Tuesday, August 25, 2009

happiness is like a butterfly...

i've enjoyed watching my adventurous twins become nature lovers, particularly "roly poly collectors" and "stick hunters" when we visit the numerous beautiful parks in our area. the bigger the stick, the more likely the question "can i puulllleeeeese bring it home mommy?" so needless to say we have a stick collection in the front of our house. there are two sticks that have lingered around longer than many of the others. after seeing this mobile idea in several editions of the pottery barn kids catalogue, i finally stopped "just" admiring it and got to work on creating a mobile for izzy's nursery. using the two lingering sticks (and fibbing to the girls about where there "sword" sticks had gone - we can find more right?), i spray painted them lavender using the same can of spray paint left over from the lamp and frame. without even intending to be THIS frugal, but my printer is not working well right now, i found a butterfly template on the computer and traced it onto paper on the screen - how's that for saving paper? (again, not intentionally because that is really almost embarrassingly cheap! ) i cut out several butterflies from scrapbook paper and put maddie to work on the glitter which believe me, you never need to ask a little girl twice if she wants to play with glue and glitter! we decorated the butterflies, grabbed some fish line (which if you purchase this once, unless you really use it to go fishing, you are guaranteed to have this roll of fish line laying around for years to come - it's endless!) and tied random length of fish line to the sticks and punch-holed the butterflies and tied them on.
izzy now has a very simple and inexpensive mobile in her room which she loves to look at while i rock her in her rocking chair. i'll be honest, i thought i was just fulfilling my need to be crafty and tackle this simple project and that it would turn out to be more of an accessory for her room, but she truly watches it when it blows around in the breeze in her nursery. so the next time your little ones want to bring home those dirty sticks, don't think about the mess it will make of your once clean car (i'm guilty of that often!) but rather, bring them on home and BE CREATIVE!





12 comments:

  1. Very cute! What did you use to anchor the sticks to the top of the armoire? I'm sure Maddie loved helping!

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  2. i just positioned them in this planter - luckily they just stay - knock on wood! jack, this would be a cute idea for your nursery, even a bit fancier...i'll get to thinkin on it!

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  3. How do you come up with this stuff?! I see a craft day in our future...my girl would love to come help with glitter and glue. You know I'm craft-challenged. My poor kids! ;-)

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  4. so adorable!!! reminds me of the curly willow I have in Jake's nursery :) hopefully he will like to look at the things I have hanging from the branches too!

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  5. LOVE this! You are truly amazing Jen! Your girls are so lucky to have a mom that not only loves to do fun & creative things for them, but gets them involved too...so precious!

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  6. this is gorgeous!!! i want to make one! i would love to feature this on my blog next week. let me know if it would be ok to grab your photos with a link back to you :)
    shari spearmintbaby@gmail.com

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  7. OH.MY.GOODNESS! SO stinkin cute! I may have to steal this idea, but make birdies instead of butterflies. :) I LOVE this! Do you mind if I use a couple of these pics in a future post on my blog?

    Thanks for your sweet compliment on my blog and for becoming a follower! Stop back by soon!

    Smiles,
    Rachel

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  8. Beautiful! I'm wanting to attempt something like this for my daughter's room too! :)

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  9. this is so cute. great minds think alike :)

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