A Bushel of Apples to Play With

 
I loved my Mom’s crocheted apples so much that I had to make up some polymer clay ones!

These were so quick and easy to make.  Then, I let my kids play with them!

After I made my tiny apples, I made up this paper to use them with. 
I keep adding to my list of manipulatives for my children to play with.  There are so many ways for the kids to play with these.  They can sort them by color, do pattern work, use the above sheet and sort by numbers, etc.  I love this kind of stuff!
Rebecca

I'm joining the following fun parties; Its A Blog Party, Blue Cricket Design, Sew Much Ado, Just A Girl, ABC and 123,

Fairy Garden Garden-Gotta Check This Out!

My kids and I are having so much fun in our fairy/rock gardens!  I think you will be seeing many more updates on this as we make all of the hundreds of things we have planned for these gardens.
Let me give you the first look at our Fairies’ garden.

I’ll point a few things out because, quite honestly we have spent way too much time on these creations! ;)
We made a garden with rows for each plant type.  Starting along the top row we have corn, next are green onions, zucchini, carrots, and then lettuce.  Along the left side are our sunflowers.

The coolest part of this is that all of the vegetables are removable!
Oh ye-ah!  I wanted this garden to be completely interactive for my kids.  So, they can “pick” everything for picnics or regular meals.  Even the basket to hold the bounty was made by us!
Now, when the season is over the kids can take everything out, down to even the corn stalks themselves!  Then, you will just see the rows of dirt!  They can pretend to plant their garden and watch them grow!

Here is all the produce we have so far.  Notice in the basket we even have strawberries.  We have a strawberry barrel in progress for those to “grow” in.
Also, the corn can come out completely down to just the corn cob, ready to eat.  Or they can pick corn cobs with 1, 2, or 3 husks still on it.
Oh and my zucchini plants...  I think zucchini plants are the most gorgeous vegetables that you can grow!  These were so much fun to make…we even included tendrils under the flowers and stamens inside!
 
We have a campfire to cook up our bounty.  We still have to make a “metal” bucket to actually cook the food in.  We’re thinking we’ll make some more veggies that are already cut up, so that we can make stews and such.
We tried to make the rings in the logs, like real ones.  They turned out pretty cute.  Again, everything is interactive so each part of the campfire is its own piece so that it can be moved however, or wherever they want it to.

Here is a shot of where the Fairies’ garden went into place.  We added more pathways, sand, and even some moss.  We wont be able to actually grow anything in these fairy gardens, the kids talked me into moss being the next best thing!  I think it’s pretty clever.

A very cool thing about making a polymer clay garden is that my kids are learning a ton about vegetables.  We had to really think through what makes a vegetable really look like what it is supposed to look like.  The corn husks needed the fluff on top of the stalk.  However, we did take liberties with how the corn attaches, so that we could make it interactive.  We looked up pictures on flikr, and actual produce from our refrigerator to get colors, leaves, shapes, and more “just right”.  It is also fun figuring out what tools will make the right effect that we are going for.  It was my oldest daughter’s idea to have a false bottom on the garden, for the vegetables to be able to push into.  It works like a charm!

Rebecca
I would LOVE to see any fairy/rock gardens that anyone else has!  We are getting our inspiration from anywhere that we can!

I'm joining the fun at the following parties!
The Persimmon Perch, Skip To My Lou, Keeping It Simple,  Making The World Cuter, the DIY Showoff,

Rock/Fairy Gardens!!

 
We’re making better and bigger fairy gardens than the pots we had before!
This is turning out to be more fun and a better idea than I first thought.  Look at the cute pebble paths?  Those fairy houses we made last year out of Fimo Clay.  Wait until you see the new Fimo Clay Fairy stuff we’ve been working on!  But they’re not ready so I’ll post those another day!
 
I am loving these fairy gardens because it gives us even more reasons to be outside.  It gives us something to do together that we are all enjoying.  It also gives me us an excuse to do more crafting!  Gotta love that!  My kids have so many ideas for these things that I cannot keep up!
 
Here’s a view of more of this daughter’s fairy garden.  I have these “rings” of dirt in my backyard that are perfect for each child to build their own fairy gardens in!  In the middle (kind of lower right of the picture) that was my attempt at a pond, with island in the middle, waterfall off to one side that has a hidden fairy house underneath the waterfall.  I’m not loving how it turned out, but dear daughter does, so that is all that matters!
 
Daughter number 1 made a tunnel with a cave.  I thought it was so cute.  I’m having fun making surprises for the kids to be found in their fairy gardens.  I made that pile of gold nuggets to go in my daughter’s mine.  Now she is making a mining cart! ;)  Our ideas are breeding off of one another.  Love the arch?  It’s a horseshoe from daughter’s birthday party about 3 years ago!  We’re using what we have.

My dear Son’s Fairy Garden is turning out more Army Barracks right now.  He can’t make up his mind between garages for cool cars, or an airport.  Yet, his fairies are the army men (last year, said army men even got wings!).  I’m still mulling this one over.  I’ll come up with something to delight that sweet boy of mine!
 
This all started with my children bringing home more rocks to collect.  Being the good Mother that I am…..I usually toss, said rocks. ;(
But I finally decided to let them pile them up in their own piles in the backyard (it’s mostly rocks anyway…we live in AZ after all).
We found large rocks and I cut out their names in Vinyl.  They put their vinyl letters on the rocks however they wanted. 

Then, I let them have at those rocks, with spray paint.  It was interesting the colors that each of them chose.  I would not have guessed it!

We had my kids covered with gloves and giant face masks to do the spray painting.  Those masks aren’t for tiny faces (and the gloves weren’t for tiny hands either), but they worked.  Once they were done spraying, I peeled the letters off the rocks.  Now their name rocks will go in their fairy/rock garden.  The rest of their rocks they can scatter as they please.  There is plenty of room for plenty of rocks. 
Now maybe I can regain my title of “Good Mother”, by not throwing out anymore of their precious rocks!
 
One more picture to leave you with.  Isn’t she a beauty?  I’ve been drooling over something like her for about 10 years now!  She was my Mother’s Day gift this year!    I was not expecting to get her, so it was a very nice surprise!  She’s already got egg shells and banana peels in her (I stole them from my Mom at our Mother’s Day brunch.  I know my Dad thought I was kooky, but it’s not the first or last time he’s thought that of me!).

Rebecca
PS  Thanks to my whole family for a wonderful Mother’s Day!  You all are too sweet and it was such a joy to spend the day with you. As always, the food was to die for, as well!  I am so thankful to have such wonderful and amazing family in my life!  I think the water balloon launcher broke, so all the cars should be safe now ;)

Polymer Clay Gifts

I made these gifts for Christmas but these are perfect for any time of the year. I think all of us have those friends who are hard to shop for and so making jewelry always seems the best way to go.

This pendant was surprisingly easy to make. Polymer clay is really great to use (you just need an exacto knife and a pasta roller). I have always wanted to use the blender method to make my own colors and it turned out wonderfully!

You can buy the black cording at a craft store (like Joann's) and it already came with the closures on it so I only had to attach the pendant to it using jump rings. Sooo easy!

The next gift I made is this snazzy bracelet. I made one also in blue, but wrapped it before I got a picture. The bracelet is a little more complex than the pendant, but also very manageable.
The only materials I needed were the black, yellow, and white polymer clay, stretchy cording and some random beads that were used as spacers. All in all, these gifts took about a day to make. Not too shabby!

Linking here and here and here!