Child's pouch sling

Well, I finally attempted - and actually went through - the making of a sling to carry dolls or stuffed animals around. I had this on my list already a while and used the instructions by Melissa on her blog Chasing cheerios. I turned out fine - however, MUCH too small. So I will have to give this one away and make a larger one for my daughter. But since it was done very quickly I am still pleased that I made this one.

(If anyone is wondering - the animal in the sling is a tapir.)

Some more felt pieces

I made some more pieces for the felt board. Can you guess what that might be?

My daughter wished for a "big heart" ... I got the template from here.

Bath fun

Today when I saw this post on WEELIFE I instantly thought I HAVE to try this. And since we (meaning I) had planned on a big bath for today I thought that would be perfect.
My daughter actually loves baths. But everytime I announce that she will have a bath she cries out loud "I don't wanna have a bath!". Once I get her in the tub with lots of persuasion she has all the fun you could imagine. When I announce half an hour later we should finish up now she cries out loud "I don't wanna get out of the tub!".
I figure I just gotta live with it. But everything that will be making the "persuasion-bit" on my side easier is welcome. And the tub paints seemed like one of these things.

They mix up really quickly and easily. We only made three colours to try whether it works. I let my daughter help with the mixing and she got so excited that she could not get undressed quickly enough. ;-)

And she really enjoyed colouring the whole tub! It did of course not help too much with getting her OUT of the tub lateron ... but oh well ... :-)

Mouse costume

I just wanted to share with you a really quick costume idea. My daughter wanted to be a mouse this year for carneval. Since I did not have a grey dress for her and didn't want to buy one I figured I will just make her costume myself. I found an old grey fleece sweater that I am not wearing anymore and used one of her simple dresses as a pattern. I cut out two pieces for the dress. All I had to do now was to close the side seems of the dress since fleece doesn't fray. I closed the straps with sewed on buttons. I also cut a bit of the sweater into a tail and sewed to the back of the dress. And I made grey ears from the sweater (with a bit white felt) and sewed these to an old headband I am not using. Oh, I also sewed a pocket onto the dress ... but that was just for my fun. :-)
All you will need now are some dark thights and a dark sweater for her to wear under the dress. Oh, and face paint of course!
I actually tried to get a picture of her "being" a mouse. But she was a rather jumpy mouse - no real luck with the photos. She would just jump right out of the picture ...

P.S. Do the legwarmers look familiar. :-)

Banana muffins

Of course on Sunday I was baking again. Lately it seems that at least once a week I'm standing in the kitchen mixing up some kind of dough. Well, this time I had to get rid of some bananas therefore I made banana muffins. I have never made "just" banana muffins. Only banana-chocolate ones. So I was very keen to try. I did find a recipe I had copied down from a book (I have no idea which book) about 10 years ago. I kinda used this as a basis and changed a couple things. So it's kinda made-up ... but it worked very nicely. The muffins look rather boring, but taste really good and have a very nice texture. Very moist and kinda fluffy. So, if you want to try it, here is what I did. I used (for 12 muffins)

280 g flour
1 tea spoon baking soda
1 tea spoon baking powder
3 very ripe bananas (the riper the better!)
110 g butter, melted
2 eggs
180 g sugar
2 table spoons milk
1 table spoon vanilly joghurt
1 packet vanilla sugar - or just some vanilla flavour or pure vanilla

Just add it all together like you always do for muffins - dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda) in one bowl, wet ones in another one. With the wet ingredients I usually start out mixing together eggs and sugar, and add the rest. I also added the banana to the "wet" bowl and mixed quickly through it. Then you add the dry stuff to the wet stuff, stirr it quickly together being careful not to stir for too long! (Stirring for too long will make the muffins dry.)
You bake this in a preheated oven at 180°C (350°F) until a cake tester comes out clean. Mine took about 20 minutes, but that depends on your oven.

I made some nice cream cheese frosting to go with it. You can just use any recipe you like. And regarding the photo, I know that you're actually supposed to put the frosting on top of the muffin. Well, the advantage of spooning it on while you eat is simply - you get MUCH MORE frosting to fit on your muffin!!! :-)

Bag tag

Okay, so I got tagged by Kathie ... and I actually really enjoyed reading about her bag. :-) However, I almost fainted when I read that I will have to show my bag and write about what I got in there.

Okay, these are the rules:

1. Post a picture of whatever bag you are today - not last weekend when you and your hubby went out to that fabulous restaurant. No cheating!!!
2. Tell us how much it cost. This is a no-judgment zone -- there will be no ridiculing or eye rolling here. And, if there is a story to go along with how you obtained it, I'd love to hear it.
3. Now tag some fellow bloggers and link back to this post so people know why you are posting pictures of your bag.

I just realized - after I took the photos - that it doesn't say in the rule that I have to show/ write what I have in my bag ... HA! But since my bag itself is much more embarassing to me than the contents I am going to do it like Katie did it.

Okay, so here it goes. Before I show you the pictures I gotta tell you:
I am truly - biologically - a woman ;-) BELIEVE me! However, I do not care much for bags! (To be totally honest, I also don't like having thousands of shoes and hate shopping! Here you go!) Sorry, to all womanhood, but to me bags are just something that are necessary to carry stuff around. Well, of course there are some that are prettier than others ... Since I started sewing I actually think about - handsewn - bags very differently! And while I was interviewing for a job and therefore forced to look for a "pretty" bag I found out that there is actually a bag designer that I really do like (but of course usually cannot afford). I do own VERY few pretty bags, which are not to be shown here - and which would never work as an "every-day bag"! I am actually still looking for an every-day bag that can handle all the needs a women has - or better I HAVE! I am not sure that this bag exists on earth ... but still searching ... :-)

Anyway .... here are the pictures. Beware, photo material below might not be suitable to people that love bags!!! I will not be hold responsible for any injuries that are caused by looking at these pictures!


I also want to add - I am truly THIRTY - NOT thirteen, which you might suspect after looking at the pictures!

Okay, I was actually rather lucky - or you were, depending on the point of view. Because this is not the only everyday-bag I use. As I said I haven't found the perfect bag for me. And after alot of unpacking, packing, repacking ... and always forgetting something ... I started using different bags for different purposes so I basically only have to "repack" my wallet. I got three every-day bags - and this probably is the least ugly! Even if you might not believe me, I fear this is true. You are really lucky, people, that my only "going out" today was to the doctor!
I got a backpack for work, with all my workstuff in there. I got one big bag for stuff I do with my daughter, like going to the library, or having a picnic in the park, or going to the play ground ...
The picture shown is my, "I just gotta go somewhere and not really take much with me" bag. I usually use it to pick up my daughter from kindergarten (often by train) and have nothing planned afterwards. When I pick her up it usually contains some childrens' books. Today I left those at home. But now - the rest of the rules.

This bag I bought at a thrift store for 2 or 3 Euros. I kinda liked the "buttons" and figured I can't go seriously wrong for 3 Euros. The light blue colour is kinda ... well, childish. But anyway ...
I got in my bag today
- my wallet - obviously my bad taste regarding bags also applies to wallets
-my phone - since I have a kid the most important thing to carry around
-tissues
-a pen
-a couple band aids
-an old train ticket for the way to the kindergarten
-one cough drop
-two hair pins
-a chap stick - IMPORTANT!!!
-one book - which I wanted to read in the waiting room - but when I started I realized that I have read it already. Grrr!

Okay, now you KNOW and hopefully you still like to read my posts! :-) After writing this "sewing my own bag" is really on high priority know!!! (I made the pattern ... but didn't get further yet.)
But now a bit of fun for me. I get to tag some people ... well, it doesn't say how many. I would really like to tag

-Lier from Ikat bag - because I saw this beautiful bag she made and I am really curious whether she might have made her own every-day bag, too ...?
-Kathleen from Grosgrain - I LOVE the photos on her blog and she always looks so feminine and pretty in them, I am hoping I can "learn" from her bag! ;-)
-Mira from Kleine Naht ganz groß (in german) - I know that she just made herself a bag and am wondering whether this is her everyday-bag

Legwarmers finally finished

Yeah, finally done! Here is the PAIR of legwarmers that I started a WHILE ago. And I got them done before spring! :-)
And after lots of persuading and a bit of bribing I even got the leg warmers modelled for a photo. Since we still are all recovering from different illnesses the photos had to be taken inside however. But still better than none.

I think they are really cute and I love the result. I like the kinda slouchy look (is that actually english?) and I like the curly edge ... and the pompoms ... I just love them. Hope my daughter will like them as much as me and actually WEAR them when spring comes!

One more finished project ... coming soon ;-)

Sorry, for not posting much lately. The last couple days I have not been feeling very well. (And now that I am actually feeling better the rest of the family is ill.) The good thing about being ill ... once the worst is over you get bored quickly. Well, I do. :-) Unfortunately when being ill I have the attention span of a toddler. Definitely not the time to try or start new projects. But knit two and purl two I can handle! And since I ran out of books to read as well ... the second leg warmer finally is finished. YEAH!
I am working at the pompoms at the moment. And if I am lucky my daughter might agree to model them for me tomorrow and I might get some good pictures. So hopefully I will be able to show them off tomorrow!

My little magazine reader

This is what I found when I went into my daughter's bedroom to say "good night":


I had to laugh so hard! :-)
And she told me that she wanted to finish reading before she had to go to sleep. So I had to come back in 10 minutes ... She was actually really going through the whole magazine. I still could burst out laughing just thinking of it!

Felt board

Sorry, I had this post written up already a few days ago but didn't have the time to take pictures. But here it finally is.

I really wanted to cross some things off my "I am working on..." list ... I have made quite a few things that have not even been on that list! But that list kinda didn't change at all during the last weeks.
So I sat down to finish the felt board. I figured cutting out felt should be quick and easy and therefore satisfying! :-) Oh well ...

I did not choose my project - or rather my templates - very wisely. I wanted to make some dress-up dolls for the felt board. I used these templates, which are actually thought to be used as paper dress-up dolls. I figured it should work just as well with felt. Well, not exactly correct. The thing is that the outline of the clothes in the template is often very similar. The clothes "look" different because of their details. However, I did not want to embroider all the details into felt - I just wanted to cut out some simple stuff. Therefore if you cut out four different pairs of pants - they will eventually all look the same in felt ... except for the colour maybe.
I ended up cutting out two dolls and some hair and clothes for the two. But I was not too satisfied with the look of it all and therefore did not want to cut more stuff for these dolls.
Well, my daughter still loves it. She repeatedly asks me which hair is boys' hair and refuses to believe that long hair usually is girls' hair. :-)

Sorry, the face of the doll at the right side looks very weird. I tried to draw it on with a ballpen, which was not a very clever idea. Did simply not work very well. On the left doll I used a felt-tip pen. Much better!

Meanwhile I have found some REALLLY REALLY lovely magnetic dress-up dolls and I really want to make these. I really want them ... if my girl doesn't want them I will play with them! :-) And I am NOT kidding. You have to check them out, they are simply gorgeous! They are made by Lier and while you are at her blog Ikat bag you should browse and check out her other posts. She makes such beautiful stuff - I can't imagine how she finds the time for all of the great projects with three kids!

Because I was not very satisfied with the dress up dolls I wanted to make something else for the felt board. So I made a snowman this afternoon. I like it much more than the dress-up dolls. My daughter likes it, too. However, it is not something she can play with for a long time. She will get the dolls or the snowman dressed - and that's it. It seems like - well, a lot of work for this little time of quite playing. :-)

I was also searching the internet for other felt board ideas. Many I have come across were nice but seemed to be more appropriate for smaller children (like colour matching or shape recognition). I had the idea of cutting out letters to form words on the board - but the idea alone of cutting all the letters of the alphabet at least twice ... *faint* I might cut out numbers. If I cut out a set of 0-9 twice I would be able to get until 99 ... that feels much better. However, I don't really know whether "just" putting numbers on the felt board will be very much fun for my daughter ...

I saw some really cute felt board ideas with a "under water" theme and some with "flowers". But they usually don't look like something that will be done in one or two evenings ... and I simply don't know whether it is much fun to play with such things for my daughter. Do any of you have experience with that? What kinda things do kids like to do with felt boards? And what age range are felt boards appropriate for?
(These questions might sound weird. But in Germany felt boards are just not around at all. I have never seen one - neither to buy nor in use! So I do like the idea of it - but I have simply no experience and noone to ask around.)

More heart-shaped food

Today we made pretzels - well, kinda. We used this recipe and made the dough into pretzels, circles, letters and - of course - hearts. My daughter had fun - and I was surprised how nice they tasted. I was a bit scared that they might end up being rather hard and dry - but they had such a lovely texture and even when I put the rest away for tomorrow they were still really soft! (I think that is because of brushing them with melted butter.) Definitely will make them again.

Valentines

Today we had a nice breakfast in bed with a heart shaped "zebra cake". Cake and tea for breakfast together with the people you love - does life get any better than this? I got the recipe from the blog Baking Bites. (The picture on there also looks much better than mine.) I made this cake yesterday together with my daughter and it was really fun. (Well, except for the part when my daughter thougth she should get all the flour out of the bowl on the table ... but the rest was fun!) The cake turned out really nice and I think it's a really cool cake to make for (and with!) kids! They love the stripes and I plan to make it again when I have to bake something for kindergarten. I am sure it would also be very lovely as cupcakes.

As I wrote earlier in my blog in this part of the world valentines day is not really celebrated as much as in the US. But I still got a little something from my hubby and - the best part - my daughter gave me some chocolate hearts. Well, this was not the best part. The best part was, as she gave them to me, she told me
"I love you up to the moon and the water!"

I think everyone who has kids is familiar with the famous book "Guess how much I love you" and the famous quote "I love you right up to the moon and back." Well, she owns that book - obviously :-) - and used it to tell me how much she loves me. I was so moved. Even more so, when I asked my husband whether he had told her to say that - because I figured she could not have possibly come up with that herself. But he had only told her, that she should tell me that she loves me. How she said it she had totally made up herself! Kids are so amazing! That really has been the best valentine gift EVER!

I also gave her my valentine gift today - the felt cookies I had made. I had put them into an empty chocolate box. She took the box, realized that it was very light - much lighter than it was supposed to be when it containes chocolates - and stated disappointed "It's empty!". Then she shook it and felt (haha) something moving ... and looked inside. She loved it - BUT stated that she cannot give her dolls cookies with beads on top! "My dolls don't like to eat beads!"
She is just the loveliest and cutest thing in the world!



In the evening I also gave her the mail set I had made. I had written a letter to her and put it into the red envelope. I also had finished the green one finally and given her the whole set and showed her how to put on and off the address labels and stamps. She could "read" all the labels except for the one with the dog's name. However, she did not care too much for the fact that she can now write letters herself. She told me that she wanted her label on the envelope and that she wanted to receive another letter from me! No inclination at all to write letters herself! :-)
Oh well, I just hope that in the future all the cute labels are going to be used ...

Okay, what did I do the rest of the day? I had a day "off" because my daughter went with her daddy to visit his grandma. I rarely have a day off therefore I really enjoy those days. However, well ... our apartment looks like a HUGE MESS at the moment. My daughter enjoys cutting with scissors very much. Which I think is great! She can be busy cutting up some advertising papers, junk mail, old magazines or catalogues for quite some time. However, can you imagine what happens when a 3year old cuts up paper? Well yes - bits of paper EVERYWHERE! I mean it! There is probably no place in the apartment where there is no paperbit! So I was busy trying to clean up the mess I made during the last days while crafting and her mess from playing and cutting ... in between checking out some websites for valentine ideas and other stuff ... and trying to make some valentines for my husband. I had already so many ideas in my head but did not get around to making them during the last days ... so they are REALLY LAST-MINUTE! Since I did not want to end up spending all day on them they had to be quick and effective! :-)

I actually did try to make this garland out of cereal boxes with my daughter. Since she enjoys cutting so much I thought it would be a fun activity. And I really loved the idea of using old cereal boxes for this. Cutting up perfectly fine - and expensive - crafting cardboard seemed just so ... well, wasteful! However, it turnes out my daughter cannot cut cardboard very well. It is too thick for her to manage and she very quickly lost interest (before finishing even one heart). So this will be a project for the future!

She did however cut out hearts from coloured printing paper - still cheaper than crafting paper. I planned on writing something she loves about her dad on there. But whenever I asked her what she likes most about her dad the answer was "His sweater". Well, I simply don't get it. I have not noticed that she is especially fond of his sweaters so I am quite sure that it must be something I simply don't understand - maybe she loves to cuddle with him ... and that reminds her of hit sweater. I am lost, really! I asked her several times hoping for something else to come up. No luck. The answer was always the same. :-) Sometimes children are just a mystery!

I also cut out more hearts myself and added some things that I like about my husband and hung them from the ceiling above our bed.


I also made him a tiny present - really tiny. But when I saw this the first time I simply loved it so I had to try it. And since my husband loves to read and always uses scraps of paper to mark the page I figured he might like this bookmark.

I also printed this page out just for laughes and put it at the bedroom door.

I also wanted to make these hearts but couldn't find a good place where to put them ...

My husband and my daughter both were back in time for dinner and we we had "hearty" pizza. :-)


And I added some marshmallow hearts to my husband's coffee and my daughter's honey milk. (Taking a picture of a white marshmallow heart in white milk did not seem very clever - therefore I did not even try. To get a good photo I wanted to give my daughter cocoa, which she usually really likes, but she refused.)

I hope your day was as good as mine! :-)

Lovely letters

As I wrote earlier I write many notes to my daughter lately. And as I already made her a mailbox for the notes I thought that I should write proper "letters". Up until now I just wrote a few words onto a slip of paper. I figured my daughter might enjoy it to get "real letters" in an envelope with a stamp and address label. :-)
However, since I write quite a few notes a day using regular paper envelopes seemed too wasteful to me. Even though I really liked the "mail kit" ...
So I thought why not make an envelope out of felt?! I still got loads of felt lying around ... :-) and I figured I could make little address labels out of felt as well and stamps and attach them with velcro. Well, and that's what I did.

If you want to make some for your kids as well - it's really easy!

To make the envelopes:

Figure out how many envelopes, address labels and stamps you want and what colors you want to use.

If you make more than one envelope it probably helps to make a cardboard template. At least if the envelopes are supposed to have the same size. :-) If you want to make a regular sized envelope the easiest way to do this would be to use a paper envelope for making your pattern. I made two very small envelopes and therefore just made my pattern up.

You use your pattern to cut the felt.

Now you have to figure out what size your address label should be. Of course you can do this using your template. But if you did not use one - the easiest way to do it is pin together the envelope and establish where the label should go and what size it should have.

(In the picture you can see one of the address labels I made. I just couldn't wait until I finished the envelope. :-) You don't actually have to make them before the envelope. You can start either way - as long as you figure out the sizes of the envelope and the label beforehand.)

Where the label is supposed to go you sew a bit of velcro. You also sew a bit of velcro where you want to put your stamp later on. When you're done it should like this:


or folded up like this:
Now you can sew the envelope togehter. Because my template was very simple I only had to sew two sides and I used a running stitch. But you can use pretty much whatever stitch you like.

Done! You can embellish your envelope which ever way you like. Depending on what you want to do it might be easier to actually do this before you sew it together. But I did it afterwards. I also added a button at the back to close it. You don't have to do this however, you could also use velcro or just make an envelope that gets "tugged" together.

To see a picture of the back of my envelope just scroll down to the end of this post.
To make the labels:

Basically all you do is cut out two rectangles out of felt for each label you want to make.

To one piece of felt you sew the other bit of the velcro - so it will stick to the envelope later. On the the other piece of felt you embroider an address. I just used the names of our family members and our dog. :-) Again you can use any stitches you like. You can see the front sides of my labels here:


After you're done with this you sew the two pieces together - so the front will show the embroidered address and the back will have the velcro and will stick to the envelope. This is what the back of the labels should look like

To make the stamps:

This is basically the same as the labels. Even easier. You just cut your stamps out of felt, sew a bit of velcro to the back and embellish the front. I did not even cut out two pieces of felt for each stamp. Of course if you want to make it really pretty you can do this.
Here you can see the envelope - not embellished yet - and one stamp and one address label.


And you're done! :-)
This is what mine looked like ...

when taking the picture I had only finished one envelope but I was planning on making a second one. That is the green bit of felt in the photo. :-)

And here a picture of the backside of the envelope.

I am really curious what my daughter will think of them! :-)






*This post has been entered in the "Best Creative Craft Ideas from 2009" contest at Flower Showers Crafts.*

Mailbox

I just started writing little letters and notes to my daughter. Of course they are really short and we have to read them to her. But she loves them. And she does recognize her own name in print easily. So I thought it would be fun to make her a mailbox where she could receive her mail. I started searching the internet for ideas. Here are a few I liked:

the place where big and little art meet
This is a really easy one. As soon as one of our tissue boxes is empty I will make one like those to put at my daughters door. Mybe I get her involved in making it, too.

ikat bag
Here are pictures of a really cool mailbox! I would love to make one ... but it looks rather time consuming ... and you need a really big cardboard box for it.

freekidcrafts.com
These are the instructions for a really cute mailbox made out of an old cereal box and fun foam. I really like how cute this one looks.

I really liked all of those ideas but I still did not go for any of them but made up my own. Here is what I came up with:



If you want to make one for your kids this is what you will need:

*an empty "cardboard" can with a plastic lid
I live in Germany and I used a can of "Im Nu" - which is an instant drink for kids. A can of instant coffee or cappuccino would also work. I do not know what similar things there are in other countries. - If you have any ideas or suggestions please comment! - Basically it just has to have the right size, not be off glass (probably even thin plastic would work) and have a lid your kid can work.
*some cardboard (2 pieces)
*a brass fastener
I had to look up the translation of this ... so I hope it is correct that it is called brass fastener. If not - please let me know!
*glue
*gift wrapping paper or construction paper - optional



Out of one cardboard piece you cut a mailbox flag. You could also use fun foam for this.


You put a hole where the flag is supposed to go. This is where you need the brass fastener - to affix the flag in a way that it can still be moved up and down. I just put it on the can in the photo below to check whether it works ... and took it off again for the following steps.



If you want to you can decorate the flag. I made a little envelope out of white thin cardboard and glued it onto the flag.


I glued wrapping paper all around the can. My daughter chose blue. :-) But you can also use construction paper or colour the can ...


Out of thick construction paper I cut a simple rectangle and also "wrapped" it in the gift wrapping paper.
Then I glued the rectangle to the can as a "foot" (you can see it in the very first pictures of this post).
That's it! Done! :-) It really doesn't take much time and my daughter loves getting her mail out of the mailbox and even put some own "letters" in there already.

After posting this I got a really lovely email from the writer of the blog IKAT BAG and she sent me the link to even more wonderful mailboxes and a totally cute mailing kit for kids. Check it out!