What to do when you can't NEST

If you have ever been to our house you would know that it's cozy and that is a nice way of saying small. It was perfect when it was just me; slightly less than ideal with Eliot and I since his clothes are in another room, and crowded with Lydia. But we are working on that. However, this impacts how I nest. Simply there is no space to really nest. The new baby will be in her bassinet for about 6 months which is how long Lydia was in it and hopefully a more concrete plan will be in place. So the natural nesting nerve must be channeled in new ways, for me it's been organizing things that really didn't need much organization and crafting items for Lydia, that she could live without, but thankful doesn't need to.

Someone in cyberspace had made containers for their children's art supplies. They used glass jars, glued animals to the top and spray painted them. Thinking that I didn't want to use glass, I went to Walmart and found these plastic 2 quart containers for about a $1. Then I began my search of every dollar store and dollar general for the animals. I didn't want to break the bank on the decorative top. I kept finding dinosaurs which I would show Lydia, she would look at me with a funny face and then question, "Puppy?" I would say, "No, dinosaur." She would respond with attempting to say dinosaur and shake her head.  I took that as a sign. I went to the craftstore which secretly must store gold inside the plastic animals they sell because they range from $5 to $25 for one animal, which I in good conscious could not do. What I did find was little flowers for a $1. I decided these would be perfect. I super glued them to the plastic tops waited for them to dry and spray painted each a different color. I picked colors that I will use again with other projects but all in all I think they turned out very cute. After each was fully dried, I happily filled them with various artsy items.

To keep me busy I have been making busy bags. The first one I completed a couple of nights ago which was very simple just popsicle sticks and velcro. The idea is that as Lydia
 grows older she can connect the sticks to make shapes and letters. At the moment she really enjoys sticking them and unsticking them together. Such an easy game which entertained her for 15-20 minutes which in a toddler's world is huge. I did learn that you didn't need much velcro and that putting pieces on both sides of the stick was a good idea to make connecting them easier for her. It was a less than $5 project.

The second busy bag I am making is felt faces. I have purchased the felt already just need to cut the pieces out. I plan on cutting out lips, noses, eyes, hair, so she can make faces out of the felt also easy and craft felt is inexpensive. My larger felt project is making a playmat. Buying all the colored felt and the large felt pieces was less than $6. It is becoming a fun challenge to make stuff inexpensively.

With that principle in mind, I have found another task that occupies Lydia's attention greatly: sorting. I didn't do anything other than buy the little counting animals that come in different colors and pulled out her IKEA bowls of matching colors. Now this is one of those things that I am completley focused on her, she does beautifully. She will easily put blues with blues, reds with reds. If she thinks I am losing interest, she will put a blue in a green bowl, not let it go and look at me slyly. When I ask her is that's right she laughs hysterically and says Noooooooooo. At the end she likes to put them all in the same bucket which takes her some time, but really likes to put them away, so I dumped them out a couple of times so she could put them away. No craftiness took place here but the ideas did come from others and my daughter loved them.