Shamrocks for St Patrick's Day

This one's a little late. I had planned to write a post about the shamrock hair accessories I was making for the girls for St Patrick's Day. But I got distracted! In fact, I got so distracted that I didn't even end up making the girls' shamrock hair accessories until a few hours before the St Patrick's Day parade! With the rush to make the girls' hair accessories there was no time to write a post in time for St Patrick's Day. Maybe this will serve as crafty inspiration for someone for next year's St Patrick's day instead!

Ava wears her shamrock headband to the St Patrick's Day parade in San Francisco

A Thanksgiving Turkey... Costume!

I've mentioned before that Ava had this idea in her head that she must dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving. I thought this would be a fun idea so I got to work on making costumes for both Ava and Lola.

Lots of felt, coat hanger wire and hours later we had two little turkeys ready to celebrate Thanksgiving!

Here's a look at the costumes I made for the girls. They both happened to have brown onesie tracksuits in their wardrobe (as you do!) which made the perfect base for their costumes. With the addition of tails  (wired to stand up), turkey feet and beaks the girls were good to go. Unfortunately Lola wouldn't wear her costume for a photo so you'll just have to believe me when I say she looked adorable.

Turkey Ava flapping her wings

Felt Ball Wreath

Time for yet another (very belated) Christmas post...

This year I decided that we needed a Christmas wreath on our front door. Christmas wreaths aren't hugely popular in Australia but they seem to hang on every second door here in California. And even though it's already mid January there are still Christmas wreaths to be seen everywhere - including our front door!

In the lead up to Christmas 2010 I saw multi coloured Christmas wreaths made of felted wool balls doing the rounds on all the design blogs. I had intended to make one back then but never got around to it. Supplies for such a wreath were tricky to come by in Australia and were super expensive when they could be found. Now that we're living in a shopper's paradise the supplies were easy to come by and relatively cheap.

Making a Christmas wreath was one of the projects that I included on Ava & Lola's advent calendar of activities however the felt ball wreath was more than a little difficult for small children to work on. Instead I made most of the wreath myself and Ava stitched on a few of the felt balls at the end. She was really proud of herself for helping out on such a grown up project.

Here's Ava working on the wreath.

Ava working on the Christmas wreath