Seed Sprouting Bags

Seeds, baggies, paper towels.

     My daughter loves plants. She loves seeds, she loves dried beans, and she loves Sid the Science Kid. It is one of the only shows she actually watches. We have a science journal for her, and yesterday she got it out and wanted to record observations.... Ummmm............ What are we going to observe? Then I remembered the seeds we had in the garage.

     Then I remembered doing some seed sprouting between paper towels as a child and a recent conversation I had with a third grade teacher about how his class just puts seeds in paper towels and baggies and tapes them to the window. I think I can handle this science experiment. 

Ready to go with her tools!

     So we simply got the paper towels wet, wrung them out, folded them to fit, and picked out a couple of seeds to slip in the bag. 

     Nothing fancy here. I have no idea if this will even work. But we are simply observing and recording. She has no expectation of what is supposed to happen here. 

Taped up on the dirty play room window. 

     We have our cute little floral notebook, and are taking notes every day. First day included me taking a photo (the one you see above.) and second day was just opening up the notebook and holding her pen to her mouth while saying "Hmmmmm. Momma, nothing happened. Why is there tape on the window? Fix that bad bag. We should throw it in the garbage. Let's go outside and look at flowers." I would say right on track for a 2 year olds thought process. Maybe in a couple of days something will happen that will be worthy of a notebook scribble.

Simple Coasters

    

     One of my amazing girlfriends made us the sweetest coasters part of our christmas gift. They were tiles mod podged with some of our family photos. She just went on face book, printed a few of her favorites, and away she went! These are my favorite kinds of gifts. Personal, original, and full of love.

     After raving about how much I loved them, she gave me some extra tiles she found at the habitat re-building center so I could try my hand at making my own. They are an adorable turquoise that looks a bit retro, yet totally modern at the same time. You will have to trust me on the color part. All my photos make them look blue.

     I had some leftover scrap book paper (also from Sarah) from an earlier project, so I decided to throw the trendy pennant banner look onto the coaster. When I grow tired of this style I am not worried about re-purposing, or good-willing these bad boys. The total cost of this project was FREE!!! Gifted tiles, little bitty scraps of scrap book paper, mod podge that I already had on hand, a sharpie, and some sealant borrowed from a friend (do I even need to say this friend was also Sarah). I have not put cork on the bottom yet because I am still trying to find my cork in my crazy craft closet. I may have to just do the ol' hot glue and felt trick. My grandmothers coasters always have had green felt on the bottom. I may do that for nostalgia.

       There are many tutorials out there that recommend baking your ceramics when you use sharpies on them. I used a navy blue sharpie to draw the "string" that my triangles are hanging off. In my limited  research, it seems that you actually have to get somewhere in the 900F range to make anything stick. So I just used one layer mod podge over the ink, used a tiny dab of m.p. on the tip of a paint brush to pick up the triangles of paper and drop them onto the tile, followed with three layers of mod podge and some finishing gloss spray. Don't stack them on top of each other for a couple of days. I did and I got dents and scratches in them. I laid them out on a table to really cure up and no more bumps and bruises for these guys. So far so good. They have even passed the spilt coffee test.

     There is really no exact pin or blog post that this was inspired by. I would say it was inspired by my friend Sarah.

Sara's pin boards!

     I think the gifted photo ones are moving upstairs to our night stands where we (grown ups) will use them every day. These guys will stay downstairs where they can be beat up by a toddler and we won't care!

     Give it a try if you have some tiles laying around. It was super quick and my little helper had a blast pretending with a dry paintbrush and a scrap of paper.

Felt Heart Banner

Last year I wanted to do a little teeny tiny bit of Valentines day decorating. I found a very simple looking pin of a heart garland that I thought looked easy enough. I clicked the link and........ All in Korean. Not recognizeable charecters to me. Hmmm, guess I was winging this one. Winging it is more true to my style, so I thought of this as a good thing. Here it the original pin.

http://www.duitang.com/people/mblog/13035472/detail/

http://pinterest.com/pin/94083079685252147/



Here is my finished project.

Steps to make your own:
1. Grab some felt, one of those cheapie sheets they have at craft and fabric stores will work just fine.
2. Fold it in half the long way.
3. Sew a seam down the fold with a small seam allowance.
4. Flip the fabric around so the seam and seam allowance is now in the inside.
5. Pinch the felt together along the now bottom (looking through the felt like a pirate monocle) and decide where a seam should go that would make the best shaped heart.
6. Sew your seam where you decided would give you the heart of your desired size.
7. Trim excess fabric from bottom of heart.
8. Grab scissors or a rotary cutter and slice the long tube heart every 1" or so. This should give you about 11 hearts from the one long tube heart you have made.

Repeat as many times in as many colors as you want. Then simply grab a needle and some thread and string them up.

I used a huge needle and old yarn that I had. I also used neon puff balls from the craft section as spacers, but these are definitely not necessary if you are using yarn. I would assume the hearts would slide around on normal thread so you may want pom poms of puff balls for stability if you go that route. Make sure to thread through on the upper third of the heart. If you go right through the middle they will be top heavy and swing around to become upside down hearts.

So my Valentines mantle is on it's way. To what? I don't know. But there is a pin using that cute little mailbox that I am going to try tomorrow. And I definitely need some xoxo blocks, or something similar. So many pins, so little time!

Testing testing

Just a little test run to see if this is working! Lots of "pinspired" projects on thier way!!!