December « 2008 « mama smiles

Recent Activities

Playing with bubbles

Marker art on large sheets of paper

Coupon clipping

Rice, Ham, and Veggie Casserole

This casserole was inspired by leftover ham and rice that were sitting in the fridge needing to be used. It was a huge hit (somewhat to my surprise), so I thought I’d share it here. Sorry I don’t have any measurements…

INGREDIENTS:

cooked rice
mixed veggies (I used Costco’s frozen organic veggie mix)
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
hot water (add enough that the mixture is easy to stir, but not runny)
cubed ham
grated cheese (I used a six-cheese Italian mix)

You basically mix all the ingredients (minus the cheese) together, put them in a casserole dish, sprinkle some cheese on top, cover with foil, and bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes. You can remove the foil for the last ten minutes or so if you like a toasted cheese top.

Geometric Shapes Train

This craft was inspired after we made this Cut and Paste Train posted at No Time for Flash Cards.
Both kids enjoyed building the train, so I decided to make them felt shapes for a train. Here is the design I created:

My plan is to create a series of standard shapes made out of felt that can be used to create various scenes/pictures. Then I can just get out the shapes and design sheets and my kids can use them over and over, or create new designs of their own.

Here is the felt train. Emma really enjoyed making it over and over, with a little help.

Frugal Organization

I have long admired the organization bins sold in Ikea and other stores, but could never bring myself to pay for them. I recently discovered that shoeboxes make an excellent thrifty alternative. I just put them in drawers as they come, but you could cover them with paper or fabric if you want to make them look nicer. I don’t have a before picture of this drawer of Emma’s, but just picture it stuffed to the brim with clothing. It has all of the same articles of clothing in it now, but there is plenty of space to open and shut the drawer and I can easily find the shirt I’m looking for.

Books for All Ages

I’ve been a fan of Karen Katz ever since we got Where Is Baby’s Pumpkin? as a freebie with Emma’s Halloween costume last year. We recently borrowed Ten Tiny Babies from our library, and both I and the kids enjoy reading it. The babies are very cute, and one baby gets added on each page – making it a fun counting book as well as a bedtime routine story. Now, if only my kids went to bed as peacefully as these ten adorable tots…

Both Make Way for Ducklings and Blueberries for Sal are books I remember loving as a child, but I only recently realized they are both written by Robert McCloskey. Living near Boston, it’s fun to picture a family of ducklings bringing daily traffic to a halt, and the story of Sal and a baby bear switching mothers comes with wonderfully expressive illustrations.

Newbery Honor book Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt starts right before the American Civil War. The protagonist is a perceptive, intelligent nine-year-old boy named Jethro, and through his eyes Hunt reveals the complexity of war with incredible compassion and sensitivity. I like to listen to recorded books while cleaning the house and playing on the floor or making art projects with the kids, but I find it hard to find interesting stories that don’t have language or scenes that are problematic for a two-year-old to hear. This one was perfect – complex characters and a completely engaging plot involving a difficult subject told in such a way that it might instruct, but would not lead to nightmares even if Emma chose to listen. This is definitely a book I’ll be reading aloud to my kids when they get a little older, probably more than once.

Handmade doll bed

This doll bed was Emma’s Christmas present. It was very simple to make, and she loves it.

The blanket is two pieces of fleece (scraps from clothing I’ve made her which you may recognize if you’ve followed this blog for a while) tied together. Just cut out each corner, cut the edges into strips, and tie. Don’t pull too hard while tying, since fleece stretches out and stops looking nice under stress.
The bed frame is the lid of the large shoebox that Mike’s winter boots came in. I covered it in wrapping paper, but I might recover it with fabric if the wrapping paper rips (so far, so good).

I traced around the lid and added a seam allowance to make the mattress. The mattress is stuffed with two layers of quilt batting. I top-stitched around the edges, mainly to avoid hand-sewing where I had added the quilt batting. The pillow is made out of the same fabric (a remnant a friend gave me that they had left over from making a baby blanket), also top-stitched around the edges for the same reason as the mattress.

Here is the finished bed. I made the entire gift in under one hour, start to finish.

Emma loves her baby’s new bed.

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas card puzzle

For our craft today, we cut some Christmas cards into puzzle pieces. The puzzles work better if you back the cards with cereal boxes (or cardstock) for stability before cutting out (use a glue stick and be generous with the glue – and leave time for the glue to dry before cutting out. The non-printed side of cereal boxes sticks better than the printed side). If you have access to a laminator, I would back cards with a cereal box and then laminate. Another option is to back the cards with felt and then to build the puzzle on a felt board. Cut the card into more pieces for an older child.
I have no idea why this picture insists on showing up sideways – anyone know how to fix it? This seven-piece puzzle really tried Emma’s patience, even though she generally likes puzzles. She did much better with 3-4 piece puzzles.

Jingle Bells

For some reason snow makes me think of bells – maybe because I read the “Little House on the Prairie” books so much as a kid and they have sleighbells on their winter sleighs?

We had a big snowstorm this weekend, and all the snow put me in the mood for bell-oriented crafts. Both of my kids enjoyed these two simple bell crafts.

We put bells on ribbons to make some more Christmas tree ornaments:
And I made some bell bracelets for Emma. She was really cute running around the house waving her arms around to make the bells ring.

I got the idea for the bell bracelets from this post at My Montessori Journey.

Stockings!

I finished the stockings tonight! My husband wound up cutting the letters out for me – first he cut squares and then he cut each letter our of a square. Count on an engineer to think up that way of keeping the letters the same size!

I think they turned out cute, although Johnny’s is a tiny bit skewed to the left and Emma’s goes maybe a tiny bit to the right. What can I say, I had lots of little "helping" hands! I love the way the letters look hand-sewn on, but it definitely took longer than I expected. My sister Catherine reminded me that her stocking (which I helped make at least a decade ago) has the letters of her name attached with iron-on fusing. The letters have stayed on all these years, and they still look great. So that’s a quicker way to do it – and something that could be helpful even if you want to do the hand-stitching too since the fusing holds the letters in place.

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