Hearts
Knit Together was born out of my struggle to balance my desire to
create with my busy life as a working mother of four. I am challenging
myself to do something creative WITH my children each week and to share
that adventure with you on Mondays. I invite you to share your
creativity with your children so that we might inspire each other with
ideas to help "knit our hearts together."
If you want to join me, write a blog
post about something creative you did with kids and share your link in
the comments. No rules really, only that your link is current and
something about creating with children. They don't even have to be your
own kids. Please remember to link back to The Gauge Wars so that others
who may want to join can find it. Pretty simple. Your post can be from
any day of the week. It doesn't have to be Monday. Thank you for
participating!
Have you heard of Craft Hope? It is an inspiring organization. They collect and distribute handmade items to different charitable organizations around the world. I heard about it from a friend when they were collecting handmade bibs to send to orphanages in China. Recently they collected hand knit scarves and hats to send to Romania. The latest project they are sponsoring it sending decorated flip flops to children in Nicaragua. Check out their website. The pictures of the children in Nicaragua will touch your heart.
This is the first Craft Hope project I have participated in. I want to get my children involved in serving others. It builds character, teaches gratitude and humility, and as they feel the power and joy of helping others, I believe it inspires them to make service a daily part of their life. The world would be a better place if we were less selfish and more giving.
So I gave my daughters the task of reading the Craft Hope page about this project and finding out more about Nicaragua. They reported back to me about what they learned and were ready to jump in.
My oldest thought it would be great to decorate the flip flops with buttons using a glue gun. After a few attempts, the glue gun just wasn't strong enough to hold the buttons on. Since I didn't have any better glue on hand, we went to fabric.
Maeve required a lot of assistance on making these cute ones with fabric scraps but enjoyed working with me. We cut strips of fabric about 1/2 - 3/4 inch wide and 4-5 inches long. We tied them in knots on the flip flop straps and then trimmed them a little to make them neat and even. The hard part was coming up with a way to decorate some flip flops for boys.
We decided on some great jungle fabric left over from a baby quilt I made and I love how those ones turned out. Really simple but cute. We glued the end of the fabric to the flip flop strap then wrapped the fabric around the strap and glued the other end. Then I trimmed the loose threads. I like the boy ones the best. Don't look too closely at those little feet. You can tell we are in the thick of mosquito/chigger/everything bites season. Gotta love Kansas.
Here is the cute little crew, with their glow stick swords. We finished these four pairs one evening and shipped them off to Florida where a mission trip is headed to Nicaragua later this month.
"Sorry you live in a junkyard
but that's okay
flip flops are here
to save the day."
to you from Maeve.
I asked Maeve if she wanted to make a note to send with them. A few minutes later I said, "don't mention living on a dump," but I was too late. The poem is pretty cute but I didn't send it. I just couldn't. Though I find it funny, I wasn't sure others would. The irony of a flip flop really saving the day...but if they cheer the hearts of four children it will be worth it. Actually even if they never make it there it will be worth it because my children are learning to be selfless with their time.
Labels: Children, Hearts Knit Together
