January is the month of Birthdays: Both Addie and Ian turn one year older just 12 days apart from each other. Not only that, but the birthday festivities start right after the holidays. I feel rushed every year!

This year, Addie went for a Dress-up/Princess theme (of course!) and Ian for Rockets. It was simple, and no-fuss. I had grand ideas like I always do, but then toned it down by keeping it about the fun and not the presentation.

We had lots of activities, but the one I wanted to share was from Ian’s party.  I planned on having the boys build rockets out of materials I was going to collect through the month. But….since I never collected anything, I came up with this idea at the last second.

Rocket Ship Diorama

Do you remember making dioramas in school? Yes I know. Very retro now, I’m sure. But I am here to bring them back. They are rather awesome, if I do say.

Here’s what we did :

Materials:

PDF download of rocket figures

Shoebox

Styrofoam ball

Toothpicks

Thread or fishwire

Scissors

Glue or scotch tape

Sky or Space colored paper

Directions:

1) Cut out the paper figures. Girl and boy rocket people are a must.

2) Attach a toothpick to the back for mounting.

3)Wrap the inside of the shoebox with paper that will look like outerspace: dark blue works best, and it’s fun to add glitter, stars, or whatever you want so that it looks super space-y.

4) Cut a styrofoam ball in the shape you need to make the top of a planet or moon

5) use fish wire to attach the firing rocket and planets to the ceiling of the  shoebox.

6) Be creative and add whatever you want to make it your own!

We were rather no-fuss about this, and let the little boys make them by themselves really. They loved positioning the rockets on their own. Even with paper they try to make things collide and explode:)

So, simple? Yes. Entertaining for a 5 year old? Yes and yes. Ian sleeps with this next to his bed so he can look into it before he drifts off to dreamland. Dreaming about green aliens and conquering the cosmos for sure.

Click here for the PDF download you can print yourself.

I’d love to see what you come up with!

I’ve been wanting to do this advent calendar for years…and I finally get to do it!  This will be our first Christmas home since having children, and I’ve wanted to have this be a family tradition of ours since I saw this idea from a neighbor of mine years back.

Children’s Picture Book Advent Calendar: What is it?

24 Christmas Picture Books, all wrapped up and marked for each day leading up until Christmas. This way, we will be reading one Christmas story a night!

Now don’t panic…getting 24 Christmas Books isn’t as hard as it looks. When you can check out Christmas books from the Library for 3 weeks at a time, it makes it rather simple….you may need to renew one time in there, but it still makes for a lovely tradition! And inexpensive too!

And Book #24……is the Bible, so that lessens the load a bit. But you’d be surprised how many Christmas books you already have.  Really, I am sure you have more than you think you do. I think books on winter can even count too… And don’t forget any Christmas Anthologies with short stories in there too.

Here’s a list of a few of mine in there:

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

The Polar Express

The 12 Prayers of Christmas

Christmas In the Manger

Christmas is Here

Christmas Day in the Morning

Snowmen at Christmas

A Wish to be a Christmas Tree

God Gave us Christmas

Who is Coming to Our House?

Olive, the Other Reindeer

Oh there are SO many Christmas books that I want to get my hands on….I have so many favorites that I don’t even have own yet! But this year, most of the books in our Advent Calender we DO own (thanks to the need to have a few books for “research” when working on my book) but even still….to the children, these books will be like new since they are all wrapped up.

These books are now in our open bookcase in the basement (thus the really lousy photo…sorry!) But this way, they are in plain visibility. Another good place is the hearth of the fireplace…or in your child’s bedroom.

Anyways…I wanted to share in case anyone needed a good idea for an advent calendar this year. And the best part? It’s either “rented” or a good reason to add to your already established Christmas collection.

Have any of you ever tried this one? It’s a new tradition for us this year, and I think this one is here to stay!

Happy Christmas!

xo

sarah

P.S. And don’t forget! The Cyber Monday and Tuesday Sale in the shop ends tonight at midnight!

O Frabjous Day! Callooh, Callay!

Yes, I have new paper dolls! This only took, oh like  year….but I think you’ll love them!

There is enough for each little paper doll to have their own little story: Playing Santa, playing in the snow, Christmas Caroling and even something as wonderful as bringing a winter pet home from the woods.

There are PDF and paper versions available! So either perfect for stocking stuffing, or print your own so you can let the kids rip them up without worry.

There are more coming…I really hope! But in the mean time this is what we are playing with at our house:)

enjoy!

Do you remember this post from way back when? Gosh, it was like two years ago…so Addie and Ian were only 2 and 3 years old. I had all this art that my babies had made (finger painting art to be exact) and I didn’t know what to do with it. I’d read blog post after blog post on how to store your kids art, digitize it, etc. But I wanted to USE their art, but didn’t know how. SO I came up with this ART GALLERY idea. I drew up stencils and traced them onto their finger painting art, and cut them out. Then we framed them, hung them on the wall, and had an instant art gallery of my kids work. Every time people came to visit, they always commented on our Gallery wall. It was so fun to look at! And since then, it’s become the most downloaded post on my blog (maybe cause I don’t have that much to download….working on that!)

But, I bring this up, because Chicago’s local news station did a demo of how to make your own ART GALLERY with your children’s art, and they used my blog post and templates for the demo! (Sorry folks…I couldn’t figure out how to embed the video, but you can watch the clip if you click here. The demo is the second half of the program at the 2:31 mark).

It was kinda surreal to watch someone half way across the country share with local Chicago viewers, something that I came up with with on a whim while two toddlers crawled all over me on a normal wednesday morning….and I just thought, “Hey, this would be fun to blog about.” It just made me realize that the normal things that we do each day can help inspire someone else to find more enjoyment in their daily living. That’s what I love about blogging. To me, cutting out animals onto finger-painted paper was just another thing to do on a quiet wednesday morning. And it was! Not that spectacular. But to someone else, that’s an idea that they might not have ever had if they didn’t go read about it. And so I guess it makes me happy to think that somewhere in Chicago there’s another mother cutting out finger-painted paper, while her toddlers climb lovingly all over her, to create a little art gallery from her own children’s precious fingers. It really made me think about how far reaching the little things we do each day can be.  I love how this world turns. And I love sharing in the turning.

To find the templates to make your own, click here.

Happy Monday friends!

This is a repost from last year, but I loved our framed pictures so much, I’m posting it again in case you can use the idea!

Happy Halloween Decorating!

Spooky portraits: so fun to make with the kids.

How we made them: On one particularly sick day, we laid around the house making spooky faces in the camera. The kids sat with me at the computer while I made them ready for printing. I had originally thought of framing them in these frames from IKEA, but since we were all too sick to get out, I drew a frame into photoshop inspired from the IKEA one I love, inserted the photos, and printed the whole thing out! Voila. Instant framed decor for Halloween!

**Other ideas if you don’t have a printer:

1. Purchase some mix and match frames from a local thrift store and paint them black
2. Swap out some already hung frames on your wall, and fill them with spooky faced for just this month
3. Trace out a simple frame on poster paper and have your children help you paint it black

And since we had more than enough spooky photos of the kids, I printed out the extras, and we had fun coloring in spooky embellishments in marker and crayon…like pirate eye patches, cat ears and sharp teeth. It’s like dress ups without the mess on the floor!

Halloween floral arrangement: Hardly floral! We spray painted some dead branches from outside, adorned with glittered butterflies and black crows (which I did purchase earlier in the month). The spray paint was a hit…and even though the kids just watched me, they wanted to turn everything in the house black after watching the transformation. Good thing we ran out of spray paint!

Bats in the doorway: Oh these took minutes…and cost near to nothing..but they really look great as they hang in our entry way. Something about the silhouette factor. These were made with construction paper and string we had on hand.

If you have any fun links of kid-friendly Halloween fun, do share!

Happy Spooking!

Polly Dunbar’s Tilly books are so delightful. Have you seen these books yet? They are rather new. You may have heard of her from this favorite picture book. She is a young British illustrator, and I just love her whimsicality. Her stories are very simple, but that is what makes them so appealing. If you can’t tell, I am a big lover of simple childhood…and these stories are just that. Childhood at it’s essence.

You’ll fall in love with her sweet characters.

And even better..there’s a whole series of books about each of her friends. If you library doesn’t have these, talk with your Librarian about getting them. They really are delightful little books perfect for very young readers.

Can I tell you how much my family loves this book?

My mother read it to us when when we were children, and I am most certain my mother’s mother read it to her.  My 5 year old brain remembers so well the silly characters and faces from which I learned to say “please” and “thank you.” My Mother bought this (at Anthropologie of all places) for Addie and Ian on their first Christmas together, and honestly…I think my kids love it as much as I still do. But honestly…tell me the beginning of the book isn’t pure genius.

If you can’t read it, here’s how the book begins:

“Having good manners is really just living with other people pleasantly. If you lived all by yourself out on a desert island, others would not care whether you had good manners or not. It wouldn’t bother them. Most of us don’t live on desert islands. So this is what we do-We meet people…” And so it goes on. Simple and brilliant.

Addie’s favorite part is the section where you meet the children who are very unpleasant to be around. The Whiney is so ugly and unappealing, Addie has vowed to never whine again. Uh-hum. She makes strong promises. But the impact of these illustrations does the trick. Coupled with a naive yet very modern 1930′s illustrative style, this book catches your attention almost surprisingly.

These other books are just as delightful, and will invite your kids to think manners really are fun. I find it fun to think that these books are still teaching kids after nearly 75 years (these were published in 1936.)  And if anything, I’ve used these for decoration. The book jackets are so colorful, and make me so happy. Display them on the bookcase and you’ve made your point already. Subtle hints…but pretty, yes?

We moved into our new house in April, but something about it being a major fixer-upper (like we’re talkin’ floor to ceiling fixer uppper) mixed with spending the year learning how to illustrate a picture book and getting used to life with 3 kids, has translated into a whole lot of non-decorating. Ugh. How I can’t wait to get my hands onto some vintage furniture to paint and some curtains to sew. We’re getting there. But in the mean time, I’ve been collecting things to help me get ready for when I have a few free hours (or dare I say it…an entire Saturday?) to get our place some personality of it’s own.

As much as I love dreaming up the Master bedroom and living room, the kid’s room always gets me most excited. Here’s some great finds I can’t wait to get my hands on:

New favorite maps from These are Things. Letterpress and Gorgeous!

My favorite designer, Rie Elise Larsen.  I love these hanging lamps. Too bad I don’t speak Danish.

Loving the pop of these pillows. Image here.

A nice way to enter a room.

Inspired by yellow.

It’s gonna be a while till I can buckle down and create some fun spaces. But I can’t help boiling ideas in my head!

We moved into our first home about 3 months ago. We have done hardly any decorating…mostly fixing up the place to make it livable (it was quite the fixer upper!) But the first things we did do were to establish the reading corners throughout the home. We read a lot.  And I realized just now as I am writing this that we have 6 designated reading spots in the house. I love that several times a day, I’ll find the kids reading in one of our book nooks. My office has large book case full of mostly children’s books, we have a library room (it’s really the living room with a wall to wall bookcases), the kids have bedside books, Ken and I have bedside books with books for the whole family, and we have a basement bookcase full of children’s books. That’s a lot of books! So that makes 5.

But the 6th place was added a few weeks ago when we purchased these picture frame shelves from IKEA and made a display book case. It was an interesting thing: For as many books we had through out the house, so many of the picture books that were crammed into bookcases just weren’t getting read unless I displayed them in baskets, or pulled them out for their reading piles.Think of it like browsing in the bookstore and not having any books on display, and only getting the spine to entice you to pull it down.

This bookcase has solved that problem! We rotate the books every other day or so, and the kids pull them down so much more often than before.

And besides that, it’s just pretty. It’s really like displaying art! Really good art at that!

There are so many ways to make display bookcases.

Here are some other ideas if IKEA isn’t available (although, I hear Target has the same kinda thing)

A MacGyvered bookcase from old wire and such.

These bookcases are actually a rain gutters, painted white and cut to size. Seen on Small Notebook Blog and Tiny Decor Blog and Satori Smiles.

Clever IKEA hack that keeps the books from falling off but still give the visual punch.

We have plans to do more….like make the closet next to the shelving into a reading cave complete with curtains and flashlights to make for a dark cozy reading spot …but more on that later.

So question: How have you made reading time fun at your house?

Children’s books have more power in 32 pages than children even realize. It isn’t until we are older than we find ourselves saying, “Mom, remember that book with the one page that had a dog in the bed, but he wasn’t asleep…and then a tree at the end? What was it called again?It was my favorite book.” Our memory of reading picture books can be as vivid as our real childhood memories, because imagination and reality are one and the same to kids.  The pages of picture books allow a child’s’ mind and senses to make sense of the world around them and give them freedom to explore new places and feelings in a very safe way. It’s a beautiful art, and one that I hope to master some day. There is so much more that goes into a book than a simple “tree at the end” ending. But to affect the child in a positive way is the ultimate quest.

Marilka is one of those books to me. To be completely honest, my memories of reading this as a child have completely messed up my critical eye. This could be a lousy book (which it isn’t) but because I loved it so much as a child, I love it now. Do you have those kind of books? Books that as you read now aren’t that amazing, but to your 5 year old self they captivated you?

From the front flap:

“When Marilka’s parents think she is lost, not only are they miserable, but everyone and everything in the neighborhood is afflicted too. When Marilka reappears, joy is unbounded, and she knows that she is the center of her parents’ world. In gorgeous full-color pictures and playfully exaggerated text, Janina Domanska transforms a universal childhood experience into a work of art.”

Marilka (I believe) is out of print (Macmillan 1970) and can only be found here or in your libraries.