Make an easy HAPPY NEW YEAR banner.

K is showing great interest in learning how to read. So, when I suggested we make a HAPPY NEW YEAR banner, a craft that uses letters, she squealed excitedly. When she saw that the letters were glittery, she declared this to be 'the best craft EVER!'

We needed,

Glittery letters (from a craft store)

Paper or card stock

Glue

Glitter

A star stamp

Scissors

Yarn

Fold the paper in half and then half again.

Cut your paper in half along the second fold.

You now have the two halves of folded paper. Cut a triangle flag from each piece, leaving the straight side intact, the side that has the fold in it. You will be hanging your flags over yarn and they'll rest on this fold.

I put glue in a recycled plastic lid and K stamped each flag with a glue star...
And then sprinkled the star with glitter.

I arranged the letters on the deck and wrote out HAPPY NEW YEAR on a piece of paper for her to follow.

She had great fun finding the right letter and sticking it onto her paper flag.

I strung up some yarn across our beam and K showed me which letters to put were to make the words HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Now, when you enter our house, you'll be sure to have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Blessings and magic.

How to make Champagne Glass Charms.

I am excited! We are going to a New Years Eve bash. Yay... chink-chink... HAPPY, NEW YEAR!

This is when I have to admit that we have been real old fogys for the past few years... we haven't even made an effort to see in the new year... we have put our kids to bed at their regular hour, watched some TV and then gone to bed ourselves, grumbling at the sounds of revelry coming from our neighbors party, very thankful that we are mature enough to know that we don't have to stay up all night just because it is the eve of a new year. Well, not this year, baby! This year we are going to make it to the first hours of 2010! Whoo Hooooo!

It is my friend who is hosting the New Years Eve party. I thought it would be lovely if we could give her a little something special for enticing us out from under our rock. So, it being a party where the Champagne will flow, K and I made her a set of Champagne glass charms.


We used Sculpey to make them. This is all we needed...
Colorful Scupley
Thin, bendable wire, cut into a bout 6 inch pieces


K and I got to work making tiny little charms with the Sculpey...

We made a heart, a toadstool, a rose, a pumpkin, a sun and a strawberry...

Our collaborative toadstool is my favorite...

When our charms were done, we used the wire to make small holes through each charm...

We then baked them in the oven at 360 *F (180 *C) for 15 minutes and let them cool.

We threaded a piece of wire through each hardened charm. Twisted it to secure it...

We left the two ends of the wire loose to twist around the wine glass but you can get little clasps from a craft store for that 'more professional' finish.

And Voila! Champagne Glass Charms... too sweet, don't you think. Only problem is that now I want to keep them for myself!
So, my friends, are you going to be 'mature' this year and stay home? Or 'silly' and boogy the night away?

Blessings and magic.

How to make a Wet Felted Soap-On-A-Rope.

Both my kids love the bath. They play in and with the water for ages. I love it because it is one place these days where they play happily together (yes, we have entered the stage of fighting)

One of the things that I find really sweet with their bath is that they wash each other. We decided to make a soap-on-a-rope.

We needed a bar of soap, sturdy yarn, warm soapy water and our wool supplies... roving and our needle felting needle. I get my wool supplies from Weir Dolls (www.weirdolls.com).

I tied the yarn around the soap as if the soap was 'brown paper packages tied up with strings'. K launched into 'Raindrops on Roses and whiskers on kittens...'
I made sure there was enough yarn left on the ends to make a loop for our rope part of the soap-on-a-rope and tied it into place.

This is what the yarn-wrapped soap looked like.

We made a hole in the wool roving for the yarn loop to fit through.

We threaded the yarn loop through the hole in the wool.

Then we wrapped the soap in the wool.

One strip of wool around one way like this...

Another strip of wool around the other way so that the soap was fully covered. It was important not to skimp on the wool as we didn't want any of the soap to show.

This is what our wrapped soap looked like...

Next, it was time for the warm soapy water. We dipped our wrapped soap into the water and started to gently massage the wool.

We massaged and massaged, very gently at first, so that the wool fibers slowly interlocked and the wool became tighter over the soap.

When we felt that the wool had started to felt together, we started to agitate the soapy wool soap with more vigor. The wool shrunk over the soap and the soap started to feel nice and snug over the soap.
Then we gave our soap-on-a-rope a nice rinse in fresh water and hung it up to dry.

Our bath tonight was even 'funner' than usual. The children took great pleasure in lathering up their woolen soap and scrubbing themselves clean.
They washed each other and themselves over and over again and I think they truly are the cleanest they've ever been!

Remember to pop over to Friday's Nature Table on Fridays to share your nature-inspired posts... everyone is encouraged to participate!

Blessings and magic.

A Magical Letter from the Fairies!

You wont believe what happened this morning! When we went outside to explore the day, we noticed sparkles on the patio! Then more sparkles! It was a trail... a fairy trail!

It was fairy dust! Do yo see it sparkling in the early morning sun!
We followed the trail all around the garden.
It dusted the flower beds,
Sparkling in a most enchanting way!
Finally we saw something unusual under the printers tray.

A scroll of ancient looking paper!
But it was most odd... the paper was blank! There was nothing written on it! We couldn't figure it out.

And then Mother had a very brilliant idea... perhaps we should paint on the paper to see if anything special happens.
We got out our water colors and began marking the magical paper with bright colors...

LOOK what happened!

Beautifull fairy drawings emerged! Magically!

This is what the fairies drew for us... a butterfly, a snail and a flower. We discovered that they were trying to tell us something, that the pictures were a letter to us, and this is what K decided the letter said...

One fairy came on a butterfly, another came on a snail, to say thank you for all the beautiful flowers in our garden.

We feel very honored to have received a fairy letter and now we know that fairies DO live in our garden.

Blessings and magic...

PS - this is how the fairies wrote their letter; they started with plain, white paper. They used a white candle to draw their picture on the paper and, voila! they had a magical, invisible fairy letter that reveals itself only when painted on with water color paints. Wink, wink!

Remember to join me on Friday for Friday's Nature Table where everybody is encouraged to post their nature posts on my blog. Have a look at Friday's Nature Table to see all the wonderful, inspiring posts of the week.