small projects

This past week there's been a flurry of activity at our house.  Nothing major, just little things as I try to do a little spring cleaning and get back into the swing of planning small projects for the house and with my kiddoes.  When I'm in my still phase, activity seems overwhelming and burdensome.  Ironically, though, it's often forcing myself back into the activity that lifts my spirits.  Creating something lovely, small though it may be, is healing, I find. 

The kids did a little watercolor and salt painting yesterday. Easy-peasy, but the result is quite striking. It's just liquid watercolor paints (we get ours from Discount School Supply) on thick watercolor paper. Then sprinkle some salt on top when the painting is done but still wet. In a few minutes, the salt produces a crystal-like effect in the watercolor.  The pictures don't do it justice...

Cool! When the paintings were dry, I brushed off the loose salt because I think I may cut them into postcards for our next project...

A Letter-Writing Kit!  I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a while now but never got it together until yesterday after reading a Simple Kids post on making one.  Some of the online tutorials for letter-writing kits involve either materials I don't have or a lot of sewing.  This one, though, is simple - just a folder of stuff.  And I happened to have a folder that is perfect!  I'm working on getting together all the supplies for it, but we've already got the basics, and The Girl is psyched about it.  Let's hope we can keep up the enthusiasm and actually use it on a regular basis.  I'm not good at snail mail myself, so this is as much for me as for the kiddoes.  I'm thinking of instituting Mail Mondays, or some other such gimmick, as a reminder to us all.

I've also done some home hackery things.  And I do mean hackery.  I read about home sew-ers who do it "for the detailing," but I have no patience for such things.  I want to do it and be done with it!  And I'm also such a beginner sewer that it still takes me 4 times as long (at least) as any tutorial says it should take.  So this week I sewed a simple bookcase curtain to hide the mess on our dining room bookcase (library books, cookbooks, tea set stuff, random miscellania).  It's one of those 20 minute projects that took me 2 hours.  But it's done!  And the fabric is an old tablecloth that we never used.  I am queen of the re-purposing.

I also sewed a curtain for the doorway into our playroom (which sometimes doubles as a guest room).  I used a sheet I already had (see - queen).  But I'm not sold on it.  The color is wrong for the space, so I may be home hacking something else.  Sometimes I'd like to just go out and buy pretty fabric, but the re-purposing is a worthy challenge.

I have some plans for a few other projects: curtains (more curtains!) for our master bedroom, hanging curtains in The Girl's room (that I've had for months and months), framing some art (kid art) for the playroom, more bubble painting (I think The Boy is old enough to join in this time), a number of clothing-hackery projects.  We'll see how much I actually get done (before I am distracted by other project ideas)!