Easter Wheatgrass

I remember seeing in a magazine one time these Easter baskets with live grass in them. And I thought, "Oh that's cute and folksy and eco-friendly and old-fashioned. And I'd probably love to do that but who knows if I ever will." In other words, I filed it away in my mind. I don't even think I had kids then. And Easter has never really been a very "big" holiday in our family, so I had no need to use it right away.

A couple of years ago my mother-in-law gave my older son a basket with real grass and I told her how much I loved it. The mental file was brought to the front of my mind.

This year, we are going to be visiting some of my nieces and nephews for Easter. So my basket tally went from maybe 2 to a possible 6. Obviously I started thinking about what kinds of things I would want to include in these baskets, the first I have ever made, by the way: healthy treats and small books are a nice alternative to too much candy. Maybe a toy or two but I like to keep things simple in the baskets so that it doesn't distract too much from the meaning we find in the holiday. 

Then there was the grass! I finally had a reason to attempt it, but I wasn't sure where to begin. A quick call to my mother-in-law revealed that she had bought a whole bag (albeit the smallest one available) of actual lawn grass from the home improvement store. She figured she could always use the extra in their landscaping. Well... I would've been down for that. Except the smallest bag I could find was $15 and I knew I could figure something else out. Also, I wasn't in the market for leftover lawn grass at the moment.

I researched other grasses, and I finally decided on wheatgrass. If you are interested in doing something like this, you can easily buy wheatgrass at your health food store already grown and just pop it in. Easy peasy! But it was gonna cost me about $5 a pop so maybe $30 for all. Plus, you know I like doing things the hard way. Haha. So anyway, I decided I could probably grow my own. I walked around the corner to the next aisle over in the health food store and found hard wheat berries or wheatgrass berries in their bulk food section. Grabbed a few scoops full, up the the register and bam - 65 cents! That's more like it...

I found several versions of how to grow wheatgrass, but I went with the instructions I found here.

Here's how we did it:

Soak berries overnight. I read to make sure you don't soak longer than 24 hours as they may go rancid after that.

Line a basket. You can use an old plastic grocery bag or saran wrap. Or anything else that's water proof. If your basket is somewhat loosley woven, you can lay some fabric down first to hide the plastic. Add a layer of soil to about 1/3 the height of the basket. You don't want too much dirt, because it will make the basket heavy.

Spread seeds (or "berries") in a single layer across the top of the basket. I found a handsome helper to assist me with this step.

Then we soaked the seeds with a water bottle and left them in a sunny spot with a little saran lid to keep the moisture in. I'm told the trick the first few days is to keep the seeds moist.


Boy, you know what? If anyone ever feels like they have a black thumb or gets discouraged in their gardening endeavors, growing something quick like wheatgrass sure is encouraging. :)

We were very excited to see this is what we had on day 3:

And only one week from when we planted the seeds:

Ten days old here:

 

Wow, that grew faster than I thought! At this rate, my problem is too much grass! I will have to trim it before Easter and I hope it will still keep growing in green and lush and not turn yellow on me or something! That would figure. If I do it again next year, I will wait a bit later, like 2 weeks before Easter instead of 4 weeks.

But, that also means that you still have plenty of time to try this out if you want to. ;)

Reusable Snack Bag

In honor of my son's first week at preschool,

I just finished these reusable bags for him to take to school!

 

(Pattern can be found here).

 

He picked out the fabics himself. :) He loves dogs. And yes, he loves ladybugs! Although just to be funny, we call them "man-beetles" around here. And Winnie of course. I might make him some Lightening McQueen ones later if I can find that fabric in my stash. ;)

 

The inside is ripstop nylon. My first time working with it, and it was kinda fun. It is not waterproof, so these bags can't hold like... a cup of sliced peaches or anything without leaking a little probably. But the nylon does wipe up nicely and can handle all the dry snacks like little crackers, nuts or dried fruit. I have some BPA free little tupper-type things for wet stuff.

 

If you are interested, you can research different fabrics to line with. Some people used organic cotton. Some people used something called PUL, which I am not familiar with. But I am told that once you get into waterproof fabrics like PUL, you are using essentially plastic-lined fabrics. So I would look to be sure that the lining is BPA free or specifically states that it's food safe. The ripstop I used is 100% nylon, not waterproof, and seemed benign enough to use with food.

 

 

Hope everyone is enjoying the back-to-school season. Can you believe it's gonna be September in a couple of days?!

BUNNY GIVEAWAY!

Time for a giveaway! :)

This cute little bunny is the perfect addition to your child/grandchild's Easter basket, or just as a cheerful spring-time gift for a little friend. 100% upcycled cotton. Embroidered face makes it perfectly safe for children of all ages! More pictures and info can be found here.

I am so excited to be using Rafflecopter for the first time! I find it so user-friendly. Please enter using the Rafflecopter below. I will pick a winner on Monday the 19th, email them and announce it here. The winner will have 48 hours to respond or an alternate winner will be picked. My goal is to ship by March 21st so you can enjoy your bunny before Easter, if you are so inclined. :)  Good luck!

P.S. If you are interested in any of my other toys for sale, please visit my Toy Section.

Christmas time is here...

 

I just love that old peanuts song...

It's been busy-busy around here, to which I'm sure most of you can relate. I've been sewing up a storm for work, as well as gift making and shopping...decorating... baking. The list goes on! Tis the season, I suppose! Perhaps I will post pictures of my sewing projects in another post, if I can find the time. ;)

This is my third Christmas at Lil Hipsters and for the past couple of years, I allowed myself to get caught up in work so much, that I had very little time left for fun, Christmasy, family things. This year, I made a point of taking time out for that. My son and I have run several errands together (we like to look at Christmas decorations in the local shops and crafts stores), I have included him in all the decorating, we've gone to the library and checked out a couple Christmas books (The Night Before Christmas and the Gift of the Magi), we plan to make some cookies and deliver them to the neighbors, and we have done a few crafts together. Tonight we painted ornaments for the family. These may not be how my sophisticated adult, buttoned-down, laced-up mind would've ever thought to paint an ornament, but I love to see his creativity, so I give him free reign. Aren't they beautiful?

 

While on the subject of crafts.... have any of you seen the new Holiday version of the paper bags at Trader Joe's?? So clever! I forgot to bring my cloth bag one morning, and when I got home with the paper one, I noticed all kinds of decorations on the sides. Turns out that they have designed almost the whole bag to be re-used for Christmas crafts! There's one whole side that has tags printed on it - you can cut them out and use on your gifts. And two sides have festive strips, which can be cut out and used for paper chains! I liked it so much, I "accidentally" forgot my cloth bag again the next week so I could get more gift tags. ;) I think it is such a neat idea - to be able to re-purpose something and then recycle still afterward!

Trader Joe's gift tag, shown with wrapping paper from JoAnn's and baker's twine from The Twinery

So of course we made a paper chain together. That was fun. My son also wrote his first letter to Santa this morning, and I let him mail it when we were at the Post Office today. Do you know what he asked of Santa? Absolutely nothing. I asked my little boy what he wanted to write and he said "You're welcome. And have a merry merry Christmas." That's it? "Yup." I thought it was so sweet. ♥ For all the thousands of kids who are writing out their wish lists, all my baby wanted to do was wish Santa a merry Christmas. :) Oh the innocence of youth...

Speaking of Santa... I know there are several ways to approach the subject of Santa Claus. I hope this isn't a touchy subject for anyone. It was sort of a self-discovery actually for us, since this is the first year that our son was old enough to recognize Santa and ask about him. So we discussed him a little bit. I grew up in a family where he wasn't talked about at all because my mom felt that he distracted from the true meaning of Christmas. I somewhat agree, but we have decided to take a more balanced approach - allowing some of the fun and imagination that Santa can bring, without having to lie about his existence. I explained to my little boy that Santa is sort of pretend. And that people like to pretend that he comes to their house on Christmas Eve etc etc. and isn't it fun to pretend sometimes? He seemed to think it was a great idea and got a little excited about the Great Masquerade. When he gets older, I plan to get more into St Nicholas and who he was in real life. But for now, I feel that the key was establishing Santa's status in reality, which will help us avoid any crushing disappointments later. And of course, through all of this, we also talked about Jesus - that He is the Reason we celebrate Christmas, to take the time to remember his birth and how thankful we are that God sent Him to us. ♥

Our family wishes you and yours a warm, happy Christmas and a healthy, prosperous New Year!

Homemade Birthday Present: Train Table

For the last week and a half this has been referred to as "Daddy's Project," rather secretively. As in - "Don't go out there, daddy is working on his project." Or "What is this for? Well... it's for Daddy's Project."

What our son didn't know was that the reason we were being so secretive is because Daddy's Project was actually his Birthday Present. And we were trying so hard to keep him from figuring it out, even though we were building it right under his nose.

Here is a photo of the Birthday Boy "helping" daddy, which he was very excited about. It's funny, isn't it, how much our children can utterly trust us sometimes? He was so diligent in helping and yet, when he would ask us what it was going to be or when it would be finished, all we could give him were very diplomatic answers.... like "we'll have to wait and see!"

Please note the teeny tiny 10'x6' space in which my husband did all this work!

It all began about two weeks ago. We were out as a family doing lazy Saturday afternoon things. One of the Birthday Boy's favorite places to go is the bookstore. Purely because they have a Thomas the Train table there with all kinds of track and trains and cool looking buildings... he could easily play there for hours. On this afternoon, while watching our son play, it occurred to Joel that he could probably make a train table for a lot less than the cost of buying one and since the boy's birthday was coming up, why not do it for him as a birthday gift?

I left all the drawing and planning and measuring and woodcutting and routing and sanding to Joel (of course). Haha.

When it came to painting the thing though, I agreed that Joel could paint the body "Thomas blue," but I wanted to paint the table top. I decided to take inspiration from the store-bought versions by painting grasslands and trees and lakes and all that.

So, tonight we finally did the "big reveal," so to speak. We had him hide in his room while we put the pieces together, and then brought him out and showed him what Daddy's Project had really been about all this time. It finally came together in his brain, and he was so excited. After a little giggling and a little hopping and a little playing with it here and there, he proclaimed that this was "...the best birthday ever." So that made it all worth it, of course.

Oh look, he's wearing his train shirt. How apropos.

We got one small set of track to go with it. But our son already had several trains that felt right at home on the table.

Joel did great work. Good job, honey!

Now we just gotta figure out how to fit it into the boy's room! :-)

T Shirt Bag

Speaking of less waste market bags!

I've been thinking of this craft project I saw a few months ago, where you make a market bag out of an old T-Shirt. I don't really remember where I first saw it, but after searching a bit, I found out it was originally a "Good Thing" from Martha. You can find her video/tutorial here.

The main thing I was waiting for was a good candidate for the project. Then the other night my husband was cleaning out his closet and asked me if I wanted to do anything with this old shirt. I said yeah! I do! :)

Here it is. Cute, huh?  I bought it as a gift for Joel about 9 years ago, when we were dating. I remember hanging out at his parents house, laughing at old Strong Bad emails. Good times. ♥

Needless to say, it's getting kinda ratty. Especially around the neck. But a perfect candidate.

The project was SUPER easy. I think it took me about 15 minutes to do the whole thing.

 

The only problem now is... I feel kinda funny bringing a ratty old tshirt bag into the grocery store. Haha. :)