We Made Baby Dolls

We thought that it would be fun to make tiny baby dolls after seeing some cute handmade ones on the internet. The timing was perfect with reading "Little House In The Big Woods". We had just read about Laura and Mary's baby dolls. Here is a picture of Sweetpea's, Peanut's and my baby dolls.

Sweetpea's (purple), Mama's (floral) and Peanut's (pink)

Here is a brief and rough tutorial on how we made them:
To make the head, we drew a circle onto flesh colored knit fabric. We used one of our glasses with a diameter of about 3-4". Cut out the circle. Sew closely inside of the circle with a long running stitch. When you get around to where you started, pull the thread to draw up the fabric. Stuff with fluff and pull the opening closed. We used a thin nylon fabric and covered the head. We wrapped the thread around the "neck" a few times and then tied it.

To make the body I drew a template and then traced it onto the fabric, cut it out and then cut it into 2 equal pieces (see photo below). 

Stitch along the sides and rounded bottom leaving the top open. Turn right side out and stuff with fluff. Insert the "neck" part of the head into the body and stitch closed. We added eyes and cheeks.

Mama's baby doll

Peanut's baby doll with eyes and cheeks

We used squares of flannel and wrapped them up all snuggly.

We sewed all of the edges down to hold the blankets on the babies. And here are Peanut's and Sweetpea's Babies.

Thanks for reading!

Churning Butter

We have been reading "Little House In The Big Woods" and comparing that era with ours. We have been discussing how we would have liked to live back then and also some of the hardships of then and what we would miss from now. We definately like the simplicity back then.
In Chapter two Laura, Mary and Ma made butter from the cream from their cows. We've made butter many times by shaking cream in a small jar. We have a butter churn that has been in my family since it was made. We hadn't used it but thought that we would give it a try today.

Lucy pouring in the cream

We thought that we would start small. We used a half gallon of cream and began churning.

My girlies started churning but only lasted a few minutes each. Then it was my turn. I churned for 20 minutes and check out what our cream turned into. 

We scraped down the sides, strained the contents and got...

two containers of butter and about a quart of buttermilk. We all tried the buttermilk and it actually tastes pretty good. We also enjoyed our freshly made butter on crackers and bread. Too bad we didn't make our own bread today to put the butter on. For any of you who are I Love Lucy fans, like I am, "homemade bread with home-churned butter".

thanks for reading.