hopeful

Question: How do you prepare a two-year-old and a four-and-a-half-year-old for a twenty-six hour road trip across five states?

Answer: I have no idea. But I thought I'd start with tote bags.



We've made this trip before, last year in fact - we packed up the minivan and strapped in the boys to make the cross country trek from central Illinois to western Montana. It was different last year, somehow. For one, Emmett was still very much a baby - in a rear facing car seat with a propensity to sleep a lot and in that blissfully unaware stage (you know, where you could pull into a drive-in and order yourself a milkshake without your kid even noticing) that made him kind of a non-factor in the equation. Finn stayed content with books and DVDs and more sleep than usual. Now I've got  two kids to keep entertained, two kids who aren't particularly good at entertaining themselves in the best of situations. I am thus determined to be prepared.

Over the last few weeks, I've been building a stash of goodies for the trip. I'm not talking about the edible kind (though we will bring plenty of those), but the keep-'em-happy kind. I've been searching the Internet for parenting articles about road trip happiness (and have found a lot more directed at older kids, unfortunately), and I've talked to Finn at length about the kinds of things he wants to do in the car.

We will bring the portable DVD player, but I honestly don't want them watching movies the entire time. I did think ahead to purchase new, sturdy, kid-sized headphones (aren't they cute?) for both boys, since last summer Finn watched (and we listened to) It's a Very Muppet Christmas (the really annoying one with Joan Cusack) about seventeen times in South Dakota alone.

I love the Crayola Color Explosion markers that only show up on special paper (instead of all over my kids), so both boys got a set of those. We've got coloring books and colored pencils and pads of paper for drawing. Each boy gets a set of binoculars and a flashlight, and we picked up some garage sale books last week so they each have some books they've never seen before.Finn's got a stash of Highlights Hidden Pictures magazines to bring along, and Emmett will probably get a few little cars to play with.

Last year, Finn developed a deep affection for travel brochures. He actually slept with a stack next to his pillow the whole time we were at Grama and Grampa's house. That stash migrated to every deep corner of the van. This year, I made him a brochure box that he can use to stash the brochures he picks up. Hopefully this will work for both of us.



Now that I've got this ever growing pile of activities, where do I put it all? I thought a couple of tote bags might do the trick and decided to make them extra special by customizing them. Here's a quick tutorial on how I did that for your appliqueing pleasure (I can't believe spell check let me get away with that).

I would love to hear any great road trip ideas you might have, particularly for the preschool/toddler set.

Happy trails, all!


What you need: blank canvas tote bag,initial pattern, scrap of fusible interfacing, iron, scrap of fabric, sewing machine, thread

1 - Start by pressing the tote bag and the fabric scrap so that everything is nice and smooth.

2- Using a word processing program, print out the desired letter. Mine were Franklin Gothic Heavy, size 700 in outline.
 
3 - Cut the fabric and the interfacing slightly larger than the letter. Use an iron to fuse the interfacing to the back side of the fabric. This makes the initial substantially sturdier. Pin the letter to the right side of the fabric/interfacing and cut it out.

4 - Pin the letter where you want it on the bag. Use a zigzag stitch to attach the letter to the bag (it helps to practice on a scrap of fabric first so that you get the zigzag to the appropriate width and length - mine was 2.5 wide and .5 in length).

 
6 - Trim off loose threads. Enjoy your bag!

I've rediscovered my love of Pinterest in the last few weeks. It supplied me with my Valentine's Day breakfast treat for my boys. It's where I found the idea for the paint chip bookmarks I wrote about earlier. And it lead me to this ridiculously cool tutorial on how to use a block of wood and a printout of a photograph to make a really awesome present for my husband:



A few additional tips garnered in the process:

• I didn't know what gel medium was. I found it at Michael's in the aisle with the artist supplies (not the craft paints but the oils/acrylics/etc.)
• When rubbing off the paper, don't rub too hard. I made that mistake in my first attempt and my husband ended up losing his face. I used a gentler hand the second time. Fortunately the block of wood has two sides.
• My favorite part of the video is where she has a baby sitting on her lap as she attempts to finish the project. Not really a tip, but thank you, unnamed super cool wood photography lady, for that dose of reality in your web tutorial.

And that is about all I have to say. This was a fun, easy, results-oriented project that I will be repeating many many times in the future. Here's the finished result. It looks kind of washed out since the flash reflected on the mod podge, but you get the idea. It's an old photo of Sean and me, but one of my favorites:

When I was a little girl growing up in the Chicago suburbs, there weren't too many places you could go on foot. There were, however, a few small shops just a few blocks from my house that, by the time I was in elementary school, I could walk to on my own. My two personal favorites were Mr. Gs, a hot dog stand that sold soft serve ice cream cones, and Hines Hardware Store, my earliest source for paint chips. It was one of those wonderful, hard-to-find locally owned hardware stores that had a little bit of everything, and I loved going in there, usually with an ice cream cone in hand, and picking out a few paint chips to take home. I typically used them as bookmarks in my library books.

I never thought of using paint chips for crafts until the wonderful blogosphere introduced me to the idea. And so, with a little help from my trusty sidekick, I put together a few Valentine's inspired paint chip crafts. I bought the heart shaped punch from Michaels, and that, in combination with a covert, satchel-stuffing visit to the paint department of the local hardware store, was pretty much the only expense.  What I am most proud of is that I was able to use nearly every scrap of every paint chip - the punched out hearts were every bit as pretty as the punched out outlines. Finn and I made three entirely different crafts with the stack of paint chips that I had...not bad for a days work!

I started with these bookmarks, courtesy of Foxy Inspirations:




I then ran the leftover heart outlines through my sewing machine, to make this funky rainbow garland:



 I gave Finn the heart punch, some stickers, the remaining paint chips, some cardstock, a few markers, and a rubber stamp and commissioned him with making Valentines for his preschool friends. He called it a "decorating picnic" as we were able to sit outside in the sunshine to work on the cards. It is not usually this warm in the midwest in February, so we are soaking up every bit of sun we can!





Happy February, all!

Things I've learned about making salt dough ornaments since my last post:

1. Despite the fact that we got the idea to make salt dough ornaments from a dated craft book, it turns out that salt dough ornaments are far from forgotten; they turned up on several  blogs I follow this month, from The Artful Parent to TinkerLab to Paint Cut Paste (gluten free, no less!). So I'm not nearly as vintage chic as I had thought, as there are lots of folks out there having fun with salt dough right now. I am honored to share the company, and these ladies have lots of awesome and unique decorating ideas.


2. Figuring out how to finish the ornaments proved more of an ordeal than I had anticipated. The recipe I consulted suggested using "shellac."  When I went to Michael's, I wasn't able to find shellac or to find anyone who could tell me where to find shellac. I found myself in the adhesives aisle for a while, in the paint aisle for a while, in the miscellaneous things that spray aisle for a while...nothing seemed quite right. I started exploring other blogs for ideas, and I still wasn't able to come up with anything definitive. The next day, I went to the hardware store, and there I found shellac. It was expensive ($15 for a small can), and I had to buy a lot more than I needed. I do like the shiny finish that it gave the ornaments, however (even if it made for bad photos, as the flash reflected in the shininess). One thing I did notice is that it needed to be painted on very thinly, particularly over white sections so as not to give it a yellowish tint.


3. My biggest mistake was that I used a Sharpie to add customization to the ornaments before shellacking them. Despite the fact that Sharpies are permanent and that I wrote on the ornaments the day before I shellacked them, they still smeared. Grrrrr.  Fortunately, I noticed it right away. I was able to work with it by kind of lightly dabbing the areas with writing then painting all around them. Next time, I'll shellac them first then write on them with a Sharpie. It wasn't a disaster, but it did make the ornaments noticeably less impressive.


4. A lot of the other bloggers that wrote about salt dough ornaments talked about how happily their kids painted the ornaments. My kid enjoyed making the ornaments for his friends and painting a few others, but he got bored pretty quickly. In part, I think that if we had been working in a place where it was okay to paint with reckless abandon, he may have had more fun; I opted to use acrylic paints, and they look great, but because they stain fabric, we had to be extra careful. This would be a great project for outside; in these parts, we don't generally do Christmas crafts outdoors, however. As noted in my previous post, I might experiment with paint markers next time. I also really like the look of stamping the ornaments. 

In the end, we had close to three dozen ornaments, some painted by Finn, some by Iona, and some by me. We put a few on the tree, a lot on presents, and sent a few back to France with Iona. And we will definitely be making more salt dough ornaments in the future (particularly since I still have a lump of dough in the freezer...). 

Just shellacked

For Finn's preschool pals

Initials in the tree

Gingerbread boy

Finn's heart

Ho Ho Ho piano

 

We decided not to take our pajamas off today. Partly because the boys are wearing matching red snowman pajamas that are just too cute to change out of, and partly because our car is in the shop and so I knew we weren't going anywhere. Whatever the reason, it's fun to have a pajama day every once in a while.

Staying in days often breed surprises, as was the case this morning. Finn came across a recently acquired book on the shelf: Arts & Crafts from Things Around the House. Sean brought it home from work not too long ago; I think it was a cast-off from a classroom book collection. It reminds me of the craft books I used to check out from my elementary school library, and, given the 1983 publication date, it may in fact be something I read back then:


The first project that Finn selected involved collecting pine branches, splashing them with white tempera paint, adding drops of glue then sprinkling them with glitter. I managed to talk him out of that one. Then he picked out a project called "Make and Bake Play Dough."  Perfect.

The dough requires flour, water, and a lot of salt. We had everything on hand that we needed (except the shellac, which we will do later). I pulled out a handful of cookie cutters and we were on our way.

NOTE: This makes a ridiculous amount of play dough. I filled two big cookie sheets with ornaments and still froze enough to make at least one more batch (I should add that I'm not sure you can freeze salt dough, but I though it was worth a shot). You may want to halve the recipe if you don't need a bajillion ornaments.

Make and Bake Play Dough

• Mix 2 cups salt, 5 cups flour, and 2 cups warm water. I put it in my stand mixer with a dough hook attachment.  Add additional water as needed to make the dough easy to handle.
• Knead until smooth.
• Roll out with a rolling pin on waxed paper to a 1/2 inch thickness.
• Use a knife or cookie cutter to cut the dough to desired shapes. Transfer to a cookie sheet. If you want to hang your creations, poke a hole at the top (a straw works really well for this).
• Bake at 300 for a hour (I baked mine a little longer - they still seemed soft after an hour). When they are cool, paint and coat with a clear shellac.

Making the dough was fun. Rolling out the dough was fun. Cutting out the shapes was fun. But painting was by far the most fun. We decided early on to make some presents, and Finn had a good time planning different designs for different people. He made a little ornament for each of the kids in his preschool class, and I made a bunch to add as gift toppers.We used acrylic craft paint; the only downside of this is that it stains fabric, so I was a bit manic about Finn's use of it. I might try paint markers in the future until he is a little older.

The ornaments I liked the best were the ones I painted to read "HO HO HO."  I plan on stringing them onto a garland and hanging them in the kitchen. I made the letters by pressing refrigerator magnets into the soft dough, then painting over the indentations.  I originally was going to do "JOY" until I realized that I needed to use letters that worked in mirror image. "HO HO HO" was the perfect solution :)

We're not done with this project yet - it'll take a few days to see it through to completion. But here are a few pics of our progress so far.