Happy Friday!

Jean, over at the Artful Parent blog, has frequently sung the praises of The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections (Trumpeter Books, 2008) by Amanda Blake Soule. On Saturday, during my weekly trip to the local library, I was browsing the new books and, to my delight, I found this little gem of a book! I immediately snatched it up, and the only thing that disappoints me about The Creative Family is that I will have to eventually return it to the library! I wish I could keep it forever. I guess I’ll have to head over to Amazon!

The Creative Family is chock-full of amazing insight and fun projects. In the following weeks, I plan to try out as many of these projects as I possibly can, and I’ll share them here on my blog.

The day after I checked the book out, I bought some elastic and made reconstructed shorts for both of my kids.  Since they were made out of my old shirts and I already had matching thread, all I had to purchase was the elastic, and it made one pair of shorts for my son, and two for my daughter! In total, I paid $2.76 for three pairs of oh-so-comfortable, perfectly wearable kids’ shorts! I’m so jazzed about this project that I’m going to scour the Salvation Army this weekend for old shirts that would make neat shorts!! 

My son has plenty of pairs of solid color shorts, and when I offered to make him some reconstructed shorts, he agreed, on one condition: they had to be “stripey.” Here are his “new” shorts:

I had an old pink shirt that I didn’t wear any more, which made perfect girly shorts for my daughter (Isn’t she a HAM??!?):

Plus, these shorts will match perfectly with some of the Sunny Day Tank Tops I’ve made for her! Yay!

If anyone reading this knows of any other reconstructed clothing projects (tutorials preferred), I’d LOVE to hear about them!

If you’d like to know more about Amanda Blake Soule, read her Artful Parent Interview, and of course visit the Soule Mama blog. You can also buy the book now by visiting Amazon.