Channelling Martha

My son came home last week with assignment called “Structure”.  It required him to make something, from scratch, using raw materials.  The teacher also wanted to see the design, the plan and the resources. As you can imagine, I was nervous.

I’m not crafty and I’m not very good at building anything.  I turned to the web and found all the resources to be overwhelming and too hard – Google is great and all, but sometimes it’s all too much.

That is, however, until I came upon the Martha Stewart website.  I’ve used the site in the past for recipes, but had never looked at the crafts section. It was unbelievable.  She had a tutorial for exactly what we needed:  We chose our raw material to be popsicle sticks and our structure to be a house.

Martha gave us a blow-by-blow pictorial on every step.  We followed it meticulously and it worked!  Of course, it didn’t turn out as perfect as hers (see top picture), but it was pretty close – and we added a rainbow roof!

The best part of the experience was sitting down with my son to do something together.  I realised, in the process, that we never do that. I drive him to places, we are in the house simultaneously, but rarely do we engage in an activity together.  I do crafts with my girls, and I cook with them too. But with him, it’s always me telling him what to do – piano, homework, chores – but nothing collaborative.  It was so rewarding  – looking at the plans together, laying out the materials, figuring out the slightly scary but oh-so-wonderful glue gun, the joy at seeing the walls come together –  and then the shared pride in our creation. So fun.  I had to hide my disappointment when the exercise was finished. 

This house sits on our mantle now and reminds me of that experience.  I’m eager for the next project.