We are Pumpkin+Bear

Look what my awesome little kiddo learned in school this week:

The teachers incorporated 15 minutes of singing into the daily curriculum this semester, and so the kid's absorbent little mind is chock-full of folk songs now: This Land is Your Land, Where is Thumbkin, Looby-Lu, The Paw-Paw Patch, The Name Game--if Pete Seger sang it, my kid knows it. Thursdays are request days, and although I keep secretly wishing that the kid would request something that rocks, like Rufus Wainwright or Kimya Dawson, she's pretty into her teacher's lap dulcimer-thingy.

In other news, the family here is deep into prep for Strange Folk, festival of awesomeness, which is NEXT WEEKEND! For those of you who will be there with bells on, my booth is #243, by the tennis courts. There are still some things that I'd like to make, but this coming week is all about display and branding. We're going to buy a cheapo EZ-Up from Sam's this weekend and set it up in the basement playroom for a mock booth, and then after Strange Folk we're going to return that EZ-Up, because the EZ-Ups from Sam's suck. Matt is in process designing me a logo that I can freezer paper stencil onto some shirts for us and perhaps potato stamp onto bags or print onto fabric that I've soaked in Bubble Jet set. Here's the one he made that I like the best--

--but Matt has to make me a simpler design for the stencils, so I don't have to deal with all those islands on the bear or the thin little lines on the pumpkin.

And in between cleaning house, and sewing one more miniature T-shirt quilt (I can't stop!), and finding a big bag of wet laundry that I put out on the back porch YESTERDAY and never got around to hanging up, and having a friend over to cut out felt shapes for our felt boards, and zipping by the grocery store with the little kid (Bob's Red Mill pancake mix and baked dessert mixes were on SALE!!!), the kids and I worked on a table cover for one of the two tables that I'll have in my booth.

In my artist's statement, I think I made it clear that I consider all my work collaborative with my kids, and so I wanted that to be reflected in the booth display. While I hope that my other display items will be a little more sedate, most of the table covers will be, well, covered, anyway, so we went all out. We painted and colored--

--and cut and collaged (the books are usually outdated textbooks or children's books that we get for free from various places and they live in one special bin in the art room--not even the toddler is confused by what books we cut and color in and what books we don't, and the toddler cuts the couch and colors on the walls)----and the end result might be a little wacky--

--but you can surely tell that some joyful children participated in its creation.

Next up, a bunting and the logo T-shirts for the family. Also, the preschooler wants to make and sell something, too, and I'm all for the idea...but I can't think of what! I tried sewing her some books out of old book pages for her to dictate stories in and illustrate them, but they're so precious that I can't sell them! Could she attractively color on old picture book pages or other vintage papers and I could turn them into greeting cards? Model stuff out of dryer lint dough? Paint rocks?

Any ideas?