Hungry?

I have been obsessed with this project this week...

Felt food! Breanna posted about making some last month. It was adorable! Then I made the mistake of searching for felt food on flickr and I was hooked!

So far I have made (clockwise) lettuce, egg, pancake with syrup, carrot, tomato, bacon, and a piece of bread with optional peanut butter. I have many more ideas in the making. Sydney has been having a blast every morning checking to see what I made while she was sleeping the night before. She thinks they are very fun but taste kind of fuzzy!

So far I have only used cheap acrylic felt to make these, but there are some really cute ideas out there that incorporate a little fabric that are adorable as well. Either way, I am on a mission to reduce the amount of plastic junk in my house! An impossible task for sure, but I figure every little bit helps.

Alright, now eat up!

Thanks!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the very kind birthday wishes yesterday. It was so much fun to "meet" so many new people. And all of my faithful readers as well. Thank you!

My husband surprised me with the beautiful flowers in the picture. We had a quiet supper out together last night while Sydney played at my sister's house. It was a great day.

And today is another one! Go check out this very cool site Craft and Found. Its new to me, but is chock full of fun stuff. And today Robyn is featuring my new black and white purse from last week! Hop on over and check it out!

Intentional Play

I've been reading bits and pieces from this book lately. I've learned a lot and have tried to incorporate a few things into our daily play that I thought I would share with you.

One of the main points that really stuck with me from this book was the opinion that children learn better, think better, play better in a tidy organized space. Ouch! While I try to keep our home that way, by the end of the day it is chaos. Usually the chaos gets picked up before the next day starts, sometimes not so much. Anyway, I made a conscience decision that this was going to change in at least part of our house (you've got to start somewhere, right?) Sydney and I spend the beginning of our day upstairs in our house. We get up, snuggle a little, have breakfast and play until lunchtime, then she goes down for a nap. So I decided to focus on the dining room and living room. We keep a lot of her toys in an armoire in this room. I cut back what was stored in there significantly and focused the toys to puzzles, games and other things that we like to do together and are at least semi-educational. All the items are organized as much as possible and labeled. (I got a new label maker for Christmas and am loving it!!)

The next principle I took from the book was to provide a mat for the child to play on. This helps them to focus on one thing at a time and to keep a tidier space. I made this for Sydney out of leftover curtain fabric from the living room and a soft decorator weight fabric from a clearance bin somewhere. I sewed them together with some very crooked square quilting and so far have only serged the edges because (believe it or not) I don't own any plain brown fabric to use for the binding.

The mat is about 2 1/2 feet by 4 or 5 feet. We've been using the mat for a little less than a week and I have to say it does really work. She loves to do puzzles and other stuff on her "play mat" as she calls it. I'm not sure if she is more trained, or if I am just more insistent that we clean off the mat before we start the next thing but it works. Our space has remained very tidy and I think she enjoys playing with her toys even more instead of being a little overwhelmed with them all.

Some other things we have done...

• Set up this art easel in the corner of the dining room.

• Rearranged my china cabinet to make room for a "project jar". I keep all my scraps of fabric, paper, ribbon, etc. from my projects and put them in here. She loves to cut and glue them onto paper. I also cleaned out one drawer in the cabinet to house things like glue, scissors and paints.
  


• Made number flashcards. Numbers on one side, correlating dots on the opposite side. Also a good way to learn colors. I printed these out, trimmed them up and covered them with contact paper. I could totally feel a little Kindergarten Teacher coming out in me when I was making these! :)
  
• Bought a "movable alphabet" of sorts. These are foam letters I got from Michael's with my 40% off coupon. Much cheaper that the real Montessori thing and I think they work just as well. So far I've only sorted out one set of letters. I plan to do more.
  

Sorry, today's post was pretty wordy! If anyone out there has any other ideas to add to the discussion I would love to hear them!

Guy Bags

I made a couple of these little fabric bags this week loosely following this pattern, but much smaller.

They were extremely easy and fun and a great way to use some wild fabric in a small dose.

One of these was for a gift, the other for Sydney. Perfect for holding a family of "guys".

P.S. Thanks for all your complements on my new purse! I am still loving it...but the haircut not as much. Why is it always so much better when they fix it at the salon than when you do it yourself at home?

Needed Something New

Earlier today I got a fancy new haircut and I decided that called for a fancy new bag.

My inspiration was an Anthropologie bag (of course). But really I've seen this general design all over the internet. It was fun and easy to make and I love how wide the bag opens so you can actually find something inside it!



I finally cut into some fabric I got during my last Ikea trip to make this bag. I love the weight of it and luckily I have enough to make more!





I was a little worried about carrying a white bag in the winter - is that a horrible fashion faux pas? Clinton, Stacy, are you out there?

A Quick Game of Catch-Up

The rush of last minute Christmas projects made me put my Quilt Along squares on hold for a bit. I'm trying to not get overwhelmed with it, since that was the point of the whole thing, so I am only doing one square a day.

Here is my week 2 square. A little wonky, but I am pretty pleased with how my corners match up!

Happy New Year!

Welcome 2008!

I've been thinking a lot lately about the new year and what I want to change. Not resolutions per say, just goals I guess. At some point one needs to create a plan for their life, set some goals, grow, learn. The rest of this week my husband is going out of town for a "Strategic Planning Retreat" with some co-workers. He works for a small engineering company that has grown very rapidly over the past 15 years and has had a sort of "fly by the seat of our pants" mentality regarding growth and running their business. They are are at a point where they need to re-evaluate and actually plan for the future, and I guess I feel like I am at that point too.

As I think about the things I might like to accomplish in 2008 I keep coming back to the word intentional.

intentional: (adj.) done or made or performed with purpose or intent.

There is nothing specific that I can say I am going to stop doing this or start doing that...I just want to try to live more intentionally. And the more I think about it the more I realize it relates to almost every aspect of my life. I want to be more intentional in the way I cook and the foods I choose, in the things I buy and where I spend my money, in my time with my daughter, in my home and how I care for it, in the way I write, in my health, in my faith, in my relationships with others. The list just goes on. I think I will probably be talking more about all of this here as the year stretches on. And maybe you would like to join me in making 2008 an intentional year.

I wish you all the best for 2008. I hope we can spend a good share of it together! I appreciate each and everyone of you that stops by to read my blog. Take care!

Roxanne