Felt Cookies

Since O will be getting a kitchen set for her 2nd birthday in July, I decided to go ahead and start making felt food for her. I had a great time making these cookies (with my mom's help because I CANNOT do a decent blind stitch!), and they were super easy to make (except for the blind stitch). O doesn't get to eat cookies very often. In fact, I think she's only had one chocolate cookie in her life, but I know she'll love pretending to eat them. Next on my list to make are fried eggs, pancakes, bow tie pasta, ravioli, linguine, cheese quesadilla, cupcakes, carrots, carrot slices, banana slices, bread, tomato slices, lettuce, cheese, etc. I think all of those foods will be fairly easy to make and then maybe I'll branch out to the more difficult items. If anyone has any experience making felt food, I need all the suggestions and advice I can get. I found a few pictures and patterns on Crafster that I'll use as inspiration, and I'll also look at pictures of felt food at Etsy for ideas.

Our Doll Family

Here they are! Dada, O, and Mama. O has had lots of fun playing with them. She wore Mama and O in her back in the sling, and she had O get her milkies from Mama. Very cute!

Sewing Dolls

I was inspired by the beautiful dolls made by JojoEbi and decided that dolls would be a great Spring Break project. After I made the first doll (with my mom's help, since I am a novice), I decided that O would LOVE to have a family of dolls. Today we worked on the Dada and O dolls and finished the Mama doll. My sister was excited about the dolls, and she quickly made one for her daughter. Hopefully, I'll have a pic tomorrow. We've had a great time making them and working together. My mom, sister, and I all have different things that we like about sewing, so its good that we can work as a team. We are going to try to have monthly sewing/craft days.

O's Easel

O's grandmother recently gave her an easel that belonged to O's Uncle William when he was a little boy. We put it in her porch playroom today, and she enjoyed painting on it with water. She's still a little short for it, but she seemed to really enjoy herself (and after yesterday we are keeping all water play outside for a while). I was glad to see that it has a chalkboard side (although I'm not especially fond of chalk), so that she can paint with water on it. For a great post on easels look here. The comments were especially interesting. Thanks, Grandmother, for sharing William's easel with us!

Painting with Gumballs

I've been wanting to paint with gumballs ever since we painted with marbles and today seemed like a good day to give it a try. I poured the paint into 2 bowls, and O dropped a gumball into each bowl. We shook the bowl around to coat the gumball with paint, and then O poured the gumball into the box.

Then we shook the box around (our piece of paper was in the bottom) to move the gumball around.

Here is the finished product. Its not nearly as nice as the marble painting, but it was fun!

After we finished the first painting, O enjoyed dipping the gumball into the paint and dotting the paper with it. She also painted with a stick for a while. It was great to paint outside!

Coloring on a Box

Dh brought home a box from work, and I was sure that O would like to play in it. Wrong! She's shown no interest in it at all. Tonight dh suggested that we get out her markers and color on the box. What a great idea! I was very impressed with him. O loved it! We all scribbled some, and then dh and O had fun tracing their hands, feet, and shoes on the box. O also loved taking the marker tops on and off. Thanks Elliott for your fun idea!!!

Finger Painting in the Tub

O fingerpainted in the tub tonight. This time we used store bought fingerpaint instead of homemade fingerpaint, and it worked much better. O had fun, and she made a few masterpieces.

Painting with Marbles

The idea for this painting activity came from Wondertime magazine. We put a piece of paper in the bottom of a shoe box, put a few drops of paint into small containers, dropped marbles into the containers, rolled the marbles around to cover them with paint, dropped the marbles into the shoe box, and shook the box around to make art! It was super easy, not very messy, and tons of fun!
O is dropping the marble into the shoe box.
Shaking the box.
The finished products- we were quite proud!

Next time I'll use a smaller shoebox that doesn't have an attached lid, so it will be easier for O to manage. This was another activity in which O was very closely supervised, so that the paint covered marble did not end up in her mouth.

Dots n Dashes Sponge Tip Painters

Yay! We can paint outside of the bathtub after all! I told my mom that I wanted to get O a set of these paints since she loves dots so much, and my mom said that she already had some in her closet, and she would find them for us. Yay! (I'm not the only one who stores random kid stuff in my closet!) The painters make painting mess-free (except for our hands which were quite colorful after we finished our paintings). We had a great time, and O got to make lots of dots!

Beads, Bells, and Pipe Cleaner Necklace

O and I had fun making a necklace today out of beads, bells, and pipe cleaners. O was thrilled and very proud of the finished product!

I should have said earlier that O was very closely supervised while making and playing with this necklace. At 19 months old, she still occasionally puts random things in her mouth. A child her age should never have access to beads, bells, etc without an adult right beside them.

Tuesday's Art

O colored with markers for the 1st time today, and it was LOTS of fun!

Finishing our Valentine's

O and I had fun finishing our Valentine's this morning. She needed a little help spreading the glue on the backs of the hearts because she really wanted to just dig her fingers into the glue and spread it on the table. She did a good job patting the hearts into place, and I did hand over hand with her to sign her name. She was VERY proud of the finished product!

Making Valentines- Step 1

O and I started working on our Valentine's tonight. I cut out lots of hearts out of computer paper and taped them to the bathtub wall. O painted them with red, pink, and white paint. She actually had much more fun painting herself and the tub, and she needed lots of prompting to actually paint the hearts. Tomorrow we'll glue the hearts to construction paper to make cards. This was LOTS of fun, and we'll definitely be painting in the bathtub for a while (maybe years because this girl is MESSY!)

O's Art

After reading JoJoEbi's blog post about her son's magnetic drawings, I decided to get O's drawing board out of the closet (I put it away before Christmas. I keep only a few toys out at a time), and put away a couple of puzzles that she was losing interest in. O was super excited to see the drawing board this morning, and she's been scribbling all day. Here is O's 1st collage. We looked at magazines together and she chose the pictures which I then cut out. She was very definite about which pictures she wanted. I showed her how to use the glue stick, and we glued the pics to the construction paper. Can you tell we were looking at a Pottery Barn Kids catalog :) ?

Making Finger Paint

I've been planning on making finger paint with O for weeks, and we finally did it today. O really enjoyed it, and she learned about colors and mixing colors. She loved to squeeze the food coloring into the mixture, but the most fun was stirring the paint. We used the easiest recipe I could find - 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of cold water and food coloring. It was a little thicker thank I would have liked, and it didn't spread very well. We put O in the bathtub with paper taped to the walls for her to paint on. She wasn't too impressed. She had more fun putting the lids on and off the containers than she did painting. She was a little distressed when she accidentally got a handful of paint, but she enjoyed painting her tummy after we talked her into it. I think we'll try watercolor paint tomorrow.

Painting with Water

I've been feeling guilty lately that O is 18 months old and has never painted. I know painting with water isn't really painting but I thought it was better than nothing. It was also an easy activity to take with us on our snow skiing vacation. I forgot to take paintbrushes, but luckily O's grandmother had a couple of make-up brushes that she let us use. O had lots of fun, but she was concerned later when she saw blue and green paint stains on her hands.

Art Activity

I'm trying to do more arts and crafts activities with O, and this was what we did on Friday. My boss gave me a glass Christmas platter with a raised scene, so we did a crayon rubbing of the scene. It would have turned out better if I had taped the paper to the platter, but we still had lots of fun, and O was very proud to show her art to her daddy when he got home from work.