Too wet to go out, And too cold to play ball.

So we sat in the house. We did nothing at all.

It may not be wet out, but it is definitely too cold!  Eli was dying to go out today.  He even got his snow suit from downstairs, and mine, and begged me to take him out.  Call me a bad mommy, but I just wasn't willing to venture out in the -22 degree weather (which, for you Americans out there, that is -8 F) and -30 degrees with the windchill (-22 fahrenheit).  So, while I said just yesterday I was probably not going to craft much during my Raw Food adventure, I figured if I didn't do something I'd have my own little Thing 1 and Thing 2 destroying my house "on this cold, cold wet day"!

So, out came my bag of tricks: paper, scissors and a sewing machine.  That's all. Super easy, very involved, and pretty cute, too. 

Sadly, even though I took tons of pictures of the entire process, even Eli sewing the strips together all by himself, none of the pictures are on my card, and I don't know why.  So, you will just have to imagine how cute Eli was trying to cut a straight line, or how darling Silas was coloring his own paper while Eli and I were cutting, or how determined Eli was to hang them up by himself.  Really, it was wonderful!

Here's how I did it.  I got out 5 peices of paper. I picked some pretty, recycled looking ones, so that the sun would shine through them, but you could use any.  I gave Eli a pair of scissors (do you know that a lady at the YMCA was telling me that her son, who is the same age as Eli, had an assessment done at school to see if he had any delays, and one of the questions was whether he could cut with scissors or not. Well, believe it or not, until today I had no idea if Eli could use scissors. Early screening or looking for problems???) He cut the paper width wise into strips, which we carefully stacked.  We took the strips down to the sewing machine and sewed them together right down the middle (make sure to set your sewing machine to a long stitch, otherwise it might just perforate the paper enough for it to rip really easily. Then we took our beautiful mobiles upstairs and hung them in the window to add a little brightness to our cold, white world.  I think they are beautiful, Eli loved that he could use the sewing machine, and he didn't mention going outside again (fewsh!)

The one good thing about losing all the pictures is that you don't have to see the terrible haircuts I gave my boys today. Maybe I will try to fix them before I take any more pictures!