The cardboard hotel I posted about last week has a new guest on the ground floor:

My few longtime readers might remember the cardboard skyscraper I made for my son last year based on a project in a book I found at a yardsale: “Woman’s Day Book of Best-Loved Toys & Dolls” published in 1982. Over the last few weeks, we tackled another project from the book, the cardboard apartment building. This time, rather than spend hours and hours measuring and drawing, I scanned the diagrams from the book, enlarged them using Photoshop, printed them on multiple sheets, taped them together, cut out the windows and then traced everything  onto cardboard. OK, so that still took hours, but it did not require tedious measuring. The downside was my cutting was probably a bit less precise, so this building is more wobbly than the skyscraper, which has held up beautifully over the last year.

Once again, I skipped most of the trim and extra embellishments, and I cut some of the windows so they could open and close. Parker painted the whole outside a light gray, then I used a Sharpie to draw the stones. He helped with the shading: a dash of darker gray crayon along the left side and bottom of each brick and a swipe of white paint along the top and right side.  Instead of an elevator like the other building, this one has a trap door and chute. Parker has decided it is a hotel, and our guests so far have included dinosaurs, cats, penguins, horses, and one slightly disgruntled cow.

Thanks for all the great suggestions for things I could make to give along with the book, and for your kind words.  And my husband is very thankful to have picked up a few new blog readers.

The winner is: MaryAnne at Mama Smiles! Please send me a note at hollyrh at gmail dot com with your address.

I’m interrupting this craft blog with a little non-crafty giveaway: my husband’s new cookbook! It is available at bookstores now, and he will be promoting it tomorrow morning (Monday) on Good Morning America! So please tune in between 8:30 and 9, and leave a comment below if you’d like to win the book. Of course I’m biased, but it is a great book. My husband is the national food editor for The Associated Press, and the basic idea of the book is using high-flavor ingredients to do the heavy lifting, instead of complicated techniques. I’ll pick a winner Wednesday morning.
For extra chances to win, do any or all of the following:
_ let me know that you are a subscriber to my blog
_ let me know that you are a subscriber to my husband’s blog
_ give me an idea for a cooking/eating/kitchen-related craft or sewing project. We’re probably going to be giving away some copies of the book as Christmas gifts, and I’d like to make a little something to go with them

UPDATE: There’s still plenty of time to enter the giveaway. Here’s his appearance on GMA:

Something new for this week’s entry into the “present a week ’til Christmas” challenge at Works in Progress. I won again last week, bringing my total to three out of the six weeks I’ve entered! At this rate, I will have to make even more gifts to keep up with the new fabric I’m winning!
Instead of sewing or felting, this week I finished a photo gift using the digital scrapbooking skills I’ve been neglecting for a while. It used to be my biggest (only?) hobby, but gradually I turned to more hands-on sewing and crafting. Here’s a sneak peak, and once again, if you don’t have the address to the “secret” blog where I’m posting all my gifts, just leave a comment below.

I am a bit bashful about posting this project: my entry into the “Embroidereading” contest at Checkout Girl Crafts. The rules called for embroidering a poem, either something you wrote, a quote from a favorite poem or song lyric or a child’s poem. My original plan was to have my son write something, but he had no interest, so I wrote this little snippet based on something that first struck me when I was very little. I love fall, and fall foliage, and I’ve always thought that leaves being blown down the street by wind look like a bunch of runners just starting a road race.

I might give this to my sister for our birthday in October since she likes to do a lot of fall decorating. But it feels a bit strange to give someone a poem. What if they don’t like it? My son asked me to read it to him, and when I told him about how I think the leaves look like a road race, he said, “Me, too!” And told me he liked the poem and that we should keep it. So maybe I will! I so rarely make anything for myself.

I’ve never done much embroidery, and it probably shows.

I fell behind on keeping up with the “present a week ’til Christmas” challenge at Works in Progress, but I’m back on track this week. If you’ve thought about joining the challenge, you might like to know that the odds are rather good. I’ve won twice already! (The prize is a  half-yard of fabric, and the winners are chosen at random)

If you missed my previous posts, please leave me a comment if you would like the address to the “secret” blog where I’m posting these projects so my friends and family won’t see them. Hopefully I have kept up with the requests, but if you haven’t heard from me, please give me another chance!

Coming up soon, pictures of the two dresses I made to wear to the wedding we attended last weekend. I think I went against most the advice I got here and didn’t add the flounce to the flowered dress, but it still looked nice. In fact, I may wear it to another wedding tomorrow.

I’m on vacation this week, but my husband is working so I’m hanging out with my almost-six-year-old son. Yesterday, we took a bus into Boston and went to the New England Aquarium. It was great, though I think he enjoyed the free fountain outside just as much. I made a list of fun projects for us to do, so I thought I’d post some of them here.

• Hot Rocks: (pictured above) We tried these a few days ago and they were a big hit. It was pretty neat to hold the tip of the crayon against the hot rocks and watch it melt. The colors got muddy pretty quick so the final result is not quite as vibrant as I imagined, but still a fun activity.
• Find a rainbow in the yard
• Needle felted stars
• Gigantic bubbles
• Treasure Stones/Dinosaur Eggs

(Just a note, it drives me crazy when my fellow journalists invent words by substituting one syllable with something that doesn’t fit at all. “Staycation” works ok because “Stay” rhymes with the syllable it replaces. But I recently saw the word “Bravolebrity” apparently meaning “a celebrity on Bravo.” UGH)

Here’s a sneak peek of my entry for Week 5 of the “present a week ’til Christmas” challenge at Work in Progress. Once again, if you’d like to see what I’ve been up to, please leave me a comment or email me and I’ll send you a link to the “secret” blog where I’m posting these projects so my friends and family won’t see them.