Simply Mother

Two-year-old Jade was asking to borrow Sarah’s wallet and Sarah didn’t want her to.

But during Jade’s nap, Sarah and I decided to make her a wallet of her own for Christmas. When Jade opened it and saw what it was, she exclaimed, “A wallet! I’ve always wanted a wallet!” and ran over to give her sister a big hug.

She was so excited! But where does she come up with this stuff? She’s always wanted one? Like, since last week? But I don’t think she’s ever even heard that phrase used–she blows me away with the cute stuff she comes up with.

She does love it, and uses it often. You can see in the above picture there’s a circular outline in it–she was using it to store a little maze stocking stuffer gift (thanks mom!) (who’s gift package provided pretty much our entire stocking stuffer collection). Here’s Sarah showing her how the buttons work.

Sarah showing Jade how to unbutton her new wallet

Five-year-old Sarah did most of the work on the wallet. She cut on the lines I drew, used my sewing machine to stitch the sides, thought up the idea for adding a handle and sewed that on, and hand-sewed the buttons by herself.

After we completed this, I helped Jade make one for Sarah. (Can’t find it at the moment to photograph.) Obviously I did a lot more of the work on this, but Jade was no less thrilled to give it to Sarah on Christmas morning. She handed her the package, hardly able to contain her excitement as she did a little dance and spilled out, “Here, Sarah, it’s a new circle purse for you!” Sarah was also very appreciative of it, wrapping her arms around her sister with a “Thank you so much” and a big kiss on the cheek.

They were both just tickled with the idea of making presents for each other, and of receiving presents made by each other. And they really treasure their little gifts.

I even got in on the crafting action. I’ll save the dolls for a separate post (remember how I hinted that maybe some of the handmade gifts were “not-so-cute”? Yeah. You’ll see.) But these little pillows for my mom and mother-in-law turned out pretty well. I didn’t get to photograph the red and gold ones before we gave them to mother-in-law, but these are the ones we made for my mom. (Fabric chosen to match their decor. Or in my mom’s case, she just really loves blue and white gingham. I’m not sure of your current living room, but I hope there’s still enough blue gingham around your house that these will fit in.)

Sarah helped out quite a bit, tracing and cutting out her own hand, and helping me measure and cut the rectangles and squares. I had NO idea what I was doing, but by the time I finished the second batch, I think I’d learned quite a bit about quilting–probably the hard, round-about way, like I learn everything else. When am I going to learn to just BUY A PATTERN? Or at least find something with simple instructions to follow. I did all sorts of crazy things on these. But, they actually don’t look too bad (as long as you don’t look too close at the applique around the fingers. I wonder if there’s a better way to do this, or if I’m just always in too much of a rush to make something like this look very good.)

Sarah made her dad a cute little guy out of some scrap fleece. It’s hard to see in the photo, but there is a little face embroidered on there. It took her awhile to handsew it together, and she’s really proud of it, and was so happy to give it to Matt.

And then, because my husband is full of surprises and amazing abilities, check out what he helped the girls make for me:

Impressive, no?

Filed in: crafty • cuteness • family | December 30, 2008