Rainbow Swap

I've signed myself up for two upcoming swaps. Seriously what was I thinking? :) I just finished my rainbow swap items. I've made pots of gold filled with yellow glass rocks. I still need to get everything together to send it in. I'm really excited to see what comes back as "rainbow" is a pretty broad swap theme. My next swap is play food and I think I'm going to be making sushi.

Watercoloring in the woods

We spent the day in our local state park hiking around the big pond. We stopped for a picnic near the water and K was able to run around and explore the woods. Then we collected water from the pond to water color with. K had a good time pointing out the wildlife (goose, woodpecker, and a swan).

We've been trying to get over to the state park more often so hopefully we will have lots more art in the park days.

Letting our Butterfly

Today we let our butterfly go. We had him since he was a caterpillar. K has been fascinated with the whole process and keeps asking me to get out the cocoon so he can talk about it over and over. We ended up having to keep the butterfly (or buhbuys as k calls him) much longer then I had intended. After he emerged from the cocoon it rained for several days. Today was our first nice day. Luckily he was just fine and took off down the street as soon as he was free. :)

Sewing Bear

My mom found a wonderful sewing bear for 25 cents at a mom-to-mom sale. I've been trying to find one for a while as K has been expressing lots of interest in sewing and knitting lately. Here we are sewing together for the first time. I think he was pretty excited to finally be able to participate.

Earth Day

I'm a couple of days behind here but this is what we did on earth day. I got the idea from the blog:http://childhoodmagic.blogspot.com/

She has such great ideas! On Earth Day we also walked into town to buy some organic raspberries from our local natural store. Overall it was a great day. Especially since K finally took a nap after a week nap strike and it was 3 and half hours!

Dandelion Soup

The other day I decided I wanted to try and make dandelion soup. K and I spent the morning collecting dandelions from the yard.
We chopped up lots of veggies to add to the soup including these beautiful purple potatoes!
To take the bitterness out of the dandelions I boiled and drained them twice.
I fried the flower buds with butter and onions and added them to the soup.
Here is the soup all finished and ready for K to try. I have to say he wasn't a huge fan, but hey he's in an "I hate soup" phase at the moment. :)

The Wizard

I have hardly had any time for crafting lately as K has decided that napping is no fun. Finally today though I've gotten some gnome making time! I've been wanting to make a wizard gnome for ages and just kept putting it on the back burner. Ok really I think my next few gnomes will be females. I just need to start brainstorming.

The Huntress

I finished my first female gnome. Ok well I've made other females in the past, but this was my first female gnome with hair. I wanted to make a companion to my Robin Hood gnome that actually wanted to get in on the action. Now that I've figured out how to add hair to the gnomes I think I'm going to make a bunch of strong female characters. K was excited about this one and I could hardly take her photo as K kept grabbing her and making her dance around the table. :)

Spring Table Storage

What do you do with your spring table items that are out of season? When I first started my table (this past winter), I ran into this issue as I started to put items away. I didn't want to put them in a plastic tub. It seemed wrong to put all this time and effort into making all natural items and then shove them into plastic. So I made a big velcro bag for everything winter. Of course that now means I need to keep this up and make a bag for each season as needed.

You can see my winter bag is stuffed full as it contains all the holiday items also. So far spring only has our leprechaun gnome and some shamrocks.

Where do you store your nature table items?

Butterfly gnome gets a makeover

I sold my butterfly gnome the other day (yay!) and I've decided that as my gnome sell I will begin remaking them with the 100% wool. I really love working with this stuff. This is the updated butterfly gnome with the wool felt. The colors are a little different. Also are some pictures of K playing with the gnome as I was taking photos. I love that he instantly had to put that flower hat on. :)

No more paper napkins

I've been collecting used and vintage fabrics from a local recycle place called, "Arts and scraps." Its this great place that collects lots of factory discarded things including giant paper which I love. They also collect old fabric scraps. Some of the fabric is from half finished projects, some are scraps, some are swatches from clothing companies. Anyway we always find lots of great treasures when we go. For instance on our last visit we found a bunch of wooden eggs, a basket weaving kit, and some wool yarn.

So the past few days I've been cutting some of the fabric into squares and hemming the edges so that now I have a big bowl full of handmade napkins. I love that none of them match!

Spring Table Swap

Here are my latest spring table swap items. For this swap I sent the root children. I received this beautiful yellow play silk. I'm excited because its a different size then the ones we have at home. We also received this crocheted basket, a little wooden mushroom, a wool fairy, and two little felt ducks. K seems most excited about the basket and the ducks. I think I'm going to have to say that the ducks are my favorite too.

I keep trying to find patters to make more felt animals, but am having little luck. Does anyone have and great resources?

Easter nest

These darn glue nests just won't dry. I finally got one of them to dry by leaving it in the sun. Here is K's nest with one of the grass eggs in it. Hopefully I'll have more dry nests soon and can post a finished photo.

Another Knitted Chickeno

After knitting K's first chicken I just felt like you can't just have one chicken. Right? I dug through my yarn and found this great brown. This time I also use more of the wool felt. I really love this yarn. :) I think he might need a rooster now.

Knitted Snail

I've recieved my final Spring swap item from my local group (one mom couldn't make it and had to bring her swap items over later). I love this knitted snail! He is sitting on our nature table right now, but I think I'll eventually add him to K's basket of animals to play with. This reminds me. I should take a new nature table photo. It has changed a lot since my last one.

Wooden Buttons

I keep seeing these wooden buttons on people's blogs and really wanted to try and make some. I have no idea what I'm going to sew them on. They were pretty easy. First I sawed the pieces off of a branch. Then I drilled holes in them, sanded them, and used beeswax to polish them. I'll have to come back when I've actually used them on a project. I was thinking they would have been really cute on my root children. Perhaps next time.

Knitted Chicken

The other night while watching a little tv with Casey I knitted up this chicken. I just gave it to K and he is wondering around the house saying, "bocka bocka bocka." Silly boy.

Robin Hood Gnome

The other night I was inspired to make a fantasy gnome. He was really fun to make. I really want to make him a little companion gnome that has long hair. Its been a long time since I made a fantasy gnome for my etsy shop and now I keep thinking of all the possibilities. :)

Making Lotion

My mom and I made lotion today! So I meant to take a whole bunch of pictures of us making the lotion, but none of them really turned out. Sorry. Anyway a friend of mine gave this this lotion recipe from out of the book, Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Life. The lotion turned out so great I think I'm going to have to buy this book. We made two batches. The first was scented with grapefruit and the second was scented with rosemary. The process was pretty easy and we had a good time.

Local spring swap

We joined some other moms in a local spring themed craft swap. It was really fun to actually get together to swap. We had a giant pot of soup, breads, and other snacks to share, and our kids could all play together. I bought the crocheted mushrooms and received some great things in return. We received a recycled bird feeder, a tree with a hidey hole in the trunk, beanbags, a playscape garden, and one more item that hasn't arrived yet. :)

Felted Ball

I've been racking my brain on what to make for my cousin's baby shower. I decided to try my hand at a needle felted ball. The inside has an easter egg with a bell in it so it rattles. I'm pretty happy about how it turned out. I got the idea for a felted ball from Living Craft Magazine. My husband just bought me all the back issues for my birthday and I am loving them! Its actually pretty overwhelming because I want to make everything.

Anyway I loved making this ball so much I'm thinking I need to make K one and then perhaps make a couple for Etsy. We'll see.

Outdoor Silk Play

The Weather has been so nice. We are so happy to be able to get outside and play again. Now that K received new silks in his basket we have enough to tie them across the yard. K had a great time running in and out of them. We also spent some time building roofs and houses out of them. I wish I would have taken a picture of that as K was so cute sitting in his house saying, "house! house!" I'm thinking we might need to make a park play date with friends and tie our silks around trees. :)

A Homemade Easter

Here are a few pictures from easter morning. I loved using K's new silks as the basket stuffing. I think I'll keep that up every year. It was fun to fill his basket with lots of homemade goodies. As you can see from the pictures the little blue bag made by a swapper was his favorite. In another picture he is playing with a tiny bunny I felted.