Pepita

Chocolate Skulls

Frances’s birthday is in July, but her school likes to make sure that everybody has a special day during the school term. Frances’s honorary birthday fell on November 4, and since her class has been studying Día de Muertos, she wanted to make sugar skulls instead of cupcakes this year.  As it happens, I already had some sugar skull molds, but, since sugar skills are actually not that pleasant to eat, I suggested chocolate skulls instead. Frances approved.

We used Wilton Candy Melts and adornedthe skulls with Candy Decorating “Pens”. I use scare quotes here because the name of this product is misleading: They’re basically tubes filled with Candy Melt, and keeping the candy warm and flowing is kind of tricky. I found that getting an effect I liked was a lot easier if I painted inside the candy molds before pouring in the chocolate. If we make these again—and I’m guessing that we will—I will probably use some kind of decorator frosting on the de-molded candies instead of the so-called candy pens.

All that aside, this was a fun project. Frances was happy with the results, and the candy skulls were a big hit with her teachers and classmates.

 

Frances’s DIY Ghost Decorations

It’s not too late to decorate for Halloween! All you need to adorn your walls with scary ghosts is a few household supplies and Frances’s handy, four-step guide.

Step 1 Draw a ghost on paper.

 

Step 2 Use scissors to cut out ghost.

 

Step 3 Get yourself some glue!

Step 4 Affix ghost cut-out to a fresh sheet of paper.

That’s all there is to it, but don’t be afraid to improvise. Frances used paint and glitter to make this picture, but it’s still the same basic project. Use your imagination, and have a great Halloween!

 

 

Valentines

Coffee filters. Watercolors. Cardstock. Love.

Homemade Giftwrap

I like a beautifully wrapped package as much as the next gal, and, heaven knows, I have a paper fetish. But I found myself rethinking my gift-wrap habit after contemplating the bags and bags of waste that end up on the curb every Boxing Day, and the resources involved in manufacturing, packaging, and transporting a product that delivers a few seconds of delight before it heads makes its swift journey to the landfill. (And, full disclosure here: Since Martha Stewart left Kmart, finding inexpensive, locally available, and aesthetically pleasing gift-wrap got a lot more complicated).

So…  Homemade giftwrap! I had plenty of the basic material—kraft paper and newsprint used as packing—on-hand already. I also paper shopping bags, so I used some of those, too. Frances and I stamped festive designs onto our wrappings using retired and repurposed foam tub toys (we also borrowed the asterisk from an alphabet stamp set) with craft paint in Christmasy colors. I had a few apple bags in storage, and I felt that they were sufficiently pleasing on their own, but I couldn’t resist adding a little glitter glue. Instead of tags, we used stickers, and, voilà! Cheap, pretty, personalized, and eco-friendly wrapping that was fun to make.

 

Embroidered Bookmark

Ted is not really into stuff. This makes giving him gifts kind of difficult. The pressure to come up with an awesome Christmas present for him was slightly diminished this year, as we agreed to give each other very modest gifts. Still, I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about my choice—a paperback novel I thought he might enjoy.

Then, as is so often the case, Martha Stewart saved the day. I got an email newsletter containing a bunch of suggestions for easy handmade gifts, and a bookmark was one of the featured crafts. I didn’t actually use Martha’s project, but I was inspired to create my own.

First, I transferred a portrait Frances made of our family onto some homespun, and then I embroidered it. Next, I used some double-sided fusible interfacing to attach the embroidery to a piece of wool felt. Finally, I pinked the edges and a mediocre Christmas gift was transformed.

 

Putz Houses

I presented Frances with a variety of ideas for crafty Christmas gifts this year. She rejected all of them, and informed me that she wanted to make “house models”. Putz houses! Perfect! I particularly love giving gifts like this to my Grandma Nellie, as she is a faithful preserver of paper goods. (She has, as far as I can tell, every craft her four children ever made, and she displays them at the appropriate season. If you want to know how big my Uncle Mark’s hand was in 1970, check the turkey that hangs in the dining room from mid-November until the day after Thanksgiving.)

There’s a putz house pattern in this Urban Debris post, and I considered making my own. But then I thought about the potential cost-savings-to-frustration potential—factoring in the mental and emotional energy required to complete a craft project on a deadline with a four-year-old—and I decided to buy a few of these ready-mades from ArtChix Studio. I think I made the right choice.

Frances and I used acrylic paint and glitter—of course we used glitter—to decorate our houses. We had a lot of fun, and now we have some awesome gifts to give Frances’s great-grandma and her grandpa, and we have the beginnings of our own wee Christmas village. I don’t think I need to tell you which of these houses was made by the forty-year-old Martha Stewart devotee, and which were made by the preschooler who wants to be an artist when she grows up.

Butterfly Garden

Frances and I got the basic idea for her Halloween costume from Martha Stewart. I’m glad we started working on it early, as finding a green leotard and tights was harder than I thought it would be. The flowers are vintage millinery findings I got from Etsy and eBay. The butterflies are from a different Martha Stewart craft, printed on sticky paper and stuck on black posterboard, with fabric-wrapped floral wire between the two layers. Martha Stewart suggested attaching the wired butterflies to bobby pins, but I was dubious that this would result in floating—rather than flopping—butterflies. I wrapped ours around a headband, and then wrapped the headband in green ribbon. Martha’s instructions say to hot-glue gun the flowers to the leotard, but I sewed on ours instead and added some beads. Obviously, Frances looked adorable, and she had a fun Halloween.

Autumn Leaves

Fall leaves. Paint pens. Glue and glitter. Some are mine. Some are Frances’s. Some are collaborations. Inspiration here.

 

The Chaos Equation

I have found that, since becoming a parent, I spend a lot of time trying to determine whether it is more important to complete the endeavor in which I am engaged or prevent Frances from completing the endeavor in which she is engaged. It may be worth pointing out here that, when I write “the endeavor in which I am engaged” I mean something along the lines of “cleaning the litterbox” or  “clearing the lunch dishes” rather than, say, “working on my novel” or “bringing a restorative hour of yoga to a satisfying close with twenty minutes of silent meditation.” What it comes down to, generally, is this calculation, “Is the order I am restoring greater than the chaos that Frances is creating?”

A recent example: Last night, when Frances walked down the hallway carrying an armload of maxi pads and muttering to herself, “I wonder if my plan will work,” I continued brushing my teeth. I even decided to go ahead and take the time to floss and wash my face.

I’d like to say that I’m such a parenting genius that I always make the right choice, that I always solve the chaos equation correctly, but that would be a lie. In this case, however, everything turned out just fine. My evening toilette was complete, and I emerged from the bathroom to discover that Frances had created some festive Halloween decorations.

Obviously, this is a howling ghost, but I do think that it was nice of Frances to include the helpful label.


Unicorn Dress

This is the dress I made for the end-of-the-year celebration at Frances’s school. I used McCall’s pattern M5797, which is incredibly easy and, I think, incredibly sweet. I wanted an unfussy shape because this dress is really about the fabric.

Unicorns on a field of purple, lovely cotton voile: What’s not to love? This print is from Heather Ross’s Far, Far Away collection. I bought the fabric as soon as I saw it, and I decided to save it for something special.

I’m pretty pleased with the way this project turned out, and Frances is, too. 

P.S. The unicorn print is now available in Keds form. I want.