Candle wraps and mats

For our fall decor I made these from a kit. I love love love felt applique.

Embroidery for toddlers

Kitten always asks to sew (usually she takes an accessory box from my sewing machine and plays with tools and doll clothes pretending to sew them) and I thought she might enjoy some real sewing. I stretched some burlap on a small embroidery hoop, threaded a big blunt yarn needle with a piece of yarn and tied a big knot on the end.

Surprisingly she understood the concept pretty well and enjoyed it. Here is what she made.

Apparently she thought she was sewing a hat :)

New drawing milestone

I was very excited a couple of weeks ago when Kitten suddenly started drawing arms and legs for her people, so I thought I'd share a couple of her drawings:

 That's Marfa, our Waldorf doll, with a small Cheburashka under her (I guess he is sitting in her lap)

 Marfa

The whole gang - Marfa on the left, big Cheburashka in the center and small Cheburashka under the big one (we have two brown ones now) - I don't know why but she is always drawing the three of them

Baking together - Cream cheese Pudding

This recipe is adored by my whole family. I so much miss Russian farmer's cheese, which of course you can buy here but it is prohibitively expensive and is not sold everywhere. Oh, all the wonderful recipes that you can make with it! This recipe uses cream cheese but really tastes like it is made with farmer's cheese - for all my Russian readers. For the rest of you - a very easy tasty everyday dessert/snack. Is isn't really a pudding, I guess, my dictionary translated it as baked pudding, but I have never heard of such a thing. Just try it and see for yourself. Kitten could almost make it herself, it is so easy.
Ingredients:
2x 8oz packs of cream cheese - softened
3 tbsp sour cream
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
5 tbsp semolina or flour
Raisins if desired

Mix all the ingredients except raisins together.

Add raisins, mix.

Grease a 7x11 inch pan.

Pour the cream cheese mixture in it and bake in a preheated to 350F oven for 50 minutes or until golden and toothpick inserted in a center comes out clean.

 

Serve with sour cream. If you try it, let me know how you liked it!

Our early fall nature table

Thought I'd share how our nature table looks at the moment. I haven't made anything new this year but I did not show it last fall, so here it is. The felt leaves, pumpkin and gnomes are from Wee Folk Art free tutorials (if you don't know it, I highly recommend this site!) and the Harvest Goddess (or however you like to call her) is from the book "More Magic Wool". She has seen her share of child play, that's why she looks a little battered. Oh, and there you can see my only felted acorn, it is bright blue (I plan to make several more of different color and make up a story about magic acorns, that all represent diferent strengths of character but Kitten is still too young for such stories, so it is just an idea so far).

Easy dry erase board

I was very excited to find a roll of sticky back dry erase roll in Michael's for $1 (as well as a sticky back chalk board roll, which I haven't tried yet). I cut a piece of it and stuck it to our wall. It peels off easily but doesn't stick too well to the rough paint on our wall, so I added a border of yellow masking tape, which doubles as a border of "allowed to draw on" surface. No easel needed and no space taken!
It works great with an addition of dry erase crayons. Kitten's favorite part is to clean it afterwards (the included with crayons mitten does not work very well but wet paper towel works like a charm). It cleans easily off the wall too, although Kitten is pretty good about staying inside the border.

Wool blanket

I am so excited about finishing this blanket! I worked on it for 4 years (intermittently, of course) because thread painting stressed me out. I am not an artist and, even though I had a picture and instructions, each stitch was still up to me to place. After I finished the elephant, came the kite border. Easy but A LOT of kites.
I am ashamed to admit that I started it for my little sister, who was 6 at the time and her favorite toy was an elephant (Mr. Yell was his name). Now that she is 10 and much taller, it no longer suits her and so became Kitten's blanket. It is stitched on 100% wool blanketing with wool thread and backed with cotton flannel with piping. It is very soft and heavy and I think it will keep Kitten comfortably warm through the winter. I love surrounding my baby girl with things I made and dreaming about my grandchildren using them one day.

{this moment}

{this moment :: inspired by soule mama}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Fall Tree printing

I got this idea from Frugal Family Fun blog (love it!). I drew a bare tree on a piece of blue card stock with a marker and gave it to Kitten along with yellow, red and orange paints and a cork.

I really love the outcome (although I had to finish it a little). For some reason she thought that she needs to push as hard as possible at the cork (may be because we were using a paper punch not long before that) and it was slipping and smearing, so I corrected her several times, after which she lost interest :( I need to remember to interfere less and not to be such a control freak.

Her knitting basket

Kitten loves to do everything with me, whatever I do she wants to do as well. After she partially unraveled a couple of projects that I forgot to put away I decided to give her her own knitting basket.  I filled it with some yarn, a knitted square, row counter, cable needle, crochet hook and knitting needles. She loves playing with it pretending to knit and finally left alone my knitting!

Play Moments

A couple of my favorite moments from Kitten's play. I just love these little evidences of how her imagination grows and her play evolves. I enjoy cleaning up after she's gone to sleep because I get to find different play scenes, like little glimpses into what was going on in her mind.

Pencil Roll

We needed a place to store our Lyra pencils and I came up with this roll. It is about 12x7 inches. It would have been better to make it taller but I was running out of wool felt that I used for lining. It really adds nice stability and cushioning to the pencils.