Découpage: tear, crumple, stick

Scrape down the sides and bottom of the yogurt tub, preferably with God-given fingers till not a lick of it is wasted?

Guilty.

Stick a piece of bread in and hold it against the side of the jam and peanut butter bottles turning it around slowly with even pressure to scour every last bit of the goodness clinging on adamantly?

Guilty.

Save the gift wrapping paper/scraps after wrapping/unwrapping, including the tissue and any reusable/recyclable materials?

Guilty.

Indeed, D frequently shakes his head in disbelief giving me the bemused look of was it worth all the trouble? when he catches me squeezing the last drop of juice out of the tiny shriveled and dessicated lime which gave up its ghost about 2 weeks ago but sat patiently in the fridge awaiting salvation... but, he hasn't ventured to call me on it. Thus far, it has just been the not-so-subtle rolling of the eyes and casual sniggers...

However, I felt slightly vindicated a few weeks back when D saw Ana working on her découpage: he recognized the papers she was using for decoration as left over gift wrappings and tissue papers that I pried out of his recycle-happy tentacles not too long ago.

Ana seems to have taken to what I call Tear, Crumple, Stick art work. So, without further ado, here is another toddler activity I hit upon by accident one weekend that seems to still ride the high wave of novelty with Ana.

Materials: scraps of tissue paper or gift wrapping paper, standard 8x11 card stock paper in any color, craft glue.

Method: Dot the card stock with glue, tear the fancy printed paper, paste on the glued area on card stock, as Ana demonstrates in the inimitable dainty style she adopts for arts and crafts work at home that is tediously slow yet potentially delightful for the onlooker :)

I know.. she is only 2½ and I am not sure I had this much co-ordination or attention span at that age... anyway, I dilute the glue with some water so Ana can smear it all over the paper to her heart's content, and optionally, let Ana crumple the paper a bit before sticking it on the card stock.

Well, the "finished" work doesn't look like much as you can see below. But, as D points out, it is "original", if nothing else :)