Necessity is the mother of invention

"Necessity is the mother of invention",
I believe this is true, but sometimes, being a mother also necessitates invention. I have been thinking of all the things I have created in my job as mother

Benedryl pops
There was a time when my daughter Ella had to have this lovely antihistamine every 4 hours for 5 days (due to her peanut allergy – I promise I wasn’t just trying to get some sleep.) After the second day, whenever she saw the dosing syringe come out, she ran. We had previously mixed said med with juice, but it was hard to predict if she would drink it all. In a flash of inspiration, at 3:30 AM I cut off the ends of an otter pop and filled the two sealed ends with benedryl and stood the little mini-pops up in my ice cube tray to freeze, the next two doses were an ease to get down and I thanked Heaven for it (while I ate the middle of the original otter pop!)


Expandable flat paper party hats
OK someone somewhere may have made these before, but they were probably made by another mom; who also forgot to buy party hats for their 3-year-old’s garden tea themed birthday party.


Brown bag birthday purses
This was a rough year for birthdays; my 5-year old decided the night before the party that we needed goodie bags. Instead of just giving the jewelry etc for the girls to wear at the princess party directly to them, we needed a method of containment and portability! It may seem extreme, but with a not yet 2 months old baby, a 3 year old, as well as said 5 year old, and a husband at work, anything seemed easier than a last minute run to the store. So, we made the purses from lunch-bags, ribbon and foam flowers left over from the aloha-themed-party the year before. Thanks to scrap-booking supplies I never seem to have time to use, the girls even had their bags monogrammed.


Recycled Hobby Horses
When it is raining for a week and your daughter declares that she and her sister NEED horses, you come up with these fine steeds
Lycee Lanterns
When you are Chinese, and you celebrate the New Year, you are given a lot of red envelopes, many of these you may reuse to give to other small children in your extended family, but some you must simply throw away, or must you?

In the past we have cut them up for valentines, glued them together to make belts, and cut them into tubes as bracelets (for tiny arms only.) This year Ella came up with a new idea, and together we refined it into the cutest little lanterns you ever saw (I haven’t lit them up yet, but I think Christmas lights would be cute)

Halloween Costumes

Ella at 4 wanted “Cinderella, but not the kind you buy” say hello to sequins and netting, and a lot of praying as you cut the fabric, pretending that you know how to make your own patterns and wishing you had taken that class in school.

Ella at 3 wanted to be a witch, no problem, but Liana at age almost 2 was inspired by Ella’s dance class and wanted to be a “peacock” Of course Peacock feathers are not cheap, so I ended up gluing a few brightly colored feathers together, and stamping a white "eye" on each stack, repeated a hundred times or so... and then sewing them on a Liberace worthy cape.

I love my work here at the experimental lab of life, what have you created out of need? I’d love to hear about it.!