Jenny’s Journal

Some questioned the Buddha asking, “Are you a God”?

“No”, he replied.

“Are you an angel then?”, they asked.

“No”, he replied again.

“What are you then?”, they asked.

“I am awake”, he replied.

Natalie has been taking a ballet class at her school after class once a week. Here she is dancing with her friend Claire. At the end of each class they each give a “performance” in front of their classmates. She seems to be very comfortable in the spotlight! Very unlike her mom at the same age….:)

First, there were eggs to be found.

Then there were dresses to put on and bubbles to be made!!

Then there were pancakes to eat, loved ones to call, family to enjoy, new snow to play in(!!) and movies to watch!

Natalie lost her first tooth last week, much earlier than I remember Moira losing one. My crafty bug kicked in so I Googled “tooth fairy pillow” and, amongst the many many choices, I chose one I really liked from this site: mmmcrafts.blogspot.coml. I really loved the one she made with the crown and skirts but decided to keep it simple. A tooth with a smiley face is pretty cute as is!! The way it works is the tooth is placed in the mouth pocket in front. I added a pocket on the back of the tooth pillow so that the tooth fairy would have the option of leaving a larger treat if she wanted to.

I didn’t have it finished by the time carpool arrived but I had to bring it anyway to show Natalie! She was already majorly excited to have lost her first tooth so I don’t think the pillow made her much more excited……but I just thought it was so darn CUTE!

Here is a very small tutorial if you would like to make one also:

First, cut out your pieces. The pattern calls for both sides to be felt. I used fabric for the back.

Instead of gluing a rectangle off pink felt behind the mouth I chose to sew the mouth to a piece of the cream colored flannel (cutting a slit between the stitching for the opening). I then sewed a corresponding piece of pink flannel to the back of the cream piece. I thought this was an especially safe way to prevent the treasured tooth from getting lost inside the pillow.

I hand stitched the cheeks, buttons and eyebrows and also machine stitched the teeth onto the face. For the back I made a simple pocket out of one layer of patterned fabric. I sewed a small piece of Velcro under the top edge of the pocket, encasing the edge of the bit of ribbon that pokes out of the pocket.

After pinning the edges…

I stitched the two layers together and pinked the edges. Another modification I made from the original pattern was to leave an opening along one side of the tooth pillow, rather than a slit in the center of the back, to invert the pillow. I stuffed the pillow with natural wool roving, sewed up the opening, and gave it to my toothless grinning girl!

Thanks for the fabulous tutorial!! I love that it can hang on a bedpost and that it smiles at you!

PS – The tooth fairy found her tooth!