Mad. Mat. Matters.

Mad.

My baby boy is turning 7 months old this week. The days are loooong, mornings too early but months just fly by...  Now that little guy is sitting and crawling and pulling himself to stand.

This made life easier and harder at the same time. Easier, because sitting up makes for a happy self-entertained baby (aka sewing time for mommy) but crawling and pulling himself up and opening drawers... that's trouble! (aka mommy runs for the 10th time from the sewing machine to the little guy who is holding himself with all his might in a crazy weird position at the play table in order not to fall down the life-threatening  4 inches he is off the floor.) But anyways, I finally got around to sew something pretty besides the 20+ prefold diapers made from recycled flannel sheets, which leads us to

Mat.

A made a place mat for my daughter. It's Montessori inspired and shows the proper position of the plate, cup, spoon, knife and fork. I simply traced a plate, cup etc. on cotton fabric, cut it out fabric-glued it on top of the yellow gingham. I waited a bit until the glue was dry, ironed over it and stitched around the edges with buttonhole stitch. than I added a white layer of fabric to the back and sewed the green polka dot binding around the edges of the place mat. Currently we use it on the family table under a transparent plastic table cover (otherwise the place mat would need to go to the wash after every single meal and I'd need to make about 15 of those to have always one at hand...) And here is how she sets the table...

figuring out what direction to turn the knife

Matters.

During those last 6 months or so I've been reading a lot. What better thing to do while nursing, right? Reading a lot of  interesting facts, helpful ideas, shocking truths, good advice. Most of it not entirely new to me, but with the deeper insights I gained I started making some actual changes. I feel good about those changes that made our life healthier, more thoughtful and to some extend also greener. I am sure you'll read about it more here. Though this is still a blog about my sewing and craft stuff, all those new changes will pop up here and there, too, because they matter - to me anyhow. Most likely though in the form of some creative project. Like the Montessori place mat. (Yes, I read a lot about Maria Montessori's ideas and I put some into practice at our home...) Enough, the baby starts eating his sisters shoe's. Got to save those!

Preparing Salad

so...while I still try to cope and adjust to life with 2 children, my 2 1/2 year old daughter is taking care of us ;-) she is really into "helping" with all sorts of chores around the house. And lately she is asking almost daily to prepare "salat katan" (=a small salad). She can do it (almost) all by herself. I usually stay close by just to make sure she won't jump off the chair with the knife in her hand. She is really careful when cutting and so far only cut herself in the finger once.

This is how I set it up:

I put a small amount on olive oil in a small cup.
I have an all natural spice mixture for this salad and I open the shaker on the smallest hole.
A piece of feta cheese, washed cherry tomatoes and cucumbers pre-cut in long sticks.
And of course a cutting board, knife and bowl.

And here's how she prepares the salad:

See how well it works to cut the cucumber sticks into smaller pieces?!

and onto the tomatoes

they are more tricky because they are round...

but she can do it

and put it in the bowl.

than crumble the feta cheese

pour the olive oil (I tried before to let her pour it from the bottle, but she wouldn't stop pouring because it's so much fun. expensive and very oily fun.)

and add some spices... you see why it's necessary to only open one of the smallest holes.

one proud little cook with her delish' salad

never mind we are still in our pajamas and have a bed head... after all it's saturday morning ;-)

(sorry for the strange exposure in the pictures... the early morning light in our usually dark kitchen makes for hard photography conditions.)