My Latest: Gardening and the Apocalypse

It's Garden Week over at Crafting a Green World, and my latest two posts celebrate that with a tutorial for propagating the wandering Jew--

and another tutorial for growing yummy microgreens in plastic salad containers:

I also have a new writing job that's started this week! I now write weekly for Insteading on subjects that cover homesteading, survival skills, and post-Apocalyptic scenarios. I get to review my favorite post-Apocalypse and dystopian books and films--you might not know this, but post-Apocalyptic and dystopian fiction are BIG loves of mine--and I even get to write about my most favorite post-Apocalypse micro theme: ZOMBIES!!!

This week, I talk about the theme of cannibalism in fiction, and why this would be a very bad idea in reality, and I review the Susan Beth Pfeffer Moon Crash series:

Its dystopian society is feudalistic, which, as a former Medieval scholar in grad school, I am all about.

I like to think of myself as a writer along the lines of Virginia Woolf these days. In A Room of One's Own, she claims not only that every woman should have a room of one's own, but also that writers should write all kinds of things, not just fiction OR biographies OR blog posts, but all that and political essays and memoirs and poetry and non-fiction of all sorts. I don't completely have a room of my own (well, I sort of do, but it doesn't have any doors), so I mostly find myself writing in my chair at the living room table, a nosy neighborly view out the windows on two sides, in ear shot of all children wherever they might be shouting at each other, but I do write all kinds of things, especially if you agree that you can define "all kinds of things" as lesson plans, tutorials, essays on post-Apocalyptic themes, blog posts, and fanfiction.

Fanfiction is an especially noble genre, I'm sure you'll agree.

Tutorial: Tissue Paper Decoupaged Easter Eggs

I love that every year we decorate a few more of our monstrous hoard of wooden and cardboard Easter eggs. I bought soooo many of these years and years ago, when the little kid was a tiny toddler and I decided that we'd start celebrating Easter (I think I decide to celebrate a holiday guided only by its awesome craft project potentiality). Plastic eggs offend me, and I think I was experimenting with veganism or something similar then, so hard-boiled eggs weren't an option.

Anyway, those eggs turned out to be a great purchase, as we've loved them ever since. One year we decorated some with Sharpies, another year we painted them with acrylics, another year we made mosaics on them, one year I felted colorful wool around some of them, and still every year when I bring out the stash, there are more plain ones to inspire us.

Last week, encouraged by how nicely the tissue paper decoupaged bookshelf turned out, the kids and I tried the same tissue paper decoupage technique on some of these wooden and cardboard eggs (the wooden eggs all came from Casey's Wood Products, and the cardboard eggs came from either a thrift shop or a garage sale--I can't remember now, but it was an excellent score). I set out a dish of Mod Podge, paintbrushes, tissue paper, and the eggs, and the kids and I listened to Jesus Christ Superstar while painting a patch of egg with glue, layering tissue paper over it, and then painting another layer of glue over the tissue paper:

On the one hand, this is a fiddly project because the tissue paper is thin and easily torn, and you have to be very mindful about where you put your hands while working so that you don't mess up a section that you've already completed, but on the other hand, fiddly projects teach perseverance and problem-solving, and anything that you mess up is repaired in seconds with just another layer of tissue paper.

The finished Easter eggs didn't look anything like I'd imagined they would, and at first I wasn't sure that I liked them, but the kids loved them from the second that they were done, and now they've grown on me, too.

The kids used up the last two giant eggs in our stash on this project (one of which had some toddler Sharpie scribbles on it--ah, the memories!), so next year I may actually need to buy more wooden eggs. Six years between egg purchases is pretty darn good!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Work Plans for the Week of April 7, 2014: History and Geography

Last week was actually a really productive week for schoolwork, considering that so much other enriching, engaging, kid-led work got done, as well. There was swimming and basketball playing and jump rope and documentaries (Cosmos and The Science of Disney Imagineering are our current favorites) and pogo stick. The older kid did a lot of gardening, a lot of reading (do I even have to say that? It's her default state), some stop-motion animation, and a LOT of weapon building, led by her newest favorite books, the Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction series. The younger kid is commonly seen with her doll in one hand and her ipod blaring an audiobook in the other hand, and she spent much of last week playing quietly, listening to books. Last week went really, really well, and I hope that this one does, too!

MONDAY: The kids didn't do their Latin chapter last week (although they did memorize "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" in Latin), so I kept it on the plans for this week. They enjoyed learning that Latin song enough, though, that I'm now thinking that I might alternate weeks of Latin study and Latin enrichment--this might solve my nagging worry that the kids aren't finding enough context in their Latin study to make it legitimately memorable.

The older kid is still doing multiplication drills all this week, but the younger kid on this day, instead of our usual hands-on math activity, is getting to do an ipad app as a treat. I get just about all of the educational apps on our ipad free from App Friday; they make sort of an odd and diverse collection, but the kids LOVE discovering them waiting for them on the ipad, and they spend much of their screen time playing them (or watching Netflix or Brainpop videos, their other two favorite things to do on the ipad). Sometimes, as with the stop-motion animation app that the older kid used last week, or this multi-skill math app that the younger kid is going to use today, it turns out that one of those random apps is just the thing that we need, and then we've saved a couple of bucks by getting it free!

The portfolio project from Drawing With Children didn't really work out--collecting images that you'd like to draw from magazines and catalogs *sounds* fun, but looking at images and thinking about how you have to figure out how to draw each one is actually pretty overwhelming. Instead, we just finished a project that I made up, but that's in the style of Drawing with Children, and it was a HUGE hit! In fact, right this minute the younger kid is writing a letter to the Disney Imagineers explaining to them the brand-new roller coaster that she just drew for them, also enclosed, and asking them to tell her when they build it. Even if we don't finish her "official" schoolwork for today, I think we'll be okay.

TUESDAY: As as expansion of our animal biology, nature, and prehistoric life studies, I've been wanting to introduce Phylo to the kids for a while. I plan to have Syd help me put together the basic and pterosaur decks, and then, hopefully, we'll have a new fun game to play! The kids have also been missing doing science experiments, so they'll have a lot of fun helping me do some of the projects in a book that I was recently given to review--this day's experiment even involves acids and bases. Bonus!

I haven't even looked at what the younger kid's Math Mammoth will be for this week, but now that we're past the measurement unit, it should be pretty much plug and play, just like First Language Lessons.

The kids are starting on their project for the International Fair this week. I let the older kid choose the country, and after looking around at maps and atlases and flags for a while, she was in the end swayed by my descriptions of my favorite place in the world, Iceland, and my promise of plenty of photos and souvenirs from my trips there to add flair to their project. Also, I know Old Norse, and I might be persuaded to read a little to the kids during the presentation. Ahem.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding, aerial silks, and perhaps roller skating in the evening. My goal is to get Matt to actually put on roller skates this time!

THURSDAY: This day is supposed to be gorgeous, so I don't imagine that we'll come back from Park Day until dinnertime. I planned for just a few, practical assignments, then--the Jerusalem artichokes MUST be planted, and so must the peas, and if the younger kid's friend accepts her dinner invitation on this day, then that counts for her Making Friends badge.

FRIDAY: We didn't get history or writing done last Friday, so those have stayed on the schedule. Math class is a regular, of course, and a favorite--the younger kid came home last Friday doing card tricks, and the older kid came home talking about Prime numbers.

We're continuing to learn about Indiana's Native Americans for geography, and I'm hoping that there will be a good day next week to take a trip to the Eijteljorg, an entire Native American museum in Indianapolis (future trips also include Serpent Mound near Cincinnati, Angel Mound in Southern Indiana, and Cahokia near St. Louis). Easter crafts are also still continuing, now that I know that Easter is April 20 and not April 1, ahem. The younger kid's been enjoying reading the myths from several world cultures, so I'm thinking that we'll make this toilet paper tube crucifixion set and tell the Christian Resurrection myth. I should have been collecting toilet paper tubes for a while now, sigh...

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The entire family is going to indulge me on Saturday by accompanying me to the open warehouse sale at WHO North America, and then, depending on the weather, we'll probably spend the rest of the day out and about in Indianapolis--Indiana State Museum? Saraga International Grocery? Pottery painting? Arcade?

On Sunday we'll be dividing and conquering (the man-on-man defense, something that you can use when the kids don't outnumber the adults) so that I can take the older kid to chess club and Matt can take the younger kid and a friend to a "teddy bear tea party" at a local retirement home as a Girl Scout event. And if the weekend looks much like this past weekend, there will also be friends at the park, lots of basketball, homemade pizza and Family Movie Night, and a few more mini weapons of mass destruction, I don't doubt.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, novelty baking, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tutorial: Pippi Longstocking Hairdo

Y'all know I'm a big nerd, right?

The whole lot of us recently went to a children's theater performance of Pippi Longstocking, and I could not pass up the opportunity to do a little cosplay with the kids. Here's how:

1. You need to score some bendable floral or jewelry wire. The 18-gauge jewelry wire that I had on hand was perfect for Syd's light, straight hair, but didn't hold Will's thick, curly mop quite as well.
2. Measure out a length of the bendable wire that's long enough to go over the top of the kid's head and down each side the length of their hair. Cut it from the spool with a pair of wire cutters.
3. Comb and divide the kid's hair in two down a center part. 
4. This is the big trick: center the wire at the top of the kid's head, and get another person or the kid to hold it there. Having both braids made from a single piece of wire anchors it, so that you can bend each of the braids into more drastic contortions.
5. Comb and divide the hair on one side into three sections above the ear; include the bendable wire with the center section.
6. Braid the hair as usual, braiding the wire with it as part of the kid's hair. Tie off the braid at the bottom, then use the wire cutters to cut off any excess wire below the tie (you may want to bend it back onto itself first, so that it won't have a sharp end that sticks out).
7. Adjust the wire as needed so that it's snug and lays flat over the top of the kid's head without biting into it, then braid the kid's hair on the other side the exact same way.
8. Use a couple of bobby pins or sturdy clips to anchor the wire on each side of the kid's head above the braids, so that it doesn't inch down the back of the kid's head.

Now you should be able to bend each braid into whatever silly contortions you desire. 

After I did this, basically none of us ever stopped laughing at how hilarious the kids looked with braids sticking out all crazy--Will's long, thick hair made every pose look especially improbable. 

At the play, many of the kids were invited to sit on cushions right in front of the stage, and as soon as mine had settled themselves far enough away from me and Matt that I could no longer intervene, I noticed that Pippi hair does NOT keep to itself! Fortunately, the kids on either side of mine were buddies of theirs, buddies good enough that their parents would probably inform me if they got head lice. I'd rather have bent the kids' braids up and over their heads before they walked away, though--I can go the rest of my life without dealing with head lice ever again.

Will liked her braids okay, especially at first, but by the time we were home from the play, she was ready to take them out and move on with her afternoon. Syd, however, was ready to move on to...

a photo shoot:

She's currently making noise about wanting lots and LOTS of bendy braids for her runway walk at the Trashion/Refashion Show later this month. 

Pro: I think we could get away with using pipe cleaners instead of wire in each braid. 

Con: There's no way I'd ask a Hair Arts Academy student volunteering his/her services to put a million pipe cleaner braids into my child's hair, so there goes my pre-show morning!

This post was shared with Teach beside Me.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Bookshelves (and, Inadvertently, a Long Rant about Educational Equity)

a round-up of upcycled bookshelf projects

and our own decoupaged bookshelf that we made for our local food pantry

I don't have the photography skills to make the bookshelf look as cute as it does in real life, but the kids and I are really pleased with it, and it looks even better sitting in the children's area of the food pantry, chock-full of donated books, with kids sitting around it in their kid-sized chairs reading happily. There's so much for kids to do at the pantry now--books, crayons and paper, a construction set, some sidewalk chalk that we brought over on our latest work day, afternoon drop-in kids' gardening classes--and the Youth Outreach Coordinator has a ton more planned for after school hours and in the summer. I'm really excited about it!

We had asparagus in the pantry this week, and the week before we had arugula, and Will, both weeks, has seemed really struck by finally noticing that there are plenty of people in our community who can't identify these two vegetables, don't know how to prepare them, have never tasted them, and are nervous about doing so. I'd imagine this isn't super uncommon anywhere, and Will's seen this over and over again for years--one of my happiest memories is cutting open pomegranates for kids, encouraging them to try it by telling them that it tastes like candy, and then watching their little faces when they realize that I don't lie--but watching me answer questions, helping me photocopy preparation instructions, and tasting veggies in front of people to show them that they're good are experiences that she's brought up several times in the past couple of weeks. 

It's a lot of growing this kid must be doing, trying to figure out that other people's experiences are different from hers. The privilege of knowledge is something that we've been talking about for a while now, since the kids' global education unit study that they completed for their Girl Scout World Thinking Day badge. In a lot of circumstances, education is a luxury, I keep saying to her, over and over. You have to have time to spend. You often have to have money to spend. You have to have mental energy available to spend. If you have to work all day in a factory sewing cheap clothes for Americans to buy, you don't have time to learn to read. If you don't have extra money in your budget, you can't buy asparagus just to see if you happen to like it--you're going to buy apples every single time, because you already know you like them. If you're always worried about if you're going to earn enough money to pay your rent and electricity and water bills each month, you're not going to feel like sitting down at your table every night and studying for a college degree.

I remind her of the time that we spent $15 on a jackfruit just to see if we liked it--and we didn't like it! If we'd really, truly needed that $15 for food that week, then we would have had to eat that entire jackfruit anyway, and that wouldn't have been fun (seriously, it weighed something like eight pounds). If we'd really needed to eat using that $15, we would have been better off buying rice and beans and hamburger and spinach, even though we eat that all the time, because we know we like it and we know it will fill our tummies up nice and comfy.

That's why it's so important to make opportunities for people to educate themselves without risk. There have to be places where all kinds of new experiences are free, so that people don't have to spend their money to try or taste. There has to be enough money for every person to allow everyone to have some leisure time to explore, and there have to be courses of study--all kinds, in every possible field--that people can try at their leisure, also for free.

That's why public schools are worth improving, even if you don't have kids who go there. That's why open courseware is worth funding, even if you don't use it. And it's why your local food pantry is worth supporting, even if you don't shop there.

*steps off soapbox, turns off microphone, wanders off to eat a cup of noodles and read the next chapter in her book*

Girl Scout Detective Badge: Make a Decoder Wheel

Earning the Girl Scout Detective Badge has been super fun for Will so far, and it's involved lots of great science, logic, and reading comprehension activities for both kids. Some of the activities that Will has done, and often gotten her sister to do with her, have included:

• reading about fingerprinting, fingerprinting the family, and analyzing the patterns of our prints
• reading mysteries, noting the clues, and trying to solve the mystery before the main characters do
• reading a LOT of books about forensics, detective skills, spies, and codes
• playing online spot-the-difference games
• "spying" on the neighborhood every day (sketchy, I know, but it gets her to write without complaint!)
• exploring the science of black lights and invisible ink pens

The kids also made a really easy, really fun decoder wheel that our entire family now uses to write secret messages to each other practically every day. Here's how:

You will need:

• two sheets of cardstock (I had the kids choose colored cardstock to help them tell them apart later, but that's not necessary)
• printer
• brad--Matt and I had a fun argument in the strip mall about brads, concerning the fact that I wanted to buy a package of twenty-five brads from the craft supplies store, and Matt wanted to buy an only slightly more expensive package of one hundred brads from the office supplies store. I tried explaining to him that in a decade of crafting, this is the first time that I've ever needed brads, and even now I only needed two of them, but the per-brad price was too compelling to him, so now he's in charge of of finding 98 other uses for brads in our lives. Won't that be fun for him!

1. Visit this DIY pie charts templates page, and print out two copies of the circle divided into 26 equal parts on your cardstock. 

2. Around the outer edge of one of the circles, instruct your kiddo to write the alphabet in order, one letter per circle segment. I'm ashamed to tell you that each of my fully literate children had trouble with this task. They each sang the alphabet song many times, sometimes incorrectly (Eff you, Eleminopee!), and Syd freaked out because she all of a sudden couldn't remember which was lowercase b and which was lowercase d. Just so you feel even better about your parenting compared to mine, here are other things that my children do not know: their address, Matt's and my phone numbers, which grandmother is which, the months in order, and what month it is today (I nearly disowned Will outside the public library yesterday. They have a sundial embedded in the pavement, so if you stand on the correct month then your shadow tells the time, and Will was standing there looking at it, shouting over to me REALLY loudly, "What month is it? August? January?"). They can FINALLY tell you their ages, birthdays, home states, and grades, though, so... yay, I guess?

3. Have the kiddo find a dish that's about an inch smaller in diameter than the circles, center it on the blank circle, and trace around it:

4. Cut out both circles:

5. Write the alphabet again around the second, smaller circle.

6. Align both circles so that they're centered with the smaller circle on top, then use an awl to punch a hole large enough that the top circle can rotate after you've got the brad in.

7. Insert and fold down the brad, and you're done!

You can create a secret code by rotating the top circle until the alphabets are misaligned, and then "translating" each letter of your message from one circle to the other circle. Include a key to translation in your message--you can even hide the key in the middle of the message to make it trickier to solve, or arrange a secret family code inside a code to hide the key in plain sight in the message.

Both kids LOVE to write and solve codes using this decoder. If a kid asks me a question and the answer's not urgent (such as "What should I have for breakfast?" I HATE that question!), I'll sometimes write the answer in code ("Leftover butternut squash pasta or oatmeal or an egg salad sandwich" sounds much more fun when translated from nonsense), or if I have something fun to tell them, such as a surprise meet-up later in the day with friends, I'll write it in code and make them solve the mystery:

As a super-secret big surprise for Will's Detective badge sometime soon, Matt's planning a major mystery for the kids to solve together. I don't know if it will involve solving a crime or searching for hidden treasure, but there will be fingerprinting, code breaking, witness interviews, clues, and invisible ink messages involved.

If I take lots of photos, perhaps that will quench my urge to be all, "Oooh, a secret message!" and bump the kids aside to solve the mystery all by myself. Because doesn't it sound fun?

Okay, now I'm going to go tell Matt to make me a mystery, too!

This tute was shared with Keep Calm Craft on over at Frontier Dreams.

Work Plans for the Week of March 31, 2014: Out!

Last week was knocked a little off-kilter when Syd came down with a fever on Tuesday. Fortunately, she was feeling all better the next day, but by the end of the week, *I* had a cold, and, of course, I still have it. But nevertheless, there was a lot of building and playing and cooking and balloon animal making and hiking and reading and a respectable amount of schoolwork done for the week, so whatever we didn't get done, I kept on the schedule for this week!

MONDAY: I don't know what's not appealing about building the skip counting board--I have all the materials temptingly out and ready, AND both kids spent most of Thursday morning with the woodworking tools, building swords out of PVC pipes for themselves and a friend's birthday, so clearly the concept is a winner, but it still hasn't happened. To be fair, Syd's Math Mammoth units last week were all hands-on measurement tasks (which threw me for a loop, since I don't usually scan them ahead of time, AND I often bring them with us to do when we're out and about--not too helpful to pull it out midway through a hike, only to discover that Syd actually needs a quart jar, pint jar, and measuring cup to do her math that day, sigh...), so she was pretty full up on hands-on math enrichment and practical construction without it.

Frankly, we didn't get much done last Monday--I may have to rethink this day's schedule. We've got that two-hour volunteer gig, then when we get home we're wiped out for at least an hour, and today we're actually at the public library right now, where the kids just collected another stack of children's books for their Early Literacy Center from the library bookstore's free day, but they're reading Snoopy comics instead of doing any schoolwork because I didn't think ahead and plan anything portable-to-the-library for this day. If we don't have a productive afternoon after our volunteer gig later today, I'll have to think about what I can shift to make Mondays work better for us.

TUESDAY: I DID plan portable schoolwork for this day, because the goal is to spend what's supposed to be a gorgeous day completely out and about. Will is hoping to plan a multi-cach geocaching adventure along a popular cross-town biking and walking trail (the geocaching expert we met a few weeks ago assured us that there are many geocaches to be found there), and then we'll likely spend the rest of the day at the local hands-on science museum. Fortunately, First Language Lessons is extremely portable; I had the foresight to check Syd's Math Mammoth ahead of time and switch a couple of lessons so that her math on this day is portable; and you can memorize a Latin translation of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" anywhere.

Will is still on Kumon multiplication drills, although her memorization is coming along really quickly now that she's realized that I won't let her calculate her way out of it any longer. She's a big project planner, too, although not always a great project completer, so I've asked her to write her own lists of projects that she'd like to complete this week, as well as note any of the schoolwork that Syd and I are doing that she'd like to participate in. I'm hoping, this way, to get a little-more follow-through, and push past her "Oh, I know I said I wanted to do such-and-such, but I actually can't bear to put down my book for long enough to do it for real, and if you make me then I'll pitch a giant fit" inclinations.

WEDNESDAY: Horseback riding lessons, Magic Tree House Club, LEGO Club, and hopefully lots of time leftover for catapult building and toy dinosaur taming and tire swinging (and playroom cleaning?).

THURSDAY: Syd's almost finished earning her Potter badge! This day's task is to make some art pieces; I think that we're going to try forming beads around paper clips. Last Thursday, the whole day was spent making swords, playing at our homeschool group's playgroup, and then dropping Will off at the library for several hours, so the rest of Thursday's activities are leftovers from last week. There are supposed to be thunderstorms THIS Thursday, though, so we'll either be super productive because of the rainy day, or spend the day in the basement watching movies to distract the kids from tornado sirens. Coin flip!

Hopefully, the storms won't spoil the kids' first 4H meeting on this night. I have a feeling that Will might really like to be on the Hippology Bowl team. ( I know, right? Hippology Bowl!)

FRIDAY: Math class is always a big hit (On the way home from last week's class, Will said, dismissively, "I understand negative numbers quite well"), and last week it turned out that A History of US was a big hit, too! I'm really liking it, as well, and I think it's going to be very useful for our Indiana study and the studies of the states that we'll be visiting on our big road trip this summer.

Syd's been planning to bake the cats a treat from a cat food cookbook that we own, but hasn't gotten around to it, so I put it on this day's work plan as a pleasant surprise. I'm also planning on having her start some more regular creative writing, and I'm hoping to tempt Will to join us. Incidentally, I'm researching non-writing methods of storytelling--videotape? Tape recorder? Stop-action film?

I really like the clip art in the Eyewitness books--they're great for timeline images!--so as Hammurabi's last hurrah, I think that Syd will really like choosing images from Eyewitness Mesopotamia to put on our big timeline.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: A Girl Scout program, perhaps a roller derby game, and Syd's first Trashion/Refashion Show rehearsal are all on the schedule, but this last weekend was so hectic (Birthday party! Nature class! Earth Hour! World Cultures Festival! My terrible, horrible, no good, very bad COLD!!!) that I may insist that when we're not with the Girl Scouts, or at the roller derby, or on the runway, we all just sit quietly on our butts on the couch.

And I better NOT be still sick!

At the Indianapolis Museum of Art

With temperatures in Indy in the low 40s instead of the forecasted low 50s, it wasn't the best day to explore the Indianapolis Museum of Art and its expansive outdoor park and gardens, but there was a children's tour I wanted to attend and an aerial silks performance art piece (outdoors, of COURSE) that I'd already bought tickets for, so we all just girded our loins and muscled ahead.

It's always, fortunately, a great day to explore the indoor museum:

Matt and I usually practice a man-on-man defense in museums, which is why I only have photos of one kid OR the other, and none of Matt. He was there, just mostly with Will while I was with Syd. We'd pass each other between galleries and I'd say, "There's a Matisse over there!", or we'd find ourselves in the same gallery and spend a minute all together with the Georgia O'Keefes before I had to take Syd to the bathroom, and as a reward for sitting in the foyer with Will (who threw a fit because there were too many babies and toddlers on the children's tour--she disdains babies and toddlers) while I went on the children's tour with Syd, he got to look around all by himself(!) for half an hour or so while I hung out in the hands-on art room with both kids:

They both stay in the same place pretty well when there's art to be made.

We also huddled together as a family--Syd tucked onto Matt's lap with his arms around her, Will squished between the two of us with one of my arms over the top of her--through the performance art piece, which everyone liked, although we all would have liked it a lot better if we hadn't been so uncomfortably cold:

So walking the grounds didn't happen, and the picnic didn't happen, and the portable art set for making art en plein air that I brought didn't leave the car, but we saw the silks, some of us took the tour, the kids now have postcards featuring Georgia O'Keefe paintings on the walls by their beds, and we'll go back again for all the rest when it's actually sunny and springlike and warm.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Eco-Friendly Easter

True story: I thought that Easter was this Sunday. A company actually wanted to host a giveaway over at Crafting a Green World this week, and I deterred their rep because the timing would be too tight. Because I thought Easter was this Sunday.

Even more embarrassing: it took a trip to Wal-mart (where I desperately needed to buy the kids chocolate rabbits for their Easter baskets, since I thought Easter was this Sunday) to teach me the actual date of Easter this year, because they had signs up everywhere. Yep, classy all around, I am.

Anyway, now you at least have plenty of time to check out my roundup of tons of eco-friendly Easter egg tutorials (my favorite are the wooden, felted wool, and papier mache eggs)--

--and my review of Natural Earth Paint's natural egg dye kit, which we LOVED:

Yes, her hands are filthy, but that thumbnail is an injury entitled Willow vs. 20lb Rock.

I actually really like Easter crafting, so I'm excited that we've got a few more weeks to do it! I *think* we're going to decoupage tissue paper onto wooden eggs today, but right now the kids are downstairs building three swords out of PVC pipes, and then they're probably going to want to get started on the catapults, so the sweet little afternoon of decoupaging Easter eggs and listening to the Easter Parade soundtrack may not happen.

Siege warfare and hand-to-hand combat, however? That's looking like a given!