A Little Bit of Happiness

I love polka dots! To me polka dots equal a little bit of happiness. When I see polka dots I can't help but smile.  :)  Black with white or red with white polka dots are my favorite but I like all polka dots. A few weeks ago, I was visiting my mom when she handed me a bag and said this just looked like you. I opened it to find a polka dot tea pot and matching butter dish. I LOVE them! I have them on my counter and it makes me smile when I walk by.

See . . . polka dots equal happiness!

Fruits and Vegetables

I spent last weekend creating felt fruits and vegetables for school. I created farm stand visuals this summer but when I was gathering my materials to bring to school realized I needed more fruits and vegetables for my farm stand.  Play fruits and veggies can be expensive so I found some felt food tutorials and went to work creating. I created pears, apples, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, corn and pumpkins. It took me a long time but I was so happy with the results. I brought my finished felt foods and farm stand visuals to school on Wednesday. My paraprofessionals helped me build our farm stand. I was so pleased, it turned out just like I envisioned. The best part was the reaction from the students, they loved it! One of my three year olds exclaimed, "This is amazing!" That totally made the hours of sewing, turning and stuffing worth it. The farm stand visuals are in my TPT shop here.

New Artwork

Look who started middle school this year!

My girl loves to draw, doodle and create. She amazes me with her talent! This is a drawing of her new sneakers. 

We visited a diner that has coffee mug drawings on napkins displayed around the whole place. This is what my daughter created. I love her creativity and her ability to show a story in her art work.

This year she's in middle school so she is taking Spanish for the first time. She loves it and it's coming out in her art. Here's a Spanish speaking kangaroo wearing springy shoes and jumping on a trampoline. I love the worm in the apple on the tree.

Zombie Dolls

It's October so that means it's time for zombie dolls. This year the theme for Val's zombie doll swap was primitive zombies. See what everyone made here. (Seriously go look - Kerry made an awesome creepy zombie.) My partner has young children and likes cute zombies not scary ones. This is my style so I knew exactly what I wanted to make this year. Then I was sick with a cold for a week so I didn't get started on my creation. My original idea was going to require more time so I went back to the drawing board and created something different. Do you ever have a time when your creative mojo disappears and you can't create what you want? I had to fight this little zombie into existence. 

A bit of zombie soup, anyone?  I tea stained my whole zombie instead of tea staining the fabric before I started creating. It looked so funny!

Actually I fought with two zombies. I used my machine to freeform stitch on colored wounds and a heart. Once I finished I hated him, so I threw him aside and made a new zombie with a combination of machine stitched and painted wounds. The hardest part was dressing a wonky looking little zombie. I’ve determined that I’m not a seamstress. If ever there is a zombie apocalypse and I have to make our clothing, my family will be the one wearing the wonky clothes. Actually I’m pretty sure we’d look like zombies if I had to make our clothing.

In the end I created a pair of jeans and a tee shirt for the zombie. Then I chopped them up a bit to show off the wounds. I named him Robbie and sent him on the way to my partner iara. He arrived safely at his new home this week.

After finishing the zombie for my partner I went back to the first one I’d thrown aside and tried to salvage him. I made the same clothes for him. They look like a set of brothers, Robby and Ricky. I’m not sure what their story is. The silver linings part of me thinks they were just cute little zombies that were adopted because “Zombies are people too.” Of course if you’re a cynic you might think they were zombie activists, protesting for zombie rights, who met a bad ending. I think I’ll stick with the silver lining version.

Now that Ricky’s been hanging out at my house for a week he’s grown on me and I’ve decided to add him to my zombie horde. I think it’s time to set up the zombie horde on the mantle again.  :)