making sewn valentine's day cards

We are officially ready for Valentine's Day. For once I got a jump on a holiday and  had the kids make cards a little bit in advance. We tried something different this year: sewn cards. You can sew perfectly fine through card stock, so that's what we did this year. I found these scalloped flat cards at Staples (sorry, couldn't find the cards on their website). They come in maybe 8 colors with mix & match envelopes.

I am nothing if not well stocked with fabric scraps, so the kids went to town picking fabrics to cut into heart shapes. I tried not to interfere with their choices. The more naive, the better with these cards.

I had them cut out hearts freehand, some with pinking sheers and some with standard scissors.

Both of my kids like to use the sewing machine. There is nothing special to sewing on the paper and any crookedness makes them better, I think.

I'm not a scrapbookin' type, but I recently got this set of vintage-style alphabet rubber stamps from Etsy. Lots of supply shops carry them, but set your search to "shop local" (ie. USA) if you don't want to deal with overseas shipping. They are perfect for finishing off the cards and, well, scrapbooking too ;)

Happy Valentine's Day!

block printed christmas wrap project

This week, I don't know what happened, but I was seized by a fit of craftiness à la Martha Stewart. Maybe it was residual inspiration from my trip to Galbraith & Paul a couple of weeks ago. I corralled the kids and put them to work on making some Christmas wrap. I had a couple of rolls of kraft paper and some other supplies, it was raining, and I just didn't feel like going out to Target for the store bought stuff. The kids wound up having a blast with it, so it was a win-win. And I do think it adds a nice handmade touch to our gifts.

To do this project you will need:
-package of sticky-back foam sheets
-scissors
-pen
-washable kids' paint such as Crayola
-paint brushes
-plastic plates to use as palettes
-small foam rollers (optional)
-wood scraps such as from a 1x4 board
-roll of kraft paper

The foam self-stick sheets we picked up at Michael's were on the thin side, so we doubled them up before cutting our shapes. Thicker is better for clear prints. Simple shapes work best (the bell/toilet plunger shape didn't make the cut). The most complicated shape was the Santa had because it requires 2 colors of paint.

We didn't have any rollers on hand so we used the spread & dunk method. Spread the paint fairly thin with a brush on the plate and dunk the stamp in it.

Coverage should look about like this- not too goopy. If you have rollers, roll on the paint and it will give a similar effect, more even to tell the truth, but we let go of our perfectionist tendencies for this. Or you can use a paintbrush to apply the paint thinly to the stamp.

Then stamp away, reloading between each stamping.

Hours of fun for the kiddos, especially if you have your Charlie Brown Christmas cd playing in the background and Christmasy junk food to nosh on.

a pleasant hike along the delaware river

We opted to skip the Black Friday sales last weekend. The cousins were in town and the weather was warm, so we decided to do a mini-hike in Old New Castle, DE along the Delaware River instead. To get to the start of the hike, you enter the town via rt 273/Delaware Street and take it past Jessop's Tavern and all the way to the end where there is a small parking lot and dock. Old New Castle itself is a historic 17th century town that is quaint to go exploring in, but today we chose to walk along the water through Battery Park and the paved trail that makes a short, doable 3 mile round trip.

click to enlarge map

The kids whined a little at the idea of a hike, but this is a great one for kids. Being close to the mouth of the river and the bay, the shore is sandy and covered with beachy stuff. There is a lot of driftwood to pick through, some shells, and a good amount of sea glass to find.

It's a picturesque walk despite the power plants visible across the way. 

Battery Park has some osage orange trees that have dropped their fruit. Although not an uncommon tree, we'd never noticed one or seen its distinctive fruit before. Not related to citrus trees at all, the osage orange is named so because of the pleasant citrusy smell of its fruit. They aren't edible are said to repel ants and look good in a bowl with gourds.

Once under way, we realized there must be some geocaches set up on the route. Sure enough, a check of the smartphone there were 3 to find which kept the kids going, even running, during the hike.

What kids doesn't like a treasure hunt?

Near the start of the hike was this old ticket booth from a now defunct railway line. We'll come back another time to tour the whole town and visit the Read House and the other historical sites. There is a garden tour in the summer that I haven't been to in years...

fun with ink jet printable cotton

It's a gorgeous time of year here in northern Delaware!

With all the leaves falling, my daughter was inspired to do a craft with her friends involving leaves.

I recently discovered these nifty ink jet printable fabric sheets by Jaquard at my local sewing store, Hayes Sewing Machine Co.

I used them to make the face on my new matryoshka doll onesie & tee. When my daughter saw me using it, she started thinking of things to scan and print out on the stuff.

Leaves work great. Once you've scanned them and printed them onto the sheets, which print just like paper, you peel off the backing and have a nice piece of fabric with your imagery on it.

We decided to make the leaves into iron-ons by applying another favorite product of mine, fusible web, to the back side. I really like Warm Company's Steam-a-Seam Lite 2. It has a waxy paper backing on both sides. Cut the web to the size of the fabric sheet, then peel off one side of the backing. Place tacky side down onto the back side of the printed sheet and iron until adhered. Now the leaves can be cut out. We left white around the edges, but you could trim right up to the edges of the leaf if you wanted to.

You could do just about anything with the iron-ons- decorate your jeans, apply to a tote bag, but we decided to make 12" x 12" pillows out of some corduroy from my stash. To make a 12" x 12" pillow we figured out we needed to cut a 25" x 13" rectangle to allow for the seam allowances and folding in half to make the front/back. To apply the iron-ons, peel off the 2nd layer of paper from the back and place on the background fabric. When arranged pleasingly, just iron.

Appliqué-aholic that I am, I had the girls stitch around the leaves as well which was good practice for pivoting and controlling the stitching. The web is great, but doesn't necessarily last forever, especially if you wash your item, so it's nice to sew them down. Speaking of washing, if you plan to wash your printed fabric, wait 24 hours, then soak it in some salt water, rinse, and allow to dry. It'll fade a little, but still be pretty and unlikely to run and fade dramatically with future washes.

After the appliquéing, sewing up the sides with 1/2" seam allowances, stuffing, and closing the last bit was a piece of cake. It was a totally doable project for 10 year-olds. I think they did a lovely job!

lavender lemonade (small batch) recipe

Ever since the PA Lavender Festival, I've had lavender lemonade in the back of my mind. Today I noticed we had a few lemons lying around, so why not try making some? My boy loves to use the manual juicer, so I let him go to town.

Here is my small batch recipe- which makes only 2 or 3 glasses- adapted from the larger batch recipes out there:
1 cup hot water
2 TBS culinary lavender
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (from 3 or 4 lemons)
1 cup cold water
ice (duh)

I bought a few bags of culinary lavender on our trip to Willow Pond Farm.

The first step is to steep the lavender in the hot water until it cools. Strain out the buds, then dissolve the sugar in the lavender water. Mix in the lemon juice and cold water and serve over lots of ice.

This drink may be my new favorite, putting the Arnold Palmer in the #2 slot. Oh, it is so good!

collage poetry for kids

I'm trying something different with the kids this summer. I did not sign them up for any day camps like I usually do. I realized last summer that I was doing almost as much running around, picking up and dropping off for camps, as I was during the school year. It didn't feel like much of a summer break when we still had to be out the door by a certain time, and the kids weren't available to do anything spur-of-the-moment. Plus, I was tired of them coming home from camp with stupid "crafts" made from that sticky-back foam from the big box craft store that comes pre-cut into shapes so you don't have to think to make something.

So we kicked off the summer with a trip down to my parents for art "camp" in Mom's studio. Both kids had a good time making sculptures out of wood scraps and found objects. 

No, they did not get to use the chop saw!

Mom was working on some collages that Emma latched onto right away.

Rosemary Luckett

Something about the cut-out words makes the phrases more spontaneous. I liked them a good deal myself and think some version would be cool in her Etsy shop. Right now they are in book form.

Rosemary Luckett

Emma immediately wanted to try her hand at the word collage poetry.

It's actually the perfect craft to do at home or school. All you need are magazines or junk mail, scissors, paper, and a glue stick. It's even more fun than those refrigerator magnets with the single words. Cut out some random partial phrases, single words, and words like "and" and "the".

She came up with these delightful random mini-poems.

I think I like that last one the best.

geocaching along the northern delaware greenway

It was looking like Easter weekend was going to be a bust weather-wise. Then the sun came out Saturday afternoon just as my brother was arriving with his brood for the weekend. Perfect weather for a hike along the Northern Delaware Greenway which cuts through our neighborhood.

But how to get the kids on board? Our children are at the age where they want to be on the computer all the time, even on a nice day. It's a challenge to get them interested in something else without whining. My brother's solution: Geocaching. I'd never heard of this before, but it's been going on for years. Using a device with a GPS such as an iPhone, you hunt for hidden "treasure" by setting off on foot and tracking a route to the treasure with the device. Using the iPhone app, we determined there were 3 within easy walking distance in Rockwood Park. There are over 1 million of these treasures all over the world, hidden well enough so to not be found by accident by someone not in on the game, but not so well that kids can't find them with a little help.

The "treasures" are small low-value items like key chains, silly bands, and the like.

 

If you take out an item, you're supposed leave something of similar value behind and sign the log book.

The first cache we found had been placed in its hiding spot in 2004 and had a long list of visitors. The GPS said it was 8 feet away when we were right on top of it. So it's not accurate down to the last foot, but accurate enough.

The Mayapples were up. I love these little umbrellas underneath the trees.

The cold storage house at Rockwwod.

Doing a circuit around the manor house at Rockwwod. Get them outside on an adventure and they can run for miles. Hike for hiking's sake- not so much.

The final cache was a small bottle with tiny rolled up log inside. The kids were thrilled with the whole adventure.

 

Such a pretty time of year here in northern Delaware!