Chair Cushions

Happy Family Times is still open. Feel free to come share how your family spent some together time this week or get inspired by others' stories!

I guest posted over at Happy Whimsical Hearts today. Please stop by and visit!! It is her Happy Lil Hearts Are Baking Link Party so you can share how you and your child baked (or cooked) this week!

There are a few more days left to get an invitation to shop at Hullabalu from me. If you are interested go register here!!!

Today I got some Mommy time. I caught up on those things that needed to be done but I never get to. You know the list--schedule my mammogram, deal with healthcare receipts, etc. Now I have some down time and am going to relax and then visit all the great entries shared this past week in Sharing Saturday and at Happy Family Times. So I am going to share with you a Mommy Craft today.

Our cheap table w/ 2 of its 6 chairs

We have a cheap white patio set. I bought it when I was single just to have a table outside for one of the apartments I lived in and had access to a yard. It was cheap and is not the prettiest thing. The chairs are fairly comfortable, but not perfect. Every summer I talk to Steve about buying a new one. We look at the prices and decide not to spend the money even at the clearance sales. So I decided to jazz up ours. Awhile ago outdoor canvas went on sale at Joann's. It was the cheapest I had seen it so I bought some. (It is on sale again this week 50% off--I got it cheaper, but don't remember how much now.)  Anyway, my goal was to make some cushions for the ugly white chairs. Since we were having our friends over for the Fourth of July, I figured it was incentive to get them done. On Sunday I went to Joann's to buy some foam (also 50% off this week). I bought 1/2 inch thick foam. It won't provide much cushion but a bit. Then I started on making a pattern.

Bottom View

I took a piece of paper (well actually a couple taped together) to get the basic shape of the seat. I taped it to the chair and cut around the seat part. Then I took this paper and put it on freezer paper and added a half inch to each side. This was my top pattern. For the bottom I wanted two pieces so I could remove the foam and wash them if they get dirty. So I traced the pattern of the top on both ends and added more so I could hem it. In my first one I also added an inch strip to be the sides. I discovered this was not a necessary step and skipped it after the first one. I cut out the pieces and finished the edges that needed to be hemmed and hemmed them. Then I pinned the top to the two bottom pieces making sure they overlapped and I serged (you could zig zag your edges and sew the seams on a regular machine) all the way around. I turned it back out and used the first paper to cut the foam and inserted it. Now it is completely removable and washable. I think it jazzed the chairs up a bit and I have some more fabric so I may work on covering the backs of the chairs a bit too.

I was able to sew all six of them very quickly and it was very easy!!

This is where I share...

Happy Family Times #10--Going to a birthday party

What have you been up to with your family this week? Did you do something new and exciting? Go on a trip? Or just dance in your living room?  Please share below! Kelly over at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are loving hearing about everyone's wonderful family time! We hope this link party will help inspire more quality time with your loved ones!

Today we attended a first birthday party. The parents of the child are Hazel's godparents. Now, I think I mentioned Hazel's fear of men. The only men she is not afraid of are Daddy and Pop. Even men we see every week who talk to her, she will play shy around but talk about them as soon as we walk away and for the rest of the week. One man she is really frightened by (and I don't know why) is her godfather. She did not want to go to the party since I told her he was definitely going to be at it when she asked if he would be there. We bribed her into going by saying we would go get ice cream afterwards if she went and behaved. She decided she wanted to go to Friendly's instead of the farm that makes their own ice cream from the cows you can see there which is only a 5-10 minute drive from our friends' house. Oh, well. Note: I did not mention to my friends that I would be blogging about their party so I am blocking out their daughter's face in all the pictures since I do not have permission to post it.

Since their daughter was born Memorial Day weekend, they had a red, white and blue party. This is the party I made all the star crayons for. She wanted 100 and I made 94 from all the crayons she gave me. I think she is going to have a lot more than she needed, but oh, well. She took them and put them in plastic bags. Hazel had a good time. She was a bit cuddly, but then she went off to play with the kids. One of the girls there is one day older than Hazel so they play at all the parties there.

Hazel pushing the birthday girl with some help from her uncle

They provided bubble stuff for the kids to play with. It was a big hit. There were snacks to begin with and then your typical Memorial Day barbeque: hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad, pasta salad, etc. Then of course there were gifts to open and cake and cookies and pastries. The birthday girl had a wonderful time with her piece of cake--it ended up on the ground before she was through, but she had fun. I love the fistful in the bottom picture.

Our gift's wrapping fit the theme

Hazel ate the frosting and Daddy got the chocolate cake.

The Cake

My Cuddly Girl

After the party we headed to Friendly's and got Hazel her ice cream cone. I got a watermelon sherbert cooler--a flashback to my childhood. I use to love those in the summer. They are no longer on the menu, but still make them for me at least at our local one.

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!

Gardening Blog Hop

Patio garden with vegetable garden in background

We spent a good part of last weekend outside in our gardens. One of the major issues we have in our yard is that we do not have great sun in the back yard. My vegetable garden was slowly being shaded by the trees, so Steve dug me some more space in the other direction so we could plant all of our seedlings and seeds (which Hazel chose). This garden has been taken over by raspberries and oregano. I pulled most of the raspberries out because they need too much space for the room we have and I always am pulling out the oregano, but it keeps coming back. In fact it even managed to spread over to the patio garden! Not sure how that happened.

Steve extending my vegetable garden

While Steve dug my extension, Hazel and I tackled the weeds in the patio garden. We had really let them go and since they had flowers we left them there, but they were taking over so it was time. Hazel was a great helper. She brought over her little wagon and helped pull a few, but since I kept filling the wagon she kept taking it to empty it for me.

After having lunch outside, Steve went on to dig Hazel's sunflower garden. This garden will hopefully be a sunflower house this year for Hazel. Next year we may pick a different theme like a pizza garden. These ideas came from Sharon Lovejoy's Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots: Activities To Do in the Garden. For some of the other books we have been using as a reference check out this post.

Sunflower Garden

For now we left the center of our sunflower garden grass so it will be more comfortable as a sunflower house.







While Steve started on the sunflower garden, Hazel and I started planting our seedlings. (See Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3 for previous mention of these seedlings.) Hazel wanted to start with the patio garden, but grew bored and went off to play while I planted some of our marigold seedlings and seeds.

Patio Garden

Fairy in Our Patio Garden

Simba's Memorial

She got interested in our garden again when it was time to plant the pumpkins, watermelon and zucchini in our vegetable patch. We also planted some marigolds around the edge to keep the pests out. We are trying one of those Topsy Turvy things for a tomato plant since our tomatos have not done well in our garden. We put it over near the sunflower garden since it gets the most sun in our back yard.

Then we ended our day planting the sunflower seedlings and seeds around the giant circle that Daddy dug. You can see the picture above. What are you growing this year?

Now it is your turn to share with us! 

I have been invited to co-host a blog hop on gardening with

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Kitchen Counter Chronicle

The Educators Spin On It  

Duck Duck Octopus

Living Montessori Now

At Home With Ali

Rainy Day Mum

Ready Set Read 2 Me

Playful Learners

Please visit my co-hosts and check out their wonderful garden posts as well!!

This is a blog hop. Please join us as we know Crafty Moms Always Share!!

Outside Play & A Couple Princess Crafts

At last week's Sharing Saturday, I featured 2 Big, 2 Little's Playing with Water. I knew we had to try it and we did. Both Saturday and Sunday. Hazel loved it!! She has a water and sand table, but we found she always put the sand in the water so we made it a sand only table. We took some of the water toys from there and some from her bath for this though. We also used our colored water spray bottles that we used for snow painting this winter.

She insisted on bringing out her chair so she could sit while playing.

She had some of her kitchen toys out from her sandbox as well. She was whisking the color into the water.

Then when she got a color she didn't like anymore, she dumped the water and refilled it.

You know she enjoyed it since we had to do it again today when we played outside.

This time she got her wind-up duck working and checked to see what would float. I told her the duck wanted the water to be orange so she made him orange water.

We also had to make her a house on her swingset. The house we built at school this morning was taken down by the other kids as soon as she switched to another toy and she got really upset so I promised her we would make one outside today. I sewed the edges of these and bought large clothespins. You can see more here. We have also added her pillow pet and a blanket so she has a place to rest in her house.

She also could not wait to try out her new red chair. We had bought her one ages ago and last summer it broke, so she has been asking for a new one. We found one at Christmas Tree Shop and bought it. This is the first time I let her bring it out and opened it up for her. She was very excited about the drink holder even if her sippy cup didn't fit in it.

I know I shared this book before, The Paper Princess by Elisa Kleven. It is a cute story about the adventures of a paper princess a girl draws and cuts out and then the wind blows away. The princess wants to get back to her girl and this is the adventure of getting back home. Well since Hazel is still in the scribble stage of drawing, we found these people cut-outs and bought the girl ones at AC Moore for $1. We used watercolors on them. I tried to make the dress like the forest and the tights like the night sky and the feet like watermelons, but the colors ran. I still think they came out lovely though.

My Princess

Hazel's Princess

The other night I also needle felted Hazel a new princess. I used pipe cleaners in this one for stability. She loves her.

 This is where I link up...

Exploring at the Wildlife Sanctuary and Painting

On Wednesday we had our class at the Mass Audubon Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. We skipped our class at Drumlin Farm this week since Hazel claimed to feel like she was going to throw up on our way there, however half an hour later she wanted lunch. I'm not really sure what happened, but she seems fine now. Anyway, at the Ipswich River Sanctuary we jumped in puddles and chased the other 3-year olds. Oh, and Hazel made a friend and held hands with her on part of our walk. I took a picture of them, but did not get the mother's permission to post it on line, so I won't. After a short walk we went back to the vernal pool to see if we could see some frogs this time. And we did!! We saw two different ones. The first one pictured above was pretty brave with all the kids around. Then one of them got a bit too close and he jumped in the water, but he stayed where we could see him with his eyes out of the water the entire time.

A little ways down we saw a big bull frog. He had different coloring than the first and was sitting on a log (again until someone got a bit too close).

While checking out the second frog, we saw a fast moving turkey (many of the kids missed it by the pool) and one of the kids found a slug. He even stuck his eyes out for us!

Then it was time to go back to the Nature House for our craft. On our way back through the field we saw the turkey again.

Then for our craft we made bird nests out of air-drying clay and grass. Then the instructor gave us a bird for it.

Then we ran some errands and came home. After lunch we finished our fairy garden and did some painting.

We have been reading the book Brown at the Zoo by Christianne C. Jones. It starts by talking about the colors--primary and secondary and that brown is a tertiary color. It then talks about how you can make it. The book goes through all the things that are brown at the zoo. It is in a series of books about colors. We decided to try to make brown in the different color combinations with Hazel's paints. Basically you can mix the three primary colors or you can mix any two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel (red and green, yellow and purple, or orange and blue). We tried to make different shades by mixing the different colors. Some combinations worked better than others, but it may be the proportions we (Hazel) used.

Then she wanted to do some more paintings from The Color of Us. So we mixed yellow, white, black, and red in different proportions to explore the colors we would get. I let Hazel have a bit more control with the mixing this time.

Then we started over with some new mixtures and got this.

Then Hazel wanted to paint with blue. She said these were blueberries, but I thought it could also be pictures from The Dot by Peter Reynolds. We kept saying we were going to make some dot paintings, but never quite got to them.

Then she asked to use watercolors and she came up with the following. I think she had blueberries on the mind!

Just a reminder that Sharing Saturday will start tonight and you can visit the wonderful posts shared last week still, and Happy Family Times will end tomorrow, so go link up. And I'm still hosting a link party for Mother's Day gift ideas.


This is where I link up...