birthday crafties.

On the morning of a birthday party for Autumn's friend, my thought process went a little like this: I can spend an hour getting a present for the party or an hour making a present. One would be junkier and cost me a good $15-$20. The other would be free (or at least using supplies I already have bought) and would be 10 times cooler. So we crafted away and didn't have to get out of our jammies.

The result: An apron with a matching journal.

the needles and hooks are flying

Yes, the Kang house has been staying busy with all sorts of knitting and crocheting. Even our cat-dog who loves to play with the yarn-o cannot keep us away from it. I think I am up to 3 knitters and 3 crocheters, ranging from 6-11. Elise likes to knit, too, but hers is the position of assistant knitter. She loves the knitting poem (thanks, Kylene!), saying it for me as I do each stitch and her job is to "run around the back" and then get angry if anyone dares to touch her work. Hannah has become the expert knitter, but attempts to learn crocheting turned into many shed tears today. Autumn, on the other hand, loves to crochet and pretty much lacks the desire to even try knitting. Someday.

Here is the confession: (shhh) I didn't teach 2 out of 3 of my knitters how to knit because of a lack of patience with bad form and primarily because my dad was there to bail me out. He was more than happy to teach them as he definitely has the heart of a teacher, always willing to take things a little slower if it means inspiring someone to learn a new skill. (This is probably why he was the one to teach Rachel how to bake pies so deliciously, too.) Anywho, he was intrigued by this knitting poem I referred to and requested I blog it. And a picture of Hannah's first knitted goods, to celebrate. Everyday it is something new, but it is always something for Haiti. She told me today that she was so glad that she knew how to do something that could help people. Hannah, my dear, I love you.

How to Knit:
In through the front door
Run around the back
Out through the window
And off jumps Jack

How to Purl:
Under the fence
Catch the sheep
Back we come
And off we leap.

thank you for waiting

I am glad I have you to remind me of projects that I never post as I have the memory of a rock! My mom was just pointing out to me that I really should blog about the things I do, showing just how little of my life I actually blog about. So here is my art wall. I love it. I would like to add the disclaimer that if I wasn't in a marriage that requires some levels of compromise, this frames would probably be painted in a much brighter hue. With that being said, I do think the white worked still. I am almost certain that I copied this idea from someone, but I can't give credit because I can't remember who the stink it was. Sorry, guys. Enjoy!

to pj or not to pj

I am really struggling with this and I think mainly because I don't want to make jammies this year and my kids, of course, want me to.

Since it was just Rachel and Autumn, there have been handmade jammies made out of $1/ yd flannel that was bought on the day after Thanksgiving. This year, Lilly helped me only get 1 1/2 hours of sleep before the big sale. Joann's fabric wasn't quite as cheap. And now, laziness and enjoying a very slow December is taking over. I like the relaxed mode that is going on at the Kang abode.

Ok...now for the pro argument. I mentioned to Rachel the possibility of not doing pj's, thinking that with her teenageness she would be absolutely with me on this decision. And she wasn't. She was shocked that I would think of getting rid of a tradition that, in all honesty, was made when I didn't think we would ever have more than 4 kids. Six pairs of jammies are more of a time commitment than four! So do I hold on to the tradition seeing that there might be a time in the near future when my kids will not be keen on matching pj's for Christmas Eve?

Input?

crochet {adorned}

Yes, I have been known to turn my nose up at crocheting. (sorry, all of you crocheting friends of mine.) I am a knitter during the months of September to March, which I affectionatly refer to as knitting season. I can't bring myself to knit when it is sunny and hot out, yet there is something about knitting during the winter that ranks up there with drinking hot cocoa and smelling the fresh fall air. But this year is a little different. I have been feeling the pull of the crochet hook as an increasing number of projects call for cute edging that just isn't done so well with knitting.

A few months ago, I tried to master crochet in an attempt to add edging to the girls' pillowcases. My grandma threw her arms up in defeat as we tried to translate crocheting from right handed to left. I finally got desperate enough to watch a video online for us left handed freaks so I could crochet (cutely, of course) around baby socks. Then I ran into Crochet Adorned, which sealed the deal. (or the addiction) I have now mastered all of the little stitches and am busily working on a table runner for the table that will (someday) be free of the sewing machine. And instead of getting ready for school to start, I am crocheting. Just like any responsible homeschooling mom, right?

Christmas in July

anyone have a fairly easy tree skirt pattern? I am wanting to simple quilt together a top and bottom (with this incredibly adorable fabric that I snagged at Fabric Depot) and bind it with a red polka dot. I would like to start now in hopes of it maybe reaching completed status in time for the holidays. (Yes, that is about how quickly I move over here...so lame.) I would like to avoid the whole cutting out a big gigantic circle in hopes of stretching out my not so cheap fabric. Help??

the infamous zig zag quilt

{a las, the infamous zig zag quilt. stripes of blue, green and white.}

If you are new to quilting, this is the quilt for you. If you have a one year old who likes to toss quilt squares around while you are doing quilting yoga (aka: laying out many, many squares), you might want to lay this out during sleeping hours.

Did I tell you how much I love fabricdepot.com? This quilt did not require a single trip to the fabric store. I even used batting from a garage sale! Thanks to Bend the Rules, I never prewash my

quilting fabric. This leads me to my favorite part of making a quilt. I love to pull the quilt out of the dryer, finding all of the cute puckering magic from the fabric shrinking that gives it that vintage feel. Sigh.

I can't believe that I neglected to give Amanda credit for this beautiful pattern, even if it did take me 3 months to make it a reality! (beautiful and easy....a winning combination!)

Goodwill finds

Depending on the girlies and their varying moods (and boy can they vary!-myself included), we find ourselves wandering they aisles of our neighborhood Goodwill store. Some of the places that we check for bargains are: 1. the linen section because old sheets can be made into just about anything 2. The frame section for frames that are calling out for a little spray paint (as used in Rachel and Autumn's room. Lots of pink and brown frames all over the place.) 3. The basket aisle for odds and ends that are great for storing other odds and ends, including but not limited to towels, sewing supplies, current projects, baby toys and play food 4. Trinket aisle- It has a lot of junk, but every now and again I come across something that is calling for me 5. Book aisle for great old books that are hard much cheaper than our neighborhood Powell's. When the girlies are in an especially good mood, we venture to the Goodwill Outlet store, where we get to feel like we are dumpster diving. (But we leave with 2 carts full for $35! And baskets are the best here because they charge by weight and...baskets are light!)

During our most recent trip we found a chair for my craft room, a sheet that was torn up for our braided rug that Chloe and I are making, a honey dispenser (just like the one Hannah broke 2 years ago before I even got to use it!) and last, but most certainly not least, a recipe stand. If you had asked me, upon entering said store, if I thought I needed or even wanted a recipe stand...I must confess that I might have said no. This recipe stand (for a lovely 1.99...or as Chris would say, 1.99 too much) called to me. It asked me to paint it, give it a new life and here it is. Minus the recipes, which I will be adding soon. See this green? This is also the color that I am dying to paint my kitchen. Please, Chris??

Liar, liar pants on fire

I swear that I really was planning on posting pictures of my purses tonight.  I even had Autumn hand over her purse for said photo shoot.  Then I realized that someone had my card reader and all of my cards were full.  Sigh.  I hope I don't recieve any death threats over this one. Compromise?  I will post the links to the cute bags that I made so you can at least start working on your own.  Deal?

My purse

Autumn's Purse

As for the pictures of Becky's family?  You can hop on over to my photography blog to check them out.  And as soon as my card reader comes back, you'll be checkin out my purse creations. Swear.  Oh, wait.  I don't swear. 

late nighters at the Kang's

Chris: Do you know what time it was when you went to bed last night?

Me: Don't tell me!  It makes me more tired!

Chris: (insert inaudible mumbling)

Me: If you only knew what I was doing last night!  You would think it was totally worth it!

Chris: What was that? (expecting another laundry fairy visit or something)

Me: I made cute wraps to go around the towels in the girls' bathroom! Actually, only one because I kept messing up.  I think it was too late.

Chris: (speechless)

Here is my lovely work of art that has been wandering around my brain for a week or so.  It probably would have turned out better if I had done it during daylight hours when my brain was at least working at 50% capacity, but it also probably would have never been completed if I had waited for that.

  

In addition, below is a treasures that I found at my favorite little Snohomish shop, Joyworks.  The clippy board isn't completely finished as I have to add some pictures that reflect the last two girlies in our family.  (reflecting when I got my digital camera and stopped having a ton of extra pictures around)  Note the basket at the bottom that used to have a bunch of paper in it.  Once I refill (and teach Elise that they paper is to color on, not to tote around the house), the girls will continue to color little pictures for me to display in empty clips.    

Side Note #1: The fabulous St. Cleanliness that came to my house does have a real name.  I highly recommend her.  Her name is Jess and if you want any more info about her, you probably better e-mail me as I don't want to go willy nilly posting her info on here.  Fabulous.

Side Note #2:  I forgot about the Thomas Quiz and I am sure you are all checking regularly for these very important answers.  Here goes.

1. Grey/Black

2. Green

3. Brown

4. Blue

5. you got me there!  I think pink is about it, but is Chris manly enough for a pink toothbrush?

Hats for Haiti (just slightly tardy)

I am the queen of planning, but not always the queen of carrying out those plans.  This is why an executive decision was made to cancel school today for a service project. (one that we have been planning on doing for quite a while!)  We took all of our old shirts and turned them into cute little baby hats for premature babies in Haiti.  39 hats later, we are out of shirts. If any of you have some t-shirts laying around, we would love to transform them.  They can have holes or stains, as we cut the pattern out around those.    This was a great project for kids of all ages that can be kept busy with cutting, trimming thread, knotting the hats, etc. (Except 2 year olds, who tend to take cutting t-shirts as an invite to cut up their own, non-stained t-shirts.  Just warning you.  We caught Elise before she cut up her cute panda shirt, but you might not be so lucky!)

Lessons learned instead of the typical school: 1. To serve others (most important) 2. Where Haiti is and a little bit more about it 3. How to cut out a pattern 4. How to operate Mom's serger 5. How to recycle something that looks like it is destine for the trash into something very sweet and adorable 6. Service projects are fun! 7. Sometimes, school isn't all that important

After explaining to the girls that although Haiti is pretty hot, they still need these knit hats for the premature babies to keep their body temperature up.  I continued to tell them that this increases their chance for survival.  This is when Autumn started counting.  Every hat that she cut out came with the announcement that she had now saved ___ babies.  Next are baby quilts made out of (cute) old sheets.  Sounds trashy, but I swear that they are stinking cute.  We only do cute.  Pinky promise.

Healthy Mommas Unite

It is that time again.  You know, the whole "I can't use the postpartum excuse anymore because my baby is almost a year old" time.  It is time to start reducing the size of my empty baby house.  Because I am one who truly gets pleasure from checking off any box on my to -do list (and I even add things that I have already accomplished just for the free check off!), I had to make myself a healthy momma checklist.  In addition to having to have a checklist, if it is really going to inspire me, it better be cute.  AND because it is so stinking cute (and despite the fact that Chris looked at it and said "What is this for?  What do those lips mean?  A moment on the?"), I am going to share it with you.   Because it is late, I am still a little sick and to top it off,  my computer technician is sleeping, I can't figure out how to post these so they actually make a good print.  (how is that for a run on sentence?) If you would like a copy, let me know in the comment section and I will e-mail you the version of your choice.  I have the weight watcher's version, the spiritual version (complete with a check box for reading your scriptures and saying your prayers) and the plain jane version.  Maybe if I can feed Chris enough sushi tomorrow, he will help me upload these files successfully.   Let's cross our fingers. 

 Technical Notes: I printed mine with 4 on each side of paper and plan on cutting it in half and making a quick little book out of it. (As in, fold in half with a cover and staple)  The other option would be to cut them in rectangles and glue them into a spiral bound index card book.  Whatever the style, the concept is still there.  Hey!  Being the realist that I am, I even included a confession part to write the things that you ate when you fell off of the wagon.  Realist or pessimist?  In the fiber section, I am going to tally all of my fiber. (likewise if you use the points version for those of you doing weight watchers.)  The nike shoe is next to the check box for exercise and I think the rest is fairly self explanatory.  Enjoy!

Fairy Frenzy

While my mom was here this weekend, she taught the kids all about the art of fairy making.

Let me start by telling you that Autumn has been obsessed with fairies for the last two years and I keep trying to sway her towards the more traditional fairy and away from the lovely disney fairies.  Something a little more earthy in nature, maybe?  Yep, these fairies are exactly what I had in mind, but in my little picture of Autumn playing with these "earthy" fairies, I never imagined this great little craft that the girls could whip out on their own.  It is perfect.  Autumn will disappear into the other room, quietly creating her own little world of fairies, complete with their acorn hats and their tiny fairy tree that Grandma provided.  Thanks, mom. 

Chris update:  A day full of therapy again today.  Now that he can walk in the backyard, he has been going out there to help his dad put together the trampoline. (In a managerial sort of way)  Before, he really couldn't go back there because of the sticky clay and unlevel nature of it.  The best thing is that he has been better emotionally lately.  I think the prospect of going back to work and getting back into the swing of things is great for him.  He also has been getting his blood pressure around 120/80 on a pretty consistent basis.   Good job, honey!  He is able to lift 5 lb weights on the right hand. (just a few weeks ago, it was 1 lb)  I think we need to go driving again, since we still haven't gone since last week.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or the next day.  Or the day after that. :)

Calling all T-shirts

I was exploring Soulemama the other day and read about her call for baby hats made from t-shirts.  I have been going through our clothes donations and have been picking out t-shirts that I think will make some mighty comfy baby hats, but I was thinking that there might be some folks out there that have possible baby hats (that are still in the form of t-shirts) that they might want to share with us!  If any of you have t-shirts that are dying to become hats or that just may need a vacation (to Haiti), please let us help them fulfill their wildest dreams.   My little women and me are anxious to start on this fun project and would love to adopt any of your homeless t-shirts!  Thank you!

Waxy rocks

Today we made the easiest kids craft ever from a book called Summer Crafts.  I didn't like a ton of ideas from the book, but these were right up my aisle.  Here it is, easy style.

1.  Put your clean rocks in the oven on a cookie sheet for 15 minutes, at 350.

2. While they are in the oven, peel the wrapper off of a bunch of crayons.  If your 2 year old loves to peel crayons in all of her spare time, you can skip this step. (This made the rocks even easier for us! Thank you, Elise.)

3.  When the rocks are nice and toasty, you reiterate to your children how stinking hot these rocks are going to be and how very careful they are going to have to be with this part.

4.  Fun part: Choose your crayon of choice and just color on the rock as it melts.  You can mix lots of colors and do different designs.  

My favorites were the stripes and the turquoise looking rock.  This was such an easy craft that doesn't require lots of weird supplies.   I think we might even do it again in a few days.

These are my new shoes.  I fell madly in love with them.  I consider it good karma.  About a month ago I saw these other cute shoes at the Nike Employee Store, but there was a slight problem.  There were 3 color options, but Rachel and I both liked the same one.  I made a motherly sacrifice of letting Rachel have a pair, but every time I look at her shoes I think "ahhh....I love those shoes!"  So these shoes are my reward.  Nike was so happy with my sacrifice that they brought in these shoes, which I like even more, to reward me. Silly logic, but I like it.   See Lilly's smile?  She likes my shoes, too.

Crayon roll fun

                                        

I would like to start out by saying that I should start every day with a lavender italian soda.  I just had one and I am thinking that I needed it first thing in the morning instead of right before bed.  Or maybe a healthier lavender drink.

Today we went to the Children's Museum and had a blast.  Hannah and Autumn got to try out a pottery wheel. Elise made a million clay eggs and snakes and loved having permission to color all over her face in the face painting section.  Rachel discovered that painting your whole face to look like a frog isn't something she wants to try again.  Chloe loved being a "baby nurse" in the hospital section.  It was a fun little trip that we need to do more often.  Everyone played well and enjoyed rediscovering the museum together.  Its been a long time since we were there last and I must say that they have improved.  (Even with a chic suggesting that we make a monetary donation after my kids had created one rubberband bracelet and a basket from a recycled magazine.  Both were very cute and inventive, but we pay to get in.  Therefore I "donate".  And tell me ahead of time if you want me to pay for a rubberband bracelet. )  Besides that, it was great and wonderful.

 

Autumn has a birthday party tomorrow and we got crafty for the present.  She helped me with all of the cutting, trimming and design of this matching pouch and crayon roll.  The instructions for the pouch are from Bend the Rules Sewing and the crayon roll came from a great tutorial here.  I have been eyeing the crayon roll at our local toy store for a while and I think I just was too lazy to figure it out on my own.  It was very easy but I am forbidding my family from making any.  Just don't.  No particular reason.  It has NOTHING to do with a certain holiday.  Just obey my random commands.