Illness and Ornaments and Perhaps a Psychotic Break

One little girl has been sick, sick, sick lately. Therefore, two little girls have been doing this----all day for two days. One little girl has a high fever. Two little girls have been constantly in demand of snacks and juice, almost as constantly spilling them all over MY nice big bed. One little girl finds herself unable to nap restfully or sleep comfortably at night. Two little girls have been bogarting MY computer to watch PBS kids' shows on Netflix's Watch Instant feature. One little girl is cranky and uncomfortable. Two little girls have been whining and fighting with each other. One little girl just wants to nurse all the time. One Momma is going nuts, showerless and nursed out and with a headache from all the noise and tired of cartoons and just a little nauseous from comforting herself by eating almost all the Halloween candy in the house.

So for lack of anything productive to do while sitting in bed with two little girls and watching some Land Before Time movie for the twentieth time IN A ROW, I made even more fiddly little paper Halloween crafts--apparently my "Make Halloween decorations" assignment on my To Do List will not be marked off until November 1.

I made a cutie little 3-D Jack-o-Lantern ornament out of cardstock: This guy is from the most awesomest site in the known universe if you happen to like fiddly little fold-and-cut-paper crafts: The Japanese Paper Museum.

Yep, it's mostly in Japanese. Just click on stuff. Here's the Jack-o-Lantern; here's a cityscape with 3-D paper vehicles and people and road signs that you can cut out and fold and glue together; here are a whole bunch of paper dollhouse rooms and shops that you can make, including this Christmas scene; here are a bunch of animals, including (the awesomeness!) a model skeleton of a T. Rex; and here's sushi!

I had to have my graphic designer husband tell me how to cut and fold together the Jack-o-Lantern, but he claimed (of course) that the instructional illustrations were quite straightforward, and truly, I'm not terribly spacially inclined (although the last couple of years of crafting as a hobby have improved this part of my brain tremendously, I can tell). I saved nearly all these paper patterns to try later, so if you try a different one, tell me how it goes.

I also, in a desperately and almost entirely unsuccessful attempt to divert the girlies away from TV towards other quiet activities, made this garland from Paper Crave. The artist has a black-inked one, but I printed out the outline templates and wheedled Willow into coloring them in for me:
I just really like the style of these--not cutesie, but not gruesome. I also saved the sheet of mini-templates to perhaps use for stickers or magnets, and the digital scrapbook paper because I very occasionally do some scrapbooking.

Ooh, Matt's home. Perhaps I can bribe him into luring the kids away from TV for a couple of books while I take a shower!

P.S. I have a tutorial up for these matching games that I make for the girls over at Eco Child's Play.