleground party space.

I was less than dedicated unsuccessful in getting Z1 to make a list of who she wanted to invite in advance so we just invited everyone she could think of. We added any forgotten people from her class as we distributed the invitations to cubby holes. I printed out 30 invitations thinking we'd need a few spares. There were no spares. We have now invited thirty* children between the ages of four to six to a party, have undertaken to entertain them and have assured the parents they can drop them off rather than staying if they want.

I have a plan for doing a beetley sort of craft. Considering the hiccups I sometimes encounter doing crafts with just Z1, this might be an overwhelming day. Preparation is key, though, and I have over 2 weeks to get ready at this point. I even invented a beetle-themed jumping about type game the other night so it can be a beetle-themed party. Goodness - maybe I'll even make a ladybird cake**.



You may also be interested to know: When on holiday in France with my family when I was about 16, we were staying in a small house in the middle of nowhere. One thing that happened on that holiday was that we saw a rather large stag beetle. I estimated it to be about 1 1/4 inch long, at the time. Exciting times.

*  We currently have 8 confirmed attendees and 1 "no"
**I suggested this to Z1 and she wasn't keen so I may be off the hook on that one.

Dragon eggs are kind of palish

Newspaper ready
to go

This idea was inspired by this blog post here about not doing crafts with children. I get the impression from her picture of bunting that this blogger is probably a more skilled crafty person than me. However, I must gently disagree with her decision to use ordinary eggs as dragon eggs - surely they would be bigger?

Before I had even finished reading the blog post, I decided that we would make a dragon egg using papier mache around a balloon. I Googled to find recipes for the the paste and congratulated myself on not throwing out the junk mail newspapers that I had saved from before Christmas in case of ever doing papier mache.  Tearing the strips is quite a pleasing task. I was also pleased that I hadn't used up all the balloons doing these.

Balloon and paint brushy
 things

While boiling up the water for the paste, the Zeds played with a balloon each. Predictably, it ended in tears when Z2 burst his. I distracted him from his misery with a couple of pre-lunch Smarties, then we ate luch, Z2 was despatched for his nap and Z1 and I sat down at the kitchen table to get going.

First layer
hanging to dry

I asked Z1 if she wanted a music on my laptop but she said she would prefer it to be quiet because otherwise she would be distracted. She was right and I was supposed to have learned that lesson already. We worked together happily and harmoniously and chatted about what colour we should paint it when it was finished. She told me that dragon eggs are kind of palish.


After she had gone to bed, I slapped another layer on to the now dry first layer to speed up the process as I didn't know how long Z1 would be willing to string this activity out. It did tie in quite nicely with the snow dragon which we made between layers so we had a bit of a dragon theme in the house.

Z1 in action painting
and glittering the egg

The finished dragon egg
hanging above our sink
Incidentally, our
dragon egg is not palish
but it is glittery.

Painting and glittering took place while I prepared Z1's school lunch and cooked rice for dinner. I didn't notice any glitter in the lunch or the rice but either way, thanks to reading an article about pregnancy tests for rhinos in Dublin zoo a few years ago, I am confident that glitter will not be harmful if ingested. I know human digestive systems are probably a bit different to those of rhinos but zoos are usually pretty careful about what they feed their animals so I am sure it's fine.



You may also be interested to know: 

• The paste recipe I used (in the highlighted box at the bottom of the linked page) made a lot of paste. A large mixing bowl full. We have most of it left. I did add salt to stop it going mouldy but if anyone has a recipe for making it edible, please do send it my way.
• We used some of Z1's discarded drawings on plain white paper for the final layer to make it easier to paint without newsprint showing through.

Hearts of rage



The hearts of rage (they look
innocuous, don't they?)
Download them here to avoid
having the rage yourself

As a Dubliner, I feel sort of proprietorial about St. Valentine's Day, though I have never been to see his remains in the city church in which they rest. I also like seeing people smiling carrying flowers and I think telling people you love them is a good thing. Sure, it's all marketing and hype and prescribed affection if you want to see it that way but, it you want to partake, I will be happy to support your efforts. You can even send me some flowers while you're at it and I'll be grateful, thrilled and surprised.

However, Z2 is two and a half. When asked if X or Q or R is his friend, he will respond either "He doesn't hit me" or "He can talk, but he can't sing songs".  His concept of friendship and love is not yet fully developed. Although he is an affectionate little fellow, I don't think he has any particular want or need to show his pre-schooler colleagues his affection by way of a heart-embellished card or pencil or sweetie. His daycare is brilliant and I generally can't fault them. However, my heart sank when  I saw a list of all the children and teachers in the room taped to his cubbyhole. There was a paragraph explaining that bringing in Valentine's tokens - shop-bought or homemade - was not compulsory but the children would be having an activity involving distributing Valentine's tokens to each other. This letter is what brought on the hearts of rage. The letter went up on the Monday, with Valentine's Day being Thursday, so I didn't even have a weekend to prepare.

In fact, I had already been stewing and pondering over a craft for Z1 to do to bring in to her friends. I had opted out last year, our first February in Canada, not knowing she would come home laden with sweeties and pencils and stickers. I rolled my eyes a bit and resolved to sort her out with something to bring in this year but hadn't really got a concrete idea by the 11th of February. I wanted something that she could mostly do herself but knew she would get bored before she had written her own name, let alone any further message, on a token for each of her classmates.

And so, with this double pressure, from memories of last year and the letter from the pre-school room, I used Word to make the hearts of rage. The rage was caused by various cutting and pasting, text placement and font size complications. The plan was to bring them home, have the Zeds paint them in pink, red and glitter and then glue the paper to some card, cut them out on squares and possibly, if I had the energy, personalise the ones for Z2's colleagues given they were having a distribution activity. Sigh. Even worse, despite supposedly  having become one of those people, I didn't have any saved cereal boxes for backing the hearts. The idea grew into attaching bits of paper to Z1's tokens to make them into very useful bookmarks instead of pretty useless bits of card just beautiful tokens of affection.

Valentine's bookmark
from Z1

Glittery Valentine's hearts on
squares from Z2

Considering the forced march feel of this activity from my point of view, it was actually rather nice. Z2 more or less painted one sheet before wandering off to do something else (I haven't yet discovered any pink, glittery handprints) and Z1 zealously coated her two pages in glitter glue and paint. That was Tuesday evening. I cooked a creamy mild curry dish while this took place before finishing off Z2's other sheet. Z1 was set to work on Wednesday after school attaching pieces of stiff paper to her squares (while I made homemade burgers and cooked up some sweetcorn) and the finished products are certainly passable. I cut Z2's sheets into squares and decided it would be MUCH easier for the staff if I didn't write names on each heart so they could be distributed randomly.

Resting on my laurels and planning for the future

In our covered porch today

As I type, our marvellous marbles are a week old and buried in the worst snow in 5 years. Sorry, no, that should have been THE WORST SNOW IN 5 YEARS. Ah, the meeja media, they have enjoyed working themselves up to a frenzy about the snow we are having today with promises of storm reports and second by second weather reports. Admittedly, we trekked to the bus stop only to take one look at the main road with u-turning, stuck and skidding cars and return home. In fact, husband actually got on a bus for a minute or two before realising it was foolish and he should work from home too.

Our covered porch in July
(with Z2)

Anyway, yes, our marvellous marbles are still there though some of them cracked a little from freeze-thaw action and the like. Husband thinks they are wondrous and I know of at least one family who have copied the idea so I have been resting on my laurels and we have been craft-free since last Friday.

However, the cogs in my brain have been turning and I have several ideas gradually emerging.  In fact, given that we have a snow day today and I am working from home, we may have to get cracking today and back on the craft wagon. Oh, the craft wagon, such a thing to behold. I imagine it looks a bit like this.

The Craft Wagon

Breaking news: Z1, on this day, the day of the worst snow in Toronto in living memory the last five years, has asked to colour in my craft wagon drawing so craft-free week is officially over.

Bring on the minuses!

Tempting fate with green water-filled
balloon over my head. Mopping up.

We moved to Canada in April of 2011. I was dreading the winter but Toronto gave us a mild one. As this current winter started and progressed, I had been quietly thankful for each day that went by where the temperature was above -10C or so. I'd check the forecast and then check it a few more times to see if it had changed when any temperatures below zero were predicted.

The day I decided to do this project, it was a balmy 13C (only days after my personal record low temperature of -21C which we survived with minimal digit loss).

Careful placement; in the bowl, ready for placement;
striking a pose to show the arrangement off
(so mild no coat was needed!).

The forecast, as I formulated my plan, was predicting a high of -2C for the next day. I was pleased. I checked later and it said a high of 8C. I was dismayed but committed to the project so we went ahead anyway. (I also checked another forecast which still said a high of -2C - hurrah!)

That was quite an introduction without getting to the point, wasn't it? Well, the plan was to make these icy colourful marbles.

I was genuinely excited about doing these and was disappointed when Z1 and Z2 were busying themselves in the garden. I told them when they had finished playing, we'd do the water balloons. Z1 told me "We are not playing, we are taking care of the worms." and that I could do it myself.  So I did, I started by myself with a green one and went to take it outside to show the Zeds to see if they'd be interested now that there was something to look at. (I had a minor panic when Z2 could not be located - he'd wandered off behind the shed and was not responding to being called.) He was thrilled to see a balloon and happily followed me to the front to help me put it in the grass. Hurrah. Z1 soon followed when she saw that her brother was interested so we retreated to the kitchen to prepare a few more.

Here's the how to. I saw this on Pinterest and didn't read any instructions before starting. The one I did on my own was a good practice: I filled the balloon with water by stretching it over the spout and, when I removed it, water spurted out everywhere, forced out by the balloon contracting back to its deflated size, I suppose. I was not expecting that. Lesson learned.

I had a dropper to drop food colouring into the balloons before filling so the Zeds could help with that by squeezing the dropper. After that, they were guardians of the balloons as I filled the next one. We had an incident where I tied a knot too hastily and put the balloon into the bowl where it promptly splooshed its (thankfully not very brightly coloured) contents onto Z1's coat and the floor. Paper towels were promptly employed. We did a few greens and a few reds. I only had a small bit of blue food dye left which we divided between an attempt at a purple one (mixing red and blue) and a just-blue one. It may be rather pale. I didn't fill them as large as they look in the Pinterest picture as I was fearful of balloon breakage and also thought that it would be good that the smaller ones would freeze more quickly.

They are outside as I type. Current outside temperature is 12C (at 9pm) though it is predicted to be -3C by 8am which is around when we will be leaving the house. I cannot wait to poke them but I suspect the big reveal (cutting the balloons off) will be Friday or possibly even Saturday. There is also snow forecast so we might have to dig them out to see them. Bring on the minuses!

Planning and wishing for cold weather

Ah, we've been on a go-slow with the crafts for a few days. Both the Zeds seem to have suddenly discovered their Christmas toys and have been busy with them. Also, we have run out of pipe cleaners which are pretty much craft essentials.

I do have plans though. Sneaky plans and clever tricks. Ok, well, not particularly sneaky plans and possibly not particularly clever tricks but definite plans.

With Pinterest as my muse, I had considered doing something like these melted bead decorations but I fear we might poison ourselves with the fumes from melting them in the oven or, at the very least, stink the house out.

However, this weekend I have plans for garden decorations if winter would just cooperate and cool down again (12C in Canada, in January! What's that about?). In fact, I am now getting excited about it and may just execute the plan tonight as the forecast is telling me it should be below zero again. Watch this space, there may be balloons on it the next time you look.

Z1 and me: co-authors (with bonus bat)

This was an activity born of necessity. Once more, I had work to do when Z1 was not going to be otherwise engaged and I needed to keep her happily and quietly occupied. Or, at the very least, occupied.



Words but no pictures

She has made a few books before so it wasn't a new idea and I hoped she'd comply when the time came. I prepared by folding a piece of paper into four and snipping the folded edges. I wrote the story so that she could draw the pictures. I fear the story was not the most magnificent of stories. Nor was it the most original of stories. In fact, the title has even been used before (see pic). However, I knew Z1 could draw a snowman so I thought it was a good place to start. I also prepared a back-up, blank book.



Cover complete

Sad children, melted snowman

Threatening snow

It all went to plan. We read the words, she sat down to draw the pictures and showed me each one as she completed. The pictures here are highlights. She also drew me the bonus bat below. Hurrah.



Wicked (in the sense of bad) bat

A lobster of love

Lobster

This post is not about lobsters and their monogamous mating that many of us learned about from that Friends episode. No, this is about a true lobster of love.
Z1 expressed an interest in drawing a lobster together. I was a little nervous as I cannot remember ever drawing a lobster before - I have drawn plenty of octopi as I used to draw a comic strip about Leonard the octopus who had a sea anemone friend called...erm...Mark, I think, but those days are distant memories now. I was also recalling a major upset that was a result of Z1 trying, unsuccessfully, to copy my admirable bats*. However, I decided to go ahead. I bravely opened Paint on my laptop and drew the charming crustacean you see above. He (for it is a he) was partially inspired by a picture, printed on fabric, of a lobster that used to be in my house growing up. I couldn't find an image of it online and I have no idea where it came from but it was remarkable - bright orange and red on a dark blue canvas.

Lobster in colour

I believe Z1's inspiration to draw a lobster is likely to have come from looking at the lobsters in the tank at Red Lobster.

I asked her how many marks out of ten she would give me for my drawing. She said 1,000,050 so that's pretty good. She did say it was not the best lobster she has ever seen but she has seen actual, real lobsters so I suppose that was to be expected.

You may also be interested to know:
 - I have made the lobster pic into a downloadable pdf so everyone can enjoy it. Just click the picture (and let me know if it doesn't work) or go to the downloadables page (tab up there at the top)

* You will be pleased to hear that Z1 told me, only yesterday, that she is now able to draw "my" bats.

Credit where credit is due: I got instructions on how to do the downloadable pdf from sewBOLD.

Rainbow Scarf Revealed

I mentioned my plan to knit a scarf before here so thought it only fair to update you on how it went.
This was the blueprint:

And this is what it looked like before:



before

And this is after:

after

It was more difficult and less perfect than I expected. I knitted a few scarves a few years ago and was mighty proud of them so went into this project with my blueprint and my planning and some confidence in my learned-from-the-internet knitting abilities. I still like it quite a lot and Z1 seems to too so that is good. It's definitely a "Unique Handmade Item where variations in colour and texture only serve to highlight that it's one of a kind."*
*Translation: Please ignore any dropped stitches and the inconsistency in width of stripes, it was made with LOVE, dammit.



Lessons Learned from Conquering Christmas

It's December the 21st and we're leaving for Ireland tomorrow. I declare Christmas conquered. 

Here is the Advent calendar, nearly all opened now.

Here is what I learned in the process:

1. I really like miniature houses, whether of paper or of gingerbread.
2. I really like snowflakes.
3. Don't put on any visual distractions (TV, YouTube) when attempting crafts with Z1.
4. Pipe cleaners are an excellent investment for a craft box.
5. I really growing crystals and seeing the finished result.
6. And, related to 5., one woman's magical/scientific crystal-making potion is another woman's poison.
7. Blogging is quite effective at stopping me mentally packing for our Dublin trip for the entire month of December - I only made a packing list on the 16th.
8. There is time to do a crafty type thing between getting home from school and getting dinner on but it's not always a good idea.

People, I am off to Dublin until the new year but I will be back. The name of the blog will change and it will be at www.conqueringcrafts.com .  Anyone eagle-eyed will have noticed that the www.conqueringchristmas.blogspot.ca address was already redirecting to the conquering crafts one - the magic of the internet did that and will continue to do so.

Have a very lovely Christmas, however you choose to celebrate it.

(Oh, and we did manage to make a Christmas card for the grandparents this evening - DONE!)

Not-Gingerbread biscuits

I made a couple of errors in preparing for our baking today:
1. I assumed we had some ground ginger
2. I let my desire to buy "fancy molasses" cloud my judgement and override the fact that, according to Google, Wikipedia and the sensible bit of my brain, it is not the same as golden syrup

Top left shows that not all our
cookie cutters produced
recognisable Christmas shapes

Still, neither of these errors detracted in any way from the enjoyment Z1 got from helping me mix or from her joy while cutting and decorating the biscuits (cookies to you, North Americans). Z2 joined in too, though I did have to tell him to stop poking quite a few times.

Z1 with her rice and sprinkles and
two of the cookies she lovingly
decorated (the one on the left
looked like a snowflake when unbaked,
the right was a gingerbread man)

It was a bit hectic trying to get dinner sorted at the same time as baking batches of biscuits and keeping an eye on the sprinkling activities. This meant that when Z1 asked if she could put some sprinkles in her rice, I just sighed and said it was fine. The coloured rice doesn't show up so well in the photo - probably 'cause she had eaten most of the food-dye-stained grains by the time she asked me to take the picture.

Downloadable from here

Of course, after the rice and sprinkles, it was time for the Zeds to try their baking. They each took one bite and discarded their respective biscuits. I like them though (the Zeds and the biscuits, just to be clear).

Credit where credit is due: My starting point for these cookies was this recipe on the BBC recipe website

A Snowglobe 24 Years in the Making

Glittery reindeer

Before I turned it over
(I should have painted
the Ragu jar lid more
thoroughly)

Could it ever have lived up to my expectations? I have been longing to make a snowglobe since I was about eight, I think. I can remember recipes where dessicated coconut was recommended as snow and one where glycerin was suggested so the snow would swirl more gently.
Today's long-awaited snowglobe was made without input from Z1 (she was too busy playing in a box and trying to remember how to write vampire) but with some advice from Z2. We had a choice of a reindeer or some snow-topped fir trees as figurines and he chose the reindeer. Just as well because he knocked the fir tree off the table a moment later and it broke.

Slightly forlorn reindeer
when the glitter stopped
swirling

I painted the lid of the jar with acrylic paint and glitter glue a few days ago to get it all ready for today.

Glittery reindeer gazing
wisely at the world

And, y'know, it's nice. It's got sparkly glitter and water and swirling, so it's definitely nice but what am I to dream of making now?
Also, I should not be trusted with superglue.



Credit where credit is due: I found this simple version of a homemade snowglobe at this blog which seems to be in Chinese via Pinterest

Why I had 2 forks in my work bag today

A late afternoon work meeting yesterday and a Christmas concert with pot luck dinner at Z2's daycare today meant two afternoons of Christmas crafts in public places. I felt that Coffee Culture had had its fair share of the Zeds and me yesterday so Z1 and I went to Second Cup today. (Z2 remained in captivity so that he could make his grand entrance with the rest of the toddlers for the concert.)

Sample pom poms

I prepared by putting a 2 forks (one each for me and Z1), 2 balls of slightly sparkly yarn (left over from the rainbow scarf project referred to in this post) and a pointy scissors (as opposed to the Z1-friendly scissors from yesterday ) in my work bag. I also made these little lovelies on the left to show Z1 what we were going to make.  Alas, I made them during my lunch break at work so it was too late to realise that the yarn tends to shed a bit and may not be the most suitable for pom-pom making.

Pom pom earrings and
pom pom on fork in progress

A highlight of today's  cafe Christmas craft session (apart from the really nice chewy chocolate brownie) was when I suggested Z1 could wear my pre-prepared ones as earrings. (see right)

Two tone pom pom

She abandoned her brownie (which is how I know it was tasty - her abandonment resulted in my enjoyment of it) in favour of the craft so that was a good sign. On the right, you see her contemplating her wrapped fork. She had the idea of using two colours of wool on one pom pom which made a pom pom with a different coloured core. We made one pom pom before moving on to other things. Just one.

Pom poms on the tree
(with Borax crystal heart in the background)

In other news: I have abandoned the idea of including information about cost, messiness, time taken etc. on the crafts. I felt this is more about the experience than a how-to guide. Also, it was kind of annoying to do and took up too much blog space.

Credit where credit is due: I found the idea for these at Mrs. Fox's blog here