Independence crafting

Tsia is done with preschool for the summer (Does school finish this late everywhere? Growing up, we were always terrorizing the neighborhood by Memorial Day, as I recall), so I'm experiencing life as a full-time stay-at-home mom and simultaneous corporate mogul (yeah, right) this week. The stay-at-home part has given me an excuse to do normal things like grocery shopping, going to the playground, playing games, and doing little crafts: the sorts of activities I haven't had much time for during the past year while launching a small company. And I'm loving it, never mind the stress levels as we're preparing to go to press with the fall line. That stuff waits until after bedtime for a week or two.

Today we made pinwheels. Remember these? We made loads of them as kids. You could, of course, use fancy scrapbooking papers and the like, but we went a bit more organic here, decorating our own papers with markers and crayons.

Tsia likes to do her own cutting, of course (she's three!), and she's quite good at it. So I drew the lines and she cut many of them. Independence, indeed.

We used map pins because they're shorter than regular sewing pins so the points don't stick out the other end of the pencil eraser. But I have to say that our pinwheels don't spin very well. We tried gluing the corners to the center to see if that might help, but no matter how much we blew they didn't make much movement. Maybe we should have used a heavier cardstock?

No matter. The pencils themselves are much more fun to draw with when they have a decoration on top. And now I know how to use our extra chopsticks, too! They would make terrific "magic wands" for the pinwheels, and I wouldn't lose all my trusty old Mirado Black Warrior pencils to the craft bin either.

I think I know how we're spending our Independence Day weekend, now that Miss Independence has caught the pinwheel bug. I'll report back if we make any breakthroughs on the spinning front.