Holidays provide such great craft fodder. It was entirely Calvin's idea to make a shamrock craft for this week's holiday. Again, I think he just likes to use the Cricut, and maybe the glue stick. Actually, come to think of it, he's pretty keen on painting as well. In any case, here we are, getting ready for the greenest of holidays.

St. Patrick's Day art

Four hearts and a lower case "t" cut on the Cricut. Calvin removed the cross on the "t" with his little scissors and glued all the pieces together. It was boring by iteslf, so he decided to raid my button collection (which is, thankfully, rather extensive), and we used Glue Dots to adhere them to the shamrock. He wrote "Lucky" just for a final touch, and when we couldn't find a frame in the right color? He painted one.

St. Patrick's Day door wreath

I was never a wreath person before, but I've since changed my mind—I really like having something cheerful and welcoming on the door. When the Valentine's wreath came down, a week or so later than proper, of course, Calvin and I went in search of a replacement. A pre-made spring wreath runs upwards of $30 at the craft stores, and the wreath forms themselves are upwards of $10, not to mention the cost of additional materials, so instead we visited our PTO Thrift shop, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite shopping stops.

At the trhift shop we found a very country (not our style) door wreath for $2, relatively boring fake flowers in a happy yellow color for $1, and two rolls of green and shamrock ribbon for $1. A few quick snips freed the wreath base, and about three minutes later we had a spring worthy front door wreath for all of $5.

They aren't exactly rocket science, trees made out of construction paper, toilet paper tubes, and green tissue paper, but they are all the rage in our house this week and we have Mr. Roger's to thank for it. I should preface this entire post by saying that we are not TV watchers. Calvin hadn't watched even a minute of TV, aside from catching glimpses of Michigan football games now and again, until December of last year, and then the only reason we suddenly pulled the TV trick out of the bag was because he was sick, sick, sick (and the show we watched, several times, was "Jungles" from the BBC Planet Earth collection—he still loves it). I have several moral and personal objections against most TV shows and the TV culture as a whole and in general we don't watch it, but that's for another post all together. Instead, I'll just quickly say that since its daytime debut in our household back in December, we have watched classic Sesame Street episodes a couple of times a week and various BBC Planet Earth pieces as well, and just this morning we watched Mr. Rogers for the very first time. What a riot.

With Mr. Rogers we took a trip to the recycling plant, then followed the trolley to make-believe town (I'd forgotten all about that), and then we made a craft—trees, to be exact. Calvin seemed to enjoy all of the half hour show (a perfect amount of time), and immediately after he was determined to make his own paper trees so he could have a forest for his train set. We did so, and now he has one.

Paper trees

Supplies: Pen, scissors, tape and/or glue, paper tubes of any kind (we used toilet paper and paper towel tubes), construction paper in your choice of colors, and tissue paper (preferably in green).

Mark construction paper to the size of the tube. Cut paper along marked line. Adhere paper to cardboard tube. If using glue, allow to dry (we put rubber bands around our tubes to keept he paper in place while the glue dried). Latsly, crinkle up the tissue paper, shape it into the top of a tree, and shove a small part of it into the top of the tube. Done! I also used a dab of hot glue to keep the tree tops inside the trunks so that we could have a perpetual summer for our train setting.

I should probably explain that the crafts we post to the site on Monday are not necessarily crafts we have done on that day; instead, I give Calvin his choice from his finished crafts and ask him to comment on them. Sometimes I get a comment, sometimes I don't, but as he understands more about what we are doing, he takes more and more of an interest. Today's crafts are ones that we finished at the end of last week so they'd be ready for our Valentines party on Sunday.

Heart banner

We used my Cricut to make this one and if you ask Calvin was his favorite part of the craft was, he'll say "using the Cricut!" exclamation and all. He did do all the gluing and writing, though, so the Cricut doesn't get all of the credit.

Table runners

I've always wanted to dress a table this way, with runners across the table, then we got this fabric in a Freecycle find and it seemed perfect for the occasion. This was easy, easy sewing—I cut all the pieces, pinned with right sides facing, sewed all around, leaving a 3 inch space for turning, then finished with a top stitch all the way around. The heart shapes on the plates are just napkin oragami, and yes, that's a poinsettia on the table still.

We are now back from our (irresponisbly unannounced) holiday haitus, a break that was from the computer only, not so much from life. As it turns out my biggest issue with keeping up with the blog over the past few weeks wasn't at all a lack of things to post, but rather a need ot keep said things secret. Crafting is fun to post, when it isn't meant as a gift for someone else who happens to visit the site on a regular basis, like the grandparents.

The Christmas holiday to us is a lot about tradition, family, and showing others that you care, sometimes through gift giving. In previous years we have included Calvin in both the gift giving and getting, but this year I thought was the right year to really get him involved in a more active way, and something about having him pick out gifts for us to buy so he could give them to others just didn't sit well with me. Instead, we decided to have him make the gifts he gave so that they would most truthfully be from him. I scoured the internet for general ideas and gave Calvin a rather long list to choose from. In the end we made wine charms for the men in his life, and painted book bags and a Christmas Caroler decoration for the women. I will post about the others later, although as crafts they are pretty straight forward, and here I will tell you about our Christmas carolers because they were the biggest hit of all.

Christmas Carolers

The idea for this craft came from a Disney kids idea guide; they had made a caroler out of a tube, pretty much as I do here, and set it on a mantle. Calvin and I expanded on the idea by making our carolers three, and giving them a base and a snow scene. Here's how we did it.

Supplies: cardboard tubes, paint & brushes, construction paper (light peach for faces, and mitten and snow colors), marker (black), colored pencil (petal pink), children's socks, raffia, cotton batting, styrofoam sheet(s), craft glue & brush, hot glue & glue gun, snow flake punch.

1. First we collected our paper tubes. I actually took wrapping paper tubes and used a saw to cut them down to size—about the size of a paper towel tube, a toilet paper tube and something inbetween, but the wrapping paper tubes were thicker and stronger. Then we painted our tubes, using a different color for each caroler, and gave them an afternoon to dry.

2. While Calvin was napping I cut the construction paper (actually I used scrapbooking paper) in the necessary shapes—ovals out of the peach and mittens out of three other colors. Then, after his nap, I drew the faces on the ovals with a black Sharpie and Calvin used the colored pencil to give them pink cheeks. Calvin put dabs of glue on the faces, used a brush to spread it around, then I adhered them to the tubes in the proper places.

3. To make the hats we cut the ribbed portion off of each sock (Calvin was actually able to do this while I held the sock), folded one end back and tied the other with raffia. Calvin did the folding and cutting and put the hat on each little caroler. I did the tying, and I added a dab of hot glue to each raffia knot and a line of hot glue under the edge of each hat.

4. To make their books we found some unused double-sided music (you could also print some off the web), and folded it in half lenghtwise. I held the paper while Calvin cut out each book from the folded edge. We glued the mittens to the music first, then to the tubes, Calvin again applying the glue and using a brush to spread it around before I did the attaching, holding it in place until it adhered well. Now are carolers themselves were done!

5. To make the bases I used my chef's knife (it will never forgive me!) to cut 1 inch thick sheets of styrofoam down to the size I wanted—I think about 12 inches by 5 inches. Then I posed the carolers on the sheets and traced around them, then used a butter knife to cut along the traced circles, making a groove wide and deep enough to seat each tube down into the styrofoam about 1/4 inch, then I lined each groove with hot glue before sliding the caroler into it.
We used cotton filling to make the snow; Calvin pulled it apart and I added dabs of hot glue just before he pressed the pieces to the syrofoam base. Lastly, Calvin used a snowflake paper punch to cut flakes from papers in dark blue, light blue, and sparkly white, then he pressed them onto dots of hot glue I added to the top of the cotton. Done.