The Bobbin Winding Continues

We’ve been hard at work organizing our arts and craft supplies. Today I am focusing on our ongoing attempt at bringing order to our giant stash of embroidery floss.

We have been slowly and steadily winding our way through the enormous quantity of embroidery floss that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. (Have I mentioned how much I love that my in-laws own an arts supplies store and gallery?!)

Lucky for me, our three-year old daughter loves to help me wind bobbins.

I believe bobbin winding is a great activity to build hand strength. I’ve read about how cutting with scissors helps build hand strength in children, an essential first step towards writing. I believe that bobbin winding also helps with this as well. Both the winding of the handle and the holding of the string helps develop hand dexterity and strength.

We also added a color lesson to today’s bobbin winding activity. (I love how every day activities can be transformed into learning experiences!) We sorted the strands into piles of different colors:

We also giggled when we mixed them up, purposefully placing (throwing!) a pink floss in the blue pile, for example, which sent my daughter into a fit of giggles:

The kid loves adding chaos to my attempt at finding order.

We so enjoy these mama-daughter activities. We’ve found sorting floss and winding bobbins to be a calming, quiet activity to do together.

We only have a couple hundred bobbins to go. Piece of cake! I think it may take us all year.

Our Go-To Dressing

We recently stopped buying salad dressing and started making our own from scratch. We found vinaigrette making to be easy, containing fewer additives, costing less to make, and tasting so much better.

Here’s our go-to salad dressing that’s our current favorite.

This maple-mustard vinaigrette uses simple ingredients (pantry staples!), takes 5 minutes to make, and lasts for the week.

Maple-Mustard Vinaigrette

Yield: Makes 3/4 cup

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 small shallot, minced (we use 2 small garlic cloves instead)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Whisk together all ingredients in a medium bowl or a small bell jar; set aside.

We’ll never go back to store bought dressings after this.

Make Your Own Stickers

We picked up a Xyron Create a Sticker Machine at our local craft resale shop, along with a refill cartridge for just a couple bucks. Thrift store score!

The sticker maker machine is actually incredibly affordable (i.e. under $6!), so if this project appeals to you at all, I recommend picking one up! We’ve been using ours every day since we bought it.

Here’s how we made our own stickers:

We used plain construction paper, colored pencils and our Winnie the Pooh stamps, also scored from a thrift store. These stamps may look old and well-loved, but I’m thrilled we found them as I have been unable to find similar ones anywhere.

We stamped different Hundred Acre Wood characters onto plain paper, then filled in (over!) the outlines with colored pencils.

After cutting out the stamp shapes, we fed them through the sticker maker, peeled off the front and back of the tape, and voilà! We have a personalized Piglet sticker! Our little girl was thrilled.

We’ve also made butterfly clip art and colored shape stickers cut from construction paper.


The possibilities with this sticker maker are endless!

We used these beautiful handmade stickers on some of the thank you notes from our birthday festivities. A handmade-touch to the cards and a super fun project!

Arts and Craft Supplies Organization – Paper Storage Inspiration

We’ve been working on organizing our arts and craft supplies. Today I am focusing on different ways to store paper.

I adore the simplicity and functionality of this writing center, from one of my favorite educational sites Playful Learning:

Everything stored is easy to see and readily accessible!

Ali Edwards also has fantastic paper storage ideas in her old studio:

I love the three different types of paper storage shown in the above photograph, but I am not sure that any of them would work for us. I especially like the open paper storage, but I wonder if the paper might get dusty being uncovered in our house.

I also like the idea of using clear magazine files to organize paper:

I like how this solution takes up little space and with the clear files it’s easy to see the different papers. My concerns with this solution are that we’d have to keep the files full or the paper might warp, and that the paper may get dusty.

(Clearly, the theme of this post is that I need to dust more frequently.)

A dust-free solution might involve this IKEA drawer unit shown in Victoria’s beautiful (!) home office all the way on the right:

Unfortunately those drawers would take up space that I’m just not sure we have. Sigh.

What paper storage method are we going to use? I have absolutely no idea! I need to get to the stores and see what inspires me.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be reusing the plastic, semi-transparent drawers we already own.

Stay tuned…

Picture Frame Decoupage Project

We spotted these inexpensive picture frames on clearance and felt they just screamed “PROJECT!” I wasn’t sure if we would spray paint them a fun color (turquoise! lime green! hot pink!) or do an arts and craft project. The project won out and what fun we had!

First my daughter cut up small pieces of pink, red, and purple tissue paper.

While she did this, I removed the glass from the frame.

Then we glued the tissue paper pieces onto the frame using elmer’s glue. We then brushed glue over the paper to seal the paper on. (The decoupage part of the project!)

After the glue dried, we applied a coat of mod podge to really seal the paper on to the frame and add a glossy sheen.


What an easy, quick project with a lovely handmade feel! Not to mention a perfect Valentine’s Day gift for a certain daddy who needs a more recent photo of his loves for the office.

Adorable!