…macrame candle lanterns…

It’s a long running joke, that it may be rather useful, if we were to add a challenge tracker to our repertoire of planners. Every time, I resist, convinced I will remember my brilliant ideas, and then what appears to be a terminal case of baby brain (can I still claim that if the baby is five?) will come and steal away my brilliant flashes of genius that usually strike when I have nothing and nowhere to write it down.

Take, for instance, a long term project with lots of individual mini-projects, such as the current Make All The Things challenge. Around birthday season last year, my mum & I were having a chat, and something was mentioned and I said, offhandedly, that I would macrame…something…for Miss Butterfly. Later in the day, I realised it would be perfect for our 26 Materials challenge, except for the small, minor detail, that I forgot what it was I said I was going to make! Of course, it was so off hand a conversation, that when I texted my mum, she couldn’t remember either. Murphy’s Law strikes again.

With the conversation still somewhat fresh in my mind, I turned to Pinterest later that day, and plugged “macrame” into the search bar. While it didn’t prompt any memories of the thing I wanted to make, it did lead me to a heap of super cute little lanterns, that looked somewhat achievable as something I could teach the children as part of our annual advent activities, and so a roll of red hemp twine made it into my shopping cart as I surfed online towards the end of November.

The three big kids used mason jars, and Mr Beetle (aka Mummy under his supervision) used a little mini jam jar for his lantern. Sadly I can’t share the mini lantern as a small boy loved it a wee bit too much, and after carting it around from morning until night, it met it’s inevitable end, as one would expect of a glass jar dangling off the handlebars of a four year old’s bike. The other three are currently still hanging off our patio beams, almost 10 months after we hung them. Now that spring is here and the evenings are warming up, we are looking forward to dinner on the deck again, and lighting the candles in the lanterns. Three little lanterns of light to celebrate our crafty little babies, just the thing to make my mama heart sing!

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This is project nine of 26 for the Make All The Things Challenge I am doing with Carrose Creative. You can see my other finished projects here.