Craft for Canada Day! (which would work for the Fourth, come to that)
It’s Canada Day, celebrating the one hundredth and … um… 2008 less 1867 is … 141, yeah, that’s it! One hundred forthy-one years of Confederation. When I am NOT, in fact, working. The tots are safe home with their parents, doing whatever it is parents of toddlers do when they’re at home with them.
The post you are reading now was written yesterday, after the children got back from the beach, 17 minutes before the clouds rolled furiously in and 23 minutes before it began to rain. Timing, or what? AND after the children had all been popped efficiently into bed, where they collapsed into smiling little bundles of damp disheveled cuteness, from whence they would pop in a couple of hours leaving a momento dusting of grit in their wake. This is one of the many reasons why they sleep ON rather than IN my family’s beds, with their own, personal bedding.
So, while they snooze, I peruse. Scan the craft cabinet, seeking inspiration. We could do the tried-and-true handprint flag, which already graces the front door of many of my neighbours’ homes. We do them most years, and that’s all right. It’s not like they remember, and even if they did it last year their hand has changed size so enormously their parents will love to compare.
But, no. Mary wants something different, something original, something not-paint. So she peruses the drawers before her, waiting for inspiration.
And it hits! Yes! Because what does everyone* in Ottawa do on Canada Day? Ha.
So here we have the raw materials:
Tin foil, pipe cleaners, star-shaped beads, and pink ribbon. I will cut the pipe cleaners in half, and cut the ribbon into, oh, 30- or 45-cm lengths. Then I will twist the pipe cleaners together in the centre, cut some sparkly shapes out of the tin foil… slide on some beads … attach the ribbons and curl them …twist and curl the pipe cleaners a bit … and …
TA-DAH!!! Imagine a child bouncing this around at the end of his/her arm.
Know what you’re looking at?
(Besides all the DUST on Mary’s desk? Good LORD who knew that was there? Damned flash.)
Still no idea? Have a peek from a different angle:
…from which angle you now also get to see the greasy fingerprints. Which are NOT mine. However, I will ignore that for now, and you can, too. I will get out the all-purpose spray cleanser later.
Still no idea?
Hint: On Canada Day (and Victoria Day, and, for those of you to the south, the Fourth of July), what does everybody* do, everybody* go see?
Fireworks, of course!
Those are fireworks! Red and white Canada Day fireworks, sparkling and sproinging right there in your hand!
The kids will LOVE them. And if they don’t, I’ll keep theirs, too. Because I think these are adorable.
*Everybody except me. Are you kidding me? They don’t even start until ten p.m! Every year, I hear them, boom, buh-boom, boom, in the distance. They generally wake me up.
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It's Not All Mary Poppins 
they would have loved it!
what did the parents say?
The parents loved it, too, (of course!), even the parent of the child who loved his “fireworked” so much that he wouldn’t set it down for a second, so by the time the parents saw it, it was sort of an amorphous lump of sweaty pipe cleaners in his pudgy fist…
Those are fantastic! Makes me (almost) wish I had a toddler around the house to make some for me.
Nah. Do what I do and borrow ’em when you need ’em.
Happy Canada Day, my fellow Canadian! To celebrate, I did not make fireworks. We don’t DO those up here in the northern summer. Rather pointless when it’s not dark outside. So, to celebrate, I revived the blog. Woo hoo!
You in the North, who doesn’t have fireworks at all; Florinda in California who has them shortly after supper… It’s a big old world. And I’m thrilled you’re back to blogging! Woo hoo, for sure!
Ha! I knew what they were from the first pic. Of course, fireworks. Genius!
Happy Canada Day!
Takes a crafty person. Good on you! That’s how a lot of my crafts are ‘planned’: wander over to the craft cabinet and shelves, and just gaze upon the riches therein, see what leaps out at me. Something usually does. And if it doesn’t, there’s always crayons on shaped paper!
Happy Canada Day to you!
Thank you!
Happy Canada Day! Our fireworks are still a few days off. They shoot them off at the park across the street, so it’s actually not an inconvenience to go see them. Also, I’m much further south than you are, so it gets dark earlier – they’re usually over before ten :-).
You know, though I know about the effects of the curvature of the earth, it was never something that I gave a moment’s thought to until a couple of years ago at Jazzfest, when one of the performers, a woman from an island near the equator, was marvelling that it was still strong daylight at 9:00 p.m. Where she lives, it’s dark about six, all four seasons of the year. To which I had both a reaction of surprise, and a reaction of “Well, of course!”
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