Enjoying the Small Things

Enjoying the Small Things

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Want to Join Nella’s Wand Club? A Simple Ribbon Wand D.I.Y. that Promises Delight

January 27, 2020 By Kelle

It’s been three years now since Nella fell in love with a ribbon wand that became her signature accessory. Rarely is she seen without it at home. We are immune to its presence now, an extension of her we hardly notice anymore. In fact, I laughed looking through photos the other day as it shows up in every picture–even our family Christmas card photo, and I didn’t even realize it was there. I still get asked lots of questions about her wand from new people on social media. Here is the story of the wand if you didn’t know. She has an innate sense of when holding it is appropriate and, on her own, throws it in the car as she steps out at carline to go to school every morning. She hands it to me if I drop her off at play dates and can go without it when needed. She usually makes that call on her own.

But it’s clear that the wand brings her joy, and we love that.

We’ve bought so many wands over the past few years, have received them as gifts from friends, and yes–she has favorites and rotates them for different feelings and occasions. It makes us as happy to give her a new wand as it does for her to receive it, so we are always looking for ways to create new designs that will delight her.

Want to join the Wand Club? Nella’s the president, of course, but I’m a certified recruiter; and I have a whole spiel I can breathlessly deliver about the beauty of ribbon wands to sell you on them and lure you into our club. These wands promote delight and imagination and movement and creative expression and rhythm and color and childhood happiness, and it’s all contained in a sweet little stick you can make with a few things you probably have at home. These are also really fun to give away for sweet personalized birthday gifts (or Valentine’s Day!).

What you need:

Dowel Rods (we like the 3/8 inch ones and find 10-packs of them at Walmart)
Screw Eyes
Ribbon (we’ve also used lace, yarn, pom pom ribbon, etc.)

Optional: Acrylic paint, spray paint or wood stain for painting the sticks; felt and needle & thread for covering the screw eye and adding a little decoration on the end.

Instructions:

If you want to fancy up the stick part of your wand, you can paint or stain the dowel rod first. Last year, we made a batch of rich dark-stained wands which were beautiful. You can also spray paint them and then tape off stripes and add another color. You could even yarn-bomb the stick to get really fancy.

Push and twist the screw eye into the center of one end of the dowel rod until tight and secure. We used to drill a little hole first until I realized if you push hard enough, you can screw it in yourself without help. Loop as many ribbon strands as you wish into the eye and tie a knot to secure. If the knot is too bulky with multiple strands of ribbon, you can also fold over the edge of the ribbon and secure with hot glue instead.

That’s all you need for a basic ribbon wand, but we’ve gotten fancy with all these wands we’ve created and are always looking for ways to impress Nella with something new and interesting. Lately, we’ve sewn felt embellishments on the wand end which also disguises the screw eye. Cut two matching hearts (or any shape) out of felt. Add a little glue to secure one felt shape under the top of the wand and one over it so the end of the wand is sandwiched between them.

Stitch the two shapes together around the edge to secure.

Nella loves choosing her own ribbon combinations.

Now we’re just going to have to build a wand rack to store and display her collection.

Happy Twirling!

Filed Under: Make Stuff 3 Comments

This Will Make Your Summer 2019 Unforgettable!

April 9, 2019 By Kelle

The countdown has begun whether you know it or not. The days, the hours, the exact number of minutes left until summer begins is being counted by those who yearn for the magic and delight the summer months deliver–the scent of grill smoke wafting through neighborhoods; the night chorus of crickets; the thrill of catching the ice cream truck, landing the perfect cannonball in the pool, twirling a sparkler through the night sky to write your name.

Sparkler

No season stirs the magic and wonder of childhood bliss quite like summer and yet, for many, it can also elicit immediate stress–No school! No routine! Long days of entertaining kids, lining up camps and–Dear God–spending sixteen hours in the car trapped with your family on the way to the National Park visit that looked so dreamy when you booked it last November. And then there’s Pinterest Patty, your smiley neighbor whose World’s Best Summer Mom posts keep popping up in Facebook, stressing you out even more. Is it really necessary to build a market farm stand two months in advance in preparation to sell bakery goods in your driveway at the neighborhood garage sale? No, it’s not. Do you miss the feeling of your youth when you wanted summer to last forever, when scoring the last blue raspberry Otter Pop in the box was the pinnacle of summer happiness?

Regardless of how we’ve grown or how life has changed–more kids, full-time jobs, less energy, tighter budget, challenging circumstances, distinguished “spark”–the magic and possibility of summer still exists, buried in every square on the calendar that officially constitutes the season, there for us when we want to revisit Never Land. I’m here to tell you, “You can fly!”

Summer is my favorite, and I’ve been fortunate to enjoy so many summers adventuring with my kids. I feel like I’m 10 years old again come June, lost in a storybook of sensory experiences and potential for fun and meaningful memories. I completely understand the overwhelm of summer though and know that we all have our areas of inspiration. Summer memory making happens to be one of mine, and I want to share it in a way that can help bring magic to your summer. So I’ve been making something for you, and I’m thrilled to offer it to you today for presale, 25% off!.

Once Upon a Summer is something I’ve been dreaming about since last summer–a compilation of summer inspiration, easily accessed in a digital document, to help you find ideas, tips, crafts, activities, motivation, creative enthusiasm and pure happiness in the simple celebrations summer offers whether they be in the backseat of a car on a long road trip, in a living room fort at the end of a tiresome workday, or in a quiet moment in nature. We, of course, don’t owe our kids “magic” or “storybook” because they are equipped with their own imagination and creativity to make summer adventures on their own. So this isn’t about over-the-top effort or mom guilt for what we aren’t doing. On the contrary, this guide is just as much about you having fun and loving summer as it is about offering something to your kids. It’s meant to be an invitation, not an obligation. You don’t have to be a Pinterest Patty, you just have to love having fun.

You can print an ink budget-friendly version or scroll through the complete PDF, stitched with images that will evoke all your summer senses. I can’t wait to share this with you and consequently spend the summer with you, adventuring together through the magic these months hold.

Pre-order now for a 25% discount! (It’s only $9 right now!)

Filed Under: Family, Make Stuff 7 Comments

Lessons Learned from Sidewalk Chalk

March 26, 2019 By Kelle

If you’ve been reading here long, you know that sidewalk chalk is a big thing in our family.

Our kids learned to draw holding fat sticks of chalk instead of crayons, and I don’t know that there’s ever been a time in the last twelve years–give or take a couple post hurricane downpours–that our driveway hasn’t displayed, at the very least, the faint outlines of a heart, a rainbow or someone’s name in bubble letters.

It doesn’t help, of course, that we graduated from pastel sidewalk chalk to highly pigmented art chalk a few years ago, leaving our driveway in a constant state of–as Brett puts it–“a circus show.” As if we hadn’t already earned that title in our neighborhood the day Dash ran out the door naked wearing a Carol Brady wig, chasing the dog who was wearing a dress. Long story for another day.

My point is, we are well-chalked in this family, and the bottoms of my kids’ feet on any given sunny afternoon prove it. Our driveway is our go-to when we need to decompress, our bonding place when we need some together time, and our invitation to step away from phones and T.V.s for some good old brain-stretching artistic therapy.

During a family chalkfest this past weekend, I thought about the archives of memories we have in this driveway and realized how special this activity has become for our family and how much we’ve learned from it.

1. Art Heals Stress
A friend of mine with a teenager told me one of her best pieces of advice for those pre-teen emotional overwhelm moments is to have a cool-down strategy. Hers was always, “Go take a shower.” Ours? Take it to the driveway! I can’t tell you how many times we’ve settled our escalated emotions with chalk, and it always works. Just the other night, Lainey was upset about something and before I could even suggest it, she asked, “Where’s the chalk?” Sometimes we make art alone in the driveway, sometimes it’s all of us together, but it’s always served as a great way to relax and calm down when life gets crazy.

2. Don’t Tear Down Your Work
Things I’ve heard from my kids in our driveway chalk sessions: “I’m a bad drawer,” “Yours is way better,” “I stink at art”–all of which have served as great catalysts for important conversations about how we value our efforts and talk about our own work. We’ve all said these kinds of things in our mind to ourselves about our own creative work, so having repeated conversations with our kids about self talk is a great reminder for us too. We remind ourselves that comparing our creative work to someone else’s creative work is like comparing apples to oranges, and sayings like “I’m a bad drawer” not only beat ourselves up, but they are lazy, broad assessments that aren’t productive motivators to helping us do better. Through creating numerous drawings that we are both proud of and disappointed in, we are practicing good art critique self talks with questions like “What don’t you like about it?,” “What DO you like about it?” and “What could I have done differently to make it more pleasing to my own eye?”

3. Good Art Takes Determination & Time
My kids have been asking me to draw things in our driveway for years now. While I can’t produce everything they ask me to draw, I try my best to create renderings of their favorite movie and book characters. I take photos of every one (even the ones that didn’t turn out great–I’m looking at you, Moana) and store the pictures in a hashtag as well as a folder titled “Much to Chalk About” on my computer. If it’s any good, it’s not because I whipped it up with magical talent. It’s because I stayed committed to my vision and the time it takes to work slowly and tediously. I’m watching my kids do the same now–slowing down, looking at photos they want to recreate, drawing little by little, shading and blending colors and not expecting good art to magically appear on the sidewalk. I learned to draw from watching my dad draw for years and practicing over and over and over. I learned to draw by creating lots of “bad” drawings and not shutting down because I thought they were no good. I’m still learning to draw by returning to the pavement with chalk, to sketchbooks with paints and to paper with pencil, committed to the lifelong process of creating art that is a tiny bit better than the last time I created art. Good art is more about the process than the finished product.

4. Find Something You Love to Do With Your Kids
This is probably my favorite thing I’ve learned through sidewalk chalk sessions. I’ve found “Our Thing”–something I really love to do with my kids, something that never fails to bring us together, something I’ll always say yes to not because I’m doing them a favor but because I really want to be out there drawing in the driveway. Playing Barbies with Nella isn’t always fun for me (I last an average of 6 minutes), but sidewalk chalk? I’m usually the last one standing. And I know my kids can sense that–they’re happy that I’m happy, and you know what they say about Mama being happy–everyone’s happy. That thing you love to do with your kids? It’s the secret cure to witching hours, bad moods, long days and family challenges. Find your thing. In doing so, let me warn you that you may also find what is definitely not your thing. Like Chuck e Cheese.

A few more from our chalk archives:

One of Lainey’s first people drawings…

Chalk serving as Nella’s Occupational Therapy…

Last week’s Woody & Jessie…

We stay stocked up on this chalk for the good pigmented drawings and usually store it in a little basket in our garage (I also keep the cheaper Crayola sidewalk chalk for the little kids.). It doesn’t wash out as good as the regular sidewalk chalk, but it will come off with a good hosing and a scrub brush. We aren’t too precious about our driveway though and don’t mind at all our “circus show” showing neighbors the art fun we have together as a family. Another great tip with the pigmented art chalk is to use your finger to blend and shade. Not only does it make your colors look prettier and more uniform on sand paper-like cement surface, but it makes the chalk last longer.

Filed Under: Family, Make Stuff 10 Comments

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