My 11-year-old daughter had decided she really, really wanted some Frozen dolls.  However, having used all her spending money previously on a couple plush My Little Pony toys, the ones we found were way out of her price range.

She flipped through a girls' sewing book, spent a couple days thinking about how to possibly make the dolls instead, and came up with this plan:  find a picture, use it for a pattern, sew two identical pieces together, color, stuff, and stitch closed.

We used plain white knit fabric from my fabric stash so the doll would be softer and a little more forgiving, stuffed it with plain old fiberfill For the Anna doll, we used this coloring page 
Elsa:  in her coronation dress, or with one hand out.  (The one hand out was pretty tricky to turn right-side out, but it worked.)

You'll need a picture, 1/3 yd of fabric (for 11" high dolls, but you'll have enough width for 4 dolls!), needle and thread, sewing machine (optional), a handful or two of fiberfill, and some non-water-soluble markers  (we used a combination of Sharpies and fabric markers).

1- Resize the picture to make the size doll you'd like. 
2- Add 3/8" all the way around the picture*, for a seam allowance, and cut this paper pattern.
3- Pin onto a double layer of fabric, and cut this out.
4- Unpin the pattern from the fabric, take ONE of the fabric pieces, put the pattern piece behind it, hold it up on a window, and, using a Sharpie or fabric marker, trace all the lines you'll need to color later.  Draw in the facial features, neck, dress design, etc. Invent what the back should look like, for the second fabric piece. :)
5- Put the right sides (drawn-on sides) together, and sew 3/8" from the edge, almost all the way around.  Be sure to backstitch when you start and stop!  Leave 2" open.
6- Turn the fabric right-side out, stuff with a handful of fiberfill.
7- Turn the raw edges of the opening inward, and stitch closed, knotting well at both ends.  
8- Color your doll with the markers, front, back, and sides.

*On the coloring pages, the necks are too narrow to pull the rest of the body through when turning the fabric right-side-out after sewing, so shoot for a finished measurement of 1" wide, and just draw the neck the width it should be.

She had a lot of fun marking these- so much that she also made Kristof and Olaf the same way.  

The only question she has left is how much of the ink will survive their first trip through the washer and dryer!

Did you ever learn the song that starts, "Here comes Suzy Snowflake"? Our family was asked to come up with a musical number for a party... and that's what we chose.  And my girls got some great dress-up skirts out of it.  (I told them they're early Christmas presents... and now that we've performed, the skirts get wrapped and put under the tree.)

On the Youtube video below, she shows you a quick way to cut strips of netting: roll the tulle without creating wrinkles; cut the roll into 3” strips.  She used 4 colors, 1 yd each, for a 2-4-year-old’s skirt.  For that shorter skirt, she cuts each strip in half.  She says it takes about 45 minutes to make one; we spent about an hour apiece but that was with my 11-year-old doing most of the tying.
I  used her method but made longer skirts- the biggest of the two was 27" long, the small one was 24" long. So I made the strips 54" long for the first, 48" long for the second. When I got to the fabric store, I found that the more delicate-looking Illusion netting, 108" wide! so I could get twice as many strips per yard- was on sale for $1/yd, so I got that instead of the coarser netting.  I used almost 5 yard for the bigger skirt and about 4 1/2 yards for the smaller one. For the larger snowflake overlay skirt (18" long), I bought turquoise sparkle tulle, folded it in sixths cut a circle with a 22" radius (needed 1 ¼ yds); cut out a circle for the center, and cut it like a very simple snowflake.  The smaller overlay (14" long) only required 1 yard.    By the way, there's a great website that allows you to create snowflakes online and see what they'll look like before having to cut any actual paper.

The snowflake crowns were cut from the bottom of a plastic gallon-sized milk jug, then my girls colored the snowflakes blue.  See the slideshow for photos of that.

There's nothing that stimulates creativity like boredom does.
My 15-year-old was bored yesterday and came up with this idea:

Draw on wood using the power of the sun.

Normally I'm not a fan of solar power:  a couple years ago, a solar panel manufacturing company was considering building in my city.   Our city council starting reading the research and crunching numbers, and eventually declined the move.  Why?  The council members discovered that when you add up everything it really takes to build and run a solar plant, it takes MORE energy to produce each panel that it will generate in its lifetime.  

Anyway, back to this solar-powered art:

A magnifying glass, when held close to something with bright sunlight behind it, creates a concentrated beam of light, as most any inherently pyromaniac 12-year-old boy might tell you.  

So he used that as his woodburning technique, holding the magnifying glass steady in one spot until a little wisp of smoke appeared, then moving it over a fraction of an inch.  (See the light beam below?)  He freehand drew it as he went, though you could sketch in pencil first (which is erasable!) and then burn over those lines.

Note: there are some safety considerations here, obviously.  One of them is keeping an eye on your child if they try this.  And I recommend doing this in a nice green grassy area that is not prone to catching fire.  Another is protecting yourself from the sun.  He wore a jacket with a hood, since he sat with his back to the sun for about 2 hours to make this.  Too bad he didn't think to put on pants instead of shorts.

Voila!  Wood burning with no specialty tools necessary except a cheap dollar-store plastic magnifying glass!

I found this method of securing jars, by accident, just trying to maximize my shelf space.  The metal shelves we bought have a wide lip, which normally means there is a 2" space between the top of your food and the bottom of the shelf up.  It turns out that the lip can be used to keep jars on the shelf. 

This week's information is on earthquake preparedness. Have you read up on the local earthquake hazards?  I read a rather lengthy report on hazards in Utah, and just laughed at the section on earthquakes-  pretty much any scenario that might happen somewhere in the world, can happen here on the Wasatch fault.  Some of these things sounded wild- like the whole valley floor tipping and allowing Utah Lake to fill up most of the Salt Lake Valley, or liquefaction of soils (basically, the ground turns to quicksand during shaking, and tall buildings fall over on their sides).  There are 2 main types of "events", as they're called, and we're due for both of them.  For instance, one type (non-surface-faulting, if you want the name) happens every 300-400 years, and it's been 350 years since the last one.  If the LDS Church decided it was important enough to spend the money to retrofit the Tabernacle, and to build the Conference Center to far exceed earthquake building standards, don't you think it's worth doing the simple things at home you can?

Most injuries are from things falling, not from building collapse.  Plus, I don't know about you, but I'd sure hate to lose a summer's worth of canning because they rattled off their shelves.  Or to have my storage area full of broken glass, nevermind the food that had been in them.  There are some very simple, cheap things you can do to secure your food storage.  I don't know how they'd do in the worst-case-scenario earthquake, but it'd be better than nothing.  The pictures above show a couple options. 

The State of Utah recently published a booklet about planning for earthquakes, "Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country".  It's full of good info. Pages 22-23 have more information about keeping your belongings from crashing all over during an earthquake. Here's the link:

http://ussc.utah.gov/publications/roots_earthquake_low.pdf     

 
And for those of you in my neighborhood who ever wondered if there was anything good about our dirt here, there is a silver lining to all that nasty rock in our yards- our soil here in Glenmoor (South Jordan), combined with the location, has the lowest chance of turning to quicksand (liquefaction).   We're also as far from a faultline as you can be in this valley.  (Which really isn't saying much, but every little bit helps!)

 
P.S.   Do you know what our schools' emergency plans are?  Where and when do you get your children if they're at school?    I called our elementary and  middle schools to find out, and the short answer is- stay home until THEY (the schools) contact YOU.  They'll go in lockdown if they need to, or stay outside in good weather, or in case of bad weather or a severely damaged school, the Glenmoor church building is the fallback for Welby; the Dunsinane building and/or Walmart (really!) is the one for Elk Ridge.  When things are safe, they'll allow the students to call home, or you'll get a message via the radio, TV, Internet, etc.

 
Now for the recipe....

Quick Soft Breadsticks

Ready in 20-30 min. Yield: 12 breadsticks

1 1/4 cups flour (measure this one by scooping, NOT by spooning it into the cup)
2 tsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2/3 cup milk
3 Tbsp. butter melted
2 tsp. sesame seeds

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Gradually add milk and stir to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead gently 3-4 times. Roll in a rectangle, 10"x5" and 1/2" thick. Cut into 12 breadsticks. (A pizza cutter works best for this.) Place butter in a 9x13 pan. Place breadsticks in butter and turn to coat. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake at 450 14-18 minutes or til golden. Serve warm.    We double this for my family, and bake on a 12x18" cookie sheet.

This dough is very soft. If it's too sticky for you, use lots of flour on the counter when rolling, and be sure to cut with a pizza cutter!