Inspired by Geninne’s folksy embroidered felt pouch for her iPod Touch, I decided to make a cover for our iPod using some of the felt from our stash.

Of course, my little helper had to sew one too. I made a blue one, while she opted for a pink one. (No huge shocker there!)

In the end, the use for her cover morphed. She decided that she needed a case for her calculator.

And by calculator I mean her (pretend) cell phone and camera. The buttons and screen actually works, so it’s almost like the real thing. At least it is to her.

A trip down memory lane…

There’s never a dull moment in our house.

We decided that we needed some handmade, toddler art envelopes to pair with our play postage stamp stickers.

So our toddler drew beautiful art made specifically for this project, i.e. she drew with marker on construction paper. It’s brilliant, I tell you.

To make our envelopes, we first deconstructed an existing envelope (by fully unfolding it), then traced its outline on the toddler artwork.

We cut out the envelope,

then folded and adhered the new envelope together. (You could easily use double-sided tape or glue for a more seamless envelope; I had an impatient toddler working on this project with me, so we relied on plain tape. SHOCKER!)

We then wrote letters to several of our daughter’s friends to place in the envelopes.

After assembling and stuffing the envelopes, we placed one of our play postage stamp stickers on the front of the envelope.

Love these toddler letters, ready and waiting for Postmaster Leyba, age three, to pick up and deliver to her friends!

Another post in our Arts and Crafts Organization project. To read all of the posts in this series, please click here.

I had a sneaking suspicion that we had a tremendous quantity of felt in the house.

We buy it secondhand (usually in unused condition complete with their original price stickers) from our local craft resale shop for $2/lb. Whenever we spy a great color, we snatch it up. It costs us pennies. Literally.

We’ve been storing these overflowing bags of felt in inconvenient places, such as down in the kitchen (why o why?!) and tucked away in a corner of my daughter’s bedroom.

I didn’t realize quite how much we actually had though until we gathered it up to one place, sorted it by color, and stored it away in this giant plastic storage bin.

Above, felt sheets on the left and scraps on the right.

Yes, we have a lot of felt. A tremendous amount.

Nevertheless, we’ve found we need a few more shades of orange (for sewing carrots!) and light green (to sew more mixed salad greens!). We better keep a lookout for those shades at the craft store.

Because heaven forbid we don’t have the exact right shade of felt and have to drive into town. (Ah, life with a three year old. Everything becomes terribly dramatic.)

Meanwhile, time to get crafting!

A few weeks ago we noticed a bird dart off our wind chimes every time we opened our front door.

We began to suspect that she was trying to build a nest on them. Hence, the odd twig sticking out:

Last week we decided to take a peak inside the sugar bowl.

Boy, were we wrong!

The bird was so small that she built a nest in our wind chimes. A fluffy, thickly woven, yet petite nest inside the sugar bowl of our re-purposed wind chimes (a lovely wedding present from my friend Amanda that has traveled with us from Colorado to each of our houses in California).

We found five beautiful, speckled, tiny eggs.

Such a perfect Earth Day surprise.

I can’t wait to hear little birds chirping every time I go through our front door. Ah, spring, we love you.

I believe that we must honor, care for, and respect the earth every day of the year.

We must encourage our children in their development of a sense of responsibility for our planet.

To build that, we garden, hike, explore, learn about and come to treasure the world around us.

Every day is Earth Day. Let’s try to get outside today to enjoy and celebrate our beautiful world!

Did you know that Marvel has published a graphic novel version of Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice? (Thank you to Jenny for the info!)

As someone who devours all things Jane Austen, I was thrilled to hear about this. I’m all about bringing nineteenth century literature to the masses.

My copy arrived this morning. I can’t wait to dive right in. Doesn’t Caroline Bingley (above) look deliciously awful?! I abhor Mr. Collins already too:

I’ll provide one last shot, because I know you’re dying to see their interpretation of Pemberley…

I can’t wait to get reading… After this, I’m tackling the Marvel Illustrated Sense & Sensibility.