Dashing Dan and Bella

I would like to introduce Lily's playdough creatures - 'Dashing Dan' and 'Bella'.

The buttons on the side are their cheeks, apparently.

I can't wait until she can control a pencil well enough to draw these things.

A little goodness

How nice is it to receive a package in the mail? Especially when it is full of goodness.

I have been drooling over most of the stuff in Leslie's Etsy shop for months and months now and when she announced a 30% sale I decided that my time had come. First I got a little packet of stamps for Lily (& I) to play with and then I selected a modest little selection of cute fabric.

When it all arrived (this morning! Who knew they delivered on a Saturday?) I was so happy with what I had chosen. I just love the feel of the linen blends and those elephants are just so incredibly cute.

The only trouble that I face now is in deciding what to do with it...

P.S. Leslie is closing up her shop (to move home to Canada) and is now having a 40% off sale on most of her products. So pop over there for a look around if you like lovely fabric. (She also has a lovely blog).

A space to play

Lately we have been rearranging our home a little - creating better spaces for stuff and our activities. As things settle in, I thought that I would share some of our new spaces with you.

First up are a couple of Lily's spaces:

A space for crafting

A space for dressing-up

A quiet space

A space for toys

Felt makin'

I have finally kicked back into gear and started work on making Lily and her cousin's felt food for Christmas. You might remember that I made a tomato some time back. Well, now I have finished a carrot (and another one is almost done) and I am close to finishing a corn (which is currently serving nicely as a pin cushion...).



The thing is that I simply cannot believe how much work these little things are. There is so much detail to sew and it is taking me forever. Perhaps I just need a little more practice...

Of course it doesn't help that I have become completely obsessed with the idea of making toadstools in the meantime. There are some great free tutorials available online! I just had to start making one of them to satisfy my new-found obsession. I'll post some picture when I've got a nice little group of them growing on my desk.

Fortunately Lily is quite fond of hanging out in my sewing room/study while I do all this makin'. To facilitate this I made her a felt board to play with on a low table.




Though, of course, she would rather be sewing on my machine!

Lily's 'people'

I was looking at our empty toilet paper rolls this afternoon (as you do) and thought that I should save them to use for some craft projects with Lily when she gets a little older. And then I thought: why not just do the craft now?

So, Lily and I made some 'people'. Lily's favourite role was gluing (the people and everything else in sight), but she also made big contributions to the drawing of their clothes and hair as well.



Afterwards Lily started playing with them and then said to me: "Picture. Papa." So I got out the camera to take a photo of her with her people. It was gorgeous seeing her "prepare" for the shoot.

Finger painting - a new Tuesday tradition?

Since the weather has been getting nicer outside, I decided that Lily and I needed to do some more messy crafty activities at home. So, last Tuesday I thought that we would try some finger painting. In order to do this I made some 'paint' from a mixture of corn flour, water and food colouring and set it up outside with a fair bit of paper.



Lily loved it. She was able to smear the 'paint' everywhere and the bright colours showed up on the paper without really staining anything else. Next thing I knew, Lily - creative genius that she is - decided that her painting needed to include more textures and set about gathering things from the deck to add to it. I was very impressed with the results and resolved to do this again and to try to provide her with some more 'natural additions' from the beginning.



Well, of course, I completely forgot about it until this morning when Lily started asking for "Painting: finger painting."


OK, I thought, and made her some more paint (my first attempt was rather lumpy because I didn't mix the corn flour with cold water before adding the boiling water - because I I have a bad habit of rushing ahead of instructions). I set it up outside again and gathered a little bowl full of leaves, berries and flowers and stood back.

Life doesn't always turn out how you plan does it?



The next thing I knew Lily had broken into her sandpit and was busily tipping handfuls of sand on to her paper and into the 'paint'. Then she went on her own nature gathering mission and 'collected' dirt and dry leaves from nearby pot plants to add to her mix (smearing paint around the deck as she went). The collage that I had envisaged didn't exactly eventuate, but Lily had fun and that was the whole point really...



I am not sure what I will bring out next Tuesday.