Jenny’s Journal

It is afternoons like this that take the load off my shoulders as a mother. Give a child some simple supplies and they will create stunning art, silly contraptions and functional works of imagination. Really!!
Put out a box of any kind/size of paper, something to make marks on it with, scissors, glue, tape, etc….sit back and see what happens. They will entertain themselves just fine, thank you! I believe this is a cat motel and swimming pool.
Refreshments?

A stapler is often necessary.

Pride.

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!

There are so many cool things to do with wool from a sheep. For instance, you can grab a handful and dip it into warm(as hot as is comfortable/safe for you or your child) water + some dish soap. Rub and play and twine all those fibers together until you’ve made something you like. In this case, I made some little balls and Nathan made something much more interesting!

Last year I took a wreath making workshop at Red Butte Garden with a couple of good friends. Jena and Heather had taken that same workshop for the 4 or 5 years previous and were really good at it. We decided to try it on our own and each of us gathered greenery from our homes, neighbors homes and local canyons (illegally!).

Here’s the stash on our front porch…

I extended our dining table, tarped it and called the floor a good to go garbage area. We would sweep and mop up afterward. Dee had all the kids that morning and the four of us had the house to ourselves. It was so much fun to do this together. Sometimes it’s difficult to find even 10 or 15 minutes of focus on my our projects and to have 3 1/2 hours of uninterrupted  crafting was bliss.

Tanya brought a gorgeous variegated holly with her mix – all from her own yard!

Heather clipped a healthy berried holly for her wreath.

Tanya’s wreaths. Can you believe these were her first ever!?

We did it! It was decided that we would do this again next year. There was something really great about gathering the materials ourselves and knowing exactly where it all came from, not to mention how much we enjoyed each others company!