Toy Train Tracks

Mochi seems to think that these curves are made just for her

What Little Guy Read This Month

I love books. Reading was one of my favorite activities in my childhood (still is but sadly little time to read). I even made myself a little reading nook in a closet for a comfortable, uninterrupted reading time since I shared a room with my brothers. I love that books can teach you many things, cultivate imagination and quite literally take you anywhere you'd like to go. One thing I definitely would like my son to take after me would be the love of reading (hopefully in both of his languages!), and naturally I enjoy our story time a lot. Luckily Little Guy seems to like reading too :)

So I've decided to share a few books Little Guy read and liked each month here on my blog. I've finally signed up for Goodreads and share the rest of the books he read, some of which he liked and some didn't so much. So please check those out too. I hope one of those books will turn out to be your favorite.

OK, without further ado, here are some of the books we enjoyed this month in no particular order. 

Goldy Luck and The Three Pandas by Natasha Yim

This is such a cute and funny book. As you can imagine it's based on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story but the main girl in this book is a Chinese girl celebrating Chinese New Year, and the three bears are, naturally, pandas. I like that after making a mess at the panda family's house, Goldy regretted that she ran off and actually went back to their house to apologize and make amends. It's a feel good story for a new year and you can have a glimpse at how other culture celebrates New Year too. I'd think it's a little lengthy for really small children but for this one Little Guy didn't mind it at all. 

Snowmen at night by Caralyn Buehner

A little boy sees the snowman he built looked a bit "off" the next morning, and wonders what the snowman was doing all night. It turns out the snowmen around the neighborhood gathered together and had a lot of fun, like snowball fights, playing baseball etc. This is such a cute way to look at a sad part of making a snowman. Instead of feeling bad about it melting, children can imagine all kinds of activities the snowmen did and that is why they look a little different the next morning. When it was time to return this book to the library, Little Guy actually cried :(

 Hansel and Diesel by David Gordon

This is another one of those stories that's based on a fairy tale. I got this one out from the library because Little Guy likes the trucks and Diesel in Thomas & friends, and he liked the story a lot. The storyline is pretty much the same as Hansel and Gretel but instead of being abandoned in the woods, the brother and the sister decided to go find fuel on their own for the family, came across a fancy gas station and met the wicked winch. It's a funny adaptation of a fairy tale.

You're a Crab! A Moody Day Book by Jenny Whitehead

Last but not least, this is my current favorite :) The book illustrates different emotions comparing to sea animals, for example, crabby crab, silly jellyfish, mean shark, and mopey manatee. The best part I like is that when a child just feels like left alone, they can be a hermit crab and Mom will be one too and stay by their side until they feel better. When Little Guy feels a bit moody, we make a silly puffy fish face or do the octopus hug like in the book, which helps us a lot. Being able to learn names of sea animals is a plus too. The only thing I'd have to say about this book is, because the crab looks scary in the cover picture, Little Guy initially thought this was a scary monster type of book and took a lot of my effort to convince him to read it.

Please also check my goodreads page and Little Guy's "bookshelf" to find more books we read. Thanks.

Pipe Cleaner Christmas Ornaments

It's Christmas Eve. We've made Christmas cookies, We've read a few Christmas stories (e.g. Llama Llama Jingle Bells. Cute book). We've watched quite a few Thomas & friends Christmas episodes. And we've made lots of Christmas crafts at the library. Among them, Little Guy liked and was good at making these pipe cleaner ornaments, so I got the materials and we've been making lots more at home. I was impressed that he threaded the beads through with little difficulty and was actually enjoying doing it. This seems to be a good practice for fine motor skills and to learn colors. And the end results are beautiful ornaments. Love it.

Materials

12" Pipe cleaners (need three 6" pipe cleaners for each ornament)

Beads

String (if you hang from a tree)

How to Make

1. Cut a pipe cleaner in half by scissors and make three half pieces (Mama did this in our case)

2. Lay the three half-size pipe cleaners like a snowflake and twist them together at the center to keep its shape (Mama did this too)

3. String some beads

4. If hang from a tree, fold one end a bit to make a loop and put a string

That's it!

To my adult's mind, I thought clear sparkly beads on silver pipe cleaners would make the prettiest ornaments and suggested that we buy clear beads. But Little Guy insisted on colorful solid color ones, so I obliged. It seems Little Guy was right. What he made were most beautiful, if I do say so myself :)

I hope everyone will have a wonderful Christmas/winter holiday :)

Happy 3 Year Old!

I hope all of you are having a joyous holiday season :)

Our family celebrates one additional event during this fun but busy season, which is Little Guy's birthday! And he turned three! He's so proud he's three now and telling everyone he meets that he's three years old using his three little fingers. so cute.

If you've been following my facebook page or instagram account, it's quite apparent that Little Guy LOVES Thomas and his friends. So naturally this year's birthday theme was set to Thomas and his friends. I found a few Thomas themed cakes on pinterest, but Little Guy liked this one the most so we decided to make one. It turned out really fun and cute! 

Following the original picture, I used graham crackers and mini oreos for the trains to carry the cupcakes, a whole piece for the top base, two quarter pieces to connect the mini oreo wheels. Differently from the original, I used melted chocolate to connect all the pieces (and this was super yummy).

Little Guy's new train buddy, Stephen. Looks like he's quite a popular guy among Thomas fans. I heard a few boys saying "Look! Stephen!" when Little Guy was carrying Stephen while shopping.

For the main meal, I used this train onigiri kit we found on our recent trip to Japan to make some sushi to keep the train theme.

And a couple of train sandwiches, cut out by train shaped cookie cutters.

Little Guy loved his birthday so much that he kept saying "I love my birthday!" for the next few days. We're so happy he liked his birthday party. Happy Happy Birthday Little Guy.

My little brother is growing up

"Now my little brother is old enough to give me some fresh water! :)"

Long time no see (again! ugh). Just a quick update today. I wanted to share this cute photo of Mochi and Little Guy. Things have slowly started to settle here. Hopefully I can write more regularly soon.

Color Matching Parking Activity Mat

I saw this color matching car mat on Pinterest and I had to try it. Little Guy loves cars and has recently started to get really interested in the color names (like he has to point out the color of every item he sees at a grocery store). So I thought it'd be a great time to try this activity, and happily I was right. And we made it even more fun by making it together (which is why the parking spaces are not neatly lined up).

It's kind of self-explanatory but I used one piece of 12" x 12" scrapbooking paper as a base. I had a piece of map patterned paper so I used it to make streets between the parking spaces (now my paper stash has finally started to pay off lol). I chose a various colors of cardstock according to the colors of the cars Little Guy had and cut into smaller pieces. I think it was 1.5" x 3.5" but don't remember exactly. I put glue on the back of each piece and handed it to Little Guy so he could place it on the base paper. I just felt so thrilled that now we could create something together :)

Little Guy didn't know what this was at first. So I "drove" one of his cars saying "I'm green, where can I park?" and parked in one of the green spaces. After several times, he started to point to the correct color spot. Now he loves it and sometimes even plays this game on his own :)

I'm thinking that when he gets bored with color matching, I'm going to write numbers on the parking spaces to make it a number matching game too. We'll see.

If you're interested in other inspiring educational projects for toddlers and preschoolers that I found on pinterest, please follow one of my pinterest boards "home preschool ideas". 

Happy Halloween!

oh my goodness. it's been so long since I updated my blog :( I hope you've been great (if anybody's still kindly checking out this blog, haha) and you had a wonderful Halloween.

I was so disappointed I had a cold on the Halloween day and couldn't go around the neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Ugh. I had been thinking about and getting ready for this year's Halloween months before and all it took was a little cold to ruin the fun. 

But I somehow managed to go to a Halloween event held nearby. Little Guy became a tiny (but strong) Popeye this year.

I bought the outfit from Spirit Halloween. The shirt didn't have those iconic yellow buttons so I sew them on. The set came with a sailor hat but Little Guy doesn't like hats so of course he didn't wear it. Isn't he still cute though? :)

I, however, made his spinach can. 

I wasn't thinking about making a tutorial so no step-by-step photos. Sorry. But here's what I did. I used a quaker oats container for the base of the spinach can. I wrapped the container with a sheet of green felt. The felt sheet wasn't long enough to go around the container so it looked a bit patchy in the back but that wasn't too bad. And then I drew some spinach leaves on a piece of green felt, cut them out and glued them on. And finally I stitched the word "spinach" on a piece of white felt and glued that on the green can.

Little Guy was too small to help me with this but I can see that this will be a great Halloween project for older kids. Isn't it fun to collect candy in a spinach can? :)

I've also made my Olive Oyle costume.

I put a piece of felt over the collar of the red shirt and drew a line following the collar line of the shirt. Cut the neckline open then drew the wavy collar freehand on the felt with disappearing ink pen, which I used to cut to make the wavy collar. I taped the yellow line with washi tape on the skirt, but unfortunately this came off while I was walking. I probably should've used a different tape.

Happy Halloween!

Mother's Day Cards

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day! I was invited to a beautiful Mother's day brunch with in-laws and it was fun. It was some Mother's day that we, two generations of moms and all their sons, could all get together to celebrate.

For MIL, I made this card. Mother's day does not seem to complete without flowers, so I wanted to make a card with lots of flowers and cheerful spring-like tones.

For my mother, though, I ditched the flowers and went for the route 66 theme. Until about a year ago we were living in an area that was related to route 66. My mother, who is a fan of route 66, was so excited to visit us there. During her visit, she helped me get through the last couple of weeks of my pregnancy and the first couple of weeks with the new baby, and held her new grandson for the first time. Lots of precious memories. It was indeed a "sentimental journey".

I love that when you make your own card you can really personalize it. Sometimes words fail to express what I want to say but I can still use other medium to convey my messages.

Koi Fish Cookies for Children's Day

Many of you may be celebrating Cinco de Mayo today, but here at Crafty Mochi's house we're celebrating Children's Day that's held also on May 5th in Japan! As the name suggests, Children's day celebrates children's healthy growth and happiness. Typically koi fish streamers are displayed to celebrate this day, like the ones shown in the wall hanging below. And I made some koi fish cookies too!

I've made these koi fish cookies last year too with only chocolate icing, but this year I decided to make them more colorful. The green icing on the top koi fish uses matcha green tea. Isn't that a beautiful color? 

Little guy can't get enough of these cookies. Last year he was still too small to actually eat cookies (although his eyes were telling me he wanted to eat them. hehe.). What a difference one year can make!

Here's how I made the koi-shaped cookies. It's fairly simple.

Step 1: Make cookie dough following your favorite sugar cookie recipe. Roll out the dough. Cut the excess around the edges and make a rectangle. Cut in half lengthwise and cut also crosswise to make small rectangles. I just eyeballed the size of each rectangle but you can of course measure to make them precise. (I hear bakers tend to be precise. not me lol)

Step 2: Cut off a small triangle from one side of the rectangle piece to make a fish tail. I used my star-shaped cookie cutter to trim off the tail side but you can use a knife too. Don't put away these small triangles just yet (see step 3).

Step 3: Using the triangles cut off from the tail side of the rectangle piece, make a small ball and attach it to the head side of the fish. This will become the fish's eye. I made 2-3 eyes from one triangle piece.

Step 4: Bake according to your recipe's direction. Cool the baked cookies before starting to decorate.

Step 5: Now the decoration time!

Place a drop of your icing onto the center of the eye and write a "W" on the body. Pretty easy!

You can also spread clear or white icing over the fish and decorate with sprinkles too, like the third koi fish on the first photo. I used coloring pens for the second fish. I love the convenience of these pens! 

WIP Wednesday #8

If you've been following my WIP Wednesday topics, you'd remember that I was working on some girl's dress. Unfortunately, however, after I finished almost everything and the dress came off the needles, it didn't look quite as pretty as I imagined. I don't know if it was because of my yarn choice or the size but it looked too wide. Maybe I measured my gauge wrong. It's a shame because the pattern itself is really cute. I wish it worked out for me.

So I changed my mind and decided to make a hat for the intended recipient.

Actually for her and her mom (who is actually a friend of mine).

I chose Lace-leaf Hat by Sophy Ting. It's a free download from Ravelry (thank you Sophy!). The hat is pretty fun to knit and quick to knit up. I've already finished up the adult version that will go to my friend. And I'm more than happy with the result. That's the white one in the photo. I can't wait to finish up the purple version for her daughter. It'd be really really cute. I know we won't need knitted hats in the coming seasons but by the time I'm ready to ship everything, we'll probably be longing for colder days again (hehe) and my friend and her daughter will appreciate cozy hats, I think.