Happiness Is...

Happiness is a long weekend.

A long weekend spent....

With a visit from one so dear to your heart that her very presence is like opening a window

 Eating "not-bad" tuna sandwiches with "not bad" pickles...

A finished scarf

Happiness is...

Going for a cocoa/coffee date with your little girl

A trip to the Thrift store resulting in this many books:

An old favorite...

And a new.

Happiness is...

An evening heart to heart with a sister while making chocolate cake from scratch,

and eating that cake until Monday

The stillness of the house all to yourself

Time to think

Happiness is...

Cream  of Broccoli in the sunshine 

Story time with Opa

Hugs and the smell of Oma's perfume.

Happiness is another heart to heart with a new friend 

Echoing many of the same thoughts.

Babies in the playroom

Indian Food and more chocolate cake...

Not wanting the evening to end...

and having a sweet girl in red jammies call you "pretty"

Happiness is an extra day of rest and play

Sleeping in cuddles with your baby boy, 

oh so carelessly strewn across your pillow with that fuzzy hair

A trip to a petting zoo ...

enjoying the smell of the animals,

The softness of wool

The warmth of a pony's back

Happiness is...

Balloons in bright colors perfect for dancing with

A box of 64 crayola crayons and a new coloring book. 

Processing feelings while building an etch-a-sketch city

The optimism of a sundress and sandals

The optimism of glass of mango juice almost Half Full

Yes, happiness is in the right now of remembering

all the special bits and pieces of a Family Holiday, 

A weekend well lived.

How was your weekend?

Yet one more post about dolls.... and my first GIveaway!!!!

Yes, I seem to post a lot about dolls these days... stick with me on this one, there will be something for your patience at the end perhaps.

Today's post is about wooden dolls in particular.

Over the last little while, I have fallen in love with wooden toys. Mostly wooden trucks, cars and trains, which Jackson also loves (but this mama finds herself wanting to hold and roll them around too).
But today it was all about the wooden dolls.

First of all....

Do your kids spend the day enthralled with random ordinary objects and turn them into imaginative play things?
Mine sure do, today was all about pitchers, spoons and a step stool... seriously. This is what I found on the floor by the couch....

(this "baby" was carried around all morning and her "mama" kept holding her out to me saying, 
"Doesn't she have the most lovely face?" 
"Why yes dear, she is the loveliest of spoons."
"No MOM! She's a baby!")


Later in the playroom our "dancing art man", was filling in for Prince Charming, waltzing with Snow White

He really is a marvelous dancer...

Now before you start thinking my daughter must be really deprived in the doll department, let me assure you that she also has other family members who add to her doll collection. Allow me to introduce you to  "Sigmund" as I've started calling him. (Ava Grace calls him "Strawberry Shortcake")...

Ava and her imaginative Opa created Sigmund from wood and cloth scraps in his workshop during the weekend.  He is a cheerful little elf ( I think) who stands sentinel by the door now to greet those who come to our home. But after an awkward (albeit humorous) conversation, two persons felt he looked a little like a clansmen, so we decided Sigmund needed a new look....

Or at least a new hat.

And then the real reason for this post is to share some more of the little wooden dolls  I spent the morning making from clothespins...

These two little sister dolls will be headed to two little sisters this week and I hope they enjoy them!

I've had so much making these little dolls that you can also check out here. I made one extra today and not only did I use her to make a tutorial that will be going up shortly on the sidebar... I'm going to send her off to anyone who wants her.
If you would like to have "Gretchen" (complete with back-story as promised in earlier post) then just leave a comment below and I'll use a random number generator to pick someone and you let you know in Thursday's posting!

Here's Gretchen in all her glory: (sorry the photos are so bad)

What are you playing with today?

Cheers.

The Friday Moment

Inspired by Soule Mama a moment from the week I want to savor and keep as I head into the weekend.

Happy weekending everyone!

making the boo boos better

Nicola over at Which Name wrote a post today about ice/heat packs she made for her kids and their boo boos. Aside from thinking this fabulous idea, it made me think about my kids and their intense love of band-aids. If my daughter stubs a toe.... it needs a band-aid.

I remember a friend of mine telling me her children always wanted band-aids when they were kids and she was more than happy to sticker them up as it seemed to make any problem better.
I also remember when I was a little girl and my dad would draw "a dolly" (a little face) on my band-aids when I had one on a finger so that I could have a little friend to talk to while wearing the band-aid. That always made me feel better.

Then it reminded me of one my proudest moments when I was working at  non-for-profit Daycare years ago before I was married and a mama.
I worked in a class of 16 children from ages 3-5; "The Rainbow Room" and I was the official band-aid giver of the class.

One of the little girls in the class, (we'll call her Jennifer) was a very troubled little girl who came from a very dysfunctional home situation. She was part of the daycare as an intervention from Child Welfare had demanded she be put in a program that would provide some good care and stability for the poor thing.
Despite our best efforts though, Jennifer was in and out of our facility as her mother would periodically disappear and Jenny was temporarily removed from her mother's care.
One day while Jenny was living at home and had been coming to the center, she arrived with some very troublesome burns on the palms of her hands. It's still disturbing and heartbreaking to me, so I will spare you the details of the story she told us about how her hands were burned but the wounds had been inflicted by the burners of an electric stove-top.

We called her social worker and I was given the job of administering first aid to those poor little hands.
Naturally Jenny was TERRIFIED of me touching them and tried to keep them balled up her sleeves.
With a lot of coaxing and reassuring I finally got to clean them with clean cotton and warm water and applied burn ointment with Q-tips. But when I tried to apply a gauze bandage she started shrieking and crying and tried to run away. Over the next few minutes I talked her down of her ledge so-to-speak and using all my powers of persuasion, I convinced her that the bandage could be the coolest thing ever. We could put some tape on the outside of it and decorate it however she wanted. It was a very sweet moment to watch her warm to this idea and then even become enthusiastic picking out markers and stickers (even a little glitter glue) to decorate the tape of her bandaged hands.

Most of all I was proud of how this little girl trusted me not to hurt her when a lot of other grown-ups in her life did. and I was moved by the childhood essence in her that still couldn't be squelched no matter how much she had been forced to grow up beyond her time.
Now I've been a mama myself for a few years now, and I am still humbled by the trust of my little's when they come to me with the total belief that I can fix any pain they have. There are miracles in a mother's kisses and hugs, there is something special and even a little fun in all the special attention of being lovingly tended to and of course there is  magic in a band-aid. (especially those ones covered in cartoons).

cheers.

My little Ava Grace after she fell and skinned both her knees when she was a babe. Double knee band-aids!

"Adventures in Sledding"- with guest blogger The Homemade Husband.

Here are some video diaries of Kevin and baby boy on the sledding hill behind our house. Oh how I laughed! I hope it makes you laugh too!

 

The Friday Moment.

As usual inspired by soule mama, a moment from the week to savor and head into the weekend with:

Yes, that`s a full bag of nutmeg he dumped on himself and the counter, the smell of which always makes me feel a little loopy. But that`s baking with babies....

Happy weekending everyone!

A dress for Miss Madeline

"In an old house in Paris all covered with vines

Lived twelve little girls

In two straight lines....

They left the house at half past nine

The smallest one was Madeline"

                              Ludwig Bemelmans

So starts every book of the Madeline series of books that we really love at our house. I really like Madeline. She's smart and resourceful and adventurous and lacks the snippity feminism of so many of today's heroines. She's compassionate and friendly and she's from Paris so you know she's got class. 

I used to love the episodes of her cartoon that came on CBC when I was a child and when I happened upon her in cloth doll form at a children's sale a few years ago I snapped her up along with all her accessories.

she had all kinds of hats and socks, dresses, a sleeping bag, carpet bag and even little lace gloves.

The only thing she was missing was her trademark yellow dress and capelet, ah well. 

Only now Ava Grace has become a keen observer of such details and began to ask for her mama to make such a dress for her beloved dolly. 

So I rose to the challenge.

I started by laying out the dear dolly and tracing a pattern for the front of the dress and then folding it in half to trace a pattern for the back pieces. I had decided to do a simple A line dress without sleeves and a half open back for easy dressing. In the end I added to triangular panels to the sides as my pattern didn't fit on the fabric I ended up using and my improvisations left her dress a little ill fitting and without any charm...

At first, I couldn't find the jaunty yellow felt I was so sure I had packed and brought from the old house, so I was going to substitute with this thin yellow cotton, not at all nice to sew with and entirely the wrong shade. Then I did a dance when I found the right material below:

See? My fabric ended up narrower than my pattern.

The cut pieces for the dress.

I sewed all the pieces together and left this opening for the back for dressing the doll. The felt has a nice weight to it, and didn't need any closure even as it just sits nice on her and the little girl who plays with her can dress her that much more easily.

 Doesn't she look happy?

For the cape I measured a strip of fabric about 8 inches long and  trimmed the neck in a slight curve. I made one pleat across the middle of the back of the cape and stitched on these white collar pieces. There is one snap enclosure to hold the cape together and I hemmed all the edges with a simple blanket stitch.
Lastly, I went back and added those side panels to the dress and blanket stitched all the edges on the dress as well with matching embroidery thread.

Like I said, such class.

Cheers.

The Friday Moment

It took me a minute of grumbling about stains on the couch YET AGAIN... when I suddenly noticed what was there....
 

I teared up.

And then washed the couch.

Happy Weekending Everyone!

Letting the Inner "Gepeto" Out

I picked up "Green Crafts for Children" by Emma Hardy at the Leduc library last week and hardly had it out of the library tote before Ava Grace was grabbing for it with her little hands all itching to do crafts with mama.

Mama was itching too.

The illustrations in this book are large and lovely and would have made me lightheaded as a child for all their loveliness. There is nothing in this book I don't want to try!

Ava Grace got to choose one project to start. We would go and pick out all the necessary supplies and set aside the proper time to follow through beginning to end. She picked the super cool wooden peg dollies.

I had her sit down and draw up a list of all the materials we would need and off we headed on the dreadful icy highways to Micheals for the supplies.

I spoke with the first  15 year old sales associate I saw;
"Hello there! Do happen to have old fashioned wooden clothespins with a wooden ball on top and the pin divides almost like legs??"

(Such blankness of expression I have rarely seen.)

"ummmmmmm........clothespins??? Wooden ball? that might be in sewing... aisle 23 maybe?"

"Sure okay! I'll go check, thanks so much!"

So I went to aisle 23 and did NOT find old fashioned wooden clothespins. (no surprise there) but I did find an embroidery hoop, blunt tapestry needles and oodles of gorgeous buttons and embroidery thread. (for later projects...hehehehe)

BUT after showing considerable constraint... I sought out another employee and tried to rephrase my request.

" Hello, excuse me? Do you carry wooden clothes pins for crafting? Sometimes people use them to make little dolls?"

"hmmmm...... anything with wood will be in aisle 10, 11, 12 or 13."

"Okay thanks... I guess I'll go check it out then!"

So I checked out all four aisles and found some lovely wooden toys, Dollhouses, kits for birdhouses and toy barns, and wooden eggs for my tin basket that has been sitting empty for so long now and really needs wooden eggs....

BUT I showed considerably MORE restraint and decided to at least go find a decent pair of scissors for my kid so she can learn how to cut things (I could actually write a whole rant post on how much I despise useless safety scissors that won't cut a dang thing)

While in the SCISSOR aisle (which is like aisle7 by the way) I found....
OLD FASHIONED WOODEN CRAFT PINS.( labeled as such). Thirty of them in a bag for 5.00.

Micheals you totally redeemed yourself.

But on with the crafting....

Following Ms. Hardy's directions, Ava Grace and I snipped bits of fabric, hot glued (Ava watched over my shoulder) and wound embroidery thread ( I chose it over yarn cause I liked the look better) around the little pegs until...
guess what?
They turned into little people.
Cute little wooden people that we were both ridiculously tickled with.

For the hair I used the gold fringe of an old ripped scarf. I tied it in a loose knot, tucked in the frayed ends and hot glued it to "Rapunzel's" head.

Rapunzel letting her hair down...crazy party animal that girl....

5 cent fabric scraps we scored back in the summer.... just waiting to be turned into dolly dresses wouldn't you say?

To attach the skirt, I once again diverged from the book's instructions and cut a strip of fabric aprox 3 inches by 8 inches and then gathered it as I hot glued it.

 Ava insisted she needed something shiny and "satiny" being a royalty and all, so we used this ribbon scrap instead of yarn.

 Dolly #2 got no golden hair. Nor did she get a "satiny" something. So I named her Ethel and she is Rapunzel's faithful maid and confident.... I have a special place for her in my heart already.

So I gave her this pretty bow.

 Ethel looks content with her life nevertheless and has a lovely smile courtesy of Ava's artistic skills.

And now my personal favorite; "Gerald the Prince of Hunkdom". He has the most fabulous wavy blonde with sideburns (like a t.v. news anchor)  This picture is when his pants were still in progress.  I wanted to leave him like this so he could be a lifeguard surfer dude from the Beach Boys era but Kevin told me I was getting too involved in the creative process and Ava Grace gave me a look that I couldn't disobey and so forward went the pants....

 Eventually the winding of small bits of blue thread grew tiresome and his pants became knee britches and he has a pair of swashbuckling boots (like all good princes should have I say.) and he has a billowing blue blouse and red sash for hiding his sword. And he still looks like he could hit a disco club if he needed to, so I'm happy. 

Now I'm thinking these were waaaay too much fun to make, so everyone will probably be getting little wooden figures of some sort in the next year. Nativity scenes for christmas anyone? Angel Christmas ornaments? Farmers for barnyard playsets? Toy soldiers? A family for a dollhouse?

You name it, I can make it. And I'll even throw in the names and backstories  just for kicks.

cheers.

What Is It About Red Heads?

I recently read a Maclean's Magazine article about how some cultures and societies have an aversion to red headed people. Throughout history, people with red hair have been viewed with contempt, scorn and even fear. Today there are still small pockets of maladjusted people in the world who have personal agendas to make life miserable for those with red hair.

This article baffled me.

I certainly have nothing against red heads. Quite the opposite in fact.
My gorgeous sister is a gorgeous red head and I too would be a gorgeous red head if it looked gorgeous on me.... but I've tried it... and it does not.


really not.

But Ava Grace has a thing especially for loving red heads. Actually she also has a thing for her Auntie and is always showering her with compliments about her beauty and how her hair is long like a princess I have also tried to grow long hair like my sister... 

It also does not work.

Whether the initial inspiration came from her Auntie or not, it's pretty safe to say red heads are the beauty ideal for every character that comes into our home.

It all started with a little French girl named Madeline who lives in an old house in Paris all covered with vines....

Ava and Madeline Christmas 2009

 

I found a gorgeous rag doll of this sweet little character along with half a dozen gorgeous little outfits all at a community garage sale for 25.00, brought it home, "googled" it and found out the lot was worth about ten times that amount.
Yipes!
Alas, I had already ripped off the tags and my little 3 year old was having a great time dragging her around everywhere,  including to the beaches of Hawaii.

Then came Strawberry Shortcake... a doll she doesn't own but a character she likes so much that we have made MANY MANY paper dolls in her likeness and shortlisted her for next Christmas or birthday, if I can find a nice enough version to spend money on.

Then of course there was Raggedy Anne whom we rescued in an abused and neglected state from the Salvation Army, and whom occupies the most honored place in Ava's bed between the mattress and the wall, since she was installed there roughly 5 months ago. We've since collected a couple of story books about the lovable dolly which Ava Grace loves and she was so proud the day she took "Raggedy" (as she calls her for short) to preschool to present for show and tell.

Ava and Raggedy wearing one of Ava's old dresses.

 

"Jesse the Yodeling Cowgirl" has taken our family completely by storm and I must say I like Jesse too. She's spunky, smart and helpful in the saving of "critters" and those in need. In some ways her over enthusiastic conversation skills remind me of myself, so perhaps I'm leniant and biased (some of us are just excited about life). Ava's heart belongs to Jesse almost completely and the dolly she received from her other Auntie is the one she tells all her secrets too and whom has her own peg to store her cowboy hat on at bedtime.

Taking Jesse on a road trip adventure

 

Lastly there is princess Ariel, of whom this mother is less fond. When Ava Grace first saw
"The Little Mermaid ", Kevin's reaction was priceless; "Of all the princesses, of course her favorite has to be one who disobeys her father and doesn't wear clothes."
hmm....He has a point,
But in Ava's innocent world, she is simply a magical mermaid to be imitated in the bathtub, ( you know that little scale song she sings in the movie... oh ya, that never get's old) and of course she's a red head so that's really all the criteria needed.

Santa delivered the long awaited Princess Ariel.

and then...

Today we walked into the Salvation Army (looking for something else entirely, I swear) and she beelines to a cloth red headed doll that I instantly recognized; Anne of Green Gables.
Something about it actually choked me up, and then I almost squealed when on closer inspection her tag read 6.00, she was in mint condition and still had her complete outfit (the greenish-grey wincy dress and carpet bag!!!!)
Ava was in love and so was mommy so of course we brought the poor orphan home.
 

Upon reaching home, Ava needed to inaugurate the newest "carrot top" with a photo shoot ( which needed to include all her ginger dollies). I found in Anne's carpet bag a tag of authenticity stating that she was hand crafted IN AVONLEA and that her costume was designed by award winner, Martha Mann who designed the costumes for the Anne of Green Gables movies.
Along with this was her original sales tag from an upscale doll collector shop in Edmonton with her serial number and original sale price of 44.95!

But of course Ava cares only for the fact that she's lovely to hold and play with, has a jaunty straw hat and she is (as Anne Shirley herself would say) a shade of "Auburn" that Ava can't seem to resist.

 I say welcome to the family Anne!