Kiwicrate Review

One of my favorite bloggers recently posted about Kiwicrate.  It's a company that send you a box of themed crafts for your child each month.  I was intrigued and thought I'd give it a try.  We recently dug into our first box.  It was about wind power.  The 2 projects for the month were a wind-powered cars and a wind sock.

For the car there were enough parts to make 2 cars and to decorate 4 different sails.  When we opened the box there was a pair of scissors and a nice little note.  There was a very good instruction booklet and ideas for exploring wind more.  Everything is packed very nicely and of good quality.  For the car there were wooden wheels, heavy foam for the body, thick paper for the sails, colored sticks for the mast, and tons of stickers for decorating.  There were even extra sheets for making your own stickers, which is what my daughter is doing here!  The decorating was definitely her favorite part.  The box also included play dough for keeping the wheels on and precut tape strips.

My son is still too little, but he had fun helping us.

Our finished cars

He wanted to be sure you saw the striped sail!  We used our wind to race them across the kitchen floor. 

The second project was a wind sock.  It was my daughter's favorite project of the two.  It came with nice oil pastels for decorating and lots of ribbon.  She didn't want more than one ribbon of each color, but there was about a yard of 4 different colors. 

The Kiwicrate came with an observation chart.  It has a guide for rating the wind and a place to draw what your wind sock looks like for 7 days.  We've been faithfully going outside to check, but we certainly can't leave her beautiful creation outside!

I wasn't sure if these boxes were going to be worth $20, but she loved it.  Besides enough supplies to do the craft, there is lots of stuff left over for other projects.  It all comes in a nice box addressed to your child.  The instructions are clear and come with great illustrations.  Everything was of good quality.  I think my daughter may be a little big for them (3-7 is the age range), but she still enjoyed it.  We've already gotten our second box about gardens and she's pumped.  If you think your child might like it, use this link, and you can get your first box for $10.  (I also get $10 off of mine!)  It's definitely worth checking out.

New sewing space!

So I finally took some pictures of the new "office."  This is my sewing room part.  It's about half sewing space and half everything else.  Besides what's in the pictures, there is another desk for the computer, my closet, and a shelf with the TV and Wii  on it.  This room was lavendar before I started this whole switch around!  I'm very happy with the new light grey color; it makes the room brighter.  I don't have curtains yet, but I'm on the lookout for some fabric I like.


The big cabinet is new.  It replaced my wire cubes and a set of plastic drawers.  All of my fabric is in it, and the projects I'm working on are in the drawer at the bottom.  We also got 2 new bookcases to replace the ones that we've had since we got married.  (In fact, we had a blow-up fight when putting on of them together the night before we got married, but that's a story for another time!) 

My new desk.  I got this desk for $15 from a yardsale FB group.  It sat in our carport just long enough to push my husband to the limit (2 months, I think), before I brought it in to refinish.  I wish now that I had done it in black, but it's too late.  This desk is super wide and had a long drawer in the middle and 2 drawers on the side.  It also has one of those pull out pieces that accountants use.  That's the part that sold me.  I figure I can put my instructions/pattern/tutorial on that part.  I also decided that I wanted it situated in the room this way.  It gives me more room to work with large projects, and I also have the other side for my cutting mat.  This is a big improvement over my previous cutting table, the floor.  I got the chair for $8 at Goodwill and spray painted it .   (The box on the floor is stuff to pass along to my friends who might use it!)

 

Our family Christmas picture also works really well in here.  I hadn't intented to hang it in here, but it looks much better than in the living room.  I like it because my sweet boy gets excited everytime he notices it and tells me who is in the picture.  Precious.

It's still a work in progress, but so is everything else in my life.  I have alot more room to work, and there's alot more room to have other people in here with me.  I like it that my daughter can watch a movie while I sew noisly in the background.  She does not.   Don't let the pictures fool you though, there are still 3 small piles of stuff that have yet to find homes in the new space.  I'll get to them one day....

Wild Olive Stitch Swap

Mollie at Wild Olive hosted a switch swap in March.  You were supposed to stitch up a 4 inch hoop and send it your partner.  I was very excited when I got mine since I had totally forgotten it was coming.


A swirly S.  We were supposed to say what colors and motifs we liked.  I wasn't very helpful with motifs, but I did say that I liked green.  It's like Sarah knew me.  She did have this blog to look at!

This is my hoop.  My person, Jennifer, said she liked floral motifs and pink.  I'm pretty sure that I'll never get the glitter all cleaned up, but I do like the way it looks on the hoop.  This is one of the Garden Gals from one of the patterns over at Wild Olive.  I really like how she turned out.  I had a hard time finding something small enough that I liked. 
If you've never done a swap, I would encourage you to be on the look out for one that's interesting to you.  It's a nice way to challenge yourself and get something made just for you in return!

Back in business!

So I had the great idea to switch the office/sewing room with my daughter's bedroom.  I thought that I could get it all done in one long weekend.  Apparently that was a ridiculous thing to think!  I've spent the last 3-4 weeks trying to get this project finished!  I had to paint both rooms, clean the carpets, assemble some new furniture, empty both rooms, and fill them up again.  We are all pretty happy with how it is turning out.  I have a small pile of stuff to give away still and a small box of stuff to find places for.  My daughter loves her new yellow room.  I love my new gray office.  I'm going to try to post about it tomorrow.

I've wanted to make my son a bunny shirt for weeks now because he LOVES bunnies for some reason.  This was my first project on my new desk!  Simple and quick.  Very satisfying!

 

Rotten little thing!  He was excited about wearing his bunny shirt and wouldn't stop playing with the fluffy tail! 

I'm very excited to have a clean (for today!) space to be sewing in again.  I feel very motivated to get some things made!  Off to schedule some more posts....