You say you’ll never dress your kids in matching outfits, but then you have a bunch of kids and realize how freaking cute it is when they wear matching outfits. So you do it even though you know they will hate you for it later.

The bow tie is of the fake variety. I made it with the help of a lemon squeezy tutorial. The tie tie is the real kind. The pattern is the little boy tie from the purl bee. I made one last year for easter as well. It’s a very mediative process, making a tie, lots of hand sewing and ironing. Sounds no fun, which is why I forgot how much I love it.

The whole orange/floral match matchy thing actually came from this dress, which came from a garage sale last summer that my husband and daughter went to. I wouldn’t have ever bought it and he doesn’t remember buying it, but whatever, we had it and it fits perfectly. I decided the tie was the worse bit about it, so I cut it off and made a new one.

Not perfect, but at least better. The orange headband was a last minute addition after my daughter cut herself some super de-duper short bangs. Right in time for grandma to see. Nice.

We had a lovely Easter with lots of  little kid cuteness and a beautiful brunch too. I hope your weekend was full of baskets stuffed with candy and not too many candy induced meltdowns.

I need a little help picking out material for curtains. Sadly this is the story of my life, which is why all the curtains in my house are white. I can not commit to a fabric. Ridiculous. The kids’ room is too white for white curtains. And they go to bed before it’s dark out these days, so they need a little light blockage action if they are ever going to get to sleep. Here are the windows (sorry one is a before picture, the other is a during): window one, window two. The fabrics I’m thinking about are pictured above, they are:

1. nani iro painting muji canvas
2. joel dewberry herringbone
3. nani iro saaaa saaa (it looks like I randomly typed some letters, but that’s really what it’s called)
4. alexander henry pirate grid

I want something dark blue and something hand drawn-ish.  So vote away! Tell me what to do. My kids will never sleep if you don’t tell me which to get. Really. And if you have any other suggestions, I love to hear them.

This is all a part of me redoing my kids room and you helping. The posts about the process so far are Before and During.

The winner of Teach Yourself VISUALLY Crafting with Kids is #7 : Krista who said

April 19, 2011 at 5:35 pm

i really like your version with the stick! we would love to win

Congratulations Krista! I’ll be in touch with you soon.

The photo doesn’t have to do with anything except that I am an out of work baker who uses her bench scraper to pick up legos. Also, I am a genius.

May is going to be a big month on elsie marley. I’ve got some fantastic interviews scheduled, a round up or two and of course the always amazing Kids Clothes Week Challenge. There are already over 100 people signed up!  KCWC has been such a big hit in the past that traffic on the blog doubles for the month. That means over 100,000 pages views! I want you (and your blog or shop) to get in on the action. Sponsor spots for May are 40 dollars because of those super big numbers.  I really try to keep the prices low enough that bloggers and indie shops can easily afford it–and I hope you can.

Sponsorship introduces my readers–almost 4000 subscribers to date–to your shop or blog. And it gives me the resources to create tutorials and patterns and all of the good stuff you love about elsie marley. If you are interested please drop me a line at

elsiemarleyblog@gmail.com

If you don’t have a blog or shop, but would still like to support my crafty endeavors. The best way to do that is subscribe through your email or an RSS reader (there is a subscribe button on the sidebar at the right). Then I know you are out there! And the more subscribers I get the more support I get the more projects you get!  Sound good?!

Jennifer Casa, from the fabulous blog Jcasa handmade, has written a very nice kid’s craft book called Teach Yourself VISUALLY Crafting with Kids and it is jam packed with projects for all your kids. I asked my daughter to look through the book and see which project she’d like to make. The answer turned out to be every single one.

So, I sat down with her and we leafed through the book together.  When we got to the Daily Docket project, I knew this was the one. Perpetual calendars are one of my very favorite things and as an added bonus we had almost all the materials on hand to make it.

Well, we didn’t have alphabet stamps, or rather we had L, Q, H, B and R, but we weren’t  playing Wheel of Fortune so it didn’t help us much. So instead of stamping the months and days on fabric I had my daughter write them on with a fabric pen. When she was finished we cut them out and glued them onto felt. I knew I was going to regret the glue I used and I did, because bleh, it shows through.  I should have sewed them or rustled up some fabric glue, but whatever.

For all the letters and numbers and clouds and things, I had my daughter draw them and then I made patterns from her drawings. This was a totally unnecessary step, but I think it made the project more hers than mine (which is was supposed to be, right?). The weather bit isn’t in the directions, but I had just seen Abby’s felt weather board and I thought it would be perfect with this project.

Because there were more little bits now with the weather forecast and because my children love to organize things, I sewed four pockets instead of making one big one. O.K. maybe I should stop, because wow, Meg, you sure are taking a lot of liberties with this project. I mean this is a review of a book, right?  I did make changes here and there while we were making the calendar, but that’s what is so great about this book. There are so many simple projects in this book that you can use them as jumping off points for your children’s crazy creativity. It’s nice to have tutorials and books that teach us to make something just so, but it’s also lovely to have open ended projects that your kids can enjoy over and over again, each time in a new way.

I made one more little change to Jennifer’s awesome project, one that I was kinda sad about. I used a stick (straight from the yard) to hang the calendar instead of grommets. The grommets are one of the coolest bits of this project, but sadly,  I am not cool enough to own a grommet setter. So a stick and some loops and ta da! a fantastically homemade perpetual calendar. So many good things rolled up into one!

Thank you Jennifer, for including me on your blog tour for your wonderful book! Would you like to own your very own copy? Jennifer has kindly offered a signed copy shipped to the door to one of my dear readers. Leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick a winner on Wednesday! Good Luck!

There are a few more stops on the bloggy book tour and some more chances to win a copy too:

• Wednesday, April 20 – Maya*Made
• Friday, April 22 – Stitches in Play
• Tuesday, April 26- Aesthetic Outburst
• Thursday, April 28 – Artsy Crafty Babe

THE GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED! KRISTA, #7 WON! YAY KRISTA!