Fun way to keep your children's art work

My daughter loves to draw and of course I think she is really good at it too. What I love about her drawings the most is discovering how she views the world differently from me. I have been keeping many of her drawings thinking someday I will frame and hang them on the wall. Recently though I have found a new and unique way to preserve her artwork.

I was looking at craft magazines recently and came across the idea of stitching a child's drawings on to fabrics. Wonderful, I thought! I also found a blog that used freehand embroidery to stitch art work with fabric directly. I decided to combine the two into one. I have never done hand stitching so I was unsure I could pull it off. I bought a self-teach book and finished everything yesterday.

Here is my daughter's drawing of an apple tree. Not bad for 3 year old, right?  She drew this in June of this year. I adore this artwork so I decided to use it for my 1st attempt at hand stitching.

I used 4 different fabrics (5 if you include the actual fabric I stitched on). It is hard to see but I used two different red fabrics for apples. I used dark brown threads for the stitching.

I am thinking about turning it into either a pillow case, a small bag for my daughter, or a small quilted blanket, a lovey. I'm open to suggestions.

People ask me how I have the time to do this. The answer is "I don't have time to do this." My house is a mess right now, there is too much laundry to be folded, toys to be put away, and so on. A stay-at-home mom's job is pretty much the same everyday. Even if you clean, fold laundry, organize the house, and cook meals for your family - somehow the house still becomes messy, the laundry still piles up, and we all need to eat 3 times a day, everyday.

There is no deadline for these jobs and there is no end either. Through all of this I realized that in order for me to have time to do what I like I would have to make time. It is hard to ignore laundry and a messy house but sometimes I just have to forget about them. Ultimately I don't have time to do everything so I have to make sacrifices here and there. For example, I worked on this fun project last night while kids were sleeping, sitting on a couch with clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away, while kids toys were all over the floor around me, and the clock ticking well past midnight.

Mom has to do what makes her happy sometimes. Happy mom (Happy wife) = Happy family, right?