Corralling the Crafts

You know things are going well when I am able to post about something other than Butterfly's recovery process. In truth, this post will start with Butterfly and transition to something completely unrelated to tubes, medicines, hospitals and emergency rooms, although little girls will still play a starring role.

Butterfly is feeling great today. On Monday, if all goes well, she will have two of her three tubes removed. The Tuesday immediately following Labor Day, the last tube should come out. I'm toying with calling it Tubeless Tuesday and throwing a little family party.

While Butterfly was in the hospital, our collection of crafting supplies grew exponentially. Weeks before Butterfly's surgery, several of us started collecting easy crafts, along with other bed-friendly activity items, to present to Butterfly in a special bag-of-the-day each day of her hospital stay. Well, not much of those craft activities were done, either because Butterfly didn't feel well enough or, if she did feel well, she wanted to be in the hospital's play room/craft room, rather than in her bed doing crafts.

A few months ago, my mom had given me her toy organization system: a white wooden frame holding colorful plastic bins. I almost didn't accept the gift, fearing it would take up space that we didn't have, but it has turned out to be a wonderful craft organizer, to the delight of my children, especially my girls.

Each bin has been loosely designated for particular types of crafting items, such as foam sheets, scissors and adhesives.

On the left outer side of the system, we hung a hook for undecorated party bags. The bin below holds decorated bags. We should be ready for any gift-bringing occasion!

In two of the large bins, we placed 18 two-cup plastic storage containers with screw-off tops. They cost less than $2 for a a pack of three at Walmart. In these pint-size craft keepers, we have stored necessities such as googly eyes, pom-poms, buttons, cupcake liners, stickers, wooden clothespins, etc. The missing container from the photo below (which holds googly eyes) is being used as I type.

Of course, as home schoolers and as a family with crafting enthusiasts, we also have additional plastic bins that hold respectively crayons, markers and colored pencils. We also have a kids-welcome cabinet full of sewing supplies.

Today, we added a new stand-alone bin just for sock puppet supplies! Sweet friends of ours created and mailed us a Sock Puppets-in-a-Box kit. Guess what we're doing this morning?

Lizard, pictured above, is perhaps the most overjoyed with our now easy and unrestricted access to crafting supplies. She is incredibly creative and patient and has a playful sense of humor, three qualities that in my opinion are essential for crafting!

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