If you have kids and don’t know about kids craft weekly, well you should.  I’ve subscribed to their newsletter for quite some time, but I’m embarrassed to say this is the first project we’ve ever done from it.  When we do art my kids are pretty happy with the process and not too interested in the result, but recently that’s changed.  These two projects are both from the 5 minute craft issue. And really with a 2.5 and 4 year old all crafts should be 5 minute crafts. The owls were a great for learning to cut more precisely (for the 4 year old) and to work on getting better with the scissors (for the 2.5 year old). The bean project was awesome (draw something with glue and have the kids put beans on the glue–easy peasy) and my daughter has requested we do it everyday since. They started off just doing letters, but wanted to pictures as well: pumpkins and beans (ha!) and smile faces (as they call them).

I think that is actually my owl. If you want to see the boy’s owl (grandma) it’s here.

The boy is doing such a good job with potty training (this week at least) that I thought I’d make him some special undies. Before the new baby this project would have taken an hour, now it takes a week. You forget just how dramatically the pace changes when you have a tiny baby. But they did get done, amazingly enough, and he likes them–and so do I, but it is hard to watch your work get peed on.

Yay to everyone participating in color week! Don’t worry, you don’t have to take pictures of changing leaves. There aren’t really that many here and we’re way up in Wisconsin. I just thought it would get everyone excited for fall–and hurry it up a bit. For all those in the southern hemisphere: you are of course welcome, even though it’s all pinks and greens in your springtime world now.

There has been a lot of weddingness all over the place these days. Craftzine had a handmade weddings series going and well I guess summertime is just a time for weddings. My best friend from high school is getting married this fall, so I’ve been looking at dresses and cakes and cute little wedding things for her. All of which has made me think about my wedding 6 years ago. We tried to be cheap and crafty and we were, but shesh not as crafty as brides and grooms these days. I was on craftster constantly while I was planning it and I remember I could click to see the day’s new post and there would be about 20 of them. Ha! now it’s a crafty behemoth! Anyway, this is all just a ploy to share what I made for my wedding, hoping that it will give others ideas. First the invitations:

I used balsa wood for the main invitation, painting a red/orange/pink stripe across the bottom and gluing the actual invitation to the back. My printer was my best friend for all of this and the map was my baby. We got married in the middle of nowhere (on the farm where my mother grew up!) so the map had to be detailed, but of course stylish as well. I am embarrassed to admit just how many hours I spent on it. And I have a huge mental block when it comes to any image editing software: I learn it for about 10 hours and then forget everything and have to relearn it all again.

A few crafty things we did: my sisters tied red ribbons on all the trees on the path that led up to the hill where we got married–it’s hard to decorate the woods, but this worked really well. My mom made jam for all the guests (thanks mom!) and I made a tag for each that then served as the place card. There are so many little things to do for a wedding, anything that can do double duty should. I don’t know if any one used these (the photo says, “tissues, just in case”) but it was a Martha idea that was easy and useful (I think I was still making them on the way to the wedding). And the last picture isn’t really crafty, but it was an fantastic idea (not mine). Instead of having a guest book, we had a stack of cards and asked the guests to write a little note to us and drop it in a bowl. It was much more personal then just a signature and I still like to read them. There were lots of other little things. I made stickers with numbers on them and printed all the guest’s names out of small pieces of paper, then we could stick the numbers next to the names for escort cards at the last minute because arranged seating is a delicate dance. We strung up a clothesline and clipped photos of ourselves when we were kids onto it–it’s nice to have something for the less social (usually me) to do while avoiding talking to people. And a bunch of other stuff, luminarias, programs, table numbers, candle holders. Weddings are a lot of work.

My dress was made out of my mother’s wedding dress, which was in such poor shape it couldn’t be repaired. I found a seamstress who specialized in vintage fabrics (in Chicago) and she created this amazing dress. I think she had, literally, a small handful of the original lace left when she was done. Not the nicest of women, but damn she could sew.

The piece d’resistance of my cheap and craftiness was this polyester fabric. I ordered 50 yards of it in red and pink from ebay (for like 20 bucks, it was ridiculous) and my brother climbed the tallest ladder we had to staple all of it to a tree branch (if you can’t tell that is at least 25 feet up). The tree was at the beginning of the path to the lake where we had our reception and made a beautiful curtain to walk through to get there. This is the only photo I could find of it and though we had the lengths of material pulled back for the party, when we went to clean up we untied them and someone took this amazing poloroid.

I don’t have any wise words for those planning their wedding now except maybe, become best friends with your printer, exploit all of your family and friend’s talents, and everything can be found second hand.

sorry. This week just got away from me (for many reasons, but I won’t bore you with them). Kristin over at plush you wrote my blog up in a list of 15 lovely blogs. Thank you kristin! I am supposed to pass on the link love by listing 15 newly discovered blogs that I have found. And what the hell, here goes:

1. beci orpin
2. sparkle power
3. the brick house
4. violetta estacalda
5. quinn
6. on hand modern
7. sweet sweet life
8. this tiny house
9. dolls and things
10. clever girl
11. lea redmond
12. the story girl
13. misako mimoko
14. seed stitching
15. at swim two birds

whew! have a good weekend (and may some of it be spent outside and not on the computer). see you sometime next week.

I am super excited about this little project: it’s an embroidery sketch book! Now that it’s springtime here in the midwest–and what a lovely spring it is, by the way–we are outside most of the day. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to knit or crochet, so the only portable project I have as a sewer is seam ripping, which is less than pleasurable. After doing a little embroidery for a quilt square I was reminded how much I like to embroider. If I came up with a real project to embroider I wouldn’t want to take it outside because it would inevitably get dropped in the sandbox or hosed down by the sprinkler, so I made a little book out of fabric and cardboard to take with me. I just cut out a piece of lightweight cardboard (from a cereal box) for the cover, making sure it was a little bigger then my smallest embroidery hoop when folded in half, so I could use the hoop for all the pages. Then I traced the cover onto some fabric (adding seam allowances), made a pocket to go across the whole thing, sewed up 3 sides, slipped the cardboard in, and sewed up the opening. Then I cut some gray and white linen for pages and sewed up the middle.  Done.  When I was thinking about making this sketch book, it was much more elaborate with lots of pockets and pin cushions (more like this) but in the end I wanted something I could make fast, use up, and then make again. Now we’re off to the park.

For more photos look here, and here.