Spring has sprung and that means it’s time again for kcwc! Kids Clothes Week Challenge is a bi-annual event here on elsie marley where I challenge you to sew one hour a day, each day for 7 days.  The idea is that we all have the urge to sew clothes for our children, but we don’t always give ourselves the time to do it.  If you commit to sitting in front of your sewing machine, or tracing patterns, or cutting fabric, for one hour each day, then at the end of the week you will have some very well dressed kids. And a very proud mama (or papa) too!

All you need to do to sign up is leave a comment on this post. If you would like to know more about kcwc you can check out the kcwc faq page. You can also head to the elsie marley flickr group to check out creations from kcwc past or see all my posts on kcwc here.

If you would like to sponsor elsie marley during kcwc, I would love to have you! Kcwc has become wonderfully successful, so much so that traffic to this little blog doubles during kcwc month! Sponsor spots go up a bit in price ($40) but it’s totally worth it. Drop me a line if you’d like to get in on the action. elsiemarleyblog@gmail.com

Okay! leave a comment and sign up! spread the word! and sew like crazy!

kcwc spring 2012 buttons:

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It feels like the fourth of July in Wisconsin, but Easter is still a few weeks away. I’m going to try not think the weather is apocalyptic, but rather start making things for spring. Here are a few projects from the elsie marley archives to get you going.

1. bean bag bunnies. These are still getting played with 4 years after I made them–that’s like 40 in toy years!

2. the quick little bunny. Recycled, fast, cute, this bunny gets it all right. It’s even more adorable with a bandanna!

3. homemade peeps. sugar high! sugar high! sugar high! sugar high!

4. eggs in the mail. Did you know you could send plastic eggs in the mail? Wouldn’t it be great to get one in your mailbox?

Got any good spring things in the works?

it’s been a while since my last installment of things on the internet that are awesome. So here you go, a few awesome things for spring.

–blocks as hooks. It is a super simple diy and super chic but still perfect for a kids room.

–cursive letters made into adorable animals. Just right for my little girl’s obsession with learning cursive.

-a perfect wooden mp3 player. Too bad it’s pricey as hell.

–wrapped, braided extension cords. This was a design sponge diy from a while back that I must have missed, but damn! isn’t it awesome? I love useful, sculptural, crazy art, but as my mother would say, “That’ll keep you busy.”

–estonian kringle.  Wouldn’t this be lovely on Easter morning?

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So my mother called me up this morning to ask where the hell my next blog post was. Well, actually, she was much nicer than that, but that was the jist of it. I’ve been away too long, I guess?

We actually have been away. To New York, no less!  Even though we got back last week, I haven’t really returned, you know?

I shouldn’t give my mother shit because she came down and looked after all the kids, while my husband and I traipsed off to Brooklyn to eat and drink and stare at buttons (that last one was just me).

and we drank ridiculously good coffee and saw long lost friends and discovered said friends read this little blog (hi christina!).

damn, now I want to go back.

I took all the homemade, wonky, gluey hearts down from the wall in my kids’ room and it looked so sad and bare. The room needed some cheering up! First I was thinking I would let the kids go crazy with washi tape, then I thought maybe we could make some paper flowers and tape them up, but then I saw this amazing wall.

My daughter and I headed to the craft store to buy some [faux] flowers. I’m usually not down with fake flowers–or even buying that much plastic at once–but I have to admit some of these flowers are very,very pretty. The weedy looking ones are my favorite. I do believe I’m the only woman in the world buying plastic weeds.

Luckily all the fake flowers were half off, so we went a little crazy picking them out. My daughter fell hard for the bubblegum pink roses covered in fake water droplets. I was not so smitten, but she was so in love. When we got home I was messing with the flowers to see if I could get them to look a bit more natural and when I pulled back the petals on the rose, it turned into this absolutely gorgeous bloom. You can see how the rose looks closed and open above.

To hang all the flowers on the wall, I cut the bunches apart with a wire cutter and trimmed most of the leaves off as well. Then marked five rows on the wall. Working from the top down I simply taped each flower up so it was in line with the one above it. My rows aren’t perfectly spaced or perfectly straight, but the it’s the contrast of orderliness and nature I was going for–that’s what drew me to the first photo of flowers on the wall. Also, it’s just plain awesome to have a field of flowers on your bedroom wall.

For 20 dollars and an hour of our time, we managed to get spring to come a bit earlier in Wisconsin. Not bad, not bad at all.