DIY Library Bag

About a month ago I took Charlotte on her first trip to our local public library. It was a total success and she loved looking at all of the books and picking out a few to take home. When it was time to check out the books, Charlotte wanted to carry them to the car. I didn't have a bag so the librarian handed us a plastic bag. My girl carried the bag all the way to the car. I knew I needed to have a special bag for our library trips. At the same time that we began going to the library, Charlotte began painting. I thought this would be a great opportunity for her to put her own personal touch on something. I bought some acrylic paint, cheap paint brushes, and a canvas bag and let her go crazy.

I taped plastic bags down for a drop cloth. I always have an excessive amount and thought this would be a good way to reuse them.

Here's my girl at work. Sorry it's blurry. I was having issues. :)

After she was done with her "masterpiece" and it had plenty of time to dry I sparingly applied some hot glue around the top edge of the bag and attached some ribbon. I truly wanted this bag to be something that Charlotte had "designed" so on a trip to Hobby Lobby I had her pick out a spool of ribbon that she liked and that was the ribbon I used.

Once I had attached the ribbon I decided that I wanted to add an inside pocket to keep our library card in. For this step I used random pieces that I had laying around. I used fabric and ribbon that was left over from my Memo Board, a random button, Charlotte's ribbon, and some hemp cord. I forgot to take pictures as I went but I basically just hot glued ribbon around the edges so that I wouldn't have to sew anything. It wasn't until I was done with the ribbon that I decided to add the button. The card didn't fit as snug as I would have liked and I was afraid that it would get lost.

I'm so proud of the art work that my peanut creates and love being able to carry it around. Not only does it make me smile but it also makes my girl happy. I love hearing her say things like "Mommy, I did that." I want her to be proud of the things she creates and I definitely think that allowing her to carry her painting around with her will help build her self confidence.

 What crafts have you done with your children lately?



Crafty Spring Cleaning

When I say Crafty Spring Cleaning I'm not sure if I mean crafty as creative, or crafty as in cleaning my craft box. Maybe it's both. When I visited Centsational Girl today and saw that she was hosting the Fair Weather Forum I knew I wanted to participate but didn't have anything "Spring" in mind for today. All day long I kept trying to come up with something and couldn't. Perhaps I was too distracted by the complete and utter disaster that is my dining room turned cabinet painting room. Yes, I am still painting cabinets. Anyways, after racking my brain all day I pulled out my craft bin hoping that I had supplies to make something spring like.

My craft box has been nagging me for months. Every time I would go to work on something I would buy new supplies because I wasn't sure what I actually had and didn't have the time to sort through my bin. Honestly, it was atrocious but Charlotte was asleep and I couldn't go to the store so I had to pull it out. After one glance it hit me. Spring Cleaning my craft bin was the perfect idea. I had a post to link the the Fair Weather Forum and I got to organize my bin so I no longer have to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.

Within five minutes of starting I found things that I didn't even know were in there. I'm pretty sure this fusible webbing and Heat 'n' Bond are my Mothers but I may have to find a use for them. I'm actually interested to see if they still work because they look pretty dated. Time will tell.

Any who, after digging everything out and sorting, I had a dining room table (in my living room) that looked like this. Oh and you even get to see the dining room disaster that I mentioned. My house is seriously chaos at the moment. I'm not sure how much longer I can take it. The plus side of me feeling annoyed with the clutter is that I'm picking up speed with painting because I just want to be done with the cabinets.

Now you may be wondering why I would think that this may be crafty as in creative. Well, once I had emptied the contents of the bin I realized that I needed to organize the junk supplies somehow before dumping them back in. While redoing the kitchen I have come to realize that I have too many plastic containers for leftovers. I needed to get them out of the kitchen but didn't want to get rid of them because I find them to be rather useful. I kept my good Rubbermaids in the kitchen and re-purposed our saved take-out containers for craft organizers. Perfecto! As you can see I feel rather clever that I used take out containers for organizing. I'm sure I'm not the first one to do it but let's not burst my bubble.

I'm feeling much better about getting this bin organized. Now I just need to finish this darn kitchen so I can move on the spare bedroom (soon-to-be project room). Once that's complete my supplies won't even need to live in this bin! I swear, there just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done!

If you haven't noticed already I'm linking this post to CG's Fair Weather Forum. Stop over and check out all the wonderful entries!

How's your spring cleaning coming along?