What We've Been Up To: Twirling Sticks

Friday, May 22, 2009

Twirling Sticks

After making my princess some petticoats (see previous craft post) I had lots of ribbon scraps and several fake flower stems left over. Basically it's a stiff wire with green plastic coating over it. I wasn't sure what to do with them but figured they had to be good for something. Here's what I did:

Trim the plastic off of one end of the fake flower stem. Take about a yard or so of ribbon and tie it to the exposed wire end of the stem. Fold the wire over the ribbon knot and then wind it around the top of the stem to hold the ribbon securely. That's it! For a couple of them I added extra different colors & sizes of ribbon for more flare. Simple, sure, but I'll tell you that both of my kids play with them constantly. Of course, she dances with them and he pretends it's a whip (don't worry, they're too soft to hurt) or a fishing pole, but play is play, right?

PS-I suppose this would also make a great cat chase toy but we don't own cats so you'll have to test that out on your own.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt

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Friday, May 22, 2009

Twirling Sticks