I've found a lot of pants from my husband in a bin when we switched our winter clothes with our summer clothes. He said he wanted to throw them away.....Oh, no, you won't!!!
I was thinking what to do with them. The fabric is nice, sometimes thick and sturdy, so my idea was to make pillow cases out of them. The inside pillows I bought at IKEA.
I started to cut 2 rectangles out of the pants.
Sew those rectangles together and the short side. Iron the seam. Fold about 5 inches right side together on both sides. Sew, cut the corners and fold inside out. Push the corners out. Fold both sides and overlap both sides inside out. Sew the sides like the picture below. And flip the case inside out.

From the rest of the pants I've cut as much circles as I could (size of the bottom of a glass). Sometimes I got 30, sometimes 10.
With fabric paint (the color you like and the color that fits best with the fabric) you paint the circles and let them dry. Then you hotglue the circles in the center so it forms a flower. If you add more of these circles, then you get the flower effect shown in the picture. I hand sewed them on the pillowcase. Done!

We are going on a trip in a few weeks. We won't stay within the US, but we're going to Europe. That means 5 hours driving to Chicago and then about 8 hours in the plane. I have a 4 and a 5 year old. Can you guess what I'm thinking? Of course, what are they going to do all those hours. The nice thing is on the way to Europe, my husband will be with us and it is a night flight, so the kids will fall asleep at a certain point, but on the way back I'll be by myself and it'll be a day trip. So here is what I thought of and we are going to test it out. I'm also going to replace activities for the way back.I'm into recyclable materials, so I flipped a big cereal box inside out and glued it together again. I cut the top in a pointy shape so the box has a flap. I bought little velcro circles and put them on the flap so it closes.On the sides I made 2 holes. In the box I put several activities the kids can play with and create cool things with. I made a box for a 4-year old boy and one for a 5-almost-6-year old girl and these are the things that I put in the boxes:

1. 1. coloring page (print from the internet)
2. 2. stickers
3. 3. box with crayons
4. 4. pencil
5. 5. pipe cleaners in different colors
6. 6. color by numbers (print from the internet)
7. 7. look for the 10 differences (print from the internet)
8. 8. maze (print from the internet)
9. 9. origami paper
10. 10. puzzle (Target or Walmart)
11. 11. wool or yarn to make friendship bracelets.
12. 12. coloring page with watercolors on top of the page. Just have water with a Q-tip and they can color.
13. 13. For her: 2 pieces of 5"x5" glitter foam squares with holes on one side and white paper 4,5"x4,5" squares (about 10) with holes on one side. She can make her own note book or journal. Tie it together with yarn or wool.
14. 14. Some small baggies with snacks.

This is a very cheap way and I hope they'll have hours of fun.
You can add other things in the box like Lego or a small photo frame made of cereal box card board to decorate.
By the way, the box can be decorated too with stickers and crayons. Tie yarn or wool through the holes and you have a handbag or purse.

i am so impressed with my daughter. She started to read books and writing her own stories. It is so cute to see how she does this, writing phonetically (sp?) For example "dodr" for "daughter". She wrote a letter to the Easter Bunny saying that she colored the eggs, so he can hide them (she wrote "hidum").
We were very happy with her teacher. She was very patient and we had a good way of communication. So here is a "thank you", my daughter and I made for her.
The cool thing about this project is that you only use 3 fat quarters and you mix and match the fabrics you like. Gosh, I had fun at Jo-Ann's Fabric.
The bag tutorial you can find on www. thehappyzombie.com/pb. It is easy and fun too! 
Instead of using the chosen fabric for one of the side pockets I used a white piece of cloth, so Julia could draw and write something on there with fabric paint.
This is the result. 
Have fun crafting!!! Thanks to all the teachers out there!!!

We are getting more and more publicity. We are collecting some money here and there and people are asking us questions about GoJindy. One of cool things that happened was, that we were asked to have an interview here on our local radio station.

Thanks everyone for your donations. It has been crazy, but I think we did a good job to receive $1000. Read more about our GoJindy news on "Craft Cafe".
Now we can focus on the crafting again:)
We made some perks for our donors, that was fun:

There were 3 magnets, key chains, a photo frame and t-shirts.