Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Snakes!!

A few weeks ago my grampa-in-law moved from his house of 40 or so years to a retirement condo. Going through the treasures (and layers of dust) in his house was quite a chore, and all of us grandkids and great grandkids ended up with boxes of neat old things to take home. I ended up with 6 big boxes full of his salt and pepper shaker collection, but thats a post in itself!
While packing up my sister-in-law discovered a bunch of old ties headed for the dumpster. She saved them, washed them and came up with the brilliant idea to make snakes out of them for all the great grandkids to have a fun momento from their great grampa. So this sunday, after our weekly lunch at the in-laws, the kids played with their cousins and I sat down and made some snakes.

My son picked out an orange tie with a crazy '70s pattern. I'm not surprised. Orange appears to be his favourite color. This year the majority of his preschool artwork has been orange, orange, and more orange. He rarely voluntarily chooses an alternate color. Sometimes he takes a leap and colours with pink. But not often. Its a wonder all our orange crayons aren't worn down to nubs yet.

This was my first try and I followed my sister in laws directions and glued on googly eyes and a red felt tongue. 

My daughter picked out a ratty, nasty, stained, but oh-so-soft purple tie. I tried to talk her out of it but she was determined. Of course she also wouldn't give the tie up for me to work on it, so I made her brothers snake first while she ran around wearing the nasty tie like a beauty pageant sash. And then she fell asleep. So I picked out a tie in better shape with a funky blue and white pattern and hot pink lining. And I sewed on the tongue and button eyes because my sweet 2 year old is rough on her toys.
The kids really like them, they pull them around them house, beat each other up with them, and wear them like scarves.


And there you have it. This is a totally easy project and I think older kids (maybe 6+) could make these mostly on their own except for the hand sewing the liner closed.

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