Our Valentine's Day!

 

What a fun Valentine's Day we had!  The day started with the table all set for the boy's and biggest boy (hubby's) surprises!  I always loved when I woke up to see my Mom had left a little Valentine treat at our plates for Valentine's Day.  The boys awoke to 2 chocolates and these little wooden Yetis from Mamaroots etsy shop.  Monsters for my monsters, thank you Mamaroots!  My darling husband gave me a card, truffles and a sweet necklace that Michael picked out for me. Oh my heart!

We had heart shaped pancakes for breakfast. I made a little rainbow heart color matching game for Owen.  He liked it very much.  Michael and I also loved using them later on in Math.

We had an impromtu Valentine story about a powerful fire, made of love & light that never goes out, is constant and is never destructive and how all the creatures, man & animal are drawn to the warmth of this great fire.  I didn't realize until a couple of minutes into the story that I was relating this great fire to divine Love.  I am beginning to love storytelling and the magic that happens there. 

We had a make your own pizza day using English muffins.  After lunch we made Valentine cards for loved ones, something we neglected to do until today! 

Yes, a fun day!  How was your Valentine's Day?

Until next time...


PS: Don't forget to enter the giveaway for Margaret Bloom's new book, Making Peg Dolls!  Click here. 

Projects, Projects... & Garden Update

I have not been in this space for a little while, life has been happening!  You know how that goes. We have been so busy this Spring doing much needed work in our yard.  This is the ugly yard we had at the end of this winter.  The shrubs had all died in the unusual multiple snow days we had, so they needed to be chopped back to make room for new growth.  Plus the grass that we've been trying to grow for three years never really took.  Then the wind blew in all sorts of weeds.  I had wanted to have a dirt pit lined with tree stumps in the back corner but my boys & their friends enjoy bug hunting and would never leave the stumps in place.  Not to mention I hadn't thought about them digging up sprinkler pipes!  Yikes, our tiny yard was a mess!

So we decided to cheat and put in sod.What a difference it has made.  The whole family now gravitates to the backyard. 

 

The oleander shrubs have been chopped and new growth is coming up beautifully.  The chicken wire fence is not finished yet.  Hopefully this will help with our garden pests, toddlers & cats! 

My seedlings didn't do very well, so I bought plants.  We've been having very hot days and they just never took.  Mental note, start seedlings earlier next year.  Here we have bush type tomatoes, a Patio vine type tomato in the back, sweet cherry peppers, "Big Jim" green chili, lemon Cucumber, cucumber, cinnamon basil, nasturtium & french marigold seeds.  

The pallet garden has been very hard to keep wet for seeds in our hot climate.  So except for two herb seedlings I've given up. I'll get plants here & there to fill it in.  In the meantime its providing a good spot for the yellow squash & cantaloupe to rest upon while our grass establishes.  I'm not a huge fan of the edging but we put in an invasive kind of desert grass that eventually will try to find our garden. We may put in another square foot garden bed here this fall.    

Here we have vine type tomatoes, basil, zucchini and we just added some french marigold seeds along the edge.  The buckets are a small compost system I'm trying out.  Hoping it works, I haven't been very successful in this area and my husband is not hopeful.  

We made a sandbox too! We're hoping to surround it with some terracotta tiles & fill it this week.  The kids are getting excited for it, but they've had something else to play with out here.  

  

Our fairy garden! We're still working on it so more on that soon!

Until next time...

WIP Wednesday: Michael's sewing basket & featured on...

This week is my son's WIP! This summer I made up a little hand sewing basket for Michael.  He's been asking for his own supplies for awhile & every time he sees me sewing he wants to sew too.

Finally I bought him his own little sewing kit in blue.  I cut a few projects out for him, so whenever he sees me sewing he has his own projects to work on.  He loves it!  And was very proud to get his very own supplies and fill his pin cushion with pins.  Right now Michael is working on a sun wand.  He's almost finished blanket stitching the outside.  Then he'll stuff it and add the stick.

On another subject, my woodworking tutorial was featured on Craft Buds!

 

 

Here's my Rainbow Gnome woodworking tutorial if you wish to see.  Until next time...

WIP Wednesday...

This week I'm working on a new banner for Owen's quickly approaching 2nd Birthday. 

I'm also repairing the thrifted box of blocks I found on my thrifting expedition. I anticipate some more wood-burning in my future! Yay!

I'm still slowly working on getting all the blocks cleaned, sanded and beeswaxed.  They're turning out beautiful and irresistible to play with.  

And some more toy repair.  We've had this Amish made tractor and wagon since Michael was a toddler.  It was drawn on, dented, scratched and dirty.  Silly me didn't take a picture of the "before", (bad blogger!) Also the wagon peg to attach to the tractor had long ago fallen off and was held together by a ribbon.  So it was loved on this week: cleaned, sanded, beeswaxed and a new peg glued in.  It's now a fully functional tractor and is causing a few tug-o-wars lately.  Owen found some logs in the new block set and has been hauling them for a week. 

Until next time...

Woodworking Tutorial: Waldorf inspired Rainbow Sprite

*** This Sprite/gnome is my original design and is provided here for your personal use only & not to copy for sale.  Thank you!***

I've had so many questions about the process of making our wooden toys that I decided to create this tutorial.  Thank you Tanya for the suggestion!  Also thank you all for your kind comments on my last woodworking post and for helping me come up with the name "Rainbow Sprite" for these little guys. 

I wish that I could show you the process of drawing and cutting them out but I did all my cutting in NY last fall at my Father-in-laws workshop.  I don't have a saw here.  However, I can tell you that I took scrap pieces of pine of varying thicknesses and drew what I wanted to make on them.  After I drew them very close together on the wood I cut them out on my Father-in-laws scroll saw.  Then I used a sander to quickly sand the outside curves and bottom. This is where my tutorial begins.

This wood is about an inch thick.  As you can see it's very roughly cut with scratches and grooves. 

If you have a Dremel tool buy or use your wood shaping bit.

Using the dremel I curved the sharp corners and smoothed out the deep grooves.  (And no I didn't actually sand on the play silk.  Just wanted a pretty backdrop!)



If you don't have a dremel you can use hand files to do all the smoothing. I have a Husky 10-piece file set which is very inexpensive.  After the Dremel I still use the files to add detail and smooth out any grooves the Dremel is too large to smooth out.  

Here you can see I added the detail of the chin and around the simple hands shape. 

At this point I use 3M Aluminum oxide 100 grit sand paper to smooth it out completely.  

 Then 150 grit.

Then 220.

By now it's very soft and smooth.  I use buffing paper to buff it even softer.

At this point is starts to have a bit of a "glow". You can see the wood grain clearly and it has a more yellowy almost translucent color to it.

With a pencil, I draw the detail that I want to wood burn. Or skip the wood-burner and paint the detail, whatever you prefer.  I drew the face line and the tulips at the base on both sides.  I forgot to draw the hand line! (doh! Oh, well!)  Here are some tips for the wood burner.  First practice on something else first because it takes some getting used to.  Mine has a flat edge so it's hard to create tiny curved lines.  Also use it before it gets too hot.  I like the more delicate burned line that I get by using it fairly quickly after plugging in.

After the wood-burning it's time to paint!

Use non-toxic tube or bottled watercolors.  To make the rainbow sprite, squeeze out a tiny amount of all the colors of the rainbow. Or you could use just red, yellow and blue and mix the colors in between.  For this  Sprite I decided to make it the reverse of the previous one I had made.  So I started with the red at the bottom and mixed as I worked my way up.  I do all sides at once fairly quickly so they blend well.  If after it dries there's a hard edge between colors, that you don't like, take a wet brush and blend the colors again.  For my first sprite I didn't like how bright it was so I went over it with a wet brush again to lighten the colors.  Make sure you leave the face, flowers and hands (which I forgot about), unpainted.  Allow it to dry, then paint the tulips and leaves.  Since the red is at the base I decided to make the tulips purple to contrast.

Once the paint is completely dry buff it again.  This makes it smooth like glass and irresistible to handle.  Then add the beeswax polish.  You can buy polish, there's one here at Palumba.  Or you can easily and inexpensively make your own.  There's a recipe here at Wee Folk Art made with olive oil, and another here at Beneath the Rowan Tree made using Jojoba oil.  Put a thin layer of the polish on with your fingers and leave for an hour or two.  Then wipe off the excess and buff with a clean cloth. Repeat at least twice and then again whenever you notice it looking dry. Works for dry hands too! I've read one family likes to polish at the start of each season.  I think that's such a great way of showing care and respect for our toys. 

I cheated and added the wood-burning to the hands after I polished.  I guess he's a little cold and wearing a muff!

If you use this tutorial please leave a comment with a link to your creations.  I would LOVE to see them!  And again, friends this is provided for your personal use only. 

Until next time...

WIP Wednesday

 

The past week I've been busily and happily filing, sanding, painting and beeswaxing!  I really LOVE woodworking!  I cut all of these wooden toys last fall with my father-in-law's tools in NY on our northern adventure.  I got a little carried away with the cutting and could never have finished them all for Christmas.  

This time, since I wasn't making them specifically for presents and since my little Michael told me had peeked at what I had cut anyway, I let him help me work on them.  

 Michael's been working on sanding our Papa bear.  

I made our tree a bright green Spring tree with pink blossoms. I made a little being, not sure what to call her. Is she a gnome?  That doesn't seem right. She isn't a fairy.  Not exactly a root child. What would you call her? She has wood-burned tulips on both sides.  I asked Michael what color I should paint her and he said rainbow color. I thought that was a fantastic idea and I love how she came out.  Maybe we could call her a "rainbow spirit"!?

I'm seriously obsessed with toadstools!  So I had to make another.  (and I have still another on the way!) Can anyone have too many toadstools?  

I made a  puzzle, play cave. One of the sections broke on the plane on the way home so I had to glue it together.  It's not terribly noticeable, I suppose. Another flame puzzle is in progress as well.  I love how these puzzles can be played with in so many different ways.  As a puzzle, arches, hills, a cave, a stream or river (if you lay the largest one down flat) as many ways as the imagination can come up with. 

Our owl and raccoon in progress.  I don't like how the owl has come out.  All the other animals are less cartoon-y than he is.  He doesn't seem to fit the style. 

I may sand his face off and paint instead of wood-burn him.  I'm not sure yet.

Some evergreens for the Winter season. 

And another tree- this one will be a fall tree, so we'll have a tree for every season. There's also a toadstool and another gnome/spirit.

It's so satisfying to make these toys.  There are so many lovely etsy and other natural toy shops out there to buy from.  Had I the budget to do that I probably would have bought from them.  However, our budget doesn't allow and I'm so glad of it because we've been able to have this incredible experience of making them ourselves!  (and saved a boat-load of money doing so!)We appreciate them so much because of the fun and rewarding experience of making them.

Until next time...

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