A Major Crafts Project

Thanks to her pre-school, DD has immense interest in projects. She tries her hand at creating various crafts but as her mom lacks the tactile skill, she continues with her other passion - art projects.  Art is easy - she doesn't need help there, she just needs to color inside the lines. Well, I at least hope it's not complicated at 5.

It's only when she needs to glue stuff together or sew something, she needs adult support, rightfully so. But instead of seeking help from someone as uncoordinated as Mamma dearest, she'd much rather focus on building blocks or solving Jenga challenges. 

I was OK with all that till, the beginning of this week. DD's just about a week short of entering Kindergarten and that scares me. Once she starts, I know my little munchkin will turn into a super busy young girl. I want to hold on to DD as much as I can and if crafts is the way to do it, well, that's what I am going to do. 

So I brought the idea up to her. "Really?" she asked, half excitedly and half suspiciously. 

"Really"

"Ok!" she exclaimed. 

But what do we work on? I didn't want anything elaborate. She had just seen her grandma knit a sweater and I had clearly stated that that's a natural gift her mother could never acquire. So I was hoping she wouldn't want me to try crochet or some other complicated work either. 

"Let's go search for something to do" she declared. We started prowling around the house. Bead bracelets, she'd already done, rainbow loom - done to death, play dough dresses - done. Something else...God please, something, before she loses interest... and then I struck gold!

I found a pair of old jeans. Ady's of course. "You want to make something out of this?" I asked enthusiastically. 

"What? With Papa's giant pants?"

"Yeah...maybe we can make a table spread?"

"Or maybe we can use the pocket for something?" she said. Clearly the girl was more creative and had better ideas. 

So we set about. She got the scissors and I got the needle and thread. Her broken abacus beads were put to good use and the beads found a home on the pocket. 

So this is what we finally did. I won't lie, it took us 4 hours and I was thoroughly exhausted. I had to sew, remove and sew again multiple times before she was happy with the color coordination. By the time we were done, my faith in my assessment of my talent to create 3-D objects was reassured - I didn't have any and neither did I have the patience to sit through.

But the look on her face, after it was done - totally worth it. I would do it again in a heart beat, well not really. I'm probably going to find another interest in the next few days. "You wanna dance, D?"