No children were harmed in the making of this craft

First you must cut out your fishies

No children were harmed, indeed, since no children were involved. Between Pinterest and this blog, I have moved on from merely saving cereal boxes for future use to sitting down at the table while Z2 napped and Z1 watched...erm...probably Gnomeo and Juliet, not too sure as I was busy...to do a crafty thing.



Then you must glue your silhouttes
to the background

Z2's bedroom is painted blue, glossy blue, walls and ceiling. It makes it rather dark but I have decided to go with it and I call it the pond room and he has some mirrors in the shape of frogs on the wall and also this rug which I do love quite a lot. I decided he needed a shark poster which gradually evolved into me making these fish silhouettes.


This craft was a nice mix of being prepared and just making do with whatever I had to hand. Preparation included printing out the fish silhouettes. Making do included using a black marker to colour in the watermark bits as the silhouettes were from a stock picture library type thing. I also had carried them around in my bag for a few days so had to choose the non-crumpled fish to use. The frames were ones that I found about the house and the blue backgrounds are a blue card and a blue envelope which I also found around the house.



Then you must display them with Z1's flower display
and a piece of her art in the background*

I am quite pleased with the finished results. Z1 was impressed and Z2 admired them. However, they are rather small for the expanse of bedroom wall so I may have to get my scissors out, find a few more frames and  do a few more. Or I might just buy the shark poster after all and hang these on either side.

*If you do not have any original Z1 artwork or flower displays to hand, you can improvise with art and flower displays created by yourself, your own child/dog/hamster or even shop-bought displays.

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!

Continuing side effects from conquering Christmas (with pipe cleaners!)

Clockwise, starting top left: kitchen drawer,
piece de resistance on the front door handle,
one on the foot of the swivel chair, one around
the leg of the (unused and in need of giving away)
highchair, chain on the tea towel rack, jingle bell
on the oven handle.

Though Z1's enthusiasm for the craft-a-day schedule leading up to Christmas waxed and waned, it has clearly left an impression. The beloved pipe cleaners, of which we had many, have now all been used up. I think pictures will speak louder than words in this instance so feast your eyes on the photos and be informed that this is just a selection of the magnificent pipe cleaner decorations that have been created, most of them on Saturday morning while I was having a lie in (Husband encourages a bit of art before telly on weekend mornings). They are adorning all manner of unexpected places downstairs.


You may also be interested to know:

• The gingerbread house came to a sad end when Z2 was trying to sneak a few jellybeans and pulled it from the counter to the floor. I encouraged both Zeds to grab what they could before I swept it up. 
• While initially reluctant to throw the egg carton advent calendar out, Z1 put it in the recycling bin when she realised that it was hard to lay the table with it still there. Hurrah for getting small children to help with chores: table laid AND glittery-torn-egg-cartons-stuck-to-a-cut-up-cereal-box disposed of willingly.

A Bed 'Hanopy' for Z1

One thing I found when I started looking at Pinterest is that I began to see ideas for projects everywhere. This idea for a bed canopy was from a drawing in a Fancy Nancy book that Z1 borrowed from the school library. I am not a big fan of the books but Z1 is and I do quite like using the word fancy so it's ok overall.

The "hanopy" in place

The main inspiration from the book was the use of brush handles to hold it up. Dollarama sells patterned brush handles and I have a rather great love of Dollarama. I bought the fabric from an ebay shop for around $10 including postage. My part-time job from my undergrad days came in handy in figuring out how much fabric I would need -  knowledge of bed measurements and duvet sizes is a transferable skill that I use more often than I ever thought I would.

The corners at the head of the bed are tied to the curtain rail which is ugly and unnecessarily extends to the corner of the room rather than only across the width of the window. I reached this by holding onto the window frame and balancing precariously on the bed head while praying it wouldn't crack. It's quite hard to tie a knot with one hand while balancing like that and I used my teeth to pull it tight. I'm terribly innovative.

Z1 picked two different brush handles which irked me a little.

I, fairly predictably, lost my will to live enthusiasm for the project a bit when attaching the handles to the bed got a bit tricky. I used sticky tape and various long pliable items found in Z1's room in a haphazard manner to attach them with minimal swearing. I am pleased with how it turned out, even with non-matching brush handles. Z1 says it looks like it is made from fairy dust and charmingly refers to it as a "hanopy". It does make the bed unsuitable for jumping on but I was never that keen on the bed being jumped on in the first place so that's fine.