I have found a benefit to spending countless hours on Pinterest, it inspires you to get your creative on! I found this felt on sale at Michael’s and thought it would help me get going on my first craft tutorial!

This post was completely inspired by a post from Stacie @ http://befickle.blogspot.com 

She created these flowers for a Mother’s Day brooch. Her tutorial is awesome and you should really check out her blog, so many great crafty ideas.

Over the next few weeks I am challenging myself to try a bunch of flower tutorials and will document my efforts/disasters here! Stay tuned…

OK, let’s get started. You will need:

• one piece of felt
• a sharp pair of scissors
• a black pen to trace the circles on the felt
• a cup, empty container or card cut into about a 4.5 cm circle (or 3 inches)
• a glue gun and glue sticks
• a pretty button to finish it off! (Sorry the button didn’t make it into the picture, I am still learning!)

I used an empty apple sauce container and traced 6 circles onto the felt for the petals.

I flipped over the container and traced around the bottom to get the base for my felt flower. The circle is just slightly smaller than the petals, but don’t sweat it, the base could just be the same size as the petals.

Time to get cutting…

This is what I ended up with…

The next step is to fold the circle in half…

Then fold one corner of your petal over by about a third.

And then fold the other side of your petal over to make an S shape. Use your glue gun at the tip of the petal and put a few glue dots in the folds to hold the petal together.

Next glue each petal to the base making sure to place them right next to each other.

After you glue all of the petals to the base fluff up the petals a bit to get something that looks like this:

Now you can pick out a pretty button to glue in the middle and you are done! Easy peasy right? And cute too.

You could follow Stacie’s tutorial and turn this into a brooch, or glue on a hair clip or follow me and make a present topper.

Isn’t this so much better than a ribbon? 10 minutes, about .50 cents and you there you go. Let me know what you think…happy crafting!

OK, I have to come clean and really admit to the amount of time I spent on Pinterest this summer. Ummm, it was a lot. Hours, maybe days…who knows? I am head-over-heels in love.

According to the Pinterest about page:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

It is just like an inspiration board that so many self-help books and therapists urge people to create. Except that now you don’t have to hunt through magazines for images to tear out and glue on a piece of bristol board.

When you sign up for an account  @ http://pinterest.com  you install a widget on your browser’s tool board that lets you ‘pin’ all of the interesting things that you find when out surfing. Instead of bookmarking a site or subscribing to a blog you pin a visual picture of what you are interested in.

I use it as a catalogue of inspiration. It was a great resource this summer for craft ideas and saved my girls and I from many boring afternoons. I plan on posting a few craft tutorials on some of our more successful attempts.

Sign up and start creating your own pinboards on whatever is important to you. Be careful though, it is totally addicting.

The book gives an account of how Mighton started his charitable tutoring program called JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies). I had heard about the JUMP math program from other parents and read a few articles in the media. I was finally inspired to read the book after my daughter was teased at school for her low mark on a math test.

When I was growing up I believed that I was the type of student who just ‘didn’t get’ math. I moved around a lot and missed many key mathematical concepts and struggled to catch up at each new school. I failed grade 8 math and went to summer school and almost failed that too. My father’s idea of helping me overcome my challenge was to have me write 100 lines a day of, ‘I love math’, over and over again. Lets just say it didn’t help me get through grade 9 math.

The concept that Mighton stresses the most in this book is the myth that some students have the ability to do math and some just don’t. He shows that anyone can learn math and anyone can teach it. Just reading that sentence is a struggle for someone like me. His approach to teaching math is to isolate and describe each step in a math problem so that no knowledge is assumed and that any student can understand how to complete it successfully. Several studies have shown definitive evidence that this program works.

Mighton is an interesting guy. In his late 20′s he was an award-winning playwright who earned extra money as a math tutor. As he worked with students and learned how to break down each problem to its element he reignited his own interest in mathematics and went back to school in his late 20′s to earn a PhD in mathematics. His kitchen table was the birthplace of his charitable organization that has helped thousands of children learn that they do have the ability to understand and excel at math.

My daughter and I are working our way through the first workbook. Unlike other workbooks we have used she actually enjoys it. Her success motivates and helps  build confidence in her ability. I won’t let her buy in to our society’s belief that some people ‘get math’ and some people don’t. We can all understand it.

How about you? Did you struggle with math? Do your kids? I would love to hear about your experiences with math or the JUMP program.

I just returned from a friend’s cottage and it gave me the time and space to think about energy. We spent a lot of time together as a family lounging on the dock, splashing in the water and enjoying the peace and quiet. It was relaxing and so easy to get lulled into vacation mode. I think I might be stuck in that mode. Just as it is on vacation, you can get a few things done but nothing is really pressing or urgent. If it doesn’t get done, no worries, there is always tomorrow.

We drove home yesterday and my husband and I molted our lazy skin and worked together to get the packing chaos organized quickly so we would be ready for the week ahead. It made me realize that energy comes from purpose. Steve Chandler explains it so succinctly in his book, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself. He points out the difference between people who set and achieve goals all day, and people who just do whatever comes up, is knowing your purpose and being motivated by it.

I think we all know that. In my life I get distracted by all the other bits and bobs and lose my spark in the frenzy of the every day. Without the outside pressure or deadlines its easy to push your goals to the side when life gets busy or something comes up.

It’s time to fill my prescription for stress and focus on the spark.

It’s hard not to feel guilty as I pass them over to my kids.  Really they are just processed, sugary snacks that could be healthier.  I buy President’s Choice Rich and Chewy Granola Bars with chocolate chips. A 28 gram serving has 110 calories and 9 grams of sugar. I became determined to find a better option.

I started with Grab ‘n Go Crispy Granola Bars from the Sneaky Chef  http://www.thesneakychef.com/free_recipe_granola_bar.php.

On my first try the bars totally fell apart, they tasted oily and my kids wouldn’t touch them.  I went online to see other’s reviews of the recipe and found a fix from the Sneaky Chef.  I tried it and once again was very disappointed with the result.

Then finally, a recipe that works, tastes great and is packed with nutrition. The following is a modified version from Ehow member, gottalovelattes.

• 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 2 cups crispy rice cereal
• 1 cup non-fat dry mild powder
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened, shredded coconut
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 4 egg whites, lightly beaten
• 1/3 cup honey
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Spray the bottom and sides of a 13″ x 9″ pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well.  In a separate bowl, using a whisk, mix egg whites, honey, apple sauce and brown sugar until incorporated.  Add the oil and vanilla and mix well.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and use your hands to mix well.  Add the chocolate chips and mix to combine.

Fold the mixture into the baking pan and pack it down firmly.  Place the pan into the oven and bake 18 – 24 minutes until golden brown.

While the pan is still warm, cut into small bars or squares.  The granola bars can be stored in a container for up to a week or frozen in ziploc bags to enjoy later.

So yummy!

To view the original recipe: www.ehow.com/how_4681113_granola-bars-kids-will-love.html

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”  Marcus Tullius Cicero

Books are like furniture in my home.  Stacks on bookshelves and spilling over the coffee table.  Bags of library books by the door ready to return.  They are literally the heart of my home.  I feel lost if I am not in the middle of a story.  I always wonder what people do if they don’t read?

The ultimate escape, a book leads you on a journey, takes you places you never would have ventured and could not have imagined.  They teach, make you laugh till you cry or cry till you laugh.  Reading about someone is the best way to gain empathy, to experience a life that is not yours.

This weekend I finished two books from two totally different worlds.  The first, “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shafer and Annie Barrows is a book of letters documenting the lives of the society members in post-war Guernsey.

A quirky tale of the experiences of residents of the English Channel Island of Guernsey which was occupied by German forces during World War II.  The images of heroism and suffering the writers paint leave an imprint on the reader.  It’s a short book that will shadow me for years to come.

The second book, “Orange is the New Black” by Piper Kerman is a memoir of her experience in a women’s prison.

I can’t say I loved this one.  The author is a privileged young college graduate who gets caught up in a drug smuggling operation.  The conviction and jail time comes ten years after her dalliance taking her by surprise in her new ‘grown up’ life.  In places the book felt empty and lacking any real background and she misses a great opportunity to shine a light on the prison system.  She touches on it but skims by before we get a sense of it.  Interesting though, I like picking up books that are totally outside my experience.

Now…the great dilemma, what do I pick up next?  Any ideas?  I would love to hear from fellow book lovers.

Strangers have stopped by, actually read what I have written and made comments.  Positive comments, nice things from (I assume) nice people.  I am loving this blog world.

I am a keener whenever I want to learn something new and I always turn to my trusty library for a big stack of books.  So far, one of the most helpful has been:

http://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Own-Blog-Projects/dp/0672330652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297786898&sr=1-1

Tris Hussey is a Canadian blogger and holds the hands of newbies like me and leads us through the blogosphere.

Other blogs that I have discovered have been my biggest inspiration.  There are so many amazing ones out there.  A few favourites are:

Her Bad Mother http://herbadmother.com/ A fellow Toronto mother of two, and a celebrated and prolific blogger.  Her writing style is refreshing and well done.  The subjects she tackles never fail to move me and illicit some kind of response.  No wonder she has become so well known.

A visual blog I just can’t get enough of is 3191.  http://3191.visualblogging.com/ Two friends who live 3191 miles apart, one on the east coast of the US and one on the west coast.  They post thoughts and images about their daily life.  The photos are truly inspiring and its such a calm and happy place to browse through.  It transports you to a cozy, afternoon at a friend’s house.

So… thank you to this welcoming world and thank you to all the people who have encouraged me on this path.  I like it here…

The girls and I spent yesterday afternoon up to our elbows in glitter, tissue paper, glue, scissors, tape, and paper scraps of every shape and size.  With Valentine’s Day fast approaching we were hard at work on cards.  I love making crafts but I have learned that it takes a  special kind of crafter with a zen-like patience to make them with children. I am a craft control freak and it’s hard to admit.

 I love looking through craft books and finding new ideas to try.  My problem is that I want the finished product to look like the picture in the book.  In my adult ‘monkey’ mind I am doing this project to get to the final result.  My kids could care less what the finished product looks like and just love to get into the supplies and get cutting, gluing and creating.  Logically, I know this is the right way to go, but against my best intentions my hands sneak over to “help”.  And before I know it I have taken over.

I have literally lost it during painting projects, raised my voice (translation – yelled) that they just weren’t doing it right.  After one of these fiasco’s I cleaned up the mess, hugged the kids and gave myself a time-out to figure out what the hell was going on.

If I knew that the whole point of doing a craft was to nurture and allow a child’s creativity to grow and flourish then why was I snuffing it out?  When I was growing up money was tight and craft supplies were few and far between.  I have very few memories of making cards or art projects at home.  Was this more about my need to have an art outlet?  I answered with a resounding yes.

At the time my girls were enrolled in art classes and loved going.  I was such a proud mommy at the “art” that they brought home.  Here are a few examples:

I spent hours trying to figure out how they made it and chatted longer and longer with the teacher.  She suggested I try one of their adult classes and I promptly signed up for the next one.  The two hours I spent in that class every week were heaven.  I had an outlet, I could be creative, I was in charge of what it looked like.  And the best part?  Someone else cleaned up my mess at the end.

Now when we sit down to do a craft I make sure I do one along with them.  Each of us can create. And each one will look different in the end. That is what art is all about isn’t it?  Expressing what is unique about yourself and letting go.

Take a look at this link for some fun craft ideas:  http://holidays.kaboose.com/valentines-day/

This is a great book if you can find it.  It’s by Usborne Books and has some fantastic ideas to get your creativity going.

I would love to hear about your art adventures with kids and without, please leave a comment!

So there I was, head pounding, stomach growling with hunger and rushing into the hospital to get my blood tests done.  I waited in the long shuffling line to get registered, I rubbed countless pumps of hand sanitizer on my dry and winter chapped hands.  I gingerly sat down in the waiting room and tried not to touch any surfaces as I took my number and focussed on the television blaring away in the corner. 

We have all been there.  Fasting for blood tests, tapping our toes as the wait stretches on and our plans for the day start getting squeezed.  And soon you get fidgety and the constant loop on the news channel gets old and you raise your eyes to the other souls you are rubbing shoulders with. 

A young pregnant woman was waiting with her partner.  She was trying to read a book while he fidgeted and paced the floor.  Out to the bathroom and back.  Over to the coffee shop and back.  They whispered away and she tried to read her book and ignore him.

An old, agitated woman came in and snatched a number off the rack and started sighing as loudly as possible.  Everyone averted their eyes and hoped she didn’t choose the seat next to them.  She moved out into the hall with her paper bag and paced.

The nurse came in and called a handful of us into the lab room and we went.  Crowded into the room with wet boots, wool coats and mittens on the floor.  We passed over our numbers and tried to stay out of the nurses way as they flitted and flew through the patients.  We gave them a wide berth and got our arms ready for the jabs.  People came and went depositing their bodily fluids in small jars into plastic bins.  Gray pallor and rosy cheeks.  Young and old, tired and strong, patient and crazy, there we are, together.

A young  nurse was trying to get some order to the overflowing room.  “With the snowstorm yesterday everyone decided to come in today.  We are so behind,” she said.  “Number 14.”  I am up.

And its over in the blink of an eye for me.  Not for everyone else.  Some will be wheeled back to their rooms in the hospital.  Some will go and meet their doctors for whatever news is coming.  Some will struggle through the snow with their walkers and canes back home.  I rush along the salted sidewalk, confident in my strength as I take the stairs up to my car.  The sun is making the snow sparkle, a quick glimmer of blue sky and I am grateful.

I checked it out of the library last week with vague hopes of flipping through it and reading a few poems interspersed with the usual bedtime book favourites.  We were caught right from the start with, “Invitation”. 

If you are a dreamer, come in,

If you are a dreamer,

A wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er,

A magic bean buyer…

He weaves and spins his tales with a child-like sense of magic and a unique awareness of humanity that touches readers of any age.  Silverstein has that unique ability to let kids be kids and ask the questions they are dying to ask. 

This classic has had its share of controversy and was banned from many libraries for ‘objectionable morals and encouraging children to disrespect authority’.  Come on people, lighten up.

Take a journey through the pages, laugh, groan, and relish in his sense of humour and sense of life.