Displaying Our Wares

Every once and awhile, someone tells me that I am creative. I am here to confess, that all of my creative ideas come from someone else. I sometimes adapt but mostly I have few original thoughts. When I know that I am going to have grandchildren over, I love to peruse the latest issues of Family Fun magazine. It is a great bargain at around $10-$15 per year! (Thanks to my sister-in-law, D’Ann for my first subscription.) I can always find a few creative ideas for crafts or fun things to do. On page 88 of the February 2008 issue of Family Fun, is the project that we did today. It is one of the ideas from the authors of Kids Concoctions books, John and Danita Thomas, called Grass Head Guys. First you decorate yogurt containers like bodies of little people. Then we put 2 tablespoons of grass seed and a cup of potting soil in a ladies knee high nylon stocking. We carefully bounced the stocking in our hand until it formed a ball. Then we knotted the stocking as tightly as possible and cut off the stocking top leaving about a 4 inch tail—maybe not that long. We attached googly eyes on the head with a glue gun and used a permanent magic marker to draw a smile. We filled our yogurt containers with water. The stocking tail serves as a wick to water the grass seed. The directions say that you should check the water level everyday to make sure that the yogurt container is at least half full. We really hope that the grass grows so our little people will have hair. If so, we will take another picture. Even bald, they look too cute!

Morgan and Jessica and I did another Family Fun project on Sunday when we were together. We wove cloth baskets using 9 yards of 1 inch cotton piping cord and strips of cloth cut in ½ inch strips. The directions for this project can be found on page 28. The weaving took us quite awhile to complete. I cut all of the strips of cloth and it was hard to keep up with the two girls. When I did my basket, I pulled the cloth a little tighter and thus my basket turned out much firmer. The girls wanted to add a handle to their basket. I was surprised how quickly the girls caught on to the process. We think the baskets look cuter if you use all of one color first and then all of the second color and so forth rather than mixing the colors as you go. Do you think we could get rich on homemade chia pets, cloth woven dinner roll baskets, and local natural honey at a French Market booth? Hmmm. . .probably not.