Can't Believe I Thought of This

I do a lot of projects with my kids and every now and again I think of something cool however often I am just following someone else's idea.

Which is exactly what I was doing today. But...I came up with a twist. :)

You see the other day we made an apple project (which I will post soon) using real apples for prints. I am not usually a fan of using food for projects, unless they are edible. It just seems wasteful in general to me so I most often avoid those activities.

This time, I wanted something specific and figured it was the only way so I cut up some apples and got busy. After we were done, I kept looking at the apples and just couldn't bring myself to toss them so I saved them convincing myself another apple print project was in my future.

It was not to be, so today when I saw this Autumn Garland over at Wee Folk Activities I came up with a plan. The project was perfect for Cali and I knew she would love it.

I decided that rather than use felt for leaves I would cut my apples into slices and use them. I let Cali paint all of them that weren't already painted from the previous project. (She even got a little creative.)
Then I dried them and let her string them with the beads instead. See, clever huh? :)


She sat a long time for this project. We don't have a hearth so we hung it from the entry way into our living room.
It probably isn't quite as Autumn looking as theirs but she was able to do this in steps from this morning to early evening and she pretty much owned the entire thing.I did one string also so we would have enough to span the whole area.

And I feel a whole lot better about using those apples for apple prints. :)