Preschooler Sewing Box

Clara has always been obsessed with my sewing (little as there is of it) and especially my knitting.  I’m not sure that she’s quite to the point where she could learn to knit yet (maybe in about a year we’ll try), but she is certainly able to use the little sewing box that her Grandmoo and I made for her.  She goes and gets it and sits down and “sews” all on her own (she has even learned to thread a needle!).  Then, when she’s done, she meticulously puts everything back in the right spot in the basket.  So cute.  She has been sewing “baskets” and putting buttons on everything.  Then she takes them all apart and puts them away to be sewn back together another time.

The little basket was the basket that my grandmother, Mimi, gave to me when I was a little girl for my sewing stuff. I have been using it ever since until I was given a new giant sewing box from my mom. So, I decided to pass it down to my little girl. Mimi would have loved that.

Here are some of the things that Moo and I filled the box with:

• Mesh from a bag that onions came in
• Purple mesh fabric
• Shelf liner with holes in it
• Various assorted buttons
• Plastic yarn needles
• Metal tapestry needles
• Embroidery floss cut into manageable lengths and wound around a piece of cardboard
• A thimble
• Some lacing strings (in case she would rather not use a needle)

Rainbow Cookies

My daughter, who wants to be a rainbow when she grows up, declared yesterday after quiet time that we NEEDED to make rainbow cookies.  Who can resist such a request?  So, we did.  I used my Pampered Chef cookie press and my favorite spritz cookie recipe.  We used gel food coloring to color the dough the primary colors, then rolled a log of each color dough and loaded them all into the press vertically.  They were so pretty and super yummy (past tense because they are already long gone).

Tomatoes Galore!!

My garden this year has been somewhat underwhelming.  I got very few squash, cucumbers, or zucchini because of some sort of mildew.  I treated it with a garlic powder and water solution, which worked, but they didn’t produce much after that.  I had great peas, but then it got too hot for them.  My kale was amazing, and I planted a huge pot of it on the patio for the winter.  But, that’s about it.  My green beans were practically worthless.  For some reason, I only got two carrots.  And I’m eagerly waiting on my brussels sprouts to produce anything.

But, the tomatoes!  Oh, the tomatoes!  I finally found the perfect spot for them in my yard and they have been incredible despite that one chicken who thinks that I put them there just for her to eat.  I’m off now to make roasted tomato sauce!  Yummy!

End of Summer Story Stones

Sorry about the long delay here between posts.  We got busy living the end of summer.  In the last two weeks we did roller coasters, three different fountains, started ballet lessons, played in the baby pool every afternoon, spent a lot of time on the merry-go-round, and just generally lived it up in the (FINALLY!) hot weather.  And, well, I kinda forgot about posting here for a bit.

One afternoon, when both girls were blissfully asleep napping at the same time, which at this point happens, well, never, I got busy making a little story stone project.  I fell in love with the idea when I saw it here and just knew that Clara would love them. They are really simple. You just gather some flat-ish stones, draw stick figures on them with permanent marker, and place them in a bowl.

When Clara woke up, we spent probably forty-five minutes sitting on the floor making up stories together and picking rocks out of the bowl to add details to the story. Its fun for me because I can come up with whatever moral I want to that day (i.e. picking up your toys so that mommy doesn’t trip on them is really good and will earn you great points with the toy fairy). Clara’s stories seem to follow a similar pattern every time (A princess was walking through the forest and found a fairy, and a flower, and a house, and a dragon…), but there has been some slight branching out since the beginning.

I really like the story stones at breakfast where I can tell a story now without having to hold a book. This is especially important since Nancy has decided that if I help her at all with her spoon, she will fling the bowl of oatmeal across the floor. Its hard to read a story when having a battle of wills, but easier if you can just pick up the story at any point while wiping oatmeal off of the piano.

But Nancy loves the story stones, too, and when she finally finishes breakfast, she gets very interested in them as well.

The last few days they have disappeared at quiet time and I have found Clara making up her own stories with them on the spare bed. She is totally engrossed in it and while I do have a hard time following those stories, just the creativity and plot making that are happening are incredible.  I am really enjoying these and I think that our collection of stones will definitely be growing.