Salem the Artist

Now that things have settled back into a bit of normalcy, we are finally getting the chance to play with all the new toys.  Salem was in an artsy mood first thing and wanted to paint and glue stuff.  I cleared off the kitchen table and mentally prepared myself for disaster.  Much to my surprise, Salem was a wonderful artist! He followed my directions and his first project was a mixed media piece.  He cut small pieces of paper and then sporadically glued them to a piece of card stock.
 

 

For his next masterpiece, he opted for the simple yet understated watercolors.  Soon, a meddled explosion of shapes and colors appeared on his paper.  All of which he explained thoroughly as he painted, "Mom"- scribble, scribble.  'Dad'- new color, more circles.  'Delilah/Sam'- scribble.  'Pipey"- Lots of paint and swirls and scribbles.  One on top of the other.  An indecipherable piece to the naked eye and non-observer, but a work of art to me.

A Crafty Christmas Past

Now that we have finally finished distributing all of our handmade Christmas gifts, I figured it was time to share our awesomeness! As a challenge to the consumer driven madness that engulfs Christmas, we decided to set a very small budget for the 30+ gifts we wanted to give.  So with $35 (now this number is out-of-pocket expenses and I realize this wouldn't have been possible without a decent craft goods stash already on hand) and some creativity, this is what we made:

4 different baby toys

5 drool bibs

1 super hero cape

3 super hero masks

2 bean bag games

8 scarfs + 3 accent flowers

2 framed family photos (printed at home and used old frames)

2 framed photo posters (made on shutterfly for free after redeeming Coke Rewards points, which my parents collect for us.  Yes, we take advantage of other peoples' bad habits.  We also used old frames that we already owned)

3 batches of frozen cookie dough balls

Hopefully everyone liked their handmade gems!

Let the Nesting Commence!

Much to our dismay, Miguel and I were unsuccessful in securing a home for our little family prior to Salem's arrival and we were destined to live in my parents basement for a few more months. Not really a big deal except that I was robbed of my chance to 'nest' during my pregnancy.

On September 3, we finally moved out of the basement and into our first home as a family (and our first real home in almost a year)! I was so excited to finally give Salem a room of his own and that became my priority.

Because of my obsession with outer space, we decided that a room full of spacey-ness would be perfect for our son. First order of business was to assemble his furniture and then get to decorating. Miguel, Sara and I all pitched in to make the letters of his name from space inspired craft paper. After completion, we framed the letters and spelled his name up on the wall.



Next was to hang the variety of original artwork friends and family had given our lucky son.



Then, I ordered a super sweet (to scale) solar system mobile for his upward viewing pleasure and some spacey wall decals. Once they arrived on the doorstep, I immediately continued my work on the room.



Even after all of this, I thought the walls were still kind of bare so I cut out a bunch of hand-drawn stars from the left over craft papers we had used for the letters and placed them randomly throughout the room.

Finally, I decided to sew a new valance for the window and matching bumpers for his crib (which I naively thought were just for decoration until I found Salem with his head against the crib rails one night). I decided to document the process of bumper making and will type a short tutorial for my next post.



So, here's to my little man and his awesome room! Now that his space is complete, its time to tackle the rest of the house :-)