Remember when hankies were made of fabric — for every day use, not just “for show” or for special occasions like weddings? When I discovered the handkerchief craft tutorials at Bumblebee Linens, it was an instant trip down Memory Lane…

As a small child, I learned to iron (a skill I seldom practice these days!) on Dad’s big cotton handkerchiefs. More interesting, however, were the hankie dolls and animals that my mother showed me how to make when I was confined to bed with chicken pox (or possibly mumps, one of those childhood illnesses, anyway) for what seemed like weeks…

The handkerchief-craft tutorials at Bumblebee Linens include a mouse, an angel and the cutest little Easter bunny you could ever imagine making from a rolled-up and folded piece of embroidered linen.

I distinctly remember making a handkerchief mouse from one of my father’s big plaid hankies, and feeling slightly outraged that he didn’t have any that were more appropriately mouse-coloured. There was a doll, too — just big enough to fit in the palm of my young hand — but I’ve long since forgotten how to make it, and haven’t yet found the instructions anywhere…

At the moment, though, hankering for spring, I’m all about this handkerchief bunny –

All you need is a hanky (or a hanky-sized piece of lightweight fabric), a length of ribbon, a handful of cotton balls, and a needle and thread — but don’t worry about the needle and thread, if sewing’s not your thing or you want to create an Easter Bunny as a project with your kids, because that’s just to fasten on the little cotton-ball tail. (The instructions say to pin the tail on the rabbit, actually, but you might as well take a couple of quick in-and-out stitches with thread and not worry about having a stray pin falling out on the carpet — not that this is something that would ever have happened to us!)

Full instructions for making a handkerchief bunny — with step-by-step photographs — are at Bumblebeelinens.com Hankie Bunny tutorial.

Enjoy!

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I saw a promo for this SpongeBob SquarePants camera on a CNet video round-up of new tech toys, and the guy had it hanging around his neck on a cord.

Hey, I thought, who couldn’t use a camera on a cord (less fumbling for a camera in a pocket, for those spur-of-the-moment candid shots)?

But I’ve looked and looked and looked, and I don’t see a cord mentioned anywhere in the specs or ads.
Disappointment!

More second thoughts — a bright yellow camera in the form of a cartoon character might be a bit noticeable to pull off the truly subtle snapping of blackmail-worthy pics.

And there’s nothing subtle at all about the shutter sound-effects that come with — you get to pick your choice to suit the mood: Marimba, Ukulele, Foghorn blast, or Seagulls squawking their heads off.

On the plus side, there’s the fun of slipping off SpongeBob’s pants when you want to reveal the USB thingie, to plug in and download your photographs to computer.

It takes photos up to 640 x 480, which is plenty good enough for the aforementioned candid snaps you might want to embarrass folks with on Facebook or your blog. (”You’ll do my weekend shift for me, George, won’t you? Oh, lookee-lookee who ol’ SpongeBob saw together at the club last night!”) Not that we would. Ever.

But, c’mon, it’s SpongeBob.

And the camera’s cheap enough for butterfingers like me — which means the price is not out of line for kids, if you yourself are more into the suave DSLR sort of thing. Running $26 at Amazon, with some serious discounts — even some that are under $10 — from third-party vendors…

Sadly, however, Memorex is only shipping its SpongeBob SquarePants to customers in the US at the moment.

And no, Hello Kitty is not a fair substitute!

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Do you remember those folded paper fortune-tellers from back in the old school yard? This romantic version of the origami toy is at Colloco Homeware & Gifts (UK). It’s both a toy and an art object — and maybe an imaginative 3-d greeting card for Valentine’s Day?

There was always one kid in the crowd who knew how to fold one. At our school, it was Judy (who grew up to make her living from an interesting balance of crafts and computers). She wouldn’t tell anyone else how to do it, and drove us all nuts — you know how 10-year-old girls can be! — but I picked up a fortune teller that she’d dropped, took it home, and dissected it carefully to figure out how it all worked.

You want to know how to make one? No secrets here!
Here’s a video I found that gives particularly clear instructions for how to fold an origami fortune-teller:

At recess or lunch break, or sometimes in a slow-moving math class, Judy would pull out a neat square of folded-up notebook paper from her back pocket and open its corners to slip in her index fingers and thumbs. The other girls in our group would gather around…

First one, then another of us would “pick a number” — the number of letters in the name of the boy we liked best, most often — and Judy would open and close the paper fortune teller, one direction and then the other, while counting down the numbers.

Well, here’s how Wikipedia explains the rules:

The player first asks a question to the person holding the fortune teller. This question will be answered by the device. The holder then asks for a number and/or color. Once the number and/or color has been chosen, the holder uses his/her fingers to switch between the two groups of colors/numbers that occupy the inside area of the device. The holder switches these positions a specific number of times, which can be given by the amount of letters in the color selected, the number originally chosen, or the sum of both. Once the holder has finished switching the positions of the fortune teller, the player chooses one of the flaps that has been revealed. These flaps often have colors and/or numbers on them, and the chosen flap often is the same as the color/number originally chosen. The holder then lifts the flap and reads the fortune that is underneath. Any one of these steps may be repeated to suit the user.

Remember it now?
I’ve been thinking a lot about fun grown-up crafty versions of old schoolyard games and toys lately, so we can expect to take a few more little trips down memory lane in the next few weeks. What other cool homemade toys and impromptu games do you remember, from when you were a kid?

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If someone on your “social obligations” Christmas gift list has a little girl… and that little girl is a fan of Hannah Montana… but, truth be told, you really don’t like her parents all that much… here’s the perfect (slightly evil) gift.

For about ten bucks, you can pick up a singing Hannah Montana collector doll.

She comes with a snazzy outfit that the kid can put on and take off her until it falls apart, a doll display stand that someone’s bound to step on, and a delightfully tacky Hannah Montana “keepsake” in a convincing gift box.

Apparently, batteries actually are included, too!

But don’t let that fool you — this toy has genuine potential to ruin a parent’s holiday.

Because the Hannah Montana doll only knows one tune — she’ll sing Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree until every adult in the house wants to smash the doll with a case of Tylenol bottles.

How perfect is that?

Delight the child.
Annoy the parents.
And most likely get yourself off the hook for giving anything to that particular family next year!

Really, it’s the next best thing to giving the kid a drum kit for Christmas…

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So, you want your kid to have a bedroom that’s decorated to match his dreams — but you don’t want to spend much money?

Sensible!

Especially if the kiddy’s wished-for bedroom decor is based on the latest from Disney or Pixar or whatever video game is hot in the school yard this week…

What to do?
Well, here’s one incredibly frugal solution to that decorating dilemma…

Block Posters lets you send any image from your computer (up to 1 MB size file), slice it up, print it out, and turn it into a giant wall poster — free!

Check the gallery of other people’s posters (like the lovely Nemo wall art that Phil made for his young daughter’s bedroom) for inspiring ideas like these:

• Leave the white edges of the paper on for a cool tile mosaic effect;
• Decoupage the pieces onto a room divider screen;
• Frame each paper tile separately in black and hang them really close together to look like a piece of stained glass;
• Go black-and-white or monchrome for an high-toned artsy look;
• Blow up a smaller image for a cool blocky pixelated effect (turn a nature shot into modern camouflage, anyone?);
• Posterize yourself!

Okay, maybe your children don’t really want your face looming down at them from the wall above their beds while they’re sleeping at night… but you could do a nice family portrait, or a favourite pop star, or a role-model athlete, or even a screenshot from a favourite game…

Your imagination is the only limit!

Or, to be factual, about 8 feet x 10 feet is the limit, finished poster size-wise.
But you don’t really need a larger poster than that, do you? Unless you’re making a mural to decorate a great room… hmm….

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Yes, that’s what I said: it’s a knitted baby hat that’s made to look like your Thanksgiving turkey. After the stuffing and roasting has happened, fortunately.

Here’s the story:

Sara knitted a turkey hat for her little guy, 2 years ago, when he was just a wee newborn. Okay, we can figure that the stress of the holiday season and childbirth and a baby in the NICU and all…

“I may have been slightly unhinged at that point,” she says.
Granted.

So last year, did she knit little Isaac a sleek toque or a jaunty newboy cap?

Mais, non! It was the Thanksgiving turkey all over again, one size larger and in a different brand of yarn for a whiter, brighter tip of the drumstick… And now you can knit one of your very own! Sara’s offering her original Jive Turkey Baby Hat pattern — free — over at Going Crafty.

Guess the tag line of her blog:

Hahahahaha!
I love it.

Going Crafty seems to be taking a nap right now, but the weird turkey craft thing is working its magic on me…

Oh, I’m not going to size up the pattern and knit myself a chapeau avec drumsticks for the holiday season, but doesn’t it make you wonder what other wild and whimsical turkey-inspired crafts are begging to be discovered?

p.s. Are we amazed that baby Isaac, now one of the world’s most interesting toddlers, is “very anti-hat”? Even when dressed up as a porcupine? Go figure.

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Photo: eyeliam

True, it can cost a lot to give candy to all the neighbourhood kids on Halloween night. But if money’s tight, and you simply haven’t got the budget to buy off the pranksters (some of whom really will splatter your home with rotten eggs — or worse — if you don’t “shell out” ), there are a couple of things you can do to save money.

First, here’s what not to do:

1. You could be really careful with the candy hand-out — giving each child one single lollipop, say. Stretch the budget by being kind of, well, stingy.

But don’t you recall what it’s like to be a little kid on Halloween? — the excitement (even before the sugar high kicks in) of staying up and going out after dark, running around the neighbourhood with your friends, actually taking candy from strangers!! Don’t go raining on that parade. It’s not easy being a little kid, you know. Give ‘em the candy.

2. You could turn off all the lights and pretend you’re not home.

This is totally NOT recommended, however, especially in some of the tougher neighbourhoods — and believe me, this is the voice of experience you hear! In fact, if you live in a really really really tough part of town (as I did for quite some time), you want to make sure you’ve got really really really good treats. And lots of them. You’ll also be wise to turn a blind eye if some of the kids turn their jackets inside out and come back a second time, pretending to be someone else, so they can get a second helping. These kids don’t get much sweetness in their lives… Shelling out on candy is much cheaper for you, in the long run, than shelling out to buy new glass for your windows.

3. You could stock up on off-brand mystery candy.

In fact, as I was ranting in the first part of this series, there’s a lot of wacky advice out there that tells you to “Save money on treats to hand out at the door by picking up cheap gum and chips at the dollar store.” Again, this is not such a good plan.

Think about this:

How come that Bargain Candy is so cheap?

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued consumer advisory, earlier this month, warning the public “not to consume, distribute, or sell the Sherwood Brands Pirate’s Gold Milk Chocolate Coins described below. This product is being recalled due to positive test results for melamine conducted by the CFIA.”

The affected product, Sherwood Brands Pirate’s Gold Milk Chocolate Coins, is sold in 840g containers containing 240 pieces per container bearing UPC 0 36077 11240 7 and lot code 1928S1… sold nationally through Costco stores and may also have been sold in bulk packages or as individual pieces at various dollar and bulk stores across Canada.

Just one example. (And those gold-foil-covered chocolate coins were my favourite thing, too!) Fact is, if the candy is cheap, the manufacturers have been cutting costs somewhere along the line, and that generally means moving production to countries with less strict health and labour codes, or buying their ingredients there at least.

So, is it worth saving a bit of money, to give children the kind of candy that you wouldn’t feel good about giving to your own child? Of course not.

Stay away from the discount candy and look for brand-name products made in a country whose environmental and health standards are a known quantity, I’d suggest. You may end up paying a bit more — but there are reasonable ways to cut your costs.

• Chewing gum, Chiclets, lollipops and suckers, or those tiny bags of potato chips are often the least-expensive treats on offer — but take along a calculator to the store (if you’re as bad at basic math as I am) and do the figuring-out, to be sure: Divide the price of a bag of treats by the number of kids you can serve with it, to get the cost per kid — see what treat choices will give the best bang for your buck.
• Check the flyers for specials, and buy larger-sized packages if it gets you a better deal — you can always tuck any leftovers into lunch bags, in the weeks after Halloween.
• Buy candy in bulk, if that’s the best bargain — but do buy from a reputable store and do choose only those candies that come already individually wrapped, preferably in sealed wrappers. No, it’s not great for the environment, all that extra waste packaging, but no sensible parent wants their child to be given a fistful of unwrapped candy from an unknown source.

And don’t put it off a moment longer, if you haven’t bought your Halloween treats yet! Last minute shopping, when the shelves are getting empty in the stores, is the surest way to end up spending more than you want to spend or you have in your budget.

Oh, and don’t eat all the candies yourself before the kids show up at the door. But that part goes without saying, right?

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Women’s magazines, radio phone-in shows, all over the Web… I’ve been catching a whole lot of variations on the same thrifty theme. And if your family has decided to try to save money on the whole Halloween trip, you may have been noticing this too.

Photo: Mozo Man

We won’t embarrass any major media outlets by naming names, and I haven’t quoted the words exactly, but the substance of these “top 3″ frugal Halloween tips is spooned out by more than one source this season — and I’ve got serious doubts.

Here’s the kind of thing they want you to do:

1. Costume the kids as homeless people — it doesn’t get cheaper than that, when you can send them out around the neighbourhood in last year’s jacket and their oldest patched jeans;
2. Decorate your home and yard with everyday items and almost-trash, like leftover candle stubs and toilet-paper ghosts;
3. Save money on treats to hand out at the door by picking up cheap gum and chips at the dollar store.

Huh! Well, those tips just don’t work for me — and I’ll tell you why:

Poverty ain’t no Halloween costume.

“Costume the kids as homeless people”?

Well, leaving aside the fact that Junior might be scarred for life by wearing his own clothes as a Halloween costume… doesn’t it just seem wrong somehow to dress up as a homeless person in order to get free candy? Anyway, a big part of the whole point of dressing up and going door-to-door for treats is to amuse the neighbours. And they’ve seen your kids in grubbies already: so where’s the old folks’ treat in that?

Do it cheap, sure, but do it right.

One of the best things about Halloween is that it’s a night to let fantasy run free… So instead of money, why not spend a bit of creativity? Sometimes those quick homemade Halloween costumes can be the best costumes, if the ideas are good ones.

If you’re not the sewing-crafter type (or simply don’t have time), make a trip to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift store, or whatever the equivalent is where you live. We’ve got a fabulous chain of super-cheap secondhand shops called Frenchy’s that are always good for a great cheap costume for kids or for adults. Jodi tells me she’s even seen secondhand wedding dresses in there for a ridiculously low price — so there you go, a Bride of Frankenstein costume! Just add a bouquet of dead flowers and the right make-up.

The school that @wadlington’s kids go to just held a Halloween used-costume sale. “After the sale,” she says, “the leftovers were donated to Goodwill. How great is that? It’s too late now to organize a costume sale for this Halloween, but I’ll bet you’d find a lot of parents keen on the plan for next year, if you brought it up at the next PTA meeting, while the pain and stress of finding (and paying for) Halloween costumes are still fresh in everyone’s minds!

Photo: juhansonin

You can always swap Halloween costumes with friends who have kids the same age, too. This year, your kid goes as an adorable mouse; next year, he moves up to the boy-next-door’s pirate costume?

We used to pass costumes along from older sister to younger, when we were growing up. The trick is to pack them away safely until next year. But you know what? If it’s one of those trendy character costumes straight from the Disney marketing machine, I wouldn’t bother trying to save it for next year — just throw it into the toy box and let the kids wear it to play make-believe to their hearts’ delight, because you might as well put it to use. What are the odds your daughter will have any interest in dressing up as Hannah Montana, by the time next year’s Halloween rolls around? Of course, my parents probably said that exact thing about that Princess Leia costume, way back when… So, who knows? You’ll have to make your own call on that one.

My point is, why dress up your kids as homeless people and make light of something so serious as other people’s misfortune? Especially when there are so many creative ways that you can save money on Halloween costumes.

‘Nuff said.

Now, what about that bad advice on decorating your home for Halloween? We’ll be tackling that tasteful and thrifty issue in the next part of this series, so stay tuned to learn more about toilet-paper ghosts.

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Why send the kids out to collect Halloween treats in a tacky plastic pumpkin, when there are more attractive treat containers to be found — like these cheerful reusable buckets in felt or painted metal?

Reusable and durable items means that you won’t be shelling out for new treat containers, year after year. And when the kids get too old for trick-or-treating? Get thrifty and recycle!

Re-purpose the buckets as tabletop Halloween decorations, piled high with tiny gourds and autumn leaves, use them to hold the treats that you hand out to neighbourhood ghosties who come to your door, or even put it into play as an ice bucket at a grown-up Halloween party: just slip a plastic container inside to keep everything clean and dry.

These two styles of Halloween buckets are both from The Contemporary Home. Sadly, TCH only serves customers in the UK — but the rest of us can find crafty inspiration in the online shop, even if we can’t shop there!

Make Your Own Halloween Treat Buckets

What about decorating your own bucket with black and orange craft paints and a simple Halloween stencil of a bat or pumpkin or haunted house? Pick up a lightweight metal bucket for just a dollar or two in a discount department store — I see them most often near the vases and artificial flowers — or, for a bit more, your local hardware store or garden centre. Craft paints dry quickly, so you can paint the background first, then take a quick break for a cup of tea — and the bucket will be ready for its decorations.

Want to make your own felt treat buckets, inspired by those Halloween goodies at The Contemporary Home? A bit of trial-and-error with a piece of old newspaper will help you make a simple pattern and get the size of bucket you need. You’ll want to cut one long rectangle of felt to form the sides, a circle for the bottom, and a long skinny strip for the handle. (You might want to use a double layer, if the felt you’re working with is on the thin and flimsy side.) Put the pieces together with fabric glue, then do a quick decorative line of stitching around the seams for strength. Slip in the lid from a plastic container or a couple layers of sturdy cardboard to give shape to the bottom of the bucket.

Another option would be to recycle one of those ice-cream pails that have a handle, and simply cover it with colourful felt or a Halloween-themed fabric. If you use a fabric that will fray at the cut edges, either tuck in the edge and glue it down or leave an extra half-inch and pull out the cross-threads to fray it into a decorative fringe.

Finish off your Halloween treat bucket with seasonal decorations. Cut-out felt shapes of spiders, bats, or a jack-o-lantern bats (as shown), or use stencils and fabric paint. You might even embellish your artwork with bits of string and googley eyes… or customize the treat pails to match the kids’ Halloween costumes… the only limit is your imagination!

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This photo album probably qualifies as a “developmental toy” for your infant, but much more important, it could do wonders for Happy Family Togetherness a few years down the road…

We usually think of baby photograph albums as something like Granny’s “brag book” stuffed with pictures of the adored new grandchild, but Baby’s My First Photo Album of Family and Friends really is designed for Baby.

What a clever idea, this little cloth-covered book! Especially with families all spread out over long distances, the way we so often are these days… Fill the wipe-down vinyl protective pages with up to fifteen 4×6 photos of family and friends — all the important people in your child’s life, who might not be there every day to make the goo-goo noises and play with him.

Hint, hint:
Tell your toddler all your fond memories of crazy-but-loveable old Auntie Jen as you turn the pages together at bedtime, and he won’t have forgotten her when the family gets together next holiday time!

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Cartoon: Barbara Smaller

I love this cartoon:

One woman says to another, “My favorite part of being a stay-at-home mom is when they’re at school.”

Oh, c’mon, Mum, are you trying to tell us the thought never crossed your mind?

Not even once at the end of a long summer with three kids who don’t wanna do tennis lessons, Daddy away at work, and that new not-house-trained-yet puppy? (I was there, remember. Kids know these things!)

Originally published in The New Yorker October 14, 2002 — I think it should have hit the magazine in September, though — the cartoon’s shared here by kind permission.

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Whether it’s your family message center, an ever-changing scrapbook page, your photo gallery, or a do-it-yourself collage of spontaneous artwork, the front of the refrigerator is one of the most important pieces of real estate inside your home.

Oh, but those stainless steel appliances that look so elegant and modern? They’re a problem. Because it’s true — and the sales guys won’t think to warn you — your magnets won’t stick to most stainless steel refrigerators.

Photo: DairDair

Designers and decorators and magazine editors don’t quite get it. And I guess the appliance makers don’t either.

They may think we should revel in a pure clean uncluttered fridge front, but guess what?

We don’t.

We don’t want to live with a blank-faced fridge.

We love our fridge magnets — the holiday souvenir magnets and giftshop impulse-buy magnets, the tacky ad magnets from the pizza take-out, magnetic note pads, plastic alphabets, and strange glue-smeared scraps of felt on magnetic tape, made by loving preschool hands — all of them!

Our magnets help us to organize and celebrate our family’s daily lives. Right there at eye level — right in the heart of the house.

What the home appliance manufacturers need to do is sit down in my kitchen for a cup of coffee and look around. Maybe in your kitchen, too. Definitely in my friend Kathy’s kitchen…

Then maybe they’d begin to understand why North America resounds with the wail — “My fridge magnets won’t work on stainless steel!” And then maybe they’d get their act together to give us the one feature in a refrigerator that’s needed above all others: the ability to decorate the front of it with magnets.

Does it matter?

I say, yes.

So I’ve looked into this stainless-steel-fridge-magnet issue a bit, and here’s what I’ve turned up: 7 solutions!

None of these alone is the one perfect solution to your stainless steel fridge art crisis, but there are enough ideas here that some sort of mix-and-match fix should be possible:

1. Different Fridge:

Not all stainless steel appliances are created equal, however. Okay, this is science stuff and makes my eyes glaze over, but it seems to have something to do with the different amounts of nickel in the metal alloy that’s used to face the appliances that we call “stainless steel” appliances.

The good news is, some stainless steel fridges will, in fact, work for fridge magnets — especially if the magnet is fairly strong. The most magnet-friendly appliances have a thin sheet of stainless steel as a decorative face over a metal core that’s more ferromagnetic — meaning a metal that magnets will stick to.

If you haven’t bought a fridge yet, take a few magnets to the store and test the attraction before you make a final buy.

2. Different Side:

Many “stainless steel” refrigerators are made differently on the front than they are on the sides. If your fridge magnets won’t stick to the door, try the side of it — if your kitchen arrangement allows easy access to it, of course.

3. Different Appliance:

Or try the dishwasher, or another convenient appliance. For some reason — perhaps because the smaller expanse of metal on the face doesn’t need to have the same strength as a whole big fridge door, your non-fridge stainless steel appliances seem to be more likely to want to play nice with the magnets.

This is great, if all you want is to put your plastic alphabet magnets out for the little kids to learn to spell while you’re making dinner… but it’s not a great solution for those of us who love the ever-changing eye-level Metropolitan Refrigerator of Art.

4. Different Surface:

You can get magnetic paint and make yourself a new magnet display place from a convenient cupboard door, or even a section of wall. I like this idea very much, and a painter pal tells me that the magnetic paint does work very well.

You might even get a can of blackboard paint, too, and paint yourself a half-and-half magnet board and chalk board.

The only problem there is, in a small kitchen, you might not have the blank wall space to spare.

Oh, and you’d still have a great big bare shiny cold medical-looking stainless steel fridge, just beggin for some crayon art and a souvenir magnet from Niagara Falls…

5. Same Fridge Only Different:

Instead of replacing your old, magnet-friendly fridge with the hip new stainless steel you crave, at the cost of your art display, consider a refinishing job.

A good cabinet shop may be able to fit a new stainless steel panel to the front of your existing fridge, depending on the model and its age. If the new face-panel is thin enough, your magnets should still be able to work.

Or there’s a liquid stainless steel brush-on coating that’s a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a new fridge if all you really need right now is a kitchen decor update.

It goes on a lot like paint, they say, but if that’s more of a do-it-yourself job than you’re keen to take on, I’ll bet the Yellow Pages can find you a professional painter or refinisher who’s done it a dozen times and can make your old fridge look like new stainless steel. For about $50 plus labor.

And your beloved magnets will still work on your fridge.

6. Different Sticky:

Some people say you should just use sticky tape, or reusable putty or clippers or chewing gum… well, something other than magnets, anyway, to post your photos and memo-notes on the fridge.

That’s not a bad idea, and it gives a great excuse to go browse in the office supplies store! The down side: you don’t get to use and display your magnet collection.

7. Different Metal:

So, if you go the tape-and-sticky-gum route for your fridge display, and you still want to show off your magnet collection — or if you’re bound and determined to use those magnets on the fridge, no other surface will do — there’s something called the Choopa Board that could be your fridge’s new best friend.

It’s a metal board that comes in three different sizes (and two colour options: white or stainless steel) with suction cups on the back. You stick one to the front of the fridge, then stick your magnets on the Choopa Board.
Problem solved!

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2. Stylish Steel for a Modern Kitchen
3. I Can Has LOLspeak Fridge Magnets!

I always wanted to be more animated…

You’ve probably seen a lot of these Voki animations around… more frivolous stuff, driven by advertising, right?

Well… yes.

But in defence of the 15 minutes I just blew away by making my own talking cartoon self… let us not forget that a clever educator can find all sorts of ways to make a teaching experience out of this sort of thing.

Anyway, the animated characters also come in dog, cat, celebrity, alien, and anime styles, as well as the “classic” bland cartoon face style I’ve used here. (And believe me, I was sooo tempted to go all talking poodle on this!)

You can pick the clothing, hairstyle, background, etc., of course. Sliders and a color-picker let you refine the appearance of your Voki in some fairly entertaining ways, more than I’d expected would be possible, so there’s fun to be had in that.

The service does give you the option to upload an actual sound file, or to record your voice by phone or microphone… but the text-to-speech thing is good enough for this talking avatar, thank you very much.

So, there you have it — that’s Voki.

Have at it, if you’ve got a few minutes to spare or maybe an 11-year-old visitor to entertain on a rainy afternoon!

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3. Long-Distance for 5 Cents or Less

I’ve just been introduced to an interesting little company called Five Humans. Besides having a great name going for them, they’ve got a great mission statement, the “self appointed task of curing ignorance through hip, fashionable clothing.

Basically, Five Humans creates high-quality t-shirts that help you to raise awareness for a cause that’s important to you and your family — like the plight of autistic children, or cancer, diabetes, asthma, heart disease…

Cool Mom Picks says it best:

“When there’s a cause near and dear to my heart, I have no problems letting my child’s chest be a billboard for raising awareness.”

No kid? No worries — T-shirts from Five Humans come in adult sizes, so grown-up men and women can be useful and fashionable billboards for a good cause, too.

Autism, apparently, is the fastest growing developmental disorder in the US (and I’d suspect that there’s a similar stat for other first-world countries). Who knew?

Yet, most of us do know someone whose life is affected in some way by autism — or at the very least have heard news stories of low-income parents who can’t afford the special training and early intervention that’s needed for autistic children. There is no cure for autism, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope: as cause-related t-shirts serve to remind us, ignorance is a curable disease.

Related posts:

1. Have a Day: Design a Mood-Change T-Shirt
2. What’s With that Finger-Licking Fat?
3. Do The Dom – Do Good

Who says that Twitter is a waste of time? Hey, I discovered Fierce Hugs there today!

Fierce Hugs is a little company that specializes in ethical and affordable organic cotton baby tees and onesies.

These are original designs by two independent artists: Dagmar Meinders from The Netherlands, and Silvia Osella from Torino, Italy, whose work includes the Confused Cloud illustration shown on the little t-shirt here.

The t-shirt is $24 and comes in three sizes: 6-12 months, 12-18m, and 18-24m. The same design is also available in 0-3m and 3-6m as a bodysuit, but that’s just far too cute to show you here.

Related posts:

1. Fashion Speaks for Autistic Kids
2. Silly Rabbit, Dreams Are For Kids
3. Cute As a LadyBug

I’ve always sort of wondered about cradles and bassinets.

Adorable, yes, but you can’t really use a cradle for much, after the baby gets a couple months old and starts moving about.

What then? Pass it along, practically new, to someone else… Or find a place to store the extra bit of furniture until another baby comes along?

This is obviously the dilemma that the makers of the sustainable cardboard Eco Cradle had in mind:

Designed for the first few months in the home, the Eco Cradle is safe, light, easily assembled and disassembled and is made from over 60% recycled material.

The entire structure can be put together and taken apart again in a couple of minutes making it perfect for travelling and visiting the grandparents or family.

The Eco Cradle comes with European safety standard certificates. The structure is also protected by an eco-friendly non-toxic fire retardant.

Bonus, it should satisfy your inner puzzle-maker! Notice how the cradle comes apart to store flat? We may be seeing more of this sort of construction, to meet the needs of changing families, a green-leaning marketplace, and small living spaces. Find it (new!) at www.ecoutlet.co.uk.

Related posts:

1. Little Seed and the Baby Bump
2. Eco Nest Baby Chair
3. Preventing an Electrical Fire

When you’re looking for a craft tutorial, nothing’s better than a good clear how-to video. This one, from Rochelle Dahl, shows a simple way to make polymer beads. The project is easy enough for beginners and kids, but the results — as the video shows — can be stunning and quite sophisticated.

Tutorial Summary:
Polymer clay is formed into a ball, pierced with a needle, and pressed between a pair of matching stamps to texturize it on all sides. (One key tip is to use talcum powder or cornstarch to prevent the clay from sticking to your tools.) Bake the beads in a toaster oven and then, as Rochelle says, the fun part begins! Using craft paints, colour and decorate your polymer beads in any way that your imagination suggests.

Jo Brooks (of Lampwork Art, where I discovered this bead-making video) reports that she tried this with her kid a few days ago, and the family bead-making project was a great success.

Related posts:

1. Chunky Princess
2. If Claude Monet Did Hand-Crafted Beads
3. Make Your Own Gingerbread House Christmas Ornaments

BabyMoonBoutique’s Sheila Sherman knows that handmade gifts are best… and that you have better things to do with your hard-earned moola than to give it to the post office…

So, instead of ordering up a BabyMoon-made hobby horse by mail, now you can go for the DIY pony pattern at Etsy.

The hobby horse sewing pattern is 20 pages with 36 color photos; $8 brings it to you by email as a printable PDF.

Sheila says the materials cost for making a hobby horse should run about fifteen bucks, with the bonus opportunity to use up those bits-and-pieces of sewing and craft supplies you’ve got lying around.

Sounds like a deal to me… and about the only thing you’ll miss out on is the mild amusement of watching your postal carrier trying to stuff a horse-shaped package into your mailbox!

Related posts:

1. Richard the Horse
2. Sew Your Own Tux Linux Penguin
3. A Handkerchief Bunny for Easter

Arts and Crafts

This was a spur-of-the-moment craft project, instigated by my young friend Kelly (who was spending March break with her grandmother, our next-door neighbour) and carried out on a stormy evening when our other entertainment options were limited.

Remember the Bendy Holdy Wondervase? If you’ve got a pair of them, you’ve got great fun! Kelly had had her heart set on playing with those flexible vases from the moment she laid eyes on them, so of course that was the very first project we had to do!

And what’s a vase without some flowers?

They’re a bit of a tough job, these flowers, since we didn’t have much in the way of materials — Kelly glued together popsicle sticks and painted them green to make the stems, for instance — but hey, we had fun doing it!

One of the tissue-paper flowers — the white one printed with tiny red hearts — went home with Kelly as a gift for her Grammie, because grandmother’s have a deep appreciation for such things.

Granny Squares

What can I say? For the better part of a year, I’ve been griping about the sad state of the throw pillows on the couch.

Scraps of yarn, a couple of crochet hooks, and an eager young helper with a week’s break from school… and now I’ve got plenty of “granny squares” to fashion into cushion covers!

Healthy Exercise with Dogs

The long-faced greyhound — who can’t get out to his running yard, with all that snow, enjoyed a Novice class in Rally Obedience. (That’s a dog sport that involves high-speed obedience moves around a timed course: great fun! You can learn more about it at RallyObedience.com.)

And when the weather wasn’t too bad outside, we had some doggie visitors… and some lovely brisk walks on snowy trails, coming back home to cinnamon buns and hot chocolate.

…and Nature Appreciation

Because winter in Atlantic Canada may last just a teensy bit longer than we’d really prefer… but, still, it does have its moments!

Related posts:

1. Thanksgiving Roses
2. Cheese Apple Dessert Squares
3. Sumptuous Silk Sewing Kit

There’s just something about the idea of dressing up babies in soy fiber clothing that appeals to me — let’s not look into that too closely, shall we? — and I believe I’ve mentioned the BabySoy line before, a while back.

Well, we’re about ready for another dose of eco-friendly cuteness, for 2 reasons.

One, because BabySoy’s coming out with a new colour palette (eggplant)… a purple that’s much nicer than it sounds.

See?

And…

Reason number 2 for the baby gear browsing and gushing:

Your friendly neighbour Domestik Goddess in the final stretches of the exciting countdown to the arrival of the New Baby Great-Niece!

Yes, that’s right — great-niece, as in daughter of my adored and adorable big tall nephew….
(Wait, should that be grand-niece? Anyone know?)

How exciting is that?
Quite apart from making Auntie feel older-than-dirt, of course…

Related posts:

1. Little Seed and the Baby Bump
2. Baby Name Search