I have this strange kid who doesn’t like me to throw anything out ever. Maybe I’ve traumatized her with my over-eager purging that I love to do from time to time. I guess it’s normal that kids her age get attached to things as silly as old leftover food, gum wrappers or maybe the box that her Christmas baby doll came in.

The box that the doll came in was printed to look like a baby bed. I’ll give her that. It had a nice hard pillow and a crib sidewall along the back side. But it also had a ripped off mark where the price tag used to be and an ugly starburst that said something like “Grow with Me” with photos of all the other dolls I could buy her as she gets older (which I’m not going to do). Anyway, the box was ugly. I had to get rid of it.

I am such a mean mom.

I know she’s probably the smart one wanting to use a box over and over and cutting down on her carbon footprint or something but I just can’t have yucky over-designed boxes cluttering up her room. There’s enough clutter in there as it is. So I threw it away in the middle of the night and I’ve never heard the end of it since. There were tears.

Until I promised to make her a cardboard cradle that is.

I’ve been perking on this cardboard cradle idea for a while but have been busy with other things so I never got around to it. It’s still a box and it was taken from the recycle bin in the alley behind the photographer’s shop near our house so I’m sort of redeeming myself on the wastefulness factor. I’m just being creative about it.

Also I just like a challenge.

It’s not a masterpiece and I would be much happier if it was made out of wood (hint hint Uncle Shawn) but it’s cute and so much better than that nasty box her babydoll came in.

It’s light so she can carry it. I’m sure it won’t last forever (which may or may not be a good thing for me and my purging ways) but it works. All it needs is a small pillow and a little blanket. Though now that I’ve got her using an old pillow from her crib set and the bag that her flannel sheets came in as a makeshift blanket, she’ll probably get attached to those and never let me near the cradle with anything new or matching. Kids! Are they all like this or is it just her?

Instructions for hacks like me after the break.

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If you can call a trip to an independent fabric store and a walk downtown an adventure. I totally call it an adventure. Just think of the photos I could take!

After being holed up in the house all day yesterday, supposedly sewing on my grand quilt project (FAIL FAIL), I think we are due for some fresh outside air. At least Bug is due for some. Poor kid, she’s getting pretty sick of tv and us ignoring her.

Yesterday Bug took a nap early and woke up about 3pm with nothing particularly special planned by me to keep her busy. (Did I just write a sentence backwards? I do that all the time. But I can’t re-order it for the life of me so I guess it will just have to stay that way.) So you know what that means. It’s not time to cook dinner yet, we have no business to take care of (i.e., errands, grocery-shopping, etc.) and it’s a bit chilly for the park or the beach so it must be CRAFT TIME! Break it down!

Except 3 o’clock is a bit late to be starting on a craft project in the wintertime. Winter days are so short! Man! It seems like summer lasted forever and we were sweating constantly and now FINALLY it’s winter and we can do stuff and there’s next-to-no daylight time to get anything done. Short days are cramping my style. Moan, complain, bitch, whine…

Halfway in we were already losing daylight and getting paint on our coat sleeves because it was chilly and for some stupid reason we do not have painting coats. And there is no way I’m moving a painting craft indoors no matter how polluted my carpet already is. I have some standards.

We worked fast and furious and unfortunately it showed. Good thing I’m not a perfectionist!

It’s good not to be a perfectionist when you have a constant helper like I do. Sometimes I have to go to my zen happy place so I don’t lose it when she paints something the wrong way and mucks up my grand vision. She is so patient with me though.

I do lose it sometimes. I mean, I don’t yell or anything terrible but I get a bit irritated and sharp with her when she paints the house color on top of where I just painted the roof color. So when she says something like, “Mommy, you make me afraid I’m going to paint it wrong,” it just slaps me in the face because why am I doing this craft anyway? Aren’t these activities for her? There should be no fear in crafting.

I have a long way to go in the patience department. I’m just glad God gave me a such patient kid. She’s way more patient with me than I am with her.

In the end her every-which-way strokes did not really mess anything up. It was me hurrying that messed it up. I tried to add some shading to the snowy slopes and used a dark color instead of a light color which is completely backwards to what it would be in real life. I had a vision of painting some round shady hills like this painting (that I love so much) but with snow instead of meadows but I rushed through it and was sloppy.

You guys don’t really need to know all this behind the scenes stuff…it was a fun project and who cares where my expectations were right?

We added some “snow” and that made everything better. I’m so glad I stocked up on the industrial-size bottle of glitter. It’s totally been worth whatever I paid for it.

I like this photo Bug took of me lugging my giant craft box up the stairs. She put a nice big fingerprint on the lens (which is why I have a waterproof/kidproof camera) which worked as a nice softening filter. You should try it sometime. I feel like I’m back in the seventies instead of just some dork wearing a hat that is not all that flattering.

So that’s that. A craft and a lesson (for me, hah!). Now what am I going to do with this awful thing? Anybody want me to mail it to you? I’m kidding. Sort of. I’m keeping the kid.