Planning a backyard Halloween party? Check out these fun games and adorable (if I do say so myself) decorations that I designed for this month’s Parents magazine.
I made homemade stencils and spraypainted the letters to the broom bristles. Seriously, my favorite Halloween decoration ever!
Have a bone hunt: paint a bunch of dog bones white and one orange and send the kids on a mission to find them. The one that finds the orange one wins a special prize.
Wrap a bunch of boxes in black paper and make windows, doors, and shingles using yellow post-it notes. Have a contest with the kids to see who can build the tallest haunted house.
Make a spooky street sign with scrap wood and black paint.
Give your pumpkins some personality by dressing them up for the occasion!
This old fashioned game never goes out of style! Put grapes, noodles, and baggies of pudding in glass bowls, blindfold the kids and have them guess what they are touching!
I’m totally amazed at the cool effect this produces…Recyclart featured these basic jars striped with vintage zippers (I’ve been wondering what I could do with all of mine :). The repetitive texture makes for a unique surface; it almost looks like a gorgeous woven textile for a split second. To be honest, I’ve never explored the creative applications of zippers…now I’m intrigued…
I think the only way to get back is just to jump in feet first. I can’t believe that five weeks have passed since I last blogged but these 35 days days have seemed like one long day, broken up into three hour increments when my son wakes from his naps.
But I am vowing to rejoin the blogging world…I miss my daily perusals and posts! So here’s my soft re-entry.
I’m so in love with these urban quilts—Soft Maps by Haptic Lab. They are cities and neighborhoods, stitched in quilt form. They are no chump change…the throws are $2,400 a piece, but they are so intricate with their accuracy that I get it. The one above is Manhattan (must have wooden pieces), and below are Park Slope, Brooklyn (my neighborhood—holla!) and Washington, DC.
I seriously can’t believe that 2 weeks have gone by since I last blogeed. I do have a good excuse—our sweet baby boy decided to make an early appearance in this world. Oliver Fisher Cohen was born on August 29th at 9:19am. He was almost 6 weeks early, so the contractions took us by surprise, but he’s here, happy, and healthy!
Here is a pic of Oliver laying on a blanket that my talented mother knitted for him.
Yes, today is my best day of the summer and that’s because I’m visiting the most magical place in the world—no beaches, no Mickey Mouse, no messages…it’s Birch Family Camp.
For the last ten years, I have volunteered one or two weeks of my summer to teach photography to the kids and parents of this wonderful place. For over twenty years, Birch Camp has been providing families from the poorest New York communities with extraordinary therapeutic and recreational services designed for people infected — and affected — by HIV/AIDS.
It is the tightest knit family I have ever been a part of, and after just six days together in the woods, we all leave with new friends, new lessons, and sore cheeks from laughing so much. Because I am almost nine months pregnant, I couldn’t go this year, so I am going to get my fill for just one day.
Camp has been suffering greatly due to the economy, and we are desperate for donations. If you’d like to contribute, please click here, or, if you’d like to buy our fabulous Birch Family Cookbook, S’more to Love ($40 plus S&H), with over 100 recipes and gorgeous photos of shiney, happy people, please click here!
And if you’d like to peak at our photo program, you can learn a bit about it here.
After four straight days of rain, I thought my decaf iced coffee summer days were over! So hot tea was on the brain…
Donkey Products has an amazing selection of character tea bags. The top image is from their Zoo ParTea series, and the design-your-own group below is from CreativiTea. Don’t they just make you smile?
When a map and carpet come together, this is the result. The designer, Laurens Van Weiringen, and 29 of her closest friends worked together to accurately depict a landscape in the form of a rug. They used varying sized and colored foam squares in a very exacting grid to create this cool result. I wonder if she’ll do custom orders?
I’m always blown away by those able to turn the most 2-dimensional material (paper) into 3 dimensions. Take a peak at this gorgeous cut-paper work by Helen Musselwhite from the U.K. Found on Thoughtful Day.
Take a look at this and this for other cut paper phenomena…
These take tabletop gardening to a whole new level! Introducing Postcarden…
Combining gift and greeting card, PostCarden is a fun and simple pop-out card that transforms into a mini living garden. Choose from a cityscape park, a botanical garden, a little backyard garden, or a football field.
I worked on this adorable story for Parents Mag with my friend, Judy Goldberg (it was her genius idea!) and the uber-talented stylist Paul Lowe of Sweet Paul. It’s super-fun, and really, what doesn’t taste better when eaten off a stick? You can find more recipes for food on a stick at Parents.com.
Pie Pops: sugar cookie dough filled with jam. Yum!
