legions of dragons

I recently got multiple custom order requests for the same thing (at about the same time) - dragon puppets in a variety of bright colors! Funny that I got the orders all around the same time, and they were all being used as party favors for kids' birthday parties. (Can't wait for my kids to get old enough to ask why I don't give out awesome themed party favors for their parties…:)

Anyway, in the process, I ended up making nearly 70 dragon puppets over the course of about two weeks! It was intense! And one night when my husband had to work late, I told him it was ok, I'd just be working on my legions of dragons.

To which he responded that I now have to write a children's fantasy novel with that title. So I will now be accepting potential plot lines or dragon names for my debut novel! (Confession: I have actually always dreamed of writing a novel. Maybe I will! Not sure if it will be about dragons though.)

I was really happy with the way these all turned out - I'd only ever done green dragons before, but I love the bright rainbow of colors!

You learn some interesting things when making large quantities of any item. For instance, the cute little details that I loved about these dragons when I designed them began to cause some serious hand cramping from cutting out all those tiny pieces. We're talking nearly 150 little dragon ears, friends! I really wish I'd taken a picture of the piles of little pieces I had all over the table - wings, tails, ears, etc. in bright little fuzzy mounds. Or at least a picture of all of them! But some were finished and shipped before the rest based on when the orders came in.

But I do have some pictures in various stages of done-ness.

Paint drying, waiting for snouts and fire.

Just about done, waiting for the last of the paint on the eyes to dry!

Stacks of finished dragons! (Sorry, not the greatest picture I know… I took it on my phone with weird light coming through the blinds. Oh well.)

I really did enjoy making all of these dragons, and find it so funny that I got all the orders so close together. I actually made some extras just in case I got any more requests!

Now I'm off to go finish up my zoos, nativities, and some Christmas projects for a Christmas boutique coming up in a few weeks. I'll post more info on it soon!

Happy Halloween!

I'll eventually get around to posting pictures of our Halloween costumes that I made, but for now, enjoy a little preview of this fun puppet set I made for a custom order from my shop.

I thought it was appropriate to share today! Although some people say "Nightmare Before Christmas" is a Christmas movie, not a Halloween movie, I think it's brilliant marketing to get people to watch it for the whole season! :)

I'll post some more pictures and close-ups of this fun set another day. But for now, off to start the wrestling match known as getting my kids into their Halloween costumes and not ruining them before we even leave to go trick-or-treating!

Happy Halloween!

like a kid in a candy shop

That's how I feel going into fabric stores, especially when they're having big sales! I just couldn't help myself, and ended up buying lots of fabric yesterday.

But see, I could justify at least some of it because I need to make our Halloween costumes. And I got some orders from my shop, so I needed to get some more felt. And well, I'm sure I'll find lots of awesome things to do with all that adorable Christmas fabric! I'm planning to make stockings this year, and maybe a matching tree skirt, and hopefully an advent calendar that I've been planning to make for a couple years now. And I have a few ideas for Christmas items for the shop. Assuming I get them made in time... 

So this should keep me busy for a while! I'll be sure to share the finished products whenever I actually get them finished!

reading chart and preschool fun

I started a little preschool group with a few other moms (and their kids, of course) in my neighborhood, and so far it's been really great! It's pretty laid back, and we're focused more on building social skills, learning to follow routines, hands-on play and activities, and that sort of thing than a rigid curriculum. We are following my "letter a day" outline (which I'll post soon!) but that's more about having fun themes to follow, and starting to build letter recognition. We do lots of fun games, read stories, hands-on activities, and just let the kids play.

Anyway, more on that another day! But on the days we don't have our preschool group, I've been trying to work on reading with Jack. He knows all his letters, and he loves when I read to him, so we're trying to read lots and start to work on word recognition. We're a long way away from him actually reading, but the more we read, the better, for so many reasons!

So I made this chart for him to set some reading goals and start keeping track of how much reading we're doing.

Charts really work for motivating him. I think it's the visual reminder along with the immediate reward of putting a sticker on the chart, which reminds him of his long-term reward/goal. Whatever it is, they work for us - for potty training, behavior goals, etc. Now we just have to decide what the reward will be when we reach the goal!

I remember my mom reading to me and my sisters when we were little, which is what started my love affair with reading. She read to us all the time, and encouraged us to read as well - we even set reading goals! My love of reading is what to led to my (albeit brief) career as an English teacher before deciding to take a break to stay home with my boys. Can you blame me for wanting to turn my kids into little bookworms too?

I just re-read this post. It's rather rambling and random, but I guess that's just indicative of my life right now. Enjoy!

princesses, dragons, and knights, oh my!

It only took about nine months... but I finally got around to making more fairy tale finger puppets! And in more colors! I decided I need to start stocking up for the holidays, since that's always my busiest time for my shop. So I started with these little cuties.

So, somehow my three-year-old knows what a knight is, and informed me that this knight was going to ride a horse and go on a quest. He never ceases to crack me up!

Here are the different color options I have so so far.

I decided to just start with princesses in pink, blue, and purple, with coordinating knights and castles. But if they do well, or if I have time, I want to add some more colors or color combinations. What color(s) would you want?

My favorite part about designing any of my puppet sets is the little details. I think my favorites on this set are the little sparkly heart on the princess's crown, the little dragon ears, and the knight's shield.

And of course, the castle doubles as a pouch to hold your puppets when you're done playing!

I've got several new sets in various stages of design, and I'm excited to get them finished over the next few weeks. And some fun Christmas crafts, and of course Halloween costumes! It should be a busy fall!

Bridal Shower Fun!

The three people who actually ever read my blog may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in ages. What have I been up to lately, you ask? Well,  the lack of blogging is somewhat because I've been lazy (at least when it comes to writing/blogging) but also because I was busy helping plan my sister's wedding! She got married a couple weeks ago, but I spent the last two months helping plan the wedding and hosting bridal showers, and keeping my mother sane. :)

Here's a picture from one of the showers of the "welcome table." We had a sign that said "Please write your name and address on an envelope. Thanks!" which I thought was a great idea for helping the bride out. In the middle we had jars for our Mad Lib game with signs that said "adjective," "noun," "number," and "verb," with little strips of paper in front of them. Last we had a sign that said "Share some words of wisdom with the bride and groom" and a little advice book made in their wedding colors.

I wish I'd gotten a close-up of the advice book, because I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out! I just got scrapbook paper in the wedding colors, cut it down to about index-card size, and tied it with lace ribbon (lace was a theme throughout the wedding.) The cover had a contrasting stripe of color, a strip of lace, and the large stamped "H" for the soon-to-be couple's last name. *You can find monogram letter stamps at Michael's in the dollar bins!

I also wish I'd gotten some pictures of the food. It was pretty amazing, let me just say. Plan a good menu, and you won't need decorations or lame games!

But we did have a few pretty good games I wanted to share with you! In fact, several people told me these were the best shower games they'd ever played!

Here's our Marriage Advice Mad Lib game! (just click the image above for a full-size printable version) I've seen a bunch floating around online that are actual advice - like, you look at the page and fill in the blanks with real responses. That is not how Mad Libs work! So I made a much more entertaining and authentic version, where guests just wrote random words and stuck them in a jar, then I picked them out at random to fill it in. 

Let's just say it was pretty hilarious. One of my favorites was #4, which ended up saying "Be the first to say, 'I'm gorgeous.'" Or #1 which said "Never go to bed sexy." Great advice!

The other game was the "He Says/She Says" game, where you ask the bride and groom different questions, type up some of their responses, and have guests guess who said what. It's a fun way to get to know the bride and groom a little bit. And it was especially fun because this bride and groom have such a similar sense of humor, that it was really hard to guess!

There's a copy of our "He says, she says" game if you want to get some ideas!

Yay sisters! (Ignore the fact that it's blurry...) Happy bride in the middle, and "little" sister who helped me organize two showers and a bachelorette party! Love these girls!

It was a busy summer, and now I'm going to be busy with helping with another sister's wedding (yay!) and also with starting a preschool group. Lots more preschool posts coming soon!

some recent projects

I've been kind of slacking in the blog-posting field as of late. Some of that is because I've been spending more time posting on my food blog. And some of it is that we've been spending lots of time out in our yard and at the park because the weather's been so nice!! Oh, I love spring! And there's a new park with a splash pad really close to us, so we've been there almost every day since it opened. Loving it.

But I have managed to squeeze in a few other projects and orders from my etsy shop.

One of these projects was making some new sheets and a pillow case for my little boy! Now that he's been in a toddler bed for a while, and is actually using a pillow sometimes (although about half the time we find it either on top of him, or on the floor), I figured I should make him some new sheets with a matching pillow case.

And of course I used the same fabric as his beloved "train blankie!" This kid is obsessed with trains, and I'm pretty sure his train blanket is his very most prized possession. So I'm hoping he'll love having his whole bed and pillow covered in the same fabric! Maybe it'll even encourage him to stay in his bed more. (Wishful thinking, I'm sure.)

I've also been working on some new puppet sets that hopefully will be finished and up in the shop soon! But first I've got to deal with a birthday and party for my soon-to-be three-year-old. Can't believe he's getting so big!