back to school with wee wonderfuls

I was so enjoying the last bit of summer with these
that I didn't take the time to blog-celebrate the arrival of these.
Hillary Lang's wee wonderfuls blog was my first blog crush, and still the only one I check nearly every day. She has lovely ideas. I've seen a lot of great blogs, but prefer the craft ones. So many blogs, featuring their fantastic product finds, just make me want to BUY more. Those like Hillary's, though, make me want to MAKE more, and just LIVE BETTER. Making is kind of a problem with me, too, but at least it's much less consumptive than buying. The die-hard craft bloggers are fanatic thrifters and scrap hoarders, too, and it was a craft blogger who finally convinced me to get rid of my bad plastics (even plunked down the pile for this lovely Kleen Kanteen, which, by the way, was worth it. Without me even prompting her, Marian commented right off on how much better her water tasted in it).

I digress. I think what really sold me on Ms. Lang's talent was seeing this turtle king in her Flickr set. When patterns for the same showed up in her shop, I was ecstatic. I badly wanted the creatures, but was equally impressed with the charm of the patterns' layout, in sweet and accurate instructional tri-folds. I've put them away over and over again, but keep pulling them out just so I can see them.

You can see in the top photo that my darlings got wee creatures to hide in their backpacks for the first day of school. Audrey's is a butterfly and Marian's a turtle, which was serendipity since her marvelous new teacher has 3 turtles in the classroom. I have had a hard time taking a photo of them since the girls have refused to leave them home with me at all this week. Now that it's Saturday & I have daylight photo privileges, you can see the turtle's crown is a bit smooshed: she is already well-loved. Which was the point.