Craft Myths, Busted

People sometimes tell me that I am talented*, art and crafts-wise, and ask where I get the time to do the crafts I do. I usually shug, say something along the lines of "Eh thanks, mmm I dunno".

Recently I took a bit of time to ask myself where I get the time. So, I'm going to let you, and those people, if they are reading, how things work round here, craft-wise and bust a few craft myths while I am at it.

Myth: Craft projects take a lot of time

For very many crafts, you do not need a lot of time. For those projects that do need a lot of time, you do not generally need all that time in one block. Blocks of 5 or 10 minutes or even a half hour can often be squeezed in between other activities. Just keep your materials near at hand.

Myth: Craft projects need a lot of space

You do not need a lot of space for most projects. A kitchen table can be commandeered between meals or in the evening to use as a work space. Your work in progress can be stored on top of a wardrobe, in the guest bedroom or inside a cupboard. 

In the photo below you can see my current crochet project, accompanied by an unfinished Easter project (check back here in Spring for the tutorial), housed in a small basket that lives under the coffee table. It gets taken out when I sit down to watch television, usually once a week. When I am finished, I fold it back up and pop it back into the basket. It is easy to manage, keeps the children from attacking it and is always in the right place at the right time.

Myth: You have to be creative

Natural creativity is great, but good copying skills will suffice. I believe we are all creative somewhere inside. It can just be hard to tap into it. 

If you feel that you are not creative but you want to get crafty with the kids, then borrow some craft books from the library with projects that suit your level of skill or enthusiasm. Browse them, pick a project and have a go. Don't look on Pinterest and get depressed. 

Myth: Craft materials cost a lot of money

Yes, craft materials can cost a lot of money but it very much depends on what you are making and the level of professionalism you are aiming for. Here you really do need to cut your cloth according to your means.
When buying materials for a particular project, bear in mind that you can use the leftovers in other projects. I have some tubes of acrylic paint that I bought several years ago. They seem to be bottomless, I have used them so often but they are still not empty, nor have they dried out. My scraps of fabric get used up in patchwork or sewing machine embroidery projects.

A lot of what you can use for craft projects, especially for crafting with children, can be collected from around the house or bought in a €1 shop or in Aldi, like paper straws, glue, packs of coloured paper or childrens' scissors. 
Natural materials collected from the garden, woods or parks make great crafting material, are free and educational for the children too.

Assign a collection box somewhere in the house and whenever you see something that could be useful, put it in there. I often keep the following:

 - buttons from clothes that are being dumped

 - old shirts that have frayed cuffs and collars. There is a good amount of fabric in them.

 - ribbons and strings from chocolate boxes, gifts, or those loops of ribbon inside clothes that keep them from sliding off the hangers.

 - cardboard toilet roll inserts

 - pieces of plain card like the type that come with folded shirts or in packs of tights

A drawer in our kitchen, for spontaneous crafting sessions

Myth: You need to be skilled with lots of tools and methods

I am living proof that you do not need a whole lot of skill to realise pretty projects. You can learn as you go. You can watch video tutorials and you can ask your local DIY shop, hardware shop or craft shop for advice if you have a project in mind. 

Myth: It takes too long to master one craft

Yes, it can take a long time to master a particular craft. But the beauty of creative crafting for amateurs like us is that you do not need to master any particular crafts. 

But you do need to want to give it a go. I am not saying that you have to be incredibly passionate about, say, knitting. But if you have no interest at all in the end product, it is not going to go well. And just because you can't knit, doesn't mean you shouldn't try crochet. Just because you can't dressmake, doesn't mean you can't sew a cushion. Start small and work your way up or start big and hope for the best. But start.

*While it is lovely to hear that one is talented, those giving the praise must have no idea of the amazingly talented people there are out there. I do my best with the time I have and hope things turn out to be presentable. 

To market, to market.....

There are days when life with three can be so very manageable. I have to write this down to remind myself of the fact since it is often the chaotic, stressful, disaster days that are foremost in my mind when I consider taking the boys out alone.

Yesterday was one of the good days though; the days when I am not the frowning, shouting mammy but the relaxed, easy going one who makes having a day out alone with three small boys look like a doddle. 

The poor Bavarian had to work at a trade show and I was tempted to plonk the boys in front of the TV for the morning. But at heart I am anti TV and pro activity. I couldn't bring myself to give in to a duvet and pj day in front of the telly, especially when the weather was forecast to be good. 

And so Saturday morning saw us load the kids into the car at 8am and drive to the trade show to drop off The Bavarian. Being just on the outskirts of Karlsuhe, I decided we should visit one of the Saturday markets and have breakfast there, rather then head straight home. What a good decision that turned out to be! 

After several laps of Gutenbergplatz, we found a parking space and walked back to the market. Number Three was snoozing happily in the sling, I had a shopping basket with me, cash in my wallet and a son's hand in each of mine. 

The corner of the square we arrived at is the one with the fountain, so we started off by throwing in pennies and making wishes. We then began the important task of deciding what to buy for our picnic breakfast. My boys are good eaters, so we had no problem finding food they liked. Pretty soon we had a basket of food, drinks in our hands and were on the lookout for a bench.

Bench found, we tucked in, chatted and people watched. I wallowed in the happiness I found in watching the boys enjoy themselves and in the admiring glances we got, being taken for a model family. 

Behind our bench was a flower bed. Number One and Number Two had a little inpromptu nature lesson, pointing out to me the mushrooms that had sprouted up between the shrubs and the snails nestled on the leaves of the plants.

I had visions of interest being lost once the food was eaten and the hot chocolate drunk, but happily I was wrong. The colours, sounds and sights of the market kept them entertained and we had great chats about the food on sale as we wandered between the stalls. Number One can read quite well now and was reading signs all over the place. "There is fresh fish from the Black Forest Mammy", "This honey is made from rosemary, look!". Number Two was amazed at the quantities of some types of fruit, like the damson-like plums, the pumpkins and the qunice that are in season at the moment.

Then there were the gasps of wonder and of disgust at some of the produce, like the mushroom varieties they had never seen before and the heads of romanesco.

The morning went so well, I honestly couldn't have hoped for better. We shopped, ate, chatted, spent time in the fresh air, learned about plants, did sums in our heads as we sorted our coins to pay the sellers. I never asked what the children wished for at the fountain, But I know that next time we visit the market, I'll be wishing for another day as happy and relaxed as this one was.

Making an Owl Window or Wall Decoration

I've stolen a craft idea from kindergarten and I am going to share it with you today - paper owls with leaf wings.

              

My own darling children didn't feel like making these, but I thought they were very cute. Number Three pitched in a little, pinching the scissors and glue every now and again, just to keep me on my toes, and Number One and Two collected the leaves for the wings, but they left the actual craft bit up to me.

Here's what you will need:

Coloured card for the owl bodies

White and black card for the eyes

Orange card for the beaks

Leaves

Brown card for the tree (optional)

A black marker pen

Glue

Scissors

Sticky tape

Step 1: Using a saucer, draw circles on the coloured card. These will form the bodies of the owls, so you need one circle per owl. 

Step 2: Cut out the circles.

Step 3: Cut out circles of black and white card for the eyes. You need a small white circle and a slightly larger black circle per eye. 

Step 4: Cut out one triangle of orange card per owl for the beak. The diameter of the white of the eye should be the width of the widest part of the beak.

Step 5: Glue the white of the eyes to the black circles. Then use the black marker pen to draw a black dot in the white of each eye, as shown in the photo below.

Step 6: Glue the eyes and beak onto each body. 

Step 7: Glue a leaf on either side of each owl's body for the wings. 

Step 8: Per owl, cut out two small triangles of coloured card and tape these to the back of each owl's head as ears.

 Step 9: (Optional) Cut out a tree shape from the brown card. Tape it to a wall or window. Then arrange the owls on the branches and tape any remaining leaves to the tree and around the bottom of the trunk.

A Pre-Anniversary Trip Down Memory Lane

This weekend we paid a visit to the town we got married in, Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Bavaria. We hadn't been in years and the children didn't remember ever being there before.  

 

A picturesque but tourist-ridden town, Rothenburg can be a sea of American and Japanese tourists, but we were lucky to visit on a relatively quiet day. We spent a few hours strolling through the wide shopping streets of the centre of town, stopping at gorgeous boutiques and peeping in the windows of the bakeries before taking a wander through the narrow cobbled lanes that surround the town. 

The boys were amazed at the walled town and the buildings dating back to at least the 16th century. Within minutes they went from moaning about visiting a boring town to excited exclamations of "Look!" as they spotted the moat, turrets and arches that may once have housed a portcullis.

Over the years, we have learnt to avoid the tourist traps, like the Christmas shop that is open year-round and the Steiff teddy bear shop. But we have also discovered shops we love like Living Paper, a boutique paper shop in which I could easily spend an hour despite it being so tiny, or the various hunting shops The Bavarian likes to browse. 

As we pottered, the boys had to stop and examine every sword and dagger they noticed, every piece of chain mail and armour we saw, so you can imagine their delight on seeing this display in the vault of one of the shops selling medieval paraphernalia. 

With bakeries dotted all round the town, many with inviting-looking outdoor seating, we had to stop for a coffee and some traditional German cake. The boys opted for apple strudel while The Bavarian and I went for something nutty - an almond crescent for me and a chocolate nougat ring for him. Rothenburg's famous pastry, the Snowball (Schneeball) is a delicious ball of rich, biscuit-like pastry deep fried and tossed in icing sugar. But they are huge and were just too much for us to try out yesterday. 

 

All in all, we had a wonderfully relaxed family day taking in the history and scenery and, for The Bavarian and me at least, it brought back many memories of our wedding day almost nine years ago. 

The church we married in, in the valley below the town walls.

7 Things I Had Forgotten About Life With A Toddler

I am beginning to realise that there are quite a few things that I had either forgotten or possibly just suppressed about life with a toddler.

 The way you can't fill or empty the dishwasher with a toddler in the same room.

The stench of the dirty nappies of a teething child.

The way this happens as soon as you turn your back for more than 30 seconds.

The way toddlers have normal sleeping positions in their own bed but reserve their special perpendicular-to-parent, crucifix and windmill positions for the parental bed.

The number of times the floor needs sweeping per day.

The way that putting shoes on the small, bendy foot of a small, wriggly child is damn near impossible, especially when under time pressure.

The way that even the smallest amount of water will soak them to the skin, leave the floor needing mopping and make you very glad it wasn't juice, milk or coffee that they got their hands on.

Now We Know Our ABCs

We are only now coming to the end of the six-week Summer holidays. School will resume for Number One next week. Lately I have been reflecting on Number One's development. He has made such progress in the past few months. I can hardly believe the change in him. Last September he could write his name and that was it. Now, 12 months later he's reading whole books in German and in English and can write in both print and cursive. 

It was a tough year for him and it has made me determined to have Number Two better equipped for dealing with school. Number One had been keen on learning but we didn't want him to be bored at school, so we followed all the advice from teachers and kindergarten not to teach him to read or have him learn the alphabet. He'd learn all that at school, they said, and in the end he did. But it was a very steep learning curve, not made any easier by the fact that many children in the class could read and write on starting school.  I feel that he'd begun to lose interest in learning before school had even started.

Number Two has been following his big brother's progress and is very eager to learn, always spotting letters from his name and from other words he recognises. So we've decided to go against the advice and go with what our child wants to learn. I've rooted out all the ABC books I bought when Number One was younger. But best of all, I've bought us a brilliant new alphabet poster and matching mini poster that are perfectly suited to bilingual children like mine.

Love Your Lingo is an Australian company founded by an Irish woman called Una. I am ever grateful to Helen, The Busy Mama herself, for mentioning Una in a post and helping me discover these brilliant ABC posters. They cost around €20 each (the pricing is in Australian dollars and worked out at just over €19 the day I bought mine online). 

The alphabet posters and mini posters are of excellent quality and are highly unlikely to get ripped to shreds, the fate of most posters that some into this house. The illustrations are clear and the words chosen to represent each letter of the alphabet are ones that children will quite easily recognise. But for us the fantastic thing is that the words chosen begin with the same letter in German and in English. So B is for bath / Badewanne, L is for lion/Loewe and T is for tower/Turm. I am over the moon to have discovered these. It has made such a difference to Number Two's confidence with letters already.

The Little Linguist's Alphabet from Love Your Lingo covers English, German, French, Spanish, Portugese and Dutch.

As I was re-visiting our alphabet books, I found this one which I had forgotten was multi-lingual. Wenn Raketen Träumen (When Rockets Dream) is a brilliantly imaginative ABC book for space-loving boys like mine. We came across it by chance a couple of years ago in our local newsagents and only discovered when we got home that it was multilingual.

Each page depicts the rocket dressed up as something different, with D for Dragon/Drache, F for Fish/Fisch, P for Penguin/Pinguin, etc. Some are a bit tricky to name, like C for clown's nose/Clownsnase. 

The relevant word is written in the top left-hand corner of the page in seven languages, making it a great book for lots of families.

The boys had great fun spotting the rocket in each of the drawings and naming the creature or object he had transformed into. 

Apple Pie ABC by Alison Murray is a beautiful book to look at but not terribly helpful for small children. Number Two loves the facial expressions and cheekiness of the dog, but he is not overly interested in the story because the language used in much of the story is too advanced for his age group. A for Apple, B for Bake and C for Cool are fine, but Q for Quietly determinded is a bit out of his vocabulary. 

I'm excited to see how longs Number Two's interest in reading and writing keeps up. What was your experience with your children? At what age did they develop an interest in letters and reading?