Mysterious Masks

Some things that occurred here today: It rained, I monitored my newly transplanted plants, my husband and I watched my niece and nephew while their folks worked.

In anticipation of the kids' visits, I checked out The Muppets Big Book of Crafts from the library. It's a generous book filled with quirky projects, as you'd expect from a Muppets book. There is a project for making Popsicle Hands out of a juice and rubber gloves and another for making Bread Dough Monsters, which look in their example photos like mini orange Jabba the Huts (made out of bread dough of course.)

My niece, who is a very methodical nine-year old, carefully looked through each of the 322 pages and marked for me all the projects she, her brother and my daughters were interested in making. She noted in the book the twenty or so projects with post-it notes, then charted these projects with their difficulty rating (one Miss Piggy head means it's easy, three indicates difficult.) Finally, she narrowed the list down to the top five, based mostly on practical matters. Last week we made Super Secret Sketchbooks. This time, Mysterious Masks. Next time, it's Treasure Island Dioramas!

With my niece's list in hand, I went to the craft store to load up on supplies. There, I spent way too much money on the aforementioned supplies. Still, the time spent with them seems worth it (Perhaps they'll remember me fondly as the Artsy-Craftsy Aunt who made the funky projects with them) and I really can't pass up an excuse to buy more craft supplies. Win, win.