She’s crafty… not.

I have always wanted to be a natural crafty kind of gal but it just ain’t happening. I came to terms with my non-crafty ways ages ago but every once in awhile I think maybe with the right amount of patience and a whole lot of heart I will overcome my awkwardness with a glue gun and Voila!  the girls (#’s 4 and 5) will start popping out homemade do-dads while spending some quality mother-daughter time.  Mostly I don’t try and leave the crafts to our very talented school teachers, as well,  another outlet for my crafty girls has been a subscription to Keri Zingle’s (a Mum from the ‘hood!) The Craft Caravan, a very nifty club of sorts where the child receives 2 craft projects monthly in the mail that are absolutely dummy-mummy proof for non-crafty Mums like myself- all the pieces are provided and ready to be assembled… the girls love it.

Anyhoo… I have had, in the last couple of weeks, while trying to keep the kids entertained on summer vacation,   2 tiny crafty victories with two projects. The first one is a great Play Dough recipe courtesy of Yoyo Mama- I have tried many different recipes in the past to limited success- they either go mouldy, dry up or just don’t have that right dough-like consistency.  This recipie by the way, is from Yoyo Mama’s website and credited to Sharon Selby who also is responsible for The Phonics Wizard a learn to read method that I have used with the 2 girls- to great success. See the recipe (and Yoyo Mama’s website )HERE

The second crafty endeavour that gave me hope was the home made finger paint I made. I have to say, the finger paint and play dough are of course things you can easily buy at any toy store but also 2 things that I find to be a huge rip off- they are expensive and I have found that especially with finger paint, you often only get one session out of it and it is gone. This recipe I found in The Busy Book by Trish Kuffner a great little book filled with very simple arts and crafts activities and ideas- not at all intimidating.

See above #5 and her very cute little buddy ready to dive into the finger paint… Cute!

On the running front I would say that tings are looking up- I had a very nice 5 k with the Mum’s in the ‘hood Friday and then another 5k on my own last night- both times I really did not feel like I had the energy to run and both times I felt SO much better after the run. Last night was a scheduled run with another Mum and when I knocked on her door she was dealing with major bedtime chaos and apologized profusely for bailing on me- but I gotta say I am so thankful she didn’t call to cancel because I was pretty pooped and probably would have used it as an excuse to not go out- but standing there in my running gear I pretty much had no choice but to go- a good thing.