Crafty Moms Share

Rainbows, Spring and St. Patrick's Day

So as I stated the other day, we are ready for spring. We have been busy thinking about spring crafts and putting away our winter decorations. Today I am going to focus on a couple rainbow crafts we have done. After all, rainbows seem to say spring as well as St. Patrick's Day.

The first one I saw on I Can Teach My Child. We changed it a bit by using wooden beads, white clay and adding a sun coming out of the clouds.

After making this craft, I decided to make Hazel a needle felted picture of a rainbow. I took a piece of white wool felt and needled a light blue roving all over it for the background.

Then I added the rainbow using small amounts of each color. After the rainbow, I added some clouds and tried to make them three-dimensional and added a bit of grey to the white in them. And of course I added some sun, so it would be like the craft we did together. Now to find a place to hang it.

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Fair, Brown & Trembling

Well with St. Patrick's Day approaching we have been thinking Irish lately. So I thought this week we would share one of the Irish Cinderellas. We will explore the second one next Sunday since the Virtual Book Club for Kids will be on Monday (and Sunday is St. Patrick's Day). This week we will be looking at Fair, Brown and Trembling by Jude Daly. This version seems a bit softer than the versions I have read on-line at Sacred Texts and Authorma. But before we explore the story, let us learn a bit about Ireland.

So I have been trying to focus on Easter and other religious posts for my Sundays lately, however with the week we have had, I had to share this post instead. Late last spring we discovered what has become my favorite change of season book, How Robin Saved Spring by Debbie Ouellet. I needle felted Hazel the two main characters in the book at this time.

This story is about how two sisters, Lady Winter and Sister Spring, live. Sister Spring sleeps through winter and awakens to begin the spring weather and season. Lady Winter wants to stay in control with blankets of white snow everywhere, so she knits a magic blanket that will keep her younger sister sleeping while she is under it. The animals and trees want spring to begin, so they try to wake Sister Spring. Throughout the story the reader hears how certain characteristics of animals and the tree came to be. Finally the robin manages to wake Sister Spring with some sun rays, however he got burnt getting them and thus the red breast. For more information you can visit the author's site which is where I got the picture of the book since I cannot seem to find our copy.

Now our weather this week the weather predictions have been a bit tough. The weather reports seemed to say that there was a chance of 3-6 inches of snow but near the coast it would be mostly rain. We live in a coastal town, but not near the coast, so we figured at most a few inches of snow. They did say the storm would last from Wednesday evening to Friday morning. My mother had been in the hospital and was suppose to be getting out between Wednesday through Friday. I was hoping it would be Friday since the storm was suppose to be over before they had to drive two hours home. However she got out on Thursday which now I am very happy about.

On Wednesday we began to have a few snow flurries, but not too much. Thursday the flurries continued but it was not sticking. When I went to bed Thursday night they were still saying 3-6 inches with the rain/snow line being close to the coast. On Friday, Hazel woke up around 5:30 a.m. and I went to get her snack so she would play in her room and listen to stories on CD while I continued to sleep. I turned the television on while getting her snack and there were barely any school cancellations. At 7 a.m. when I got up and we went to have breakfast, I turned the television on to see the weather report and almost every school was delayed. (Luckily Steve was able to work from home and did not have to deal with the horrific commute.) They were saying the snow would slow down by 10 a.m. and stop by noon. Well, at 10 a.m. it got worse. It was still snowing until about 3 p.m. Needless to say the weatherpeople were incorrect all over the place. As it slowed I took Hazel out to play. This is what we faced after our driveway was plowed (now mind you all the snow from the blizzard and other small storms had not melted completely yet).

Hazel has her sledding hill back! She also decided the part to the right looked like a throne. Needless to say she had a great time. I helped her go down the "hill" a few times.

Then I dug her a snow fort/igloo. The first one was too small so we moved to the hill and made a bigger one. She loved it.

She even painted it with her food coloring and water spray bottles. She tried to make purple and orange by spraying some colors. Also she made a doorbell and doorknob with the "paint."

Then she also wanted to have a snowball fight. This was the first snowfall this year that was good snowball snow.

Then she played some more on her mountain while I tried to shovel out my car. Then Steve came out and finished the shoveling and I went in to take a nap. Hazel ended up playing with our next door neighbor who is eleven.

Mountain Climbing

Almost at the Top

Queen of the Mountain!

However our big discussion was that we would have much rather the robin we saw a few weeks ago had woken Sister Spring and we would have had the rain. Hazel of course enjoyed the snow though! We are hoping Sister Spring will awaken soon and get rid of all this cold and snow! Oh, and there have been mention that we need the other two sisters--Autumn and Summer. We are going to make our own stories up about them!

Sharing Saturday 13-10

Thank you to all who shared with us last week!! Once again I was inspired by all of the amazing ideas shared. If you have not had a chance to check them all out, you should. Also make sure you check out my co-host's features this weeks over at Having Fun at Chelle's House.

Our most clicked post last week was from Happy Whimsical Hearts. I know I would love to play at her house with that wonderful cubby house in the back yard!

A Few of My Favorites

1) From Play Trains!: Our Play Date at Seattle Monorail (What a wonderful story and an amazing day!)
2) From An Idea on Tuesday: Pirates and Mermaids (Oh, I love these. I am definitely going to be making Hazel some soon!)
3) From Buggy and Buddy: Wool Felt Bird Hair Clip (I will definitely be making some of these soon as well.)
4) From Toddling in the Fast Lane: Recycled Pizza (What a great idea to make this while dinner is in the oven. I love it!!)
5) From Zing Zing Tree: Bottle Cap Flowers (Oh, I know Hazel will want to make these!)
6) From Artsy-Fartsy Mama: DIY Wax Paper Lantern (Love this!! Definitely want to make one!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! If you were one of the ones picked as a feature here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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My Week in Review: This week I shared Sharing the Easter Story with little ones, Fixing dress-up clothes that have been outgrown, A Jewish, Polish Cinderella Story, Strawberry Banana Muffins, Recycling Easter Egg Wrappers, and Beaded Crosses and jewelry.

Now for This Week's Party

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Beaded Crosses

The other week when we pulled out the decorations, we had hung our four yarn eggs on our chandelier, but our chandelier has eight arms. I wanted to add some crosses to tie in the religious part of it. I thought about painting some wooden ones, but I couldn't find where I had stashed them, so we made some beaded ones.

Hazel decided to make a necklace and bracelet as well. She decided we were working in our jewelry store making all of our special orders. Oh, and we had to sing a little song we made up about making the jewelry. First I will share a tutorial for our simple crosses. You need some beads (we used wooden ones) and a pipe cleaner. Cut the pipe cleaner so it will make a cross (roughly 1/3 for the horizontal).

Then choose a bead to be the middle bead. I experimented a bit and found the flatter beads to work the best. Stick both pieces of pipe cleaner through the middle bead.

Then position the pipe cleaners to make the cross you want. You should have a little more on the top so you can make a loop to hang it.

Now start beading each branch of the cross. On the top one stop a little further from the end and bend it down to make a small loop so you can get a string through to hang it.