Month: April 2011

iPod Felt Pouch

Inspired by Geninne’s folksy embroidered felt pouch for her iPod Touch, I decided to make a cover for our iPod using some of the felt from our stash.


Of course, my little helper had to sew one too. I made a blue one, while she opted for a pink one. (No huge shocker there!)


In the end, the use for her cover morphed. She decided that she needed a case for her calculator.

And by calculator I mean her (pretend) cell phone and camera. The buttons and screen actually works, so it’s almost like the real thing. At least it is to her.

Aprils Past

A trip down memory lane…

April 2008:

Tummy time at home (three months old!)

At the park with daddy

April 2009:

Packing up to move to the country

April 2010:

Children’s Museum in San Diego

Playing at the beach in San Diego

April 2011:

Coloring in her Clifford coloring book (thrift store score!)

Crazy flyaway hair

Playing her guitar as if it’s a cello with her violin bow

There’s never a dull moment in our house.

Art Envelopes For the Play Post Office

We decided that we needed some handmade, toddler art envelopes to pair with our play postage stamp stickers.

So our toddler drew beautiful art made specifically for this project, i.e. she drew with marker on construction paper. It’s brilliant, I tell you.

To make our envelopes, we first deconstructed an existing envelope (by fully unfolding it), then traced its outline on the toddler artwork.

We cut out the envelope,

then folded and adhered the new envelope together. (You could easily use double-sided tape or glue for a more seamless envelope; I had an impatient toddler working on this project with me, so we relied on plain tape. SHOCKER!)

We then wrote letters to several of our daughter’s friends to place in the envelopes.

After assembling and stuffing the envelopes, we placed one of our play postage stamp stickers on the front of the envelope.

Love these toddler letters, ready and waiting for Postmaster Leyba, age three, to pick up and deliver to her friends!

The Felt Box

Another post in our Arts and Crafts Organization project. To read all of the posts in this series, please click here.

I had a sneaking suspicion that we had a tremendous quantity of felt in the house.

We buy it secondhand (usually in unused condition complete with their original price stickers) from our local craft resale shop for $2/lb. Whenever we spy a great color, we snatch it up. It costs us pennies. Literally.

We’ve been storing these overflowing bags of felt in inconvenient places, such as down in the kitchen (why o why?!) and tucked away in a corner of my daughter’s bedroom.

I didn’t realize quite how much we actually had though until we gathered it up to one place, sorted it by color, and stored it away in this giant plastic storage bin.


Above, felt sheets on the left and scraps on the right.

Yes, we have a lot of felt. A tremendous amount.

Nevertheless, we’ve found we need a few more shades of orange (for sewing carrots!) and light green (to sew more mixed salad greens!). We better keep a lookout for those shades at the craft store.

Because heaven forbid we don’t have the exact right shade of felt and have to drive into town. (Ah, life with a three year old. Everything becomes terribly dramatic.)

Meanwhile, time to get crafting!

The Nest in our Wind Chimes

A few weeks ago we noticed a bird dart off our wind chimes every time we opened our front door.

We began to suspect that she was trying to build a nest on them. Hence, the odd twig sticking out:

Eggs in the nest in our wind chimes

Last week we decided to take a peak inside the sugar bowl.

Boy, were we wrong!

Eggs in the nest in our wind chimes

The bird was so small that she built a nest in our wind chimes. A fluffy, thickly woven, yet petite nest inside the sugar bowl of our re-purposed wind chimes (a lovely wedding present from my friend Amanda that has traveled with us from Colorado to each of our houses in California).

Bird eggs in the nest in our wind chimes

We found five beautiful, speckled, tiny eggs.

Such a perfect Earth Day surprise.

Bird eggs in the nest in our wind chimes

I can’t wait to hear little birds chirping every time I go through our front door. Ah, spring, we love you.