Maya Road and Me

Fun Things

We have some fun new things coming out this week; here are some projects I created with them. Hope you enjoy it. Do you spot the new things?

Repurpose

Kids grow so fast. I blink and a shirt that Olivia wore for 5 months suddenly is out of season and I knoe it won't fit her next year.  For shirts like those, I have decided I will stretch their use in two ways.

Step 1: cut off the sleeves and add some fun motifs to it. This is what I did to the shirt above. It was a long sleeve shirt that won't fit her next year but with some handy scissors, I turned it into something suitable for Texas Summers. To make it fun, I added a typewriter from some scrap fabric I have and ironed it onto batting and stitched it to the shirt. 

Step 2: If after this Season we still adore this shirt, I will grab some knit fabric from my stash and add a ruffle to the bottom of the shirt. It only needs a 3"wide piece of gathered knit to be able to last her through next Season.

Then there are the shirts that Olivia will "experiment" on. Olivia had this beautiful shirt that I adored but for some reason she would always hold markers facing her shirt and there would be permanent doodles all over i. Ironically, dry erase markers do not come off shirts. 

So for our fun run in June, where little miss will be in a jogging stroller, I created her a fun moustache shirt:

All the dry erase marker pen marks were covered in fusible vinyl. The shirt now is still useable but with a cute touch to it. 

Repurposing shirts and such is one of my favorite things to do when I have time. 

A Wonderful Weekend.

This weekend, I got the chance to spend some quality one on one time with my son Noah. It has been a while since it has just been him and I:

Almost 3.5 years now since Olivia arrived. Noah has always been a gracious big brother. He is never jealous, never spiteful and always loving to his little sister.

And I have to say how much I enjoyed my time with Noah this weekend.  Olivia is still of the age where she still clings to me a bit and Noah is big enough to do most things on his own. We started this weekend training for a 5k run we will do in June. He ran a pretty decent 2 miles on Saturday. I tried to instill in him some tips on how to most efficiently run and optimize his energy levels.

We also worked on a school project. He had to make an Orca for class. We ventured out to get some black duck tape and white duck tape. He decided to use up some old Maya Road packaging we had to create the frame for the orca:

He wrote up some fun facts about Orcas to go with his model:

I cut out the pieces of duct tape and he taped up the Orca all by himself. Noah was so happy when he was done.

We also worked on making some slime this weekend:

Some PVA glue, borax we added to solution. We didn't have any food coloring at home so I decided to see if we could create something with our Maya Mist as the coloring. Happily it worked as the mist was (when mixed into the glue) pretty much a part of the polymer and did not bleed out:

Noah was fascinated by this polymer. It was a cool way to introduce him to the properties of some polymers. He would shape the slime into a ball and see how high it would bounce. He would stretch it and see if it would last as a bracelet. Hours and hours of entertainment from some simple ingredients!

Most of all, I got to enjoy my time with my son on this Mother's Day simply because of who he is. Things are different when there is another child (or other children) in the picture. The interactions, the fights, the needs of the others interferes simply with the true being of my Noah. And I am so thankful I got to spend this time with him while my hubby and Olivia were on a trip.

It is hard to believe he came into our lives almost 7 years ago. In front of me, I have one of the sweetest, most honest, kindest children I have ever met. Noah has skills I didn't posess til I was older. In a few years, some of his academic abilities might actually surpass mine and it is hard to believe he is only 6 years old. The time I had with my boy has been such a wonderful gift and one of the best Mother's Day presents I have ever gotten. I love you, my son.

A New Look At Cameras

It is hard to believe that Summer is almost here! With that comes fun days of not wearing fleece pants and tights all the time.

I purchased some fabric about 2 months ago when I wanted to make a skirt for my little girl. I started it this week:

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the skirt bottom so I thought about it and decided to add some tulle to soften it up:

A nice skirt that Olivia will be able to wear for all seasons:

In fact, I love this skirt so much, I am going to make one for myself. The waist will be a yoga band one since I am not as petite as my baby girl. And I am not a pink tulle gal but will think about what I add for the bottom of the skirt.

Hope you all are having a creative week!

A New Week

It is almost the beginning of a new week here. I like to spend the evening of Sundays to think about what I need to accomplish for the week and things coming up. 

I am happy to announce that Maya Road will be featured on HSN this week (Tuesday and Wednesday) - the schedule is not set in stone yet but we are expected to be on 4 times. This has been a very exciting process for us and I am totally stoked about it.

Part of the process of HSN is getting projects created to be shown during the segments. While some of the projects have been created by some members of my Design Team, I have been busy too:

I created a bunch of projects to be displayed during the show. If you look closely at the photo you will see that there is dust on my buffet but with everything going on it was work/create or dust and you can see what got the priority.

I am a big fan of simple projects like this one (which took about 1 hour to create if you don't count drying time)

And this one:

Just little things. We are excited about this opportunity to bring Maya Road to a wider audience to show what you can do with basics and turn them into something fabulous! Can't wait to see the segments!