Apparently I need to upgrade the security at the bunny house before Sherwen eats Daddy Bunny for breakfast.
A local thug makes a brazen attack on the bunny house!
Daddy Bunny is dragged out the door of his own home just before his narrow escape!
I'm sure Daddy Bunny especially appreciates how I took the time to capture his life-threatening encounter in photography prior to saving his little stuffed cottontail.
Don’t feel like spending $200 to house your child’s Calico Critters in the luxury of Cloverleaf Manor? No problem. Here’s how to make your own critter home in 20 steps—or much fewer, depending on your crafting skills, your child’s patience, and your own ability to focus. Supplies: shoe box, 3 to 6 pages of colorful paper, glue, scissors, sharp knife, and a sense of humor. Directions begin after the photo.
Mommy Bunny wonders whether construction will ever be done.
1. Reclaim the shoe box that formerly housed your suede pumps from your charming child, who appropriated it as one of two rowboats required for her American Girl “Itty Bitty Twins” and nonstop rendition of “Row Row Row Your Boat.”
2. Dig through the toolbox for a sharp craft or utility knife.
3. Explain to charming child that no, the bunny house is not done yet.
4. Draw a window and door on bottom of shoe box. Start to cut them out with frighteningly sharp knife—then stop abruptly when you realize you are about to slice through your living room rug.
5. Find self-healing craft mat to put below box during cutting.
6. Discover that craft mat is entirely too small for this project, but persist anyhow.
7. Gently break to daughter that no, the bunny house is not ready for Tommi, Jerry, and their mommy to move in yet.
8. Nervously cut through the cardboard; escape injury. Silently praise self for being smart enough to remember (not dumb enough to forget?) to only cut the doorway on three sides so that the bunnies can open and close their door.
9. Realize that motherhood must be causing your genes to mutate at the cellular level for you to do such a project, but decide you don’t really care, because building this bunny house is just so damn fun.
10. Measure length and width of “ceiling” and “floor” of house; cut printed paper to fit. Cut “wallpaper” and gingerly slice out the space for the window. Think to yourself that the blue-sky-with-cumulus-cloud paper for the ceiling is a stroke of trompe l'oeil genius that your daughter will surely recall at your funeral 75 years from now, when she is giving a powerful elegy to your exemplary mothering and mad crafting skilz.
11. Tell daughter that no, the bunny house isn’t ready for move-in yet—Mommy thinks the appraisal is too low.
12. Paste wallpaper, “carpet” and aforementioned ceiling to inside of bunny house. Decide that curtains are in order, cut two small rectangles of contrasting paper, and glue them to either side of the window.
13. Proudly show off the progress to your husband and glare at him when he tells you that you can have an “A” for your diorama.
The bunnies finally get a chance to do a walk-through.
14. Begin to wonder if the mod-podge could be a hallucinogen.
15. Working more quickly now, cut the paper for the exterior of the house and paste to front and sides. Refuse to deal with scary craft knife any more, leaving house with yellow Piet Mondrian-style exterior that you think is actually quite nice. Remember that you first learned about Piet Mondrian from reading Highlights magazine and feel warm fuzzies for your parents, who got it for you.
16. Remember how those same parents failed to indefinitely renew your subscription to Cricket magazine and growl like an angry bear at the memory.
17. Remind yourself how life has turned out just fine, even without a long-term subscription to Cricket. Forgive your parents since they did give their beloved grandchild a subscription to High Five, the cheerfully entertaining and creative preschool version of Highlights for Children. Vow to sign dear daughter up for Cricket as soon as it is age-appropriate.
18. Finish gluing. Check for loose edges; add more glue. Mentally begin planning improvements to the bunny home: landscaping, shutters, a yard.
19. Wake up daughter, who has fallen asleep on the floor waiting for her bunny house, and tell her it’s ready.
20. Feel your heart squeeze tight with love at her delighted reaction.
I think I hurt myself laughing at this post.
Belts from Froggy Pants Creations. Must I pick just one?The past three years have given me new appreciation for all things handcrafted and creatively made, and as I wandered the aisles of Fenton Street Market in September, I found much cause for delight.
The market, which will be open for just one more day (Saturday, Oct. 3) before closing for the winter, began last month in an empty parking lot in Silver Spring, Md. On opening day, the skies looked grey and full of rainy threats, but the overcast weather didn’t seem to make a difference: the Fenton Street Market was surprisingly and happily crowded.
Purple Clover offers "art designed for small spaces."
With all 94 slots for the market sold out for both the September and October dates, the market offered plenty for browsers and buyers alike. (I myself had to hit the cash machine for a few irresistible items: a small artwork for the Little Supervisor’s room from Purple Clover Art, Froggy Pants Creations barrettes for the same incorrigible cupcake baker, tea for a friend, a baby gift, and a bag of doggie biscuits from Neville’s Natural Nibbles for a friend’s puppies.) Booths offered baby toys and clothing, notecards, jewelry, clothing, yarny goodness, and vintage goodies, including needlework magazines from the 1920s. (It remains a mystery how this magazine-editing knitter managed to resist that $4 purchase. I’m sure I’ll be back in my right mind tomorrow.)
Neville Tiller bakes and sells dog biscuits.What I remember just as much as the adorable (and reasonably priced!) penguin barrettes, though, were the stories that I heard from the vendors, both about the creation of their business and their execution of it. Some began their business out of old-fashioned consumer outrage—they refused to pay retail for an item that they knew they could make for a more reasonable price. Others began their home-based business as a whim, only to turn it into their major source of income after losing their day job because of the economy.
Megan Dominey of Megan's Dolls
Some do it just to have fun. Megan Dominey, who is 12 years old, knits cheerfully wacky dolls, some of which she names after her friends. Others get a parental nudge. Neville Tiller, the 16-year-old baker behind Neville’s Natural Nibbles, started her dog biscuit business with a $100 investment from her mother, who believes the effort is teaching her daughter invaluable lessons about money management, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance. “Look at the economy,” Felicia Tiller, Neville’s mother, told me. “You can’t get laid off if you own your own business."
Bellajenna offers notecards, totes, and bab onesies with charming illustrations and clever sayings.
For others, their craft business represents a major undertaking, and they painstakingly plan and present their products. Jennifer Wilfong of Yummy and Company picks just a few colors for each season’s jewelry and miniature collection, combining silver with black and (this season) goldenrod polymer clay shapes to create simple, modern pieces. Bellajenna’s Jennifer LaVallee, who recently moved to the D.C. area from New York City, draws on her experience in fashion marketing to design and promote her line of cards, totes, and baby onesies. My favorite featured a charming monkey in a diaper, with the tagline “monkeying around.” (Um, yes, I bought it.) Michelle Sasscer of Babus makes felted toys for babies, using only organic, unprocessed, or environmentally produced wools for her teething rings and critters.
A happy Babus customer at the Fenton Street Market.It all sounds so straightforward and perfectly logically successful as I type these creative women’s stories out on my laptop, but you know those booths, just like the Fenton Street Market itself, were built of dreams.
This wonderful video, done by a friend's daughter, gave me goosebumps.
Alison M. Rice