Meet Monroe.

It has been awhile since I have been able to craft something with felt, needle and thread. I had the idea of a wolf doll back in the Summer but it wasn't until this past week that I finalized on it. Here is our family wolf doll, Monroe. Inspired by our affection for wolves (I often refer to the kids as my little wolves) and in part, my affinity for the show Grimm (yes, that Monroe). Here's to new adventures with our felted forest friend (p.s. he wore is handmade bow tie for the season premiere last friday)!

The Bear Wedding

Last Summer we made our first paper theatre and called our production company Scout and Pony.  We made the cast of a couple of our favorite fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Nattie had a fantastic idea to create our own original fairy tale, one that predates both Riding Hood's and Goldilocks. One year later, we finally got to it: The Bear Wedding!

The cast of The Bear Wedding is the two bears that are the parent bears in Goldilock's story. The Wolf and Granny, both from Riding Hood are the best friends of the Groom and Bride, respectively. The Wolf even officiates for the ceremony. As for the witnesses/friends we decided to use three famous little pigs who had houses made of sticks, straw and brick.

Instead of a paper theatre like our first, we wanted something more stable and permanent. Originally I was going to recycle and reuse a cereal box, cutting out a huge frame in the middle for the stage. I am glad I waited because the box we ended up using was absolutely perfect! Our box theatre is a Bulleit Bourbon gift set box that already had the opening to see the items inside. All I had to do was remove the clear plastic and I had an instant stage box. I turned the insert to the blank side and created our back drop of the forest with markers and crayons. For future productions and stories, I can reuse this one or take it out, use it as a template to cut and fold a new backdrop to illustrate. To cover the header of the theatre, I used black stock paper, decorative tissue paper and a white chalkboard paint marker to make the 'curtains'. For the wedding, we also included a coffee paper daisy garland on twine. I also added two bushes and just inserted them in the front (for the actual play, my son got to them and you'll see them just laying in the box). Our Cast of Characters are drawn, colored and cut from stock paper, and glued onto bamboo skewers.

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Our story for The Bear Wedding is not concrete, but has a basic structure. We have decided that the two meet at a Blackberry festival in the woods while accompanied by their best friends. After the festival they return to Granny's house for blackberry jam on fresh made biscuits with blackberry lemonade. The three pigs are in the story for support and help and they are delighted once their hear of the engagement. My daughter manage to video the Wedding scene. It's quite different from what we imagined the scene would be but we did forget that our audience included a one and half year old. Here are scenes from the play, taken by Nattie.

We played Seabear's The Ghost That Carried Us Away in the background and deck ourselves out in fancy jewelry for the show.

And now I present to you, The Wedding Scene featuring the entire cast and audience involvement:

the bear wedding from Andrea Millán Gutierrez on Vimeo.

 Nattie had the great idea for the next time we put the play on (besides keeping it on a higher platform away from her brother). She said we should have a reception scene for the play where we include all the blackberry treats we mention in the story. We are part of the reception and we will bake/make and have biscuits, blackberry jam, blackberry honey, blackberry lemonade and maybe even blackberry pies or tarts. Sounds good to me.

Our first Paper Theatre and presenting Scout and Pony...

Natalie and I have been working on a little project and finally finished the first one today. When looking for ideas for crafts earlier this week, we decided to combine two idea sources to make our very first Paper Theatre! We took the stage necklace idea from Creative Crafts for Clever Kids and made our own Tales puppet set  I found on Oh! Sweet Babies by (Kiss me) go to act out our versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In all of our excitement over our creative collaboration, we came up with a name for this and all of our future 'productions'. We are now Scout and Pony Productions! We plan on making new and more sturdy theatres (since this was our first, we quickly realized we will be needing light cardboard for better durability) for more fairy/folk tales and a few of our own made up stories as well.

The cast of Little Red Riding Hood comes to life...

as well as Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

The entire cast awaiting a new plot for the mashed up story of both tales.

She found another way of telling stories by laying the theatre down. This was a particularly funny 'pre-pre' story to a prologue tale we have to yet to get ready. All I am going to say is that it involves a wedding.

To her delight, I set up a little 'blog' for all things Scout and Pony. You can find it at https://scoutandpony.jux.com.

Alas! A tiny craft day...

It's my first week with the kids alone since Rick has gone back to work. Today I thought it was time we try making a little craft or two since it's been awhile. I remember having many craft times with Natalie when she was younger and I do wish we had more time like that again. Now, with an almost five month old little brother, it's possible just with a little extra patience from all of us. After we had breakfast and our morning devotional, we brought out papers, scissors, glue and a couple of washed tin cans to make flower pots. During our time of cutting paper, gluing, taking care of and feeding Finn (Momma's job exclusively) we had a great conversation about baptism, faith and other things.
While waiting for glue to dry on our tins she began to draw a bear for her marker (with inspirational help from The Black Apple's Paper Doll Primer and Sachiko Umoto's Let's Draw Cute Animals, photo above). I also wanted her to make another marker, a banner to have a word of encouragement. She decided on BRAVE and made known that she also liked it because it referenced her new favorite movie by the same name. I decided on THANKFUL as a good reminder and a rabbit to go with it. Hopefully we will finish our tin cans turned flower pots tomorrow and continue to find ways to be creative and have fun while learning to adapt to our new lifestyle with another child :)