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!