Here you will find a wide variety of fun and interesting things to do with your child, for your child, or even by yourself for yourself! Creativity begins when we're a child with our first drawing that mom hangs on the fridge, or our first playdoh dinosaur that dad displays on his desk, but it never really leaves us, does it? The creative child in us simply looks for bigger and better projects.
I'm a work-at-home mom looking to fulfill my need for a creative outlet. My young son is a real trooper about playing along with my crafty endeavors, and will generally offer a sincere appreciation when I show him what I've come up with lately. Usually he'll even give it a try himself, and it's always a thrill for me to watch him add his own creativity to the project. I have more ideas than I have time, and the problem is just magnified when I see all the great ideas being posted on some of my favorite blogs.
On my tutorials blog, you will find a wide assortment of projects of my own design, plus some that I found that I just wanted to give a try. A few of the ideas are discoveries, but the majority are originals that I designed myself. I tend to wander around somewhat aimlessly in my creativity, so there's a bit of a variety, and my ideas are usually catered more towards children. Though some of my designs might seem a little tough for young children, I've learned over the years that generally kids would rather make something more significant, even if they can't do it well, than make something that will probably be thrown in the trash in a week.
One of my first crafting loves is to make something out of trash. Spent light bulbs, soup cans, bottle caps, etc. are free and can all be found in abundance -- two aspects that have always been critical to the workshop I help coordinate at my church. And when free isn't an option, the dollar stores have come in at a close second in providing the base materials. You'll find a lot of both in my craft designs.
But it seems the left and right sides of my brain are always competing, so while the right side is driving the crafty activities, the left side is trying to do it in a logical manner. I love to surf the net for inspiration, but I found my list of bookmarks was getting too big to manage in a practical way. So my logical side jumped in and suddenly my home page was born (plus I got to learn a little web design in the process.) There you'll find a huge selection of inspirational ideas with links to articles and tutorials for all sorts of projects. I hope you'll check it out. You're bound to find something you like.
On my blog, you'll find a weekly summary of the 10 most popular links from my home page that were added that week. It's a great way to keep up on current stuff without getting bombarded with too much information.
While you're visiting, add your own creative links to the perpetual link party. It's very simple, just like a typical link party. Link to your specific post (not your site), then select your best photo to showcase -- first impressions are everything! With your submission, you'll get instantly listed under the "View by Site" link, which will show all of your submissions for your site. You also get to assign search tags to your link, to help others to find it. Take a look -- you might find a few of yours there already. If you don't have any of your own crafts to link, take a minute to check out what others have submitted.
As I watch the history to see what people are searching for, I am amazed at the number of people that are looking for off-season craft ideas -- like Christmas crafts in January! And categories like Teacher Appreciation which are never off-season. I hate the thought of some of these wonderful ideas getting lost or overlooked just because they're a few months old.
Give it try! I can't wait to see all your crafty projects!
I'd love to hear your feedback about the site, too -- even the bad stuff. Afterall, I can't improve it if I don't know what would make it better.
Enjoy! And thanks for visiting!
