Today I am sad and completely in shock. Yesterday a child who attended the elementary school where I taught for several years died suddenly. He was going to be starting high school this year, which makes him the same age as my little brother. I never met Damon except maybe once in passing, but I knew his little sister well. Devin was in my classes for two years in a row.

The death of a child is always sad, but the very sudden death of an otherwise healthy, active boy is even more difficult to understand. From what I have heard so far, they believe his death was caused by a blood clot. The fact that it happened to such a wonderful family makes it just unbearable.

During the time that Devin was in my classes it left an impression on me that she almost always had such pride and respect in her voice when she talked about Damon. I was honestly surprised when I learned he was only a year older than she was, the way this 4th grader talked about her big brother made you think he was a big shot on a college campus or a military hero. I remember hoping that one day my children would have that kind of respect for their siblings.

Devin was always a special student. As teachers we try hard not to have favorites, but there are some students who just have a special connection with you and Devin was one of them for me. It was impossible not to love her, she had such joy and exuberance and truly applied every ounce of effort that she had to any task you asked her to do. I am deeply saddened that Damon’s death might rob her of those qualities.

I also have a deep respect for Devin & Damon’s parents, especially their mother because she is the person I had the most contact with as Devin’s teacher. Mrs. M is the only parent I’ve worked with over the course of my career thus far who came back to me after a confrontation to apologize. She lost her temper over something so small I don’t even remember it (this happens often when you work with parents of gifted children), but the next day she sent me a written letter of apology. I have worked with hundreds of children and parents, but she was the only one who ever did that and it meant a lot to me coming at a very stressful time for me professionally. She carries herself with strength and dignity and has a strong passion and dedication for her children. Devin and Damon (as I’ve heard from stories other teachers have told) were both such kind children from a wonderful family.

This is truly a tragedy. All I can take from it is the knowledge that each day with our children is a gift that we must make the most of. I hope the M. family can take comfort in the fact that they used their time the best that they could have which is evidenced by the way that people who knew Damon are remembering him.

Bear with me, both the second grade teacher and little girl in me are about to come out simultaneously in a an explosion of handcrafted cuteness otherwise known as my third no-spend Christmas gift: the dollhouse diorama.

I am especially proud of this one because I stuck with it and finished it (Ok, I’m not totally finished, I still have some embellishment left to do) even though it took a looooong time by my standards, 3+ hours (Normally I have a 1 hour patience threshold.) and also because after I finished it I searched my friend the internet to see if anyone else had made one the same way. I couldn’t find one. Maybe it’s out there, but since I couldn’t find it I’m going to bask in the moment and assume this is an original idea.

My inspiration was this adorable puffy dollhouse over at Little Page Turners.

Seriously, how stinkin’ cute is that? I wanted to make one, but I had taken a solemn vow to make my dollhouse strictly with stuff I already had. Sadly, I did not have any of the plastic sheeting used for the structure. What I did have was an abundant supply of cardboard and a love of shoebox dioramas dating back almost 20 years to when I was a little girl making them for book reports.

My mission was to take this shoe box and transform it into a puffy dollhouse.

I started by cutting along the edges to get 5 pieces: the bottom (which became the back), 2 long sides, and 2 short sides.

I traced each side twice. Once onto the purple fabric and once onto the white fabric. (and by fabric I mean two old spit up rags that had been thoroughly washed)

Then I cut out all of the pieces and sewed the matching ones, right sides together, together on three sides. Turn them back right-side-out and you have basically made a slip cover for each piece.

Then, with my little helper (big brother was napping), I also traced each piece onto quilt batting. (Which I bought 4 years ago with the bright idea that I was going to make a friend a quilt as a wedding gift. Said “quilt”-all two rows of it- is still in my craft basket. They got a nice store-bought embroidered blanket from Things Remembered instead.)

Then I used a can of spray adhesive that I must have had sitting in my craft basket unused for at least 5 years to stick the batting to each piece.

Each piece needed to be trimmed in order to fit inside my slip covers. I just made sure to keep the scale of the overall box the same. (The edges that are going to wind up touching each other need to match.) Then slip each piece into its corresponding cover, with the padded side towards the fabric that you are using for the outside of the dollhouse.

Hand stitch the last side of each piece closed.

Ok, here comes the hard part….Use embroidery thread to hand-stitch the outside edges and put the box back together. I am NOT skilled with embroidery thread. (In fact the only reason I even have embroidery thread is because I went through a “I think I’ll learn how to cross-stitch” phase, but then I realized it was hard and I quit.) This part took the longest. It’s not perfect by any means, but I wanted the overall look to be whimsical and homemade, so I’m ok with that.

Each edge should look like this:

I chose to leave the top and bottom of one of my sides un-stitched so that I could have a real swinging door. I did reinforce the door by stitching on the inside edge as well.

Once the box was padded and back together I was really sick of hand-stitching and fighting with embroidery thread-that stuff is so annoying! So I decided to make the people who would live in my dollhouse. I was so excited when I remembered I had these doll pins! I bought them at the dollar store by accident a few years ago. I thought I was buying clothes pins to use in my classroom. I couldn’t use these for what I had intended, so they have been sitting with my craft stuff for at least three years.

I just modge-podged on some fabric scraps for clothes, yarn for the girls’ hair, and used a black sharpie for the faces.

See: before… during… after

I managed to get that all done yesterday and then this morning I couldn’t sleep very well so I went back and added some embellishment to the inside before the kids woke up.

It’s done! Well, it could theoretically be done, but I still have some stuff I want to add. I just hand-stitched fabric scraps to the inside to look like windows and furniture. I wasn’t even that careful about it because I wanted it to look like it came straight out of a child’s imagination.

Here’s a picture with the door open:

And one with it shut:

There you go. Free puffy dollhouse with dolls, courtesy of mommy.

UPDATE:

Ok, that’s better. I wasn’t satisfied with this one yet. It was looking a little too “I made this out of a shoe box” for my taste. I needed it to live up to the inspiration piece. So I took the lid frm the shoebox, gave it the same treatment with fabric and batting, and added a hinged front, just like the one from Little Page turners. I personalized the front with a monogram of my daughter’s initials. It closes around a fabric-covered button on the top.

Closed:

I could totally see making one of these into a mailbox. Maybe that will be my next project for Nicholas.

And open:

I also like that this gives more surface area to play with the dolls.

I feel better now.

And I didn’t need to spend $49 on this Pottery Barn puffy dollhouse

I might still make some puffy furniture to go with mine. Either way, I saved at least $49, bringing my 3 day total to $127 in savings.

Ok, so maybe it doesn’t look a thing like these from Pottery Barn Kids, but I think this rag doll is my most favorite thing of all the crafts I’ve done to date.

 

I set out to make a rag doll out of stuff that we had around the house since that is the history behind this type of doll, hence the name “rag doll.” I love, love, love how she wound up telling a story about me and my daughter.

I started out with two shirts I don’t wear anymore. The beige one is from my days as a classroom teacher and doesn’t fit anymore since giving birth left me much more well-endowed in certain areas. (Did anybody else’s shirts suddenly get shorter after having a baby?) The green one is one of the uniform shirts that the toy library staff would wear. I also grabbed one of Abby’s baby blankets. I already thought it was awesome that this project was going to be made out of her mother’s clothes and her blanket.

There’s just something so very Little House on the Prairie about making a doll out of old clothes. I wish, as an adult, that I had a toy with that kind of family history behind it that I could pass onto my kids.

I traced this pattern onto the fabric and got to work. Basically, just follow the directions, it’s not that hard.

Stuff all the pieces with polyfill. Use a crochet hook (or the yellow drum stick from the Little Einsteins music kit) to get inside the long skinny pieces.

Sew all the pieces together (just follow the directions from the pattern) and add yarn for hair. I was so excited when the idea for the face hit me that I almost shrieked loud enough to wake up my two napping children. I made it reversible! (I might be too excited about this.) I embroidered a different face on each side.

She can be asleep

Or awake

I am the first to admit that my embroidery skills leave much to be desired, but I still think she’s pretty awesome. I was also stoked that I had yellow yarn because that meant I was able to give her blond hair and blue eyes, just like Abby’s.

So there you go, the first made-by-mommy Christmas present of the year for a grand total of $0.

We really don’t have the extra money right now, but if we did I would buy this house in a heart beat! (I have a habit of stalking the MLS listings. It’s kind of like my Craigslist stalking habit, only much less productive.)

It is just a few minutes away from the house we already own and live in now, but look how gorgeous it is!

It’s 3,507 square feet (that’s huge!) with 4 bedrooms and 3 and a half baths and was built in 1910. It’s listed for $124,900! That’s less than $36 per square foot! That’s insane! At today’s low interest rates around 4.5%, even if you had no down payment, you could get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage for less than $650 a month. I have friends who pay almost 3 times that much in rent for a one or two bedroom apartment. My heart aches with longing for this house. (Is “thou shalt not covet the house down the street that is amazingly gorgeous and priced way too far below market value” one of the commandments?)

And the remodeling is already underway! Half the work is already done, and it seems to be done pretty well. Look:

Zillow.com has the house valued at $30,000 above the asking price. That’s instant equity. Zillow also says that it was purchased by a couple from out of town who were remodeling with plans to relocate. Then one of them died unexpectedly. How sad for that family! But how lucky for whoever buys this house. I wish it could be me!