to infinity and beyond

As I prepare to launch Eldest into the world, the first kiddo of my high school friend group to be grown and leaving home, a friend at the other end of mama life is preparing for a different kind of launch, with Baby2 due in the next few weeks. Bookend experiences with our bookend babies.

Last weekend, I was honoured with an invite to her sprinkle morning tea. When it came to a present, though, I was stumped. Second babies, generally speaking, need less stuff than first babies. There’s all the hand me downs, there’s the lessons learned of what is actually necessary vs what is marketing, and there’s the fact that life with a toddler and a newborn is cluttered enough without adding well-meant but extraneous “stuff” just for the sake of having a present.

I decided to go the consumable route; a bath bomb to treat herself a bit now, a box of a choccies to snack on after, and then I popped in something I had always wanted to make for my own toddlers before a new baby, but never had the time (or when I had the time, I didn’t have the energy, because, well, toddlers and pregnancy will do that to a crafter!).

I made a little busy bag.

Kiddo1 is currently obsessed with stars and space, and so I pinned a stack of different space themed busy bags. The question then was to narrow it down to something a newly minted two year old could manage with a) minimal help and b) minimal mess. In the end, I decided to keep it simple. A little felt board with some stars and planets.

I pulled up design space, and got searching. The rocket was an individual element, then I found the cute little astronaut and planets – it was actually a card design; yardstick clearly is capable of much finer detail than felt, but I figured I could make it work. Delete the back ground. Delete a layer from Jupiter. Delete the tiny stars. Keep the big basic elements. It worked. To finish up, I added some simple stars. Most elements I selected did require an Access subscription*; I intended to just pay for either a month’s sub, or the individual elements, whichever worked out cheaper, but clearly Santa thinks I’m on the nice list this year, and I was eligible for a free trial. Yes please.

Then it was just a matter of cleaning my mat, and getting the machine to work while I used my rotary cutter to cut an 8×8 square of felt for the background. In my stash, I found a B6 pouch that would be perfect to keep it all together, so once the felt was done, I quickly cut some black shimmer vinyl saying “Kid’s Name space stories”, added that, popped it all in, and voila! One cute little busy bag to keep a small boy entertained while mummy has her hands full.

Today is all action stations – I’ll still chasing my tail catching up from our trip away, and on top of that, I’m running a homeschool event this morning, prepping Beetle for a camp and Butterfly for a sleepover. Fa la la la, the silly season’s here. It’s another jam packed weekend coming up, and I’m hoping to get a jump on Vlogmas – there’s two or three videos I want to get filmed so I can get ahead a bit. There’s chores to do and market stalls to help at and charity knitting to get finished. Festive Frazzle mode activated (and yet I’ve just added another project to my list? What was I thinking?). Happy Friday friends! Let’s do this!

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