Completed: Two Ponchos

One for Lil in quiet, pretty blues and purples,

and one for Viv in purple too, but with bright oranges and reds. Just like their personalities.

Art with Kids 101: October Leaves

This is a very simple craft that I recently did with my younger siblings.

From collecting the leaves, to coloring, to cutting and pasting this is something they can really get into and enjoy. We made it as a gift to our grandma and they were so excited when they presented it to her :)

You'll first want to collect some leaves from the great outdoors. No kind in particular, just whatever grabs your fancy. I also pressed our leaves in a book for a day, so they laid nice and flat for us.

Place your leaf of choice between two pieces of paper- this makes it easier to hold them in place. Rub crayons over the area, hard or soft to get different effects. It was a lot of fun to see the pattern of the leaves emerge and exclamations of "Wow!" or "Look at this one!" could be heard while we were doing it.

When the outline appears and they're all filled in you can go ahead and cut them out.

Keep going until you have a sizable pile- the wreath will look better if it's full.

 Then cut a wreath shape from some cardboard as shown. You can make it as big or as small as you want, depending on the number of leaves you have and the size of your cardboard. We just used an old pizza box.

Cut it out, never minding if it's not perfect because the leaves will cover the imperfections.

Arrange the leaves however you wish. 

Once they are in the place you want them, go ahead and glue them down. We just used a regular glue stick and it worked fine.

Keep layering and covering the cardboard with leaves until there are no more leaves and the cardboard has disappeared.

Hang it up with some string or ribbon and viola! you have a fall "leaf" wreath that doesn't turn brown like real leaves.

This is so versatile it could be adapted with totally different colors and leaf shapes. And the best part? The kids loved helping with everything and enjoyed it immensely. 



Completed: Ellie's Sweater

Ellie's knitted sweater is finished. However, due to some slight problems in the pattern, it turned out wider than she is! I liked how simple it was to work with its
easy garter stitch and basic shaping of the rectangles, but it turned out just barely long enough for her and much to big for her, as you can see in the picture.



I did do a colored pattern to make it prettier, and I think that turned out well. It was good practice for me even though it didn't end up perfect. I am now in a "knitting fever" and will have another project to show you soon!

Sometime...

You might be asked to put a bridal bouquet together.

I agreed to do it because I have always liked putting flowers together - and how hard could it possibly be?

A large mound of assorted flowers reposed on my bed that evening.


But some of the flowers were dirty and needed to be washed. Then I thought it would be nice to bleach some of them.


Then they had to dry.


The bride wanted white and gold flowers. I had the white flowers but needed to paint some other flowers gold.


Painting them by hand wasn't hard at all, just time consuming. The flowers had to be pulled apart, each layer painted, and after they were dried, put back together.


They painted easily enough, but the color was wrong - more of an off-brown than true gold. A spray bottle of gold paint was gotten hold of and it did the trick, covering both flowers and fingers until I had the sense to put a glove on.


Then, I suggest you get a creative aunt to come and help you, since you may have now realized that you don't know how in the world you're going to do this. Pack up all of your stuff - not leaving anything behind. This will prevent you from having to send family members back for some items.

Make a mess, of course, as you try to create a lovely bouquet for a bride halfway around the world.


Find paintbrushes, hot glue gold beads onto flowers, eat some carrots for lunch, stick pearls onto floral stems and rip fake foliage from flowers while your extremely creative aunt works on the bouquet. She will have many good ideas - like creating a long bouquet to be carried over the arm. This will make it easier to be packed in a suitcase.


After a while you might have come up with a pretty bouquet, like we did... although, your bouquet might not be going to a bride in Sierra Leone.

Ours is.


In Sierra Leone things are not readily available and the bride, Tina, asked my grandparents, who travel on mission trips regularly, if they could bring some flowers for her wedding. White and gold flowers.

Isn't it interesting the way things work sometimes? How incredible to be a part of preparing for a wedding in Africa - never having met the couple!

Yet, I can do things like this for unknown persons because of the love of Jesus that connects the body of Christ, no matter how many miles separate them.