Winter Break = Arts and Crafts!

When I was growing up my father worked at a heating company, which means he had incredibly demanding work hours during the cold winter months in New York.  He usually worked all 7 days of the week, and that meant that going on a family vacation during December was out of the question!  Luckily, my mother is a very creative woman, and I still remember all the ways she would find to entertain me and my sister during those long winter days which were usually spent inside.

My favorite thing she would do was take on on a trip to Pearl Paint – a HUGE Arts and Crafts store on Long Island, and she would give me and my sister a budget, and the set us loose in the store – (if you watch project runway, it’s sort of like when they get a budget and get to run around the mood fabric store for 30 minutes to find supplies).  We would come home from the shopping trip with “shrink-a-dinks”, string for friendship bracelets, perler beads and so much more – and it would keep us more than entertained until it was time to go back to school.

Craft projects is still a big part of what I do with my free time.  I’ll be sharing a lot those projects in the months ahead (I’ve been really addicted to making crochet hats and scarves this winter!) but today I wanted to share a Canadensis Photo Album that I recently made…

I took two Canadensis t-shirts and used my sewing maching to make it one bigger piece of fabric:

Then…I wrapped it around a regular old photo album…almost like a pillow case.   I put stuffing around the photo album, so it is really comfy when it sits in your lap…and it’s soft enough to take a nap on, but you’ll be too excited by the pictures from camp to think about sleeping!

And I have a picture of the lovely Kilman Girls holding up the finished product…

Samantha (1st year camper, currently in 4th grade)  and Emily Kilman (3rd year camper, going to be a Freshman!)

I’ll be bringing the album around with me when I do home visits this year, so maybe you’ll have the chance to see it soon!  I hope you have a fun winter break in store…full of crafts, travels, or other things that bring you joy!