recrafted::crayons

Like every other family out there with toddlers, we have a bucket of crayons.  I have to be truthful here, I love crayons.  I was really looking forward to those lazy afternoons where we would all sit down at the kitchen table and color with our box of Crayola.  You know, like a Norman Rockwell picture.

And like oh-so-much about parenting let me give all you non-parents a little insight into the crayon.  Crayons break very easily and leave little crayon lint everywhere.  Crayons get their wrappers torn off bit-by-painfully-little-bit and all those damn bits of crayon wrapper end up in every corner of your house.  Crayons are very easy to bite into and then spit out.  Not that I have a child that does that (I’m looking at you, CLAIRE).  Crayons get dumped onto the floor in a giant heap so the bucket can be used as a helmet.   And also, Laura informs me that some crayons DON’T WASH OFF.  What the hell?!

The one thing kids don’t do with crayons?  Draw a picture.

Anyway one day I had a fit.  A huge, giant, child-like fit because once again an enormous pile of crayons was in the middle of my living room getting kicked around.  Crayons were flying under the couch.  Crayons were being thrown about.  Crayons were leaving their nasty little crayon lint everywhere.  I got mad and I picked up all those damn crayons, chopped them to bits in my mini chopper (oh, that was a bad, bad, bad idea) and then melted the shit out them.

 

 

 

So now I have a small basket of pretty little crayon shapes!  The kids love them.  They feed them to their dolls, they line them up, they pretend they are little people, they trace them, they put them in their car/train/tractor and drive them around. 

The one thing they don’t do with the pretty, little crayon shapes? Draw a picture.

At least they aren’t leaving crayon lint behind anymore.

Kid Designed Stuffies

I’m almost done the handmade holiday blog posting, in case you find this agonizing. Just think, my New Year’s Resolution was to start on next year’s Christmas crafts immediately so there is just going to be that much more talk about crafing. Yay! Right?!

These little guys were made for my neice and nephew. This was really my god-daughter, Julia’s idea. I think what happened was that she wanted an Ugly Doll and Michelle took one look at the price of an Ugly Doll and told Julia that Auntie Amber could make one. I assumed all this because the next time I saw Julia she asked me to make her an ugly doll like it was a given I could. At the time I had absolutely no idea what the hell an ugly doll was so I told her she’d have to draw me a picture. This led to a conversation about the book Stitched In Time, where there is a featured project of a horse that the author’s niece drew and the author subsequently turned it into a (gorgeous!) stuffie.
And so… I’ve been meaning to make one of Julia’s drawings into a stuffie for, oh, about a year. Except that her brother, Ben, also drew me several pictures to be made into stuffies and for the life of me I can’t find those drawings. Ben has asked me consistently where his ‘ugly doll’ is, or if I’ve knit him a stuffie yet. Like maybe an owl? Or a bat? He asks every time I see him, so I couldn’t in good conscience make a stuffie for Julia and then not have one for him, too. I’m getting a new pile of drawings from Ben, so until that happens I’m holding off making the doll for Julia.


That is why my niece and nephew had their drawings turned into stuffies and once again Michelle and family are strangely suffering for no real apparent reason. Talk about a whole bundle of fail going on here. That said, now that I’ve made these I learned a lot and so the next ugly dolls I make are going to be SO much better than these. So, you know, there’s that.
I should have just bought a damn ugly doll and saved you from having to read those last three paragraphs.


Steve and I both think these dolls are seriously creepy and couldn’t possibly imagine a kid enjoying them one bit. My kids, though? LOVE THEM. I had to tear that ugly “rabbit” out of Claire’s hands while she screamed “MY BUNNY” after I had her pose for these photos.

Callum randomly draws me pictures and then demands that I make them into a stuffie for him. I’ve started something. You’ll also notice that I rather stupidly put the face on the wrong side of both dolls. At least I’m consistent.

Claire’s Christmas Present

This year I had planned out very specific gifts for the kids. First, Santa was bringing the piano that they had to share. The piano was actually an expensive gift (in my mind, anyway) and I felt like I needed to scale back the spending when it came to the gifts from Steve and I. I decided on a book, a game for Family Game Night, and a toy. The games I got via a convenient $10 off coupon on my cereal boxes, the books I bought on discount (although the book Santa left wasn’t so cheap, Santa apparently doesn’t do deals I guess) and then I was left with the toy.
Initially I had planned to make both toys, or rather, I’d make Claire’s and Steve would make Callum’s. Months ago we picked up the beginnings of a wooden truck at the SOS and I found the plans to finish it, unfortunately Steve decided that it would take too long to get it done for Christmas. Thankfully the Scouts saved the day as they had a wood toy sale and were selling well crafted wood toys for CHEAP. Win-win. I supported a local cause, got my awesome hand-made wooden truck and it didn’t cost me $80 (the price I’ve regularly seen these trucks sell for, I paid $35 in case you’re curious).

Of course, said truck spent most of Christmas morning pulling a plastic bus… which, well, you know.
Claire’s gift came together exceptionally cheaply because I put it all together with felt I had on had – a felted pizza and cake! All I bought was the pizza box, for a $1 at our local pizza place, the ric rac on the cake and the cake pan at the thrift store. Me so smart, yes?


There are many, many, many tutorials online showing you how to make every imaginable felted food, and I loosely based the cake and the pizza on several tutorials and then, you know, just did my own thing. I even made a personalized sticker to cover the pizza place logo with one that says “Claire’s Pizzeria”, since she is her own pizza chef, and doesn’t work for Poppa’s after all.

The kids are having a blast making dinner and dessert, especially since they also got a set of wooden cupcakes you can decorate with markers from Auntie Michelle (markers, that thankfully, wash out of everything they’ve touched so far!). Even though that little microwave stand turned kitchen is the most used item in the house, hands down, I do think I will have to put an end to buying things for it. It’s stocked. Very well stocked.