Mouse Bed Project as seen at the Hammalier household

Oh Pintrest... you've made a crafter out of everyone. And not everyone should be a crafter. I am a semi-professional crafter... in that I force college students to take fun art classes to de-stress and hopefully learn the importance of HANDMADE. But as many of my hobby crafter friends have discovered, just because you saw it on Pintrest, it doesn't mean that yours will come out well crafted. I, too, occasionally suffer from this fate... occasionally? Well... anyway... here is my latest attempt.

I saw a cute craft on Pintrest and thought that maybe I could make it with the help of Bean. Mostly she sat and watched me hand sew and was bored... many exclamations of, "Mama, when will it be my turn to do something?!" were heard around the house with much loud sighing... sometimes I think she is 15 instead of 3.5.

Despite her preview of the teen years, Bean helped select the fabrics for our mouse bed project. White felt for the mouse body, pink cherries for the blanket and dark purple for the bedding.

When I was done sewing the mouse I let Bean help decorate her. I was then going to stitch over her pen marks with embroidery floss, but she preferred her true artistry to show through. (The large blue circles are the mouse's teeth, obviously...)

So proud of her work!

And then she kept "working on the mouse". Sigh. Why do kids always create until they destroy?Here, gentle reader, is why you might want to craft without your children present. But if you're like me and don't have a lot of time without one of these crazies running around the house, the best thing to do is to figure out how to involved them and let go of all your feelings of control. So, Bean kept decorating her mouse... the pink lines at the bottom represents the "mouse's vagina because it's a mom mouse. It has babies."

I feel compelled to make it a pair of underroos or something... she seems awfully exposed... next time. Another way to involve Bean was to have her make some patterns for me so that I could cut out and sew her creations. In the original Pintrest craft, the mouse had a little teddy bear. And because my daughter is who she is... she made a pattern for a pet snake. I did my best to capture it's likeness in green felt- complete with pink and brown decorations.

So, a mint tin, blanket, bedding, pillow, snake friend and mouse... with a vagina because she's a mom... all added up to a craft project that Bean rejected in the end and decided should be a gift to a newborn baby girl named Harper James Page. James, incidentally, is Bean's middle name too... two girls with matching middle names have a special bond and in this case that bond will be a very odd gift of an anatomically correct mouse and her sleeping quarters.

In the end it's a totally wacky take on a craft seen on Pintrest and epitomizes the awesome collaborations that Bean and I occasionally attempt. And it's another example that shows the act of making something can be more than the finished project.

HIghlights Magazine Craft

Bean and I made an easy craft on a rainy spring morning from Highlights Magazine.


I loved Highlights Magazine when I was a kid. All of the stories and poems, that crazy duo- Goofus and Gallant... such great memories. Bean received a subscription to Hightlights: High Five (for little kids) and I love it as much as she does. She "reads" it from cover to cover and then asks us to read it to her from cover to cover.

We recently tried one of the art projects they had in the back of the magazine and I have to say, it was a complete success.

Spring has come early to Missouri (or maybe it will snow again and kill all of the new buds on the trees and kill off all of the daffodils that are starting to blossom... but that's a little too pessimistic for a blog post about a kids craft project... so ... SPRING! WHOOPEE!).

Bean was really excited to help with this project which started with a tromp around the yard looking for the right kind of sticks. We put them in a glass jar (that was about to be recycled) and got started cutting our tissue paper in squares.

Bean was able to help with the twisty tie part. Take your tissue paper squares (we made them about 3"x3") and tie a twisty tie in the middle creating a bow tie shape. The ends of the twisty tie then get twisted around the branches of your sticks.

And depending on how many little branches are sticking off of your sticks you have an approximated Forsythia flower. It's quite nice on the dining room table... makes me want to do some spring cleaning now.