--have not left the living room carpet since they arrived, they're so fun. They're both crazy-intricate, with each tiny state its own tiny puzzle piece in the US puzzle and each tiny ocean its own piece in the world puzzle, although each big ocean is an awesomely big piece and each continent is its own piece, and? There's a compass built in!I originally bought them for crafting because the world puzzle is missing a couple of its fiddly little oceans and the US puzzle is missing Kansas and Rhode Island, but the girls adore them (and actually I do, too), and Willow learned where California and Nevada live, so there you go.
I am a huge fan of divided plates (I would KILL for a set of elementary school cafeteria trays), so I'm all about these three orange divided plates that I found:
And do not worry, friends and family--Matt and I own these swab thingies that test for lead, and they're all-clear. Can you imagine, though? Instead of the CPSC bullying through that ridiculously overwrought CPSIA which will leave me without a job and without anyplace to buy stuff, they could just make lead swab test kits cheap and readily available, and we citizens could just handle our own shit, thank you very much.
The biggest hit of the day, however?
Paper doilies.
I almost didn't buy them because it was the day after Valentine's Day and doilies are kinda Valentine-y, don't you think, but then I was all, "Oh, they're going to cost like five cents and the girls will like them."
The girls do like them--negative space is fun space--but I think I may like them more. On account of look at the awesome stuff I made:
Goth doily pinbacks! I heart them crazy much. I like how they're partly fussy, but also all cool in their black-and-white at the party way, and I'm an especial fan of how the intricate and fancy doily pattern makes no sense in such a small scale.
And in yet another example (as if you needed another example) of how the girls inspire me and how all my work is collaborative work with them, blah blah, their interest in rainbows--drawing rainbows, reading about rainbows, having me pull up Google Image photos of rainbows, etc.--has led me to create, off and on in my sketchbook, an entire list of rainbow-themed crafts that I'm excited about doing. And when faced with doilies, a hole punch, and pretty paper, I made this: 
I made a bunch for myself and my girlies, but I'll be putting these two sets up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop tomorrow. My pinbacks have been hitting the spot lately for some people, and I'm interested in seeing how these versions, which I like kind of crazy much, go over.
You can expect to see lots of frantic paper crafting out of me in the next few days, because Matt took my sewing machine to the repair shop (either it needs a new face plate, or the little girls need to stop touching it when I'm not looking), and the repair shop man said that we could expect it back in about 10 days.
He was just kidding, right?
Right?
2 comments:
cosmo is slightly obsessed with geography and maps and such, so we got him a (new) united states floor puzzle. it doesn't look as cool as yours, and it is hard to keep the pieces all together, since they don't really interlock, but he loves it. his first question, when looking at any map (even the city bus map) is "where's texas?" so, he's learned the shape of texas, and a bunch of other states. i'd love to have a world one too.
i, too, love divided plates. i found a reproduction of a school cafeteria lunch tray at target a couple of years ago. same material, color and size that i recall from childhood. i feel like i have to work hard to find something for each section, but it seems to appeal to cosmo.
i adore those black and white doily pinbacks. so chic.
I can still remember a US map puzzle that I had when I was a very small child. The best thing about it was that on either side, it had a personification of Wind blowing toward the middle--East on one side, West on the other.
I look around for it on ebay every now and then.
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