Summer of Craft

I've started to feel a little guilty about all of the TV-watching going on around here. OK, I've always felt guilty, but I gave myself a pass. First, I was pregnant and either too tired or physically unable to play very much with an active two and a half year old. Then there was a baby. It's just as hard to crawl around the floor with a baby stuck to your boob as it is to do it when they're inside your belly. When the TV is on, Liam doesn't ask me to tackle him, or roll on the exercise ball, or do SuperBaby with him (probably known as an airplane ride in your world?)

The thing is, I can do all of those things again! And, sweet hell, am I happy to be able to type that. Being not pregnant is pretty much the best thing ever, which is good because it's a state I plan to maintain for the rest of my days on earth.

The question is, what do you do when you turn the TV off?!

It's summer and, living in the upper Midwest, we like to make the most of that to store it up for the long, cold, wet, sloppy months when we are stuck inside. But Gav means we are pretty much housebound. For a while, I was happy to toss him in the stroller and walk to the park for the whole morning. But a couple of weeks ago, I had a Harvey Karplike epiphany. My kid needs sleep. Not 20 minutes in the stroller, then 10 in my lap, then 20 in the pack and play. He needs real, solid uninterrupted sleep. Hours of it.

In an effort to give that to him (and, by extension, me at night!), we've been sticking around here. Our yard is boring. We didn't open the pool this year, and have no swingset, sandbox, etc. A $10 plastic kiddie pool is the start and end of the charms of our yard.

Plus it's been hot as hell and I'm kind of a sweaty gal. I hate being hot.

Soooo ... enter crafts. I love doing crafts myself (ALMOST FINISHED WITH THAT DAMN RUG, STAY TUNED!) and have good memories of my mom thinking up projects to do with us. So I started scouring the Intertubes for ideas. I'm compiling my findings here and will be documenting our progress on this blog.

Last week we dipped our toes in with a little watercolor painting in a coloring book. No pics, though. Sorry.

Today, we waded a little further with an actual craft store purchase: pipe cleaners! Ahem. I mean "chenille stems" because referring to pipes will clearly lead our kids to become crackheads. (Also, from now on, Frosty the Snowman will have a corncob di---wait. That's not exactly kid-friendly either.)

It wasn't exactly a craft, but more like fun with pipe cleaners and a colander. It's a crazy-simple idea from this site. Stick pipe cleaners in a colander. MAGIC! So we did that. Here's proof:

Then we made an L out of every single color.

We also plan to do some baking this summer. We'll see if that happens. (We did make snickerdoodles last week. Sure they were from the freezer and bought for a high school fundraiser because I'm a sucker, but still. Cookies.)