I like holidays and I’m always ready to dive in and make them fun for kids and thus, very involved for me. But Halloween was never my favorite. I thought Halloween decorations were either gross or silly and could not imagine why I’d spend any time or money on them. And then I had a […]
Tutorials
Welcome to our tutorials! (Or, how we tried something and what happened, to hopefully spare you our mistakes.)
How to make modern wooden blocks
September 28, 2012 by
A LONG time ago, back in mid-May, I posted a teaser photo of a project I was working on. Well friends, I am finally done.I’ve actually been done for a month or two, but as making these modern wooden blocks has been a study in procrastination, that is right on schedule. I bought this tub […]
How to make homemade cleaning supplies
August 13, 2012 by
If you spend any time at all on Pinterest, it won’t be long before you are seized with the desire to paint constellations on your fingernails or spray paint half your furniture high-gloss lime green or, in the case of my springtime Pinterest obsession, make homemade cleaning supplies. But it wasn’t just Pinterest that led […]
How to make a paper pennant banner
June 13, 2012 by
A while ago I shared how much fun it is to sew on paper. Here’s another super-easy, fun project that yields impressively cool results, and proves that sewing on paper is still fun. My nephew Tyler graduated from high school last weekend. The first grandchild and nephew in my family, he’s been very close to […]
How to make fairy and gnome gardens
May 24, 2012 by
Last year my then-three-year-old took several trips to the greenhouse with me and loved to play with the huge and elaborate fairy garden display there. (You know, the one that is extremely breakable and says ‘please don’t play with the garden.’ That one.) So we decided to make one for him at home. We bought […]
How to set up a family recycling center
May 4, 2012 by
I remember a long time ago at some college party someone asked the group to answer: “what progressive cause don’t you care about?” (This may have been what passed for a drinking game in my crowd. Good progressive-activist, triple-majoring, newspaper-editing students, we.) That was easy: the environment. I just couldn’t get my back up over […]
How to sew easy quilted fabric cards
April 25, 2012 by
I’m not much of a sewist. As mentioned before, I’m most comfortable with straight lines and no patterns. But I do have a sewing machine and I love fabric. So when I stumbled on this tutorial by Dana at MADE for how to sew fabric cards using little bits of cute fabric, I was all […]
How to sew an easy quilt for a big-boy bed
March 30, 2012 by
There’s nothing so tiny as your baby in his big-boy bed for the first time. (Well, maybe your newborn in his crib for the first time.) It’s hard on a mama, but it must be done. Last year, Noah was ready to graduate from the crib, as evidenced by his ability to escape from it. […]