Picnic in the Park with Presents

Today, I am exhausted and totally overworked and stressed, but yesterday...

Having no extra money to spend on a birthday party for the girls after their Walking with Dinosaurs Live birthday present (as an experience of pure awesomeness, it was worth every penny), we walked over to the park less then a block from our house and spread several blankets in the shade of the girls' favorite climbing tree. We laid out a ton of yummy yet easy food out on the blankets--
--and we brought a few toys:
For those who grew tired, of toys, of course, there was a huge playground to run around on: At first we meant to invite only a few people:But when somehow the number of invitees tripled, we weren't broken up at all:I never can be the parent who writes "no presents, please" on the invitations, even though I know it's the thing to do. Making or buying a small present is actually my favorite thing about shepherding a daughter to another kid's birthday party, and being Southern, it's nearly an impossibility for me to refrain myself from taking something to one of those "no present" parties--that's how five-year-olds end up getting things like bouquets of flowers from us, because I'm busy just thinking of ways to thwart the rules. And the girls' party was blithely free of that draconian policy, and so the girls got lots of wonderful, creative, very thoughtful gifts, and they adored every one.

I did not sew matching party outfits for the girls (I know--gasp!). I did not applique their ages onto T-shirts. I did not make favor bags for the children, full of homemade art supplies and small sewn teys. I did not construct any games or activities for the party, no beanbag toss game with home-sewn beanbags or pinata done with glue-y newspaper dried over a balloon. I did not bake an elaborate birthday cake, nor did I decorate the brownies I did bake.

And that is how, although for the rest of the time until we leave for California very shortly I intend to be a total wreck--this morning, for instance, I have to make the house at least look like we live normally in it because a guy is coming at nine o'clock to install basic cable (the girls and I could not care less that we lost all our network channels during the switch to digital, but my dear heart needs to watch sports for his birthday present), and then I have to finish these crayon rolls to ship and sew dresses for the girls to wear to the wedding and finish my own skirt and go shopping for a wedding present (I can't stand to shop from the registry but I'm also not stupid enough to make something for the bride and groom, so my standard gift is an assortment of local jams, soaps, honey, and wine) and write a billion more Green Options posts because in my head I've already spent that substantial bonus and, you know, do stuff with the girls all day, and then find time to pack, which I'm actually looking forward to, because it will mean that basically all that crap is done--for the birthday party of my dear girls, who please me with their pleasure and delight me with their delight and fill me with joy at the sight of their joy, I was able to honor their carefree happiness with my own:

And now, back to work.

I Bought a Lot of Crayolas

First, let me tell you that I NEED a lot of crayons and markers and colored pencils. Not only are the girls and I doing some random art project more often than we're not doing some random art project, but I also make crayon rolls and marker rolls and colored pencil rolls to sell, and they sell better if there are crayons or markers or colored pencils already in them. AND that's my go-to handmade gift for every birthday and other gift-giving holiday. AND the girls seem to think that I should make them a new crayon roll or marker roll or colored pencil roll every time they see me making another batch to sell. And so of course I do.

And second, let me tell you that I usually buy my supplies in bulk through Dick Blick. They sell classpacks of Crayola supplies (don't even get me started--yes, I am a brand snob, because Crayola is BETTER), which sets me up for about a year with, for instance, crayons for the girls, crayons to sell with their crayon rolls, and crayons to include with presents, for about eight cents a crayon. It's about a quarter per marker there for the good ones, and I also take those to class sometimes for editing projects that my students do.

And so what if I told you that Wal-mart, in its back-to-school section, was selling Crayola Crayon 24-packs for 25 cents each? And that Target was selling 10-packs of thin line and broad line markers for $1.00? And colored pencils? Thereby allowing me to stock back up on my supplies, without waiting for shipping, a crazy LOT cheaper than I've ever seen them before (yay, lousy economy!)? And that now, when I sell a crayon roll, there will be about eight cents worth of crayons in that roll, instead of about 64 cents of crayons? And that adds up for my profit?

You'd say, "Buy, Julie! Buy a very many of these things that you need and that are on sale!"

And so I did:
The other super-good deals that I'd recommend are the glue sticks at Target, which are 20 cents for a two-pack. The girls like these so much that I bought quite a lot, even though the amount of packaging that goes into that little stick of glue is just gross. And at Wal-mart, one-subject notebooks are 15 cents each. I bought a few of these, assuming that I'd find a use for them sometime, for scrapbooks or project books or whatever for the girls.

So yeah, there are hundreds of Crayola products just sitting there on my coffee table. I know I ought to box them up and store them until I need them, but still...there they sit.

They just look so pretty, you know?

It's a Wrap!

By all rights, the girls should have been tearing the house apart on this rainy day until we finally gave up and left to spend the day at the library or Wonderlab or wherever, but after a nice breakfast together and an hour or so spent dying dried pasta weird colors, the girls basically spent the rest of the day having one long playdate with each other, leaving me to blog and sew and bake banana bread and catch up with my reading (You should totally be my Goodreads friend, by the way). I know, I know--the life of a stay-at-home mom is dang hard. But today was not one of the days in which I wanted to tear out my hair by 10:00 am.

Hallelujah.

And that is why I am basically done with the yard sale wrap skirt I've been sewing from:



Basically=I'll tell you in a minute. And ad nauseum. And I know you want to hear all about the many and varied modifications I made to the pattern. First, however, I'll show you the photos that occurred during a break in the rain when I changed into my new skirt (I'm also wearing the new bra, and I offer the news flash that non-nursing bras are not as comfortable as nursing bras), took the girls outside, and asked them to take turns taking photos of me in my new skirt:

I'm trying to get my head in the shot:

Still trying to get my head in:Shot nearly missed me entirely that time:I took this one (and yes, I do have funky tan lines on my feet, and I do let my daughters paint my toenails, and those are acrylic paint stains on our sidewalk):I give up--who needs another shot of my face, anyway?I'm much more pleased with this skirt than I thought I would be, mid-sewing--and also, I NEVER wear skirts or dresses, but a wedding is an emergency, wouldn't you say? And I haven't ruled out making a peasant top out of this same fabric and wearing it with dress pants, either, so don't think I'm skirt-committed, now.

This skirt was made from part of a queen-size sheet that I found at the Goodwill Outlet Store--I bet it cost me no more than 25 cents. And there is enough left of the sheet to make a peasant top, I really think, although I might have to do part of the sleeves in a different fabric.

And yes, the fact of the sheet begs the question--yes, I did find both the matching pillowcases, as well, and yes, I will be sewing matching dresses for my daughters to match with me. The campy transvestite in me wants to make Matt a matching tie, too, so we can look like we're going to some creepy family prom, but I will definitely restrain myself and perhaps just hem him a matching hanky for his suit pocket.

For you fellow plus-sized ladies, my waist is about 36", and I had to add two entire extra panels to this six-panel wrap skirt. This means that I also can't use the waistband and ties part of the pattern, either. I haven't finished the waist, but I'm 99% sure that my solution will be a bias tape hemmed waist, and kilt pins (read: safety pins) to fasten the skirt. Instead of the hand-sewn rolled hem that the instructions also called for, I machine-stitched a rolled hem with a satin stitch set to a short stitch length, and I think it looks very nice.

Now...shoes?

What I Want for My Birthday (Besides World Peace)

I am blogging a LOT for Green Options this month. I am sewing the perfect fancy outfits for myself and my girls. I am going through hell trying to find an acceptable non-nursing bra for the first time in five years (when you become a 34F, many conventional bra-shopping avenues are now closed to you). I am catching up with old friends via Facebook. I am not, apparently, catching up on my email correspondence (seriously, if you want to hear from people, you should join Facebook). I am planning some activities to do while we're in California (I'm pretty sure that yes, I CAN just go to Pebble Beach every day). I am deciding what I want for my birthday:

obscure lenses and filters for my Canon Digital Rebel a Cricut
a Blu-Ray player with streaming Netflix a butt-load of acrylic paints

oh, and a Kindle

Because I have such simple tastes, you see.

Make My Felt Menagerie

Tonight is the Conor Oberst concert, which means I have to track down what my friend Molly so earthily calls my "booby shirt," and put together dinner and a movie to take over to the dear mom friend I have coerced into babysitting for me tonight (she has a newborn, so I figure she'd be up late anyway). This is also our last full week in town before our California trip, so I also have to make outfits for me and the girls to wear to a wedding we'll be attending, which will mean altering my dressmaker's dummy and possibly buying the girls matching baby blue Dr. Martens AND trying once again to convince Matt to get his ill-fitting cheap suit altered, and I need to find someone to catsit and take care of the garden while we're gone, AND the girls' birthday party is on Sunday so I need to make some party favors and put together a game or two, not to even mention the lesson plans I should be prepping for my cloth diapering class this Saturday or the fall semester which starts next month...


This is all to explain why the girls and I have been doing none of that, but instead have been using stencils to make an elaborate felt menagerie for their felt board:
You can use any kind of one-piece stencil that you already have, or you can make your own stencils from good profile or silhouette images from books. Scan them as black-and-white documents at a really high contrast and at the width/height that you want, then print them at fast draft resolution to save ink and cut them out. Or you can feel free to copy and print my horse--
--or my wren:Once you have the stencil cut out of paper, it's a straightforward matter to trace the pattern onto a piece of recycled acrylic felt with a fine-tipped Sharpie, then cut it out with your smallest pair of sewing scissors. At five, Will is able to trace a pretty passable horse all by her ownself: You can also, clearly, color these felt guys with the Sharpies: I haven't tried anything else, like fabric paint or acrylic paint, but I imagine they would work, as well.


My goal is to make a few sets of a bunch of animals in different colors and sizes, good for color matching or color ordering, size matching or size ordering, grouping by type of animal, or just, you know, playing, but I found the tracing and cutting actually kind of tedious, so it's a project that I think I'll need to save for some movie-watching sessions. It was an engrossing project for the girls, however, and I didn't anticipate how much they'd enjoy decorating the felt shapes: And they're braver than me, because although I tend to stick to stencils, they'll venture into some freehand work if they, for instance, decide that they need a horseback rider for their horse:

Okay, now to go find the booby shirt.

UPDATE: While writing this, and listening to Outer South on iTunes, I got a Ticketmaster alert that my Conor Oberst concert has been CANCELLED!!! Sadness, despair, unhappiness, disgruntledness!

And Conor Oberst would have liked my booby shirt SO much.

Five on Wheels

It's barely been twelve hours, but let me tell you, five is shaping up to possibly be my favorite age yet. At five, my girl likes soccer:

She likes soccer more than I'll probably like it when these young British coaches go back to professional soccer playing in London (have I said it before? British accents + athleticism + early 20s + caring attitude towards small children = swoon), and she definitely likes soccer more than her little sister does:

   Insert sounds of crickets chirping here. At five, my girl may not necessarily have a lot of grace:

  But she does have wheels:

  And I mean WHEELS:

  And she's learned how to soak the coach?

 

I dunno, Matt claims it's a legitimate thing, and he's the parent who was actually in organized sports as a youth, so I guess he'd know... Cherishing a little kid, especially a roughneck little girl in a handmade 5 shirt and the proud owner of four pet tadpoles--it's a recipe for getting your heart broken every single day of your life:

 

But in a good way, you know?

Almost Her Birthday

Before soccer on Monday morning, I could find only one ponytail ring. Much consternation ensued among all present members of the household, all of whom wished to be in possession of said ponytail ring, until I finally decreed that it go to Willow, who has the curliest, floppiest hair of the three of us.

After soccer practice, I went downstairs to throw the girls' soccer shirts into the washing machine, along with some pants, shorts, socks, stuffed animals, Batman costumes--you know, laundry. I walked back upstairs then, as I crossed the living room, I spied Willow leading Sydney gently by the shoulders over to the mirror on the inside door of our linen closet.

"There, now," she was saying to Sydney, "Now you don't need a ponytail ever."

I called Matt to come home for lunch, then grabbed a beer and a magazine--do you ever feel the need to just disconnect, lest you say or do something that your children would feel the need to mention in therapy a couple of decades later? I loved that baby's hair.

The barber that Matt took Sydney to called her a silly goose and refused to even try to cut it all even--see this cropped part right here, for instance?
Yeah, that's the top of her head. So now Sydney's my funky-banged, big-eyed, crooked-hair baby.

In other news, ignoring it won't make it go away--Willow is going to be five years old tomorrow. Add to that the fact that my Sydney hasn't nursed since LAST FRIDAY, and I am just about to squeeze them both to my ample bosoms and commence a-weeping. It actually does help with the hyper-emotionalism that they've been SO naughty this week. I am not kidding you, today I walked into the nursery to find Willow hanging her naked butt out the window, actively trying to pee into a plastic grocery sack that Sydney was standing outside, underneath the window, holding.

W. T. F? Can you even punish that? I mean, we don't have a specific rule in place or anything, but seriously!

A couple of days ago I taught the girls how to use our salad spinner and some acrylic paints to martial the force that is centrifugal force in the pursuit of art (we got the original idea for salad spinner invitations from Chasing Cheerios, and then we modified it to more closely match the messiness that is us), and then I decoupaged onto the backs of them, and thus we have our birthday party invitations: They're postcards, so the address will go on that white cardstock square, and then the stamp will go above it. I hate that stash scrapbook paper, which came in a pack of some cool paper, because it mentions meat a whole bunch, and so I was happy that it sort of fit the theme of our party, the Picnic Party. Goodbye, nasty paper.

Willow's real gift was Walking with Dinosaurs Live, which coincidentally also blew our entire birthday budget, but I think we can put together a nice little party for a few kid friends using only stash, and keeping the food much more simple than we've done at past birthday parties. Will also knows not to expect any other presents (other than the $30 grandma-induced shopping spree she'll have tomorrow at Learning Treasures, at least), but I think I can whip up something thematically appropriate from this:

That will hopefully go nicely with the five buttons my big girl will be wearing on her birthday crown tomorrow.

Vinyl of the Weird and the Awesome

I know, I know--all I do is talk about vinyl records. Obsessions are healthy, though, right?

Um, right?

And what with our family's inability to do away with any record that isn't completely scratched into oblivion (in heavy rotation on our current playlist--a scratchy record consisting solely of wolf calls), and the fact that I need a whole new batch of record bowls for my farmer's market craft fair every month, AND the fact that I'm doing Strange Folk again this fall (yay!) and will need a whole new big batch of bowls for that, I'm already starting to freak out that I don't have enough vinyl to get me through to October and free day at the Red Cross Book Fair.

That being said, since I'm skipping out on the August farmer's market craft fair, I've got a little extra time this month to make some undies for the girls, applique them some shirts, alter a couple of dresses for myself, sew buttons back on Matt's pants (what is it with that man and buttons?), and update my pumpkinbear etsy shop with some of these record bowls I've been slaving over. Along with, you know, making spin art and very large maps with the girls and eating lots of tomato-bread salad and visiting the library every single wet day and Bryan Park pool every single dry day. I'm busy, you know?

I generally only make record bowls out of albums that are not only too scratched to play but that are also albums that I, personally, think are awesome--awesome awesome or awful awesome, doesn't matter, but it has to be something that I really dig. So when you visit my booth you get a lot of eighties stuff, soundtracks, children's music, esoteric junk, heavy metal--basically a soundtrack of my life as I know it to this point. Here are some of my very favorite favorites that I put on my pumpkinbear etsy shop today:

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

The best thing about this record, all Santa songs, is that I recognize, oh, ONE of them. Seriously, how many Santa songs are there in the world? Although, some of these do look pretty forgettable--The Weatherman's Christmas Prayer? Ech.

Neil Diamond's Hot August Night

Sweet Caroline. 'Nuff said. Okay, but have you ever heard the Langley Schools Music Project cover of Sweet Caroline? Also awesome. And their cover of Space Oddity.

Flintstones

The album says it's the Flintstones, but it doesn't include the theme song or anything as a track, and unfortunately the vinyl was too damaged for me to play at all to figure out what's going on here, so I just have in my head this idea that for this album, they got together all the voices of the Flintstones characters, and made them sing all these random songs in character? Like the Brady Bunch? Or in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, when the guy gets up to do his song from Dracula the Musical, and he does it in a Transylvanian accent? Which made me laugh so hard I woke the babies.

Annie Get Your Gun

I'm a sucker for soundtracks in general, although Annie Get Your Gun isn't one of my favorites. Whenever I see it, however, I always flash back to watching Soleil Moon Frye on Carson or something as a kid, promo-ing Punky Brewster, which I LOVED (the episode when one kid got trapped in a refrigerator and Punky had to do CPR? Priceless), and Carson asks her how she got her name, and she's all, "It's from Annie Get Your Gun--'I've got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.'"

In other news, the girlies have been rocking themselves some British Soccer Camp this week--these guys who play professional soccer in England for some reason spend part of their summer here in Bloomington, and they teach soccer to the baby townies. I already mentioned this on my Facebook, but my absolute favorite thing about British soccer camp is the athletic young men with British accents playfully and nurturingly interacting with small children. Swoon?
Swoon. Not the best photo, mind you, but my Syd, she's not too team-oriented, and this is about the billionth time that one of the coaches loped over to where Sydney had wandered off and jollied her back to the group--lots of "Come on, love," etc.

My least favorite thing about soccer camp is my introduction to Soccer Mom. Soccer Mom sits next to me when my mom friend doesn't show up one day. We're sitting against the gym wall in the REALLY crowded gym because it's storming outside, so with the noise of the storm on the metal roof, the noise of four soccer teams all playing different games on basketball court, the noise of the YMCA day camps over on the other court, and the generic noise of the random people working out in the Y to begin with, it's deafening in there. And yet, for the entire hour, Soccer Mom sideline coaches her kid. The WHOLE hour. I read the same sentence in my book about one thousand times.

But the weirdest thing is, there's no way her soccer kid could have heard a thing she said. She was talking in a loud conversational tone, I guess--the kid could have heard her from that distance if we'd been in the library, but the crowded gym? Not a chance. Nor, of course, did he acknowledge or respond to any of her admonitions--he couldn't hear her, you know. But still she kept it up, this constant patter, and even though he couldn't hear her, it was really loud in MY ear--everything from "That's great, buddy, run! Oops, you lost your ball, go get it, now run! Yay, good job!" to "Sit up, buddy! Keep your hands to yourself! No, no, get away from the orange cone! Hurry, find your spot!"

W. T. F?

Fortunately, Willow went from resolutely sitting on her soccer ball and picking clover for the whole hour on Monday to being all soccer, all the time by the end of the hour on Tuesday:

She is particularly good at a little tracking game they play called Cats and Dogs. And there's none of this American everybody did just as well as the other person because we're all special crap at British soccer camp. At British soccer camp, if your name is Willow and you are REALLY good at Cats and Dogs, you get to hear a coach shout "Willow is the winner!" and then everybody gives you a high five.

I tell you, this living vicariously through your kids business might have something going for it.

How was My Weekend? Ummm.....AWESOME!

People liked the comic book pinbacks and record bowls again this month. Yay money and accolades (in that order).
My veggie breakfast burrito from the Bakehouse had an odd mint aftertaste, but their coffee, drunk in between making sales and chatting with passers-by, was delicious.

My dear friend Betsy kept me company and crocheted plastic bags into purses and dish scrubbers. She was there to help me put the side panels up on my booth just before the passing thunderstorm hit, and we were able to do it in time even though we're the two shortest people you could ever ask to do such a job, because we are tool users (I try not to think again about Betsy reaching up, on tiptoes, standing on the narrow end of a cinderblock placed on uneven ground, in the wind).

Lots of vendors left right before the thunderstorm, which made the craft fair look a little sucky but just meant more customers for me.
Two hours after the craft fair closed, we were on our way to Indianapolis.

The girls, having gotten up at 6:00 am for the craft fair, both fell asleep in the car, and Matt and I got to actually, you know, talk.

Our hotel was crazy-awesome! Big fluffy comfy beds, big TV with all the good cable channels, a bowl in the workout room full of complementary oranges and apples for Matt to swipe, etc. I blow-dried my hair. I made Matt go down to the front desk and say I'd forgotten my toothbrush so they'd give me another one. I had the concierge give me brochures for stuff. When Matt caught me putting the packages of pretty leaf-shaped soap from the bathroom in my bag and I told him I was going to save them to put in the girls' stockings at Christmas, he tried to cut me off and I just had to tell him, listen, I am from Arkansas and he knew that when he married me.

I had to drag the family out the door to go to Walking with Dinosaurs because they wanted to see the end of Horton Hears a Who on HBO. I was all, "Everything works out in the end! We'll read the book again when we get home! Can we go make use of our $60 tickets to see giant animatronic dinosaurs now?"

Our seats were really, really good.

The dinosaurs were freaking amazing:
If you looked at a close-up shot on the big screen, at, say, the ankylosaur's face or something, you could tell it wasn't real, but we sat so close that if we'd sat any closer the brachiosaurus would have whapped us with its tail as it made the corner, and they. Looked. REAL! Before the show, we were doing our run-down again of the whole "the dinosaurs will look really real but they're not real, they're robots, and they'll be really big and stomp and roar but they won't leave the stage and they're just robots," etc., and the lady who was sitting with her husband and kid just one row in front of us, right at the front of the arena, keeps turning and giving us these looks and we're all, whatever. Her kid is, I don't know, six? I'm thinking, "She has a problem with us talking about the dinosaurs not being real? It's not like we're here to see Santa Claus or something." Anyway, the show starts, and the first scene is some dino eggs hatching into baby dinosaurs, and then the liliensternus sneaks up and snatches a baby out of the nest, and the kid in front of us jumps out of her seat and screams, "He killed it! He killed the baby! SHRIEEEEEEEK!!!" and is utterly hysterical. Yeah, they totally told that kid the dinosaurs were real.

I didn't take my camera because I didn't want to be distracted, but I probably should have anyway because you know I'm not completely happy unless I can take photographs of stuff. And that's why whenever I couldn't stand it any longer I took a shot or two with Matt's lousy cell phone camera: Lousy camera or not, however, I think you can probably still get the idea from this photo that a certain little girl really liked her birthday present: