…mini stationery case…

It’s funny, how in my last post I felt like all I was posting was a backlog of challenge projects, and nothing much in the way of real-time, what-I’m-making kind of posts. And then a project falls in my lap and we bust out a project in a morning. So what I had planned to share today, from last week’s craftiness, has instead been bumped out to Friday’s post, and suddenly it’s just like old times around here with a finish rapidly being followed by a blog post.

Yesterday, Miss 7 was invited on a girly day out, to celebrate one of her friend’s birthdays. They are great little playmates, and had an amazing day getting their toenails done, and going out for lunch and cruising the shops and then home for a play, just the way a good birthday should be. This little friend travels a lot, and so we wanted to come up with a gift that didn’t take up a huge amount of space but was still pretty and useful and fun. We are pretty much aged out of the old days of “birthday party? Pencil roll time!” but Miss7 is the crafty type, and so I started thinking of what could be a bigger-girl version of that. Along with that, I was also doing a mental catalogue of the things I’d seen in my favourite kids shop downtown that were about in the right price range, and remembered seeing a cute wax seal kit… adding 2+2 together, I got “what if we make her a letter writing kit?” – Miss 7 thought it a brilliant idea.

Once we’d raced downtown to grab the seal kit and some open toed sandals for her pedicure, we got home, set the big boys up with their school work, and got busy in the craft room. She stamped up some custom notecards using some Stampin’ Up blanks I had on hand. I measured and chopped and sewed and clipped the last thread and sealed the last piece of tape as the doorbell rang. But it got done.

With more time, I would have liked to have added cardboard inserts to strengthen the covers. And my hasty measurements didn’t allow quite enough for the thickness of the notecards and pens, so the edges when closed didn’t line up quite as nicely as I would have liked. But I received a message that the birthday girl loved it, so I’ll tell my fussy inner critic to hush and just enjoy the feeling of a gift well loved.

Today’s agenda involves, in theory, school. But yesterday’s school got waylaid by self-directed kid sewing, so who knows? I’m hoping to engage Master 9 in some cuneiform clay tablet making. Master 11 is falling in love with Shakespeare and it is such a delight to watch. Miss 7 is working on book study, which at this point in the week is basically just curling up in the day’s corner of choice and reading (her current book is Little Mother Meg by Ethel Turner – a copy that I believe the kids these days would call “vintage”, but I prefer to call “well preserved from my own childhood”). Master 5 is looking forward to another day of knocking around the toyroom-slash-schoolroom suiting himself, and starting on his kindy curriculum. The sun is shining delightfully, so I’m thinking we may even take this show on the road and do school at the farm. Before that though, we have playgroup to run…I wonder if the other kids want to make peg gnomes?