Making Sock Puppets



Meet Snake and Baby Doll
 

I was so inspired by reading tips on being frugal and money saving ideas from "Frugal Living on the Watkins Ranch, " visit their blog here that instead of throwing away our socks we decided to make them into sock puppets...

Look Mom they even fit on our toes!
 

So simple a 7 and 5 year old can do it!  Just have them put their fingers through the existing hole to hold the button in place while sewing.  They searched through my button collection to find the perfect colors and added a felt snake tongue, and yarn for the dolly's hair.  My daughter ended up giving the dolly a haircut so she could run around with her on her foot and not trip.  Better the dollies hair then her own!

Anymore leftover socks... make mitt extensions.

Modeling the store bought version for comparison... super boy!

Mitt extensions are wonderful up here in the Arctic.  (We jokingly use this term, Arctic, but really we are just the Interior of Alaska.)  Anyways, the extensions can come up as far as the elbow and no snow can get down into the little one's wrists.  They are usually quite expensive to buy them already made, so we're going to make a pair with the last pair of socks with holes in the toes, by just cutting the tops off and turning inside out.  After pulling them down over the wrist part, we'll stitch the seam and then pull them right back out again. 

The reason I'm writing this in future tense is because things didn't go as planned this afternoon...

We planned to make such wonderful happy memories, which did happen in a long sort of way.... after 2 year old sissy emptied the button container all over, twice, on my bed, which was missing it's comforter due to someone stealing it for a warm snuggle by the fire, followed by removing all the thread off their spools, grabbing the scissors, etc. I only hope I don't sleep on a button or stray pin tonight... don't worry I checked twice.  

Then Daddy came home from work and briefly rescued us.. before a phone call and other projects, when finally I decided to plop her up right in front of me on my sewing table, giving her my full attention and making her a sock puppet of her own! 

Yes, she's only 2, but she wanted to sew too.  I let her pull the needle (with double thread, a must for sewing with children) through the button eyes and snip the thread with the coveted scissors.  We never did sew up the holes in her sock because once the eyes and nose were on, she was happy and wanted to play:  she got to SEW!!! 

Did I mention the camera lenses quit working in all this?  If you could have only seen what a mess my sewing room/bed was... I had grandiose envisions of a wonderful how to blog but alas, all I have is some quick sock puppet snap shots, happy kids, and no extension mitts.... yet.  Perhaps tomorrow. 

You might be wondering by now what my older children were doing... my two girls made chicken, vegetable barley stew for dinner and homemade Garlic Parmesan Bread Sticks and my son was resting his hand as we think he jammed his wrist and thumb while sledding to the mailbox today.  Never a dull moment in a normal sort of day.... 

People most often say, "Well you've got your hands full.... or  "You must be so busy..... or "I'm impressed and you homeschool too."  Sometimes I say, "It's the grace of God, other times I say, everyone's got their hands full of something, and recently I responded, no, I don't have to homeschool all of them anymore, the oldest three love to study, read, and learn all on their own, it's just the new readers coming up that take more time.  It's really that simple, I feel guilty sometimes knowing how little I do in these matters and how much I need the grace of God for my own attitudes, not theirs!  ha, true confessions of a homeschool Mom, I better stop.  

Praise God for His mercy and grace, they are new every morning and it never runs out!