Our Own Minneapple: Crafty Lady

In casting around for the what my identity as a stay-at-home mom is exactly, I've decided I need a new hobby. Particularly because if I find myself watching too many episodes of Mad Men in a row, I get kind of snarly. I want to chain smoke and cut disappointed and suspicious glances at Matt. What are you doing out there in that big world all day, darling?

It's not good.

So, there's the baking and the bread and the taking of videos that are probably boring to anyone that isn't a grandmother with direct blood relation to my son. There's the cooking, cleaning (which - OMFG - HOW does it get so damn dirty in here every day?) There's the awesome playing with the boy and watching him get better and better and mastering his little world. It's totally amazing, but it's a little repetitive.

So, while attending to my usual three am feeding of the boy, I found myself staring at his blank walls. Poor Vince, because I'm always cleaning and moving stuff about when he's sleeping, his world in there is about as exciting as the watered down brown rice mush I attempted feeding him last week, but ended up giving up and giving to the cat instead. Seriously, Dullsville in there.

That was when inspiration struck - Hooters! My mom got me these fantastic little owl magnets and I decided that I would attempt to create a larger version out of felt to hang on the boy's wall. Unfortunately for him, I have no decipherable artistic talents. None. I mean, I am bad. The only thing I've ever attempted to successfully paint is a sad, bare little tree. With the success of Hooter here, I think I'll do just that. I'm going to paint a tree on his wall and create for him some more woodland friends.

(This is about as thrilling as toast, so if you feel the need to skip to the next in your blogroll, I totally understand.)

Anyhoo - here we go.

Our inspiration. Hooters! Okay, so I went to the fabric store and got a few pieces of felt for a mere 75 cents a piece.

Hooooter. I grabbed my ribbon scissors (which just means that they're small and not used for hacking apart chickens or anything) and a black felt tip marker.

There's the outline I cut. The ears are totally way different, but the ones on the magnets aren't perfect, either. It gives him personality.

Next, I cut out the chest area in the off-white felt. Using the tip of the scissors I put little nicks in it all the way around for some texture.

I cut out two completely imperfect circles for eyes. Then, I folded them in half, trimmed them so the two sides were even. Then I cut a smaller hole in the middle, cutting a bit of fabric out to form a little half moon shape, leaving some material attached so that the inner eyeball didn't just fall off.

Then I used the dark brown felt to cut out two wings, these ridiculous little feet and drew in the slightly cross-eyes with the marker. I had some issues with what I wanted to do about the beak, but ended up just cutting out what I would think is more of a teddy bear nose shape out and slapping it in the middle.