Felt Crayon Roll

My youngest daughter is just getting ready to start to learn how to color so I wanted to make something special just for her own little set of crayons.  I've seen a lot of my friends' kids have these adorable crayon rolls and have been wanting to make some of my own for some time now.  I searched online and came across a few ideas, but when I came across this one at Skip to My Lou, I fell in love because it was made of felt. I LOVE felt.  No hems-- it doesn't get better than that.  So, I used her tutorial and came up with this...

Puzzle Pockets

So I came across this awesome idea a little while back at Cluck Cluck Sew.  Isn't it genius?!

 I never knew how to store my kids' puzzles before, and I always kind of dreaded helping them organize the bin of them because it would, inevitably, get dumped out again.   I happened to have a bunch of sheets of felt on hand as well as sticky-back velcro, and, of course, I already had tons of hot glue.

 

I cut a strip of felt to be the top and used the rest of the piece for the bottom pocket.  I hot glued around the edge to get them to stay and  added the velcro--that was it.  I sat down and made pockets for all of our puzzles and it took about an hour.  

Now the puzzles are organized, easy to access, and don't ever get mixed up. 

Latest project- a photo book of San Francisco

I've been working on this project for the last couple of weeks, trying to make this book that will be a gift to our kids for Christmas.  Since we have officially entered our last year here, we are trying to make as many memories as we possibly can. We took all the pictures from the book on our adventures. (The version I am printing for our kids is a little more personalized with our apartment complex, church building, schools, etc.)

 Goodnight San Francisco

Marble Mazes

,Long time, no blogging.

Things are finally slowing down around our house after quite a bit of traveling and sight seeing. Now that we're back home, and my husband is back in school, I was looking forward to spending time at the parks and enjoying the outdoors but the foggy cold weather along with my youngest two children being sick with a stomach flu has put a damper on those plans. While we wait for them to recover (and for some warmer weather-crazy mixed up SF), I've been trying to find things for my older two kids to do since we're stuck here. So, today, we tried Marble Mazes. It's a really cute idea that I found in a Family Fun Magazine. All you need is a shoe box lid (we used the box as well since we needed two), a bunch of straws cut into different sizes, tape, and a marble for each maze. The kids didn't need any assistance putting them together. They just taped the straw pieces down wherever they wanted until they ran out of straws. Then I gave them each a marble and they went to town. My son loves 'racing' the marble through the maze, complete with sound effects. Super easy. And tons of fun.