She calls it Mela

One of the things I love most about being blessed to be at home with my daughter is all of the fun things we get to do together. We spend quite a bit of time doing crafts. We both enjoy them and they are always a fun activity. Kids should be able to make messes and get dirty without parents freaking out. Also, if it is a really messy craft we are making we will always throw on her "play" clothes. With her growth sports this is never an issue. If you don't have any clothes that you want your kids to "ruin" or get stained, hit the local Goodwill or thrift store and grab some. My daughter has an array of her own craft supplies I let her use. Everything from glue and scissors to markers, glitter and sand. It is always a great time doing crafts specially when they are teaching her something like words, etc......but I think the best crafts we make our the fun silly for no reason ones. I feel she learns from those crafts too, that I trust her judgment of what she wants to make and I think her ideas are important. I like letting her have a say. And she likes the way she feels when she completes it.

So, at times I do have a mama block where I can't think of some,thug to make or am "bored" with making things along the same line. I know with Pinterest and the Internet there are a million and one ideas at my fingertips , but I'm old school a lot. (And yes I do like 80's music too-HA!)  so what better thing to do than hit the local library. Now, I love to read and am grateful that my daughter loves books. She has quite the collection going. We read  anywhere from 3-4 books a night at bedtime and also sometimes in the day. She loves going to the library where I let her help pick the books, along with playing with their toys. So each week we leave with about 20-25 books just for her. If there is one she truly loves then it goes on my book list of one to buy for her as a gift. Anyway, last time we went I decided to look up if there were any children's craft books and all I can say is WOW! I was so excited to see an entire section! Score!!!

So we got a few fun craft idea books, but nothing that was jumping out at me. But one night in one of our three book selections for bedtime, I read her a story about a little girl and her apple doll. It was a cute story and Whammo! That was what I was looking for! Something new and fun to do together. The next day we gathered all of our supplies and we're ready to rock out making an apple doll of our own.  There are all different directions online on how to make one but if you want to read the story with your little one and then make one, the story is called The Apple Doll, by Elisa Kleven.
It is not a one day project it is more like a 3 day project. But the end results are so worth it.

My daughter named her Mela which happens to be Apple in Italian. 😍
So without further a due .......meet Mela

Until next time folks. Have a wonderful weekend!