Some New Projects

It's been nothing but cloudy, rainy, and downright dreary around here lately.  It was unusually warm yesterday and today but, to quote Dr. Seuss, "The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house..." and we made sculptures!

This is the before picture (note the newspaper. Multiple layers are necessary if your doing this project with kids that are anywhere near as messy as mine)

We used a homemade self hardening clay recipe:

4 cups of flour

1 1/2 cups of salt

1 1/2 cups of water

Mix together in a large bowl until a dough forms and you have self hardening clay.

After your finished modeling and sculpting away, allow the clay to sit in a warm dry place for about 2 days (depending on the thickness) until completely dry.

The sculptures seen above had been drying for 3 days.

Once they were completely dry I mixed about 1/2 cup of white vinegar to 1 package or kool aid to make a nice stain.

Then I gave the kids free reign to "paint" their sculptures to their heart's content.

The picture above are the finished products.

On a more grown up note, I've finished one comfortghan for one of our local nursing homes.  

It's large enough to fit a full size bed and fits a standard size nursing home hospital bed with a little extra hanging over the edge.

I really loved the colors in this afghan.

The variegated green, brown, tan and white yarn just makes me feel happy.

We also recieved a wonderful gift on Saturday.  

A beautiful, light, and lacey baby afghan from my very talented aunt.

I love this because the color would work well for a boy or a girl and it's nice to have something a little lighter weight to wrap Youngest in when we are inside.

All in all it was a pretty good weekend.  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well.