Other Paper Crafts We Made Together

We colored for a little while to relax from making the bed and the bedside lamp. It felt good to me to just let color flow onto the paper. Chloe must have felt the same way as I did because her coloring was so vivid.

 

 She tell me that this is a painters palet' after he has finished painting his picture the colors are starting to run together. 

I attempted to color a Spring flower arrangement.

She informed me that this is what your car looks like while you are going thru a drive in car wash. When the big brushes come and cover the car and later the soap is sprayed on the car it runs down the windows in pink, yellow, green and blue colors and then the brushes foam brushes cover the windows of mommies blue car, and then it gets rinsed off and blown dry and when we drive out it looks like we have a new car.

Some smiling faces from the girls, that would be her dolls.

An appreciation for having another great time spent together. She is such an appreciative child, it makes you want to add memories for her that will last a lifetime.

A crown for the princess of the day, yes she has plastic crowns and metal crowns, but sometimes she loves to make and color a paper crown.

Cut out bunnies for Easter.

A chair for the girls to sit in as they sit in the living room.

Cut out dolls, dressed in colorful outfits.

A string of paper dolls waiting to be colored.

A folding room divider painted with a Winter scene of Snowman.

A water bottle cover to hide it on the table while you are playing.

A fun filled day of crafting together with my grand daughter making memories for future days and having fun in the process. Who ever said that I'm to old to play with my grand children never had the fun that we have together.

Making A Light For The Bedside

I know my abilities and I knew that there wasn't any way that we could make a bedside table out of paper with out having a small box so we came up with the idea of a floor lamp with a design to match her new doll bed.

We took a sheet of 8 X 11 paper and made four folds two inches wide. With it folded we cut triangles out of the folds with scissors, to have cut outs in the fixture so light could come through. One this was finished we unfolded it and made a square out of it and taped the sides so it would stand on the table. Then Chloe colored it to match her new bed made earlier in the morning. She used this for a while while, I was working on another project for her, when I got the idea of coloring a piece of 8 X 11 sheet of paper with a bright yellow highlighter and adding some purple and pink marks over the yellow. I then rolled the paper into a cylinder and dropped it down into the square fixture and it looked just like a light.

Crafting A Doll Bed

Whenever Cloe comes for a visit we usually find time to do some kind of crafting. As we were going to play Barbies this morning the subject was raised that the dolls didn't have a bed big enough or long enough to lie in. So the decision was made to try and make a bed with what we had available to us on such a short notice.

Having just 8 X 11 paper as our only material on such a short notice I racked my brain to come up with the construction of a bed. Well a bed has four post and two rails to give it strength, so I rolled a sheet of paper in six separate cylinders, four for the post and two for the side rails. Once in figured how to tape them together, I assembled the bed. The bed still needed strength so I made two paper fans and used one for the headboard and the other for the foot board and a Styrofoam plate and covered the back of the headboard with a sheet of paper. This made it much more secured and the bed looked more like a bed. I also attached a sheet of paper over the side rails for the bottom of the bed. I was informed by Chloe that we needed to color the headboard so that the girls would want to sleep in the bed. I colored the headboard with pink and purple to make it more attractive.

We tried out the bed with a doll, but the weight of the doll made the bed sag, so I took off the sheet of paper attached to the rails and covered the rails with tape slats. One strip of tape over the rails and one under the rails and pressed them together and then replaced the sheet of paper over the tape. Now the bed was sturdy, pretty and ready for use.

I was almost excited as Chloe to think that with two heads together we could come up with a bed for her dolls. Chloe decided that it would be complete after she cut pillows from some dinner napkins and colored a sheet of paper for a bed spread.

We used tape to cover the posts on the bed to make it more finished looking. I tried to get her to let me color the bed brown, but was overruled by a six year old that girls wanted a white bed.

Now that  we have a completed bed she informed me that she needs another one.

Spring Is Just Around The Corner

We have had an extra cold Winter this year in the "Deep South." It has been below zero with the wind chill factor and several days in the single did gets. Some of our evergreen plants look like they won't recover in the Spring because the leaves have turned brown for the extreme cold.

Then in late February we got a teaser for a few days, as it warmed up into the sixties just to go back down into the high twenties.

March finally came and yes we have had cold weather in March but that only happens about every ten years or so, so we weren't wanting or expecting anymore harsh weather. We must have missed the weather report and on a Sunday morning I called to see what the temperature was and it was 61 degrees, so I dressed for Sunday Service accordingly. After our Sunday meeting when everyone left I noticed that it was a lot colder than 61 degrees. When I called Time and Temperature, it had already dropped thirty degrees and is said that we would have sleet and snow for the night.

When we woke up the next day, they had gotten it right and it was very cold and icy. This lasted for several days and finally it warmed up on Saturday to 71 degrees. Sunday was about the same and we told Chloe we would go for a bike ride.

So we took Chloe behind the house and across the lake to a parking lot where she could ride to her hearts content. She selected a circle and started her ride.

 

And as she rode her bike she widened her circle.

 It was starting to get a little windy and she was glad that Grandmother had made her wear a sweater just in case she got cold, but this didn't stop her riding.

 

She has gotten pretty good at riding and I think I can raise up her training wheels so she will learn to ride it before long without them.

The sun was getting in her face and she was glad to have brought her sunglasses as well.

She finally stopped just enough for a short break before heading out again.

She informed me that when you are going up a hill you have to stand up and pedal to get more power to get up the hill. So after showing me this she rode the entire circle standing up to show me she could do it.

When we got home from the bike ride she decided that she wanted to ride in her little red car before going into the house. She rode out one time and pulled back into the garage.

Tears were streaming down her pretty little face as she said, "Poppy, my little red car is too small, I can't ride it like I used to why is this." I just let her know that over the Winter that she had grown taller and that, yes it was getting to small for her. She let me know that we couldn't get rid of it, when Grandmother spoke up and said we will get you another little car. The last thing she wanted to know was if it would be pink.

 

The Witch Is In The Dining Room

An incident happened the other evening that brought back memories of a story that I had told Chloe of when she was about four.

Long ago when I was a young boy, my brother and I shared a bedroom. Our bedroom was between the kitchen and the hall leading to the rest of the house. Sometimes people would use our bedroom as a shortcut to get to the kitchen instead of going around thru the Living Room and Dining Room.

Sometime during the early morning hours I had awakened and when I looked across the room I saw a tall man with  an overcoat on. He was too tall to be my dad or my brother, so I thought someone had come in uninvited. I took the covers and pulled them up over my head, but to my surprise later when I looked across the room he was still there. After doing this several time during the night, I decided to quietly slide off of the bed with my pillow and to sleep under the bed so that he wouldn't get me. I slept here until morning, and as I heard my parents moving around I knew that it would be safe to get up.

Much to my surprise when I looked across the room where I had seen the man standing, was the hat and the overcoat but no man. Instead there was the hall tree (hat stand) with the hat on the top and my dad's overcoat on the peg just below the hat. My imagination had let my mind complete the picture I had formed in my mind when I had looked across the room.

I was so mad at myself when I found this out, because I had slept on the hard floor for several hours because of my fear.

So what made me think of this was, Chloe had left her winter coat here over the weekend and to make sure that she got it when she came on Tuesday, I hung it over the post on the Dining Room chair. I also put my coat on the chair next to her coat and put my hat over the top of my coat. When she came that morning I told her mother that I forgot to put her coat with the rest of her things and that I had put it here to remind me when she went home she could take her coat.

We did many thing together that day, played Barbies, played games on the computer and she wanted me to tell her some of the things that I had done growing up. This kept us busy into the late afternoon, when we decided to go outside so that she could ride her bike. I told her to get her shoes so she could put them on and she left the room to get them.

All of a sudden I heard her scream and before I could check it out here she was running back into the kitchen and about knocked me over in the process. I asked her what was wrong and why did she scream. Then she told me sh had seen a short Witch in the Dining Room and I needed to go with her to get her shoes.
I asked her, "Chloe are you sure that you saw a Witch or do you just wanting to get me to go and get your shoes." "No," she explained, "Come with me and I will show you what I saw."

As I went into the Dining Room, I didn't see any Witch, just the coats on the backs of the chairs. Then she started laughing and said, "Poppy these coats are just like the coat and hat that scared you when you were about my age." All I could do was just smile and give her a hug for remembering that story and let her know that I was sorry that the coats had given her a scare.

Making And Baking Banana Bread

It seems we can't eat bananas fast enough at our house and usually before they will go bad we peel them and put them in plastic bags in the freezer to make smoothies with later on. It has been such a cold winter this year that we haven't wanted anything cold but always welcome a good hot cup of tea.

So we had to do something with our bananas. Debby decided to make some banana bread, with nuts and chocolate chips.

As you can see, we couldn't wait until it got cooled down, we wanted to have a piece with our tea while it was still warm.