For friends

We are very lucky to be a part of a fantastic play group, with lots of really wonderful kids and their interesting, thoughtful, and often hilarious moms and dads. Over the next month we will be celebrating the birthdays of five of the kids, so I wanted to make some of their gifts myself instead of completely breaking the bank on plastic stuff from China. So there's Little Omi modeling a sweet panda bear scarf, from Aranzi Aronzo's Cute Stuff. Next we (yes, Omi helped!) made these little bean bags. I used double-sided fusible interfacing to make the letters and numbers and then just stitched around them onto the circles to reinforce the glue. The actual bags are circles (I used an old cd to trace onto the fabric) cut with pinking shears, then sewn with wrong sides together. I left a small opening so we could fit a funnel in and fill them with rice (this is the part where Omi helped), then stitched the opening up by machine. Hope our friends will like them!

(Sorry for the awful pics. It was dark outside when I finally finished the bean bags and I couldn't wait for the photo shoot.)

I'll deal with my procrastination problem later

This week I had a lot of chores to do, like taking all our income tax information to the accountant, making an appointment for a haircut, calling a tree trimmer to remove a branch left over from the ice storm, and packing for our upcoming trip to visit Aunt Sassy. So of course I decided it would be a good week to build Little Omi a cardboard kitchen. Needless to say, the kitchen was completed long before the chores (in fact right now I'm still not packed and we're leaving tomorrow).

I used these instructions, which cost a very reasonable $7, although I see the price has gone up to $8 recently. We were lucky enough to find a really huge double-walled box behind the new Circuit City and all of the pieces came from it. I had to make some minor adjustments so that we could fit Little Omi's new stove top on the stove side, but it worked out pretty well. I'm waiting to add the sink. Right now the counter space seems too valuable; Little Omi likes to make omelets and bake muffins and she needs room to crack eggs and fill muffin tins.

Of course no new kitchen would be complete without a nice oven mitt. This photo shows the sweet Amy Butler fabric that was also used for the curtain above. (Thanks so much to L for introducing me to Quiltworks, my new favorite local fabric shop!)

While we were at it, we may as well make some little napkins to go with the tea set. Grandma had the bright idea of fringing the edges, which gave them that little something extra, I think.

eBay + imagination = LOVE

I've been on the hunt for a nice tea set for Little Omi for quite some time now, ever since she started to bring Big Omi and I imaginary bits of food she had plucked off the furniture or walls. I didn't think my criteria would be too difficult to meet; after all, I just wanted something simple, that adhered to the basic principles of good design, didn't require batteries, wouldn't break if mishandled by an almost 2-year-old, and, if possible, wasn't pink. It turns out that most tea sets on the market these days fail to meet any of my standards. The tin set at Magic Cabin is passable, but the design is a little busy... and pink. There's also a Curious George set, but Little Omi doesn't even know who Curious George is yet. Moolka.com has a couple of nice wooden tea sets, but neither one comes with more than 2 cups, and while you'd have to check with Martha on this one, in my opinion one cannot hold a proper tea party with only 2 cups.



Eventually I realized I was searching for the tea set of my own childhood: a Fisher-Price white plastic set with yellow flowers on the tea pot, yellow lids for the tea pot and sugar cup, 4 tea cups and saucers, and 4 fat little yellow spoons, all nestled in their own little divided sections of a sky blue tray. Enter Grandma and eBay, and today we held our very first little tea party with the newly-procured tea set of my childhood (sans tray, but perhaps that will show up some time, too). Little Omi was ready for it. She seemed completely stunned and excited by the idea that we could all pretend to be drinking tea, stirring in sugar and cream and refilling our cups frequently.

Here's the rest of the happy gathering. While Miffy and Baby Doll were perfect guests, Paddington Bear was quite rude, demanding spoonful after spoonful of sugar in his cup, and making very loud slurping noises when he drank. Perhaps it was because he wanted a cookie; he was never offered one and eventually they were all eaten by Okasan and Grandma.

A very small diaper

Little Omi has started displaying mothering tendencies by carrying her dolls around and patting them reassuringly on the behind and trying to feed them at the dinner table. I decided that it's never too early to teach a kid how to put a diaper on a baby, so I made a little cloth diaper for her Miffy doll.

This is my first attempt at sewing doll clothes. And as Tim Gunn says, good clothes are nothing without good undergarments, so I guess it's a good thing I started with the basics.

Here's Miffy modeling her new diaper. Why is she also wearing a hat and mittens, you ask? Well, you and I know that they come off, but Little Omi doesn't know that yet, so for now let's just keep it between us, k?



And here's our model seconds later, naked as a jay bird (except for the hat and mittens, keeping her hands and head nice and toasty). Well, we did already know Little Omi was a pro at taking diapers off. I guess it'll be awhile before she's into the whole diapering thing. But when she is, she has her own diaper bag to store it in!

TK-421, Why aren't you at your post?

I've written before about my love of Legos and admitted that there is a large quantity of them in our house, stashed away in a closet so Little Omi can't play with—er, choke on them. Today I noticed these adorable little stormies, which had been a prized acquisition before Little Omi was born, now gathering dust after having been tossed carelessly into a bowl of spare (and mostly foreign) change. Ah, parenthood. It does rearrange one's priorities, doesn't it?

Flashback Friday: Favorite Activity

The theme for Flashback Friday this week is Favorite Activity or Toy. Unfortunately, and quite astonishingly, I don't have any photos of me playing with Legos, which was probably my all-time favorite toy as a child (and those of you who know me in person also know that there are Legos to be found in our house at this very moment, and they're not Little Omi's!). I was heavily into the Castle series and had a whole portion of the floor in my room dedicated to my castles and surrounding forests.

While playing Legos was primarily a solo activity, by far the most popular toys my sister and I played with together were our My Friend Mandy and Jenny dolls, or "Mands and Jens" as we called them. We also had Becky and Mikey, and although you may remember Charles and Diana's as the biggest wedding event of the 1980s, you obviously did not receive an exclusive invitation to the nuptials of Mandy and Mikey. We worked for days on this big wedding. Our mom made all the dresses by hand. Sis and I made tiny tulle-wrapped rice baggies. And the whole event went off without a hitch, or apparently a wedding photographer, because we have no photos of it!

In the summers in Colorado, my sister and I turned our attention to our Lincoln Logs. I have to admit we spent many hours building, demolishing, and re-building to perfection "The Lincoln Lodge" even into our teen years. By this time, we insisted we were building, not playing. Note the distinction!

I am not sure if we built a huge number of sandcastles together, but I just happen to have TWO photographs commemorating this craft. I think they were taken in the same year. The top photo was taken on our road trip to the Pacific Northwest; I remember wearing that satin-heart-covered sweatshirt and wondering why so many people were still mistaking me for a boy. The photo below was taken at our grandparents' cabin in Colorado, and I'm pretty sure that shortly afterwards, we were busy playing with our Star Wars action figures in this castle/Hoth snow fort.

Bend the rules

I picked up a copy of Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing a few weeks ago, but I haven't had a chance to try out any of the patterns until now. This little turtle is my second attempt at making soft toys, and let me just say, I don't think I'm quite up to a third attempt just yet. I think I need to gain a bit more patience before I give it another go. Plus, I'm very bad at following written instructions. I grew up on Lego instructions, which are in my book the pinnacle of all instructions, and so I appreciate well-thought-out and very clear directions. For some reason, whenever I'm reading written instructions and I don't understand something, I automatically assume they are wrong, and then I plow ahead doing what I think is right. This often ends in disaster, or at least having to go back and really concentrate on each sentence to figure out what it means.

Overall, I love the book. The projects are all really cute and snappy. Just don't try to learn how to tie a French knot from the poorly-drawn picture at 12:45 a.m. while your husband is trying to soothe your baby back to sleep!

Stack it up

We are doing a bit of stacking at our house these days. I am a huge fan of stacking toys. In the Montessori school I attended, there was something called the Pink Tower, which was basically a series of graduated pink blocks. My mom still has a photo of me putting the tiny top cube at the pinnacle of the tower with a look of grave concentration on my face.

These are some of my favorite stacking toys from Oompa Toys.

Estate sale goodies

I couldn't pass up these gems when I spotted them at an estate sale the other day. These were clearly "grandma's house" toys, without the normal signs of wear and tear that toys like these would receive with regular rigorous play. Little Omi took to the house immediately, enjoying ringing the little front doorbell (it's a real bell, of course, not some silly battery-operated electronic gadget). She's not quite up to riding the scooter yet; she prefers to "ghost-ride" it, by walking along side and steering with one hand.