my lovely little valentines

Both of my kids have been sick, alternating turns, for about three weeks now.  My daughter was the originator of disease, passing it on to my son, and then in grand splendor, picking it up again as a re-manifestation from her chest to her ears, considerately keeping the fever at just below panic levels for way too long now.  Because she has had to miss so much school right before Valentine's Day, I wanted to do something really special.

And what's more special than a heart filled hallway?  The hallway of love.....

Very fun to make.  I painted large sheets of paper, and then cut out a lot of hearts!

First I painted....... 

......then I cut!!!

And then I took out some twine and taped it all together.  This was kind of a last minute project, and after I had it all taped up, I wished I had done something to the backside of the hearts, but no matter.  The kids didn't even notice.  They loved it!

And then there was the something special #2....  

My first thought was to make a heart shaped cake with a lovely fondant encasement, all pink and velvety smooth, with the rolling landscape of a baby's bottom, sprinkled with an array of fondant babies and hearts and anything else you can imagine, none of which I would ever have the time to make.

So instead I decided to make a giant cookie.  With the kids' help, of course.

I used my basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, but since it was a larger cookie, I baked it at a lower temp for a longer period of time.  It turned out perfectly.  Crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside....  And of course, anything slathered in frosting can't be too bad, right?

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

*I adapted this recipe to make a giant cookie

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon (wonderful for an added warmth, but the cookies are just as good without it)

1 stick Earth Balance butter, softened

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. packed brown sugar, light or dark

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 c. dairy free chocolate chips or chocolate cut into chunks (I use Enjoy Life)

Preheat oven to 325˚F

Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon (if using) in bowl.  Mix well.

On medium speed, beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until well mixed.

On low speed, stir in the flour mixture until blended.  Add the chocolate chips and stir to integrate them into the batter.

Grease a cookie sheet and dump the whole load of dough in the middle.  Spread the mound into whatever shape you like, making sure that it is no more than 1/2" thick.  Bake for about 25-30 minutes. I started checking on mine at 20 minutes, and pulled it out after 30.  Let sit for a couple of minutes, and move to a cool surface or rack to cool completely before you add the frosting.

vanilla frosting

5 tbs softened earth balance butter or unsalted margarine

2 c. powdered sugar

2-3 tbs soy milk

few drops of vanilla

Combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium low speed.  I usually drape a dish towel over top to keep the sugar from blizzarding all over the counter and on my person..  Once a ball is formed (this should take a few minutes), turn the mixer to low, and add the soy milk/vanilla a little bit at a time.  Mix until thoroughly combined, turn the mixer to high, and whip it up for about 10 minutes, stopping to scrape the bowl if needed.  Then add coloring, a drop at a time, until the desired color is reached.  Wait until desired food item is fully cooled and slather, slather, slather... mmmm...

tis the season to bedazzle

Here is a fun easy way to bedazzle snowflakes.  Take three pipe cleaners (or however many you want) and cut them in half.  Take one of the pieces and wrap one end around the center of the bunch.  Then bend out the rest of the arms into a snowflake shape.  Next.  Take beads and bead them onto the snowflake arms to your hearts content!  I took my handy dandy leatherman tool and bent the ends to keep the beads on. Tie up some string or fishing wire and hang it from your tree.  Or doorknob.  Or door hinge.  Or rear view mirror.  Or ear, if you have one.  You get the idea.  You can also get some suction cup hooks and hang them on the window.  Endless bedazzlement, and great fun for the kids!

hanging artwork

Do you have a bunch of photos or paintings that you want to put on the wall, but become totally overwhelmed thinking about arranging them?  Well, look no further, I have an answer.

I must state, first and foremost, that you probably should NOT hang artwork while intoxicated or really REALLY tired.  You tend to make mistakes that way....  Fortunately in my case (tired, not intoxicated- the latter may have been more fun), my mistakes weren't so bad.  I would also like to add, that the photos here were taken with my phone, so the quality isn't that good.  I default back to my being tired....  

With all of these excuses, why on earth am I posting this, you might ask yourself.  Well, I have had these 5 beautiful farm animal paintings by Brenda Ferguson for quite a while now, and I have been avoiding hanging them.  Every time I looked at these paintings, I just couldn't figure out how to arrange them on the wall.  And then it came to me.  It was an epiphany.  Not to be confused with all the other epiphanies that have flashed before my brain today.  Or would those be hallucinations?

First, you haphazardly hang a clock with a tack.  Then you design your artwork around that.  Look on the floor, and while you pick up your kids' crumpled paper, look for the pieces that have the least amount of scribbles on it.  You may want to try to straighten them out a bit, but as you can see, I couldn't be bothered with that part...

I then put the paintings on the paper, and traced the outermost edges.  I cut out the paper, and voila!  You now have a template.  Because the paintings are all the same size, I drew little two second gesture sketches on the paper so I knew which was which.

I then did a quick measure. I flipped the painting over and measured where the hook is.  I measured the uppermost part of the inner hole of the hook, if that makes sense.  In other words, I visualized where the nail would sit in the hook, and how the hook would be sitting on the nail.  That makes perfect sense, right?  So, on these square 6" paintings, the hook was 1 1/4" down from the top, and it was right in the middle, at 3".  I put a mark on the paper where the nail should go.  The other two paintings have a wire, so I flipped the painting over, and pulled the wire in the direction of the top of the painting, to make it taut.  I then measured down from the top of the painting, to the wire, and then the center of the painting as well.  And I taped my arrangement to the wall.

I then put nails straight into the paper.  This is where my tiredness came into play.  I would recommend that you get out your level and make sure that all of the rows are straight.  Or you could even get out a ruler, and make the spaces in between the paintings even, or whatever you like.  I, myself, like it all a little bit off, because, well, I am a little bit off...

So I eyeballed the arrangement, and didn't measure, and nailed it to the wall.

I then hung the paintings right over the paper, to see if everything was ok.

I had to re-nail two nails into the wall, because that's when I realized I hadn't leveled or measured anything.  But I don't think it looks too bad!  The one thing I am impressed with is that the top pink painting on the left is perfectly lined up with the rooster.  And the top of the silver frame on the left is exactly at the midpoint of the silver frame on the right (5" on the dot), which is also at the exact middle of the space between the pink goats and the two beneath.  Talk about eyeballing!!

In any case, now that you have your arrangement nailed to the wall, carefully tear off the paper, and you, my friends, are all done!

Happy hanging!

easy prints, great project

So a while ago, I saw a picture somewhere of a toddler painting on a cookie sheet and then transferring it to paper.  I thought it was genius, and filed it away in my head for a rainy day.

The only problem is that my brain doesn't work like it used to.  If I don't write it down or set an alarm in my phone, it is widely assumed that I won't remember it.  And I'm not even kidding.  I can't write things on paper anymore, because I won't remember where I put the paper.  So if I have a pen and need to write something down, it goes on my hand.  Which then spreads to my arm, if any sort of details are involved.  It's pathetic, really.

But every now and again, I will have a moment of clarity, and remember something fantastic.  Today was one of those days.

My son was playing the chef who puts out fires set by the mean machine who was considerate enough to call him on the phone to alert him of his intentions, and it came to me.  I asked him if he wanted to do a fun painting project, and he was instantly on board.

He picked out his cookie sheet, we got out some paint and paper, and got to work.  This project was so easy and so much fun.  It only required a few items that I had lying around, but even if I didn't have q-tips, a finger would work just as well. Or crumpled up paper, or a cotton ball, or a paint brush, or a pencil, or a crayon, or a spoon, or Barbie's foot, or a fork, or a toy car, or a leaf, or a shoe...  It's endless fun, really.

So you put some paint on the cookie sheet, let your kid smush it all around and make all sorts of designs in it, and put a piece of paper on top.  At first, you barely have to touch the paper, since the paint will be thicker.  But as the paint pares down, you can smooth out the paper with your hands to transfer the pattern onto the paper.  That's all there is to it!

And if you don't want to have a stack of prints lying all over your house, you could fold them in half and make cards out of them!!  Or maybe if you use a larger sheet of paper, you could use it as wrapping for a small present.  Endless fun, I tell you!

The best part of this project?  No mess.  Maybe it's just my kid, but I didn't even have to put a smock on him.  I just rolled up his sleeves and let him go.  See that paint on the towel?  

That was the only paint outside of the cookie sheet.  

But......  I did use washable paint, just in case.

As great as these are, just take a look up close.  

Some of the paint we used here was metallic, and up until now, I didn't quite realize how special is was.  I just thought it would be fun for the kids.  But WOW. 

 Just, wow.

mama, please make me a cuddly

It all started with the hat.  The "mama, I want a pig hat that's just a pig" hat.  I have been knitting for many years, so making hats is pretty simple for me.  No problem, I thought.  I WILL make a pig hat that's just a pig.

I wanted it to be quick work, so I went upstairs, picked out some extra large, extra pink yarn and extra large needles.  For those of you who haven't been in my house, I have a bit of a problem with yarn.  And fabric.  I have an entire room devoted to yarn.

And fabric.

It's not remotely organized..  BUT..  I am pretty well equipped to make anything that tickles my fancy at any given time.  Unfortunately, my daughter picked up on that pretty quickly....

So in the heat of the hat challenge, I just started knitting a basic ear flap hat, putting on a nose, ears, and eyes at the end.  I didn't use a pattern and I made it in 3 hours, while my daughter took her nap.

She doesn't nap anymore.  And she knows that I can make a hat in 3 hours.  I don't quite know yet if that is a good thing or not......

Next up was the teddy bear.  She had a dream about this little tan bear with a blue nose.  When she woke up and couldn't find the bear anywhere, she sort of flipped out.  She was heartbroken that she couldn't find the bear.  And she was still so sleepy and didn't understand that the bear wasn't real.   It was very sweet..

I featured the teddy bear in an earlier post that you can read here.

So by the time my daughter came up to me and asked me to knit her a baby gazelle, I realized that I had set the bar way too high.  But..............

I did it anyway.

I so love a challenge.

I used to knit sweaters for kids, sweaters for myself, scarves..  clothing items.  But oh how I love to knit or sew little guys for my little guys.  The excitement in their faces when they see the newest creation is so unbelievably rewarding.  And having them see me make them (well if they aren't sleeping or at school), is even sweeter.  I am all about inspiring creativity here in the Karimipour Household.

This one kind of has a weird stance...

He (oh, I'm sorry, SHE) looks so uptight in this one.

Gazelles have a stripe.  And a wee little tail.

And although they may not have fluffy blue eyes, baby gazelles do have wee little horns.

Horns, not antlers...

Ta daa!  I'm really proud of this little gal...  the white stripe going down the front and on her belly is a little screwey, but that's ok.  It adds character.

This little lady was the most fun to make.  I wrote my own pattern for the gazelle (which was a challenge indeed- it took me three days and three tries), but this little lamb started out in a book as a bunny.  I made some changes with the body (changing yarn, needle size, and knit stitch- I also halved the book pattern because I wanted it tiny, and I did actually change the pattern a bit to just have one seam in the back as opposed to two seams down the sides), and changed the ear position, but mostly it was out of the book.

Although I love making things on my own, sometimes it is really such a breath of fresh air to use someone else's work...

So here's a big THANK YOU to all of you out there who shed your blood, sweat, and tears to bring wonderful creations into the world!

fun with pipe cleaners

I absolutely love Michael's.  Everything about it.  I love the tchotchkes decorating the sidewalk by the front door.  I love the smell of glue and potpourri and wood that wafts in your face the second you walk in.  I love the paper aisle, overflowing with rainbows. I can feel my heart palpitate when I  stand, mouth open mid drool, in front of the wall of glitter.  I love imagining all of the things I can create with feathers and felt and eyeballs and buttons and beads and random wooden cubes...


























I have a potentially unhealthy obsession, I know.  And when I have children in tow, the carrot just dangles that much closer..  If they want glitter glue, pipe cleaners, a bag of buttons, and crystal door knobs...  all I can say is yes, yes, yes, and YES!  Enter in those strangely malleable foam blocks you put in planters, and we've got ourselves an afternoon!!  Oh, and that thing with the pink sparkly mane and button body?  That's a unicorn.

spur of the moment paper dolls

My daughter, like most 4 year olds, loves making crafts.  She loves to play with glue, tiny pieces of paper, glitter, tiny pieces of wood, glue, tiny pieces of string, sequins, glue, and tiny pieces of paper.  You get the idea.  For two years, her teachers have commented with amazement at how she will cut up itty pieces of paper, not even a half inch in any direction, and compose entire little drawings on them.  

And then she will carry them around with her all day.  I just love her..

This afternoon, while watching her make a scrap paper collage, I started cutting out little people.  She got so excited and it just went from there.  She drew in the faces, and told me what types of dresses they needed, what their names were, and what kinds of shoes they simply had to wear.  I am so inspired by her creativity!  More people cut outs are definitely on the way.. 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the doll in the pink dress, Zoe, needed red shoes. No, not flats.  The kind that clop!