The post office has been good to me recently, and you are now guaranteed that if I have five minutes of quiet, I’m bound to have my nose glued to one of these (not that these mythical moments happen too often recently). Each is so full of inspiring ideas, it kills me. You can count on seeing bits and pieces here that got their start in one of these books.

{unfortunately, this has turned into a wicked-short post as I have a laundry list of things that needed doing yesterday — including laundry, incidentally. Do click on the images to learn more about these books. I’m hoping to get back into a proper blog groove soon}

Now that we’re settling into the house (slooowly), I’m starting to get the itch to have some creative fun once again. This is especially a good thing since I’ve got a swap to ship out this weekend!!). It was so hard to even contemplate doing fun crafts with the kids when I was going through the move and working full-time, and packing, and mothering, and wifing…

I’m so glad that Bloesem Kids is around  and chock-full of creative goodness for me to soak in. I’m especially tempted to try out some of Arounna Khounnoraj’s craft projects which are beautifully photographed, and explained in a clear, straight-forward manner (no thinking required!).

If you have creative sites that inspire you, please share, I’m always on the lookout for new perspectives

Molly is hosting her third annual mini-swap, and sign-ups start on Tuesday morning at 10am ET (do not forget this date & time!). This is a wonderful project where children (and their families) around the world are matched up for a little swap of creative goodness. Do head over to read all about it!

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And a sincere thank you to all of you who have left me notes of sympathy here and by email (and on facebook, and on maya’s mom!). I really do appreciate your kind thoughts.

My work schedule is a bit, uh… busy this week so I’m having to continue my stroll about the blogosphere in search of more creative inspiration instead of actually doing anything creative. My idea is that even if I don’t ever actually do these wonderful projects, I’ll at least have a faint memory of them embedded in my over-full noggin. Whenever the kids are desperate for something new to do, all I have to do is let the echoes of these posts inspire me. I hope they help you, too.

Write, Mama. Write. has shared a sweet heart-shaped Christmas ornament she made with her boy over the Holidays. This is one that looks so easy to replicate, I think the main thing is to have a good heart template — my hand-drawn hearts always come out wonky & wobbly

tiny happy shared (way back in December!) a link to this great no-sew tutu tutorial. We know a bunch of little ballerinas who would probably definitely like these. I’m thinking this is a perfect project for Maggie and Bjørn to help make.

Amanda (aka SouleMama) has shared the bird calendar her kids worked on all last year that she had printed by Lulu.com to send out as gifts this year. I love the idea of having a quality bound printing of a child’s work and already have a number of ideas in mind (Bjørn’s been telling me about the comic book he’s been working on at school, and Maggie collaborated on a fairy-tale with her best friend last year). Tomas self-published his children’s book with Lulu and we’ve been incredibly happy with the quality so far.

I’ve you’ve taken up knitting again as I have, you’ll appreciate this bind off tutorial on the purl bee

&, before I head to bed, I’ll just state for the record how very much I still miss Kiddley, I hope Claire decides to bring it back one day!

PS … I was off to bed but had to follow just one. more. link… to DIY Kids, the book that I’ve just put on order, used to be a blog!

Continuing on yesterday’s meandering walk about the craft-blogosphere…

Amy has posted about paper cuts. Tomas (the husband) is from Denmark, and every time we visit I am mesmerized by the paper craft. We have heart-shaped paper mobiles, tree-shaped paper ornaments, Danish stars on our Christmas tree, snow-flake templates, craft-books, you-name-it. If it’s a paper cut, you know I’ll be interested. As an example of how happy I was at Maggie’s efforts at paper-cutting, I even went so far as to buy her her own craft knife (crazy-sharp) and  cutting mat to encourage her paper-enthusiasm. (this might make me the crafting variety of a stage-mom, I’m not sure…).

This is the sweetest thing I’ve read in a long time.

BloesemKids was launched in December — how is it possible that I was so preoccupied as to miss it?! This is guaranteed to be the place to go in 2008 for impeccable design, and gorgeous inspiration.

I happened upon Cheeky Beaks this weekend, and I’m hooked. It was one of those moments where I found myself thinking *I could do that*! And then realized acknowledged that, no, I really can’t, and isn’t it a wonderful world we live in that there are people walking about with real talent? Do take a moment to click through her archives, there’s a ton of loveliness there to discover.

Melissa has posted the cutest House and Car toppers, going so far as to share her templates. CUTE!!

Gabriella shared a link to design your own snow-flake. At first I was irritated with the site, but when I saw my completed snowflake, I’ll admit I was hooked. They made my random clippings look incredible!

Ok… I can see my list of inspiring posts and sites is just going to grow-and-grow, so I’m going to break it up yet again. I’ll post some more tomorrow, but I’m thinking after that I’ll have to come up with a weekly-round-up. If you find any links I ought to check out, please share them in the comments