The Golden Slipper--Vietnamese Cinderella

This year I am going to do my Multicultural Mondays a bit different by exploring some fairy tales that are in different cultures. We are first going to focus on Cinderella. I did an introduction to Cinderella with the most common version of the story by Charles Perrault. Today we are going to look at the Vietnamese version of the story called The Golden Slipper or The Brocade Slipper.

Sewing Lesson--A Snowman Head

Sharing Saturday is still open! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities and be inspired by the amazing ideas already shared!

So before Christmas Amy at One Artsy Mama shared some adorable felt tree ornaments her Little Crafter made by sewing. I had really wanted to do these with Hazel. I have the supplies sitting on my bookshelf, but we never got around to them this year. Then I saw these cute ornaments on Amazon. I thought that is what we could try to make with a sewing lesson. 

Today we had our sewing lesson. Now it was not her first, but it was the first time she stuck with it long enough and was successful. We sewed two white felt circles together.

With some help she made it most of the way around. We put a little stuffing and some lavender into them and closed them up. By this time she was sick of sewing so we decided to glue on the faces. I then sewed strings on them so she could hang them on her seasonal tree.

Not bad for a first successful lesson. We had a very busy morning crafting, so I will share some more of our crafts later in the week.

Sharing Saturday 2013 #2

I have a feeling I am not the only one who is playing catch up after the holidays. We had a small numbers of shared posts last week, but there were some amazing ideas. If you have not had a chance to check them out, please do so! Once again we did not have a winner for most clicked, so here are a few of my favorites (though I did have a hard time choosing).

1) From KiKi's Korner: Flower Girl Basket (I think it makes a great May Day basket as well!)
2) From Discovering The World Through My Son's Eyes: Crazy Socks
3) From Life with Moore Babies: New Year's Eve with Kids
4) From Tales of the Scotts: Fun January Holidays
5) From Art Mama Says: Thank You Streamers
6) From Mess For Less: DIY Play Organizers


Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: Although I did not do many crafts this week, I did introduce our new idea for Multicultural Monday and also did a post about motherhood and the Virgin Mary. However my favorite this week was the Waldorf School Birthday Party for Hazel. I made this needle-felted picture to remember the story told at the celebration.  

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If you would be so kind to take a minute to vote for me in the Circle of Moms Top 25 Creative Blogs for 2013 I would really appreciate it. You can vote daily (every 24 hours) until January 30th!

Now for This Week's Party 
I made a few changes with the beginning of the new year. Since Mama Mia's Heart 2 Heart has not had a new post since July, and I have not heard from her since that time, I decided to take her name off the party button. If and when she returns to the blog world, she of course will be welcome to join me in hosting again, but for now I'm solo again.
 
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1)  Please follow Crafty Moms Share via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post. 

3) Post the newly updated button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

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A Waldorf Birthday Celebration

 Today we had the pleasure of joining Hazel's class in her birthday celebration. Steve took the day off so he could join us. He and I needed to arrive at 9:45. We spent a few minutes in the hall waiting for the class to be ready and then we joined them for a story written for Hazel about crossing the rainbow bridge and then for snack with the added part of cake and fruit. We brought the fruit. Hazel picked strawberries to bring. It was truly wonderful.

Tonight I made a quick needle felted picture of the story Hazel's teacher told. It started with a star child playing with her star children friends in a beautiful garden. They were playing hide-and-seek and she hid under a large green leaf that was as big as an umbrella. While hiding she noticed for the first time a small hole. The closer she looked the more she saw in the distance and was fascinated with it. She saw a cozy home where a man and woman came out and asked her to stay. She was shy and went back to play with her friends but continued to visit this new place each day. Until she got brave enough to find her angel and ask to go live with this new couple in this new world. The angel was happy for her and took her to see Father Sun who gave her courage. Then they saw Lady Moon who gave her wisdom. Then they went to see the stars who gave her joy. Then her angel put her in a boat to cross the rainbow bridge. Before leaving the star child asked where the angel would be since she would miss him and the angel told her he would always be near watching over her even if she could not see him. Then he covered her with a blanket and she took the ride to cross the rainbow bridge. When she arrived on the other side hands helped her out of her boat and there were the man and woman. The name of the star child was Hazel. 

If you lift the leaf, you can see the star child hiding and the black hole she noticed.

It was so interesting to see the class in action since I hear stories about the children. It was a bit disappointing that three were absent, so the class was very small today (only four children). However, we really enjoyed the snack and the cake. The snack ended up being my lunch since it was vegetable soup and I had two bowls. After the celebration, Steve and I went to Starbucks and then came back to pick her up. What an amazing way to celebrate such an important event. I truly love the Waldorf story of the star children crossing the rainbow bridge and that they customize it to match the child's personality and interests.

Circle of Moms--Please Vote and the Virgin Mary

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As you may know this year I really tried to focus with Hazel on the true meaning of Christmas and not all the commercialism.  To see some of the things we did you can check out my post with the Focus on the Nativity Blog Hop here. We also went to a live nativity which I highly recommend. Anyway, with our focus on it and going to church (my favorite time is Advent since I love all the Christmas music and stories), my mind has been on the Virgin Mary. Now I should add that the sermon at church the Sunday before Christmas was about Mary, so it was planted in my head. The sermon was on the true personality of Mary. She is always portrayed as obedient and good, however doing what Gabriel asked was a huge sacrifice and could have caused her death. Plus we tend to overlook that she was an unwed pregnant teenager when we look at her as a role model for our children. However this is not my focus of my thoughts completely tonight.