Dinosaur Lovers Unite!!!

I already have the Craftster Dinosaur Swap to thank for inspiring me to finally get off my butt and create my daughter's dinosaur quilt already, but that's on the giving side of the equation. On the receiving side of the equation (which is a good side of the equation to be on), I have my swap partner to thank for what is likely the most crazy-awesome swap package that I have EVER received.

And the girls? Well, I'll just say that they're beside themselves, and allow you to imagine for yourself the exact strain of hysteria that has swept through our house in the wake of this package.

First, a sweet little note:
"A surprise!" you think. "Why, I LOVE surprises!" And you are so, so correct. Because some of the surprises are this:
And some of the surprises are this:These handmade coloring pages are the coolest thing: The girls have already done several (as you can see). There is one in particular, of brachiosauruses in love, that I'm going to secretly slip to Willow (not Sydney) to color tomorrow, because I dearly want to then frame it and hang it in their room. Not that I don't find Sydney's artwork beautiful, mind you--I'm her mother, I think it's awesome--but...Brachiosauruses in Love seems meant for Willow, I'll just leave it at that.

So that stuff alone is awesome enough, I'm sure you agree, and you can't even count the adorableness of all the other miscellaneous toys and dinosaur paraphernalia also included (excavation kits! volcano eruptions! crayons! sunglasses!), but this blows all that out of the water:

I mean, are you kidding me?!?

This playset is INCREDIBLE!!! It's made up of all these great fabrics, mostly recycled, all with really interesting textures that contrast really well, and there are little dino hiding spots tucked in----and little foam dinos to play with--

--and tons of extra foam so that the girls can make their own little dinos to play with! Sydney is sleeping with this playset right this very minute. She's also, not that you need to know this, insisted on sleeping on the living room hardwood floor, on top of two big pillows, inside her pink flower sleeping bag, with a sock monkey, stuffed whale, and plastic My Little Pony, while listening to on CD. And even then it was after 9:00 pm before she went to sleep, a stark contrast to Willow, who fell asleep in the car at 6:00 pm (on our way to the park, which we then did not get to go to) after shrieking for half an hour about sunscreen that she'd gotten in her eyes while playing with it without permission. Man, kids do NOT like to have their eyes irrigated with water bottles!

But yeah...dinosaurs. The girls are re-inspired, I am re-inspired=another successful swap.

Working on the Dinos

Thank goodness! The SUN was out today! The sun was OUT today! The sun was out TODAY!!! And...wait for it...the temperature hit 55 degrees! Sitting outside for three hours on a park bench while the girls played, pushing the occasional swing, taking a little hike down the creek bed--this was exactly what I needed today. I then had the energy to do a load of dishes, and feed my children lunch, and straighten the study and the kitchen, and make dinner.

We had vegan beans and franks. I ate vegan beans and franks! I am DEFINITELY cured.

The timeline for my Craftster dinosaur swap has just this minute begun to seem very protracted. Um, why am I basically making three quilts at the same time? Well, because I want three dino quilts, and I'm not sure how much dino fabric I have to parcel out. Still, the dino deadline is fast approaching.

Here are the new dinos to add to the collection:

Yeah, that last one is crooked. I'll figure it out later.

Craftster Read to Me Mommy Swap Goodness

I do a lot of swaps on Craftster, but the Read to Me Mommy swap may have just topped the 2008 Christmas in July Stashbuster swap (in which I had not one, but TWO swap angels step in for my flaky partner!) as my favorite swap to date.

The Read to Me Mommy swap was already set up to put me into nerdy heaven, what with the pleasure I took in sending off a copy of the girls' favorite pop-up encyclopedia, , and in making a variety of felt dinosaurs and a travel felt board (AND in finding an excuse to buy ), and in stencilling a parasaurolophus onto a child's T-shirt. But it turned out to be even better to receive my own swap package from my partner:

OCEAN-THEMED!!!

She sent an autographed copy of Seashells by the Seashore, a counting and shell identification book:
She sent shells, and stuff to decorate them with, if we ever get tired of just looking at them and playing with them as-is:She made a sewn matching game with hand-drawn illustrations:She made a beach bag out of beautiful fabric:And she made the most amazing, most elaborate, themed roll-up felt playset that I've ever seen:

If you like crafting for kiddos, especially crafting educational or extension activities, you should totally check out the Read to Me Mommy swap gallery, which is inspirational. There's a Harold and the Purple Crayon package that I possibly must recreate in every way.

The next Craftster swap that I'm currently signed up for is...wait for it...a DINOSAURS swap. My swap partner would like matchy stuff for herself and her sister, so it will be like crafting for my girls in the future! I bet they'll STILL like stuffed dinosaurs and stencilled shirts!

A Set of Dinosaurs with Which to Travel

The baby is fully healed. Her 104-degree fever for much of last night earned her the day that she's having today, which she is spending in bed, watching children's shows on Netflix Watch Instant and being offered tasty delicacies by her mother--blueberry-pomegranate juice, vegan carob brownies from , fresh oranges, frozen pizza. I figure her body needs a day of rest, which it has to if my little hummingbird is content to just lie there and watch TV all day, and, frankly, I could use a day of extra productivity knowing that both girls are justifiably glued to the boob tube.

And that's how I FINALLY got that living room table nice and scrubbed (we've been kneading bread on it, is why) and made vegan carob brownies and wrote the entire About the Author section of my book proposal and finished the large craft for the Read to Me Mommy swap that I'm participating in on Craftster:

It's a travel felt board, made to accompany , a madly awesome book that would normally be far too expensive for me to purchase for a swap, but the girls were given a copy by an extremely generous mom friend, and then a second copy for Christmas by another loved one, so there you go! In my house, regifting is valid and encouraged.

Only Willow, likely, could tell you the names of all the dinosaurs that I included, but the ones in the photo above are, I believe, an apatasaurus, a supersaurus (which is either a baby or very far away!), and a dimetrodon, while an ichthyosaur swims in the sea and a pterosaur conquers the air. And yes, I cheated--using my last paycheck from Crafting a Green World for a while (more beauracracy changes, ick), I ebayed a most coveted copy of . It was a steal, and a bunch of bidders tried to snipe me in the last minute, but I stood triumphant!

The girls are thrilled, especially Willow, who drew an allosaur in honor of the occasion:Notice that she is in the camp of paleontologists who believe that predatory dinosaurs were highly colored.

For the felt dinosaurs, I cut cardboard templates with the Cricut, then hand-cut the felt. For the travel felt board, I hot-glued felt to the front and back of a Scrabble board. That one was a little tricky, so I'll likely post a tutorial for it when I make a second one for the girls. I made them their own dinosaur felt set, and I made a third set for putting into my pumpkinbear etsy shop as soon as I can squeeze in the time.

And now, while the girls watch what seems like an infinity of Caillou, I plan to do a couple of loads of laundry, write the book's table of contents for my book proposal, figure out what dinner I can make with all the pots and pans dirty (loaded baked potatoes?), blog for free at CAGW, change the bed that Sydney has been eating crackers in all day, read the girls another chapter from Bambi and hope that they'll still go to sleep even if they haven't gotten any exercise all day, get a little exercise myself, and maybe, just maybe, sew up a sock monkey baby bag.

Oh, and I didn't get much sleep last night, so there's always that.

ATC Swapped

My first grown-up ATC swap (can you believe that Will did an ATC swap before I did?) was pretty much super-fun, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Here's my X card, entitled "Mac's X-Ray":
This didn't photograph well, but it's an x-ray image of a brain tumor that my Mac (different from my Matt--rumor has it that Papa, who is hard of hearing and before my marriage saw me with my best friend as much as he saw me with my boyfriend, combined with the fact that Mac, my best man, wore a tux that was carelessly identical to Matt's, never was quite sure exactly which guy I was marrying until the actual marriage. Gawd, how I love all three of those dumb guys) battled a few years ago, printed onto transparency film and stitched to Bristol board. The words were printed individually onto adhesive paper and adhered to the front of the transparency (I'm afraid they're going to fall off, though--next time, I should figure out how to attach them from the other side of the transparency?)

Here's the X ATC of one of my swap partners. It's entitled "X-Ray":
It's three ATCs that accordion together using those metal rings, which is awesome cool. The images are x-rays printed onto matte paper and then glued onto the ATC paper.

Here's another X, by a different swap partner. It's entitled "Xenograft:"

The top and bottom of the figure are individually cut out and glued together--the proportions are perfect, which amazes me. The background is stamped with lots of letter x, and the postage stamps carry the letter, too.

Here's the V card from a swap partner--it's entitled "V=Villain":

There are a ton of collage elements to notice here--photos, typing, black-and-white copy images, inked parts, parts shaded in with colored pencil, etc.

Here's my W card, entitled "My Little Willow Tree:"

It's cotton quilting fabric quilted to Bristol board, then embroidered using the free-hand tool on my sewing machine with a willow tree.

And here's my V card, entitled "Aunt Vicki":

Again, the photo is lousy, because it's really hard to photograph a transparency. This is a photo of my Aunt Vicki printed onto a vintage book page (The Christmas Carol, I believe), lined up exactly with an identical photo printed on an overhead transparency--they're all quilted to Bristol board with a double row of stitching. The words are again printed individually on sticker paper and adhered to the top, and I'm betting they fall off before the year is out.

I think it takes a year to do all the swaps to equal an entire alphabet--how cool would that be?

Oh, no--I am now also obsessed with alphabets.

Heart Handmade: I Made It!

Y'all, I received SEVEN Valentines in the mail today! (And one etsy order). The big news, though, is that I mailed out TWENTY-FOUR Valentines today (and two etsy orders from my pumpkinbear etsy shop).

I glued patterned paper (sheet music or scrapbook paper) to the fronts and backs of 4"x6" pieces of recycled cardboard (cut from pizza boxes or record album covers), except for a few cool-looking record album covers that I cut down to 4"x6" and glued front-and-back. Then I cut and punched hearts of different sizes from more sheet music and scrapbook paper, and punched 1" circles in some of the cardboard Valentines. I glued hearts to the cardboard Valentines in whatever pattern I felt like (a different pattern for each one), glued pages recycled from a tiny little quote book on some, and wire-wrapped beads (some vintage amber beads, some a Christmas present from my mother) to dangle in the 1" circles of some of the cardboard Valentines. I hot-glued tinsel or thrifted bead strands around the edges of most of the Valentines, and cut and glued each Valentine a custom envelope recycled from an old atlas.

The US Valentines cost $1.17 to send, the Canadian ones cost $1.18, and the Australian one only cost $1.40. I have got to start sending more things to Australia.

Here are just a few highlights:Today was the day that Willow also finally got to wear the Salvation Army sweater I bought for her. It's about four sizes too big and has a big pull-mark on the back, so I thought I was buying it as a pillow top for her or perhaps her best little friend, but noooooo...

See? It's a knitted horse. With a real yarn mane. And a blue button eye. Of course she's going to wear it. Every. Single. Day.

And speaking of true love? This Saturday, my dear friend Molly and I are driving up to Indianapolis (By ourselves! Without my babies! Without my husband! Has not happened since before Sydney was born!) to see Old Crow Medicine Show:

If you're jealous (which you are), you should totally come and meet us there. I'll be the 30-something lady in the jeans and T-shirt, acting like she hasn't been out in public by herself since 2006.

I am so freakin' happy.

Holiday Fast-Forward

You'd think I'd be mellowing in the post-Christmas crash--a New Year begun, one babe back in school, my own semester yet to begin...I have magazines to read, a new Waldorf doll-making book from the library (finally!) to think about, and a DanceDanceRevolution resolution to conquer.

But no, my friends, I have not been "mellowing." I do not mellow. Instead, I have been doing this--

Yes, you with that look of horror upon your face, that is what you think it is--I HAVE been prepping for Valentine's Day.

I have an idea for a denim quilt with denim heart applique that I've been working on for my etsy shop, and a plan for another one but with all the heart appliques decorated by our family (ideally each topped with a red or pink vintage button, although I do not actually own any vintage buttons), and I'm doing some cardmaking for my Craftster swap, and the result of all this is...

Y'all, I ran out of stash. I am about two pairs of blue jeans shy of cutting out all the pieces for my second quilt, and I flat-out ran out of vintage songbook or poetry book pages dealing with the concept of love. So obviously I ran by the Recycling Center today, because their free Sidewalk Exchange is continually rife with ripped blue jeans and crazy old books (I found porn there once! Porn!). But the Recycling Center? Closed! With a big sign out front saying they're closed on Mondays now!

Stupid New Year.

When I found myself standing in the study earlier tonight eyeing my 1936 Kittredge Shakespeare, I was all, "Whoah, lady! Calm on down. You can find some real-live trash tomorrow."

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Christmas in July is FINALLY Over

Well, at least it was a happy ending to possibly the longest Craftster swap in history, on account of I got ditched by my regular swap partner AFTER sending her all the stuff I spent weeks making her (don't worry--she has a myspace page and regularly updates it, so, as the swap organizer said, whatever happened to her, she's at the least alive and with internet access), and my swap organizer hooked me up with not one, but TWO swap angels. You can witness the awesomeness of my first angel package to arrive here, but yesterday even more awesomeness arrived.

I had asked for either stocking stuffers for the girls or non-religious holiday decorations, so when the big padded envelope arrived in our mailbox and the girls began to squeal for it ("It's MY present!" "No, MY!"), I lost my head a little and made the mistake of telling the girls that they could NOT look at Momma's special package because it might be Christmas presents. For Christ's sake, you'd think I'd have learned something about parenting in the past four years. Seriously, it was a rookie move, but in my defense, this will be the first year that we're "really," as in not in a half-assed way, celebrating the holiday.

Obviously, then, after I'd actually opened the package while holding it over their heads and peeping inside, when I announced, "Yay, ornaments! You CAN have these now!", Willow immediately snatched everything she could reach and looked like this--

--and Sydney, of course, retaliated by snatching some sweeties of her own: So you can sort of see in my daughters' avaricious grasps the so-cute crocheted ornaments that JennyBear made for us. I don't know if she knows any kiddos, but she somehow knew dead-on that anthropomorphism=awesome. The ornaments have faces!!!I love the birdie the best. I vaguely remember this pattern--perhaps in ?--and it makes me want to make a thousand more for our tree, but I don't think I can come close to imitating this cool embroidery. Have you ever noticed that I'm full of a lot of embroidery talk--Sublime Stitching patterns I want to buy, how-to books I've already bought, clothing I'm going to embellish--but I haven't yet ever stitched a single stitch of embroidery? I am an embroidery poser! I'm the closest I've ever come, though, having recently used my Hobby Lobby birthday gift card to purchase some tear-away interfacing for embroidering on T-shirts.

Anyway... I spent half an hour trying to get some good shots of all this goodness to post in the Craftster swap gallery; meanwhile, the conflict escalated:

(I love how Will is sneaking the bird out of Sydney's hand while she's looking at something else)"No!!! Bird mine!!!"And Willow's main offense is to pretend to be a dinosaur--"Raawr!!!"--and Sydney's main defense is a good offense, and she lunges forward and bites Willow on the chest. Photo shoot ended, double time-out.

The Good and the Bad and the Good

We had a happy, happy afternoon at the pool-- --and then the woman depicted by chance in this photograph--
--stole the girls' blue rubber duckie. Two minutes before closing time, her little swim diaper-clad toddler ran over and grabbed up the duckie, which Willow had been happily sharing with the entire pool for two hours, from right in front of us, then ran back over and showed his mom, who nodded and kept packing up. Of course I sent Matt marching right over, but he was utterly defeated when the woman, hardly looking at him or the kid or the toy, told him her kid had brought that duck to the pool every day for four weeks and maybe we should look around more for OUR duck--I think Matt should have just grabbed the duck and ran, but he reminds me that poolsides are slippery.

Seriously, what do you do when some random person brazenly steals something from you right out in public? If we'd been kids, it'd been easy--"Give me back my duck!" Bam!--but as adults we were utterly stymied when polite conversation did not allow us to achieve our goal. Seriously, this woman just would not give back that duck. So Matt had to march back with failure in his eyes, and we had to carry our hysterical child from the pool.

Don't worry--Willow feels better now, except that I keep bringing it up again to help her process. You know--"You've been sharing so well now for over four years, and only once has someone stole what you were sharing with them," etc. It's too bad, because Will really is a very generous child. Parents often compliment me, as if I had anything to do with it, and she's always giving her little buddies presents from her own toy supply. I hate it when this happens--you lovingly raise up your child with the utmost thoughtfulness and care, cultivating precious qualities in them and building up their characters, and then some idiot comes along and makes their best attempt at ruining all your work in about one minute with one ugly act or one ugly remark. You know--telling them, "Stay with your mommy, or a bad person will come and take you away," or hitting their dog right in front of them, or stealing the toy they'd brought to the pool to share for a while.

One of our family friends was with us at the pool that day, and she's a social worker, and when I asked her for her professional opinion about the situation, she thought for a minute, lips pursed, then said, "That woman has problems."

I have something that would have cheered the girls right up, of course, but I wouldn't give it to them because I am mean. The gifties inside have to wait, but my Christmas in July Stashbuster Swap angel package arrived!

You know I got bailed on by my official partner, who apparently received the ornaments I made without a word and then disappeared, but the swap organizer found two, count them TWO, people to make swap presents for me and get nothing in return--Craftster calls them swap angels. And my first swap angel package was AWESOME!
These are the veggies that my angel crocheted for me. She made a carrot, corn, peas, a tomato, and a baby eggplant/beet. I'm so excited to put these in the girls' Christmas stockings--I've made them pretty flush on felt food, but I'd really been wanting some crocheted food, as well. Now if I can only find somebody to crochet them a matching set of eggplant top knitted hats...Because the girls also love the ocean, my angel also crocheted them some ocean life, a sea turtle and a dolphin. The sea turtle's shell is like a little jacket that you can take off and put back on again. A jacket, y'all--how much fun is that? A lot.The sweetest thing, though, is that she made me and the girls matching jewelry--the black beads are all magnets, so that you can wrap the same piece around your neck a couple of times for a necklace, or around your wrist several times for a bracelet. Of course, the first thing I did was to wrap mine and the girls' all around my own wrist for one giant, super-bracelet.
I'm really happy with my swap package; this turned out to be a great swap, after all. Just a couple more lovingly handcrafted items, now, and the girls' Christmas stockings will be full before November!

Why Christmas Isn't Really in July

I may possibly have been bailed upon by my partner in Craftster's Christmas in July Stashbuster Swap--either that, or something bad happened to her. Online buddies are probably beyond the last to know when tragedy strikes. I'm very bummed, because my partner was a knitter, and she had a stash of HARRY POTTER HOUSE COLOR YARN!!! Oh, some things are just not fair. I did possibly bring it upon myself, however, due to my intense desire to always be right. You see, I got into a little tiff with the organizer of the swap on account of this rule that when you're involved in a swap, you have to post in the swap forum at least once a week. I suppose it's so the organizer knows you're still alive and crafting, but I think it's a pain to have to have one more weekly chore to remember related to what is supposed to be a fun activity, and, since nobody wants to actually talk in the forum about what they're making, because they want it to be a surprise, the forum conversation tends to be non-crafty, and I really just don't want to be required to post weekly. My counter-argument is that since posting and crafting are two different animals entirely, weekly posting is no sign that you're actually doing your swap work and will send on time. Case in point: I posted maybe once, after I was basically forced to, and I sent early. My partner posted weekly just like she was supposed to, and she's apparently dead in the water. So there.

Anyway, here's what I made for my partner. Her family has six, count 'em six, holiday trees, and I made a set of ornaments for each tree. The littlest kiddo loves to color, so his set is made from crayons melted into heart molds, with an ornament hanger melted into the back of each one:

The little girl's favorite colors are blue, pink, and purple, so I hand-sewed her set out of blue denim, and added pink and purple beads:

I forgot to photograph the other little girl's set, but her favorite color is red, so I made her ornaments all from different red fabrics--faux fur, silk, plaid flannel, felted wool, etc.

The eldest kiddo likes red with black, so his set is made from felted wool:

The main tree in the house is decorated in blue, silver, and white, so I also made a set of ornaments out of my blue glitter vinyl. I really liked how these turned out, although vinyl doesn't photograph well:

I also really, really like the fangeek set of ornaments I made for the "handmade ornaments" tree. They're all sewn from black denim with black beaded hangers, but each person in the family has a front and back T-shirt transfer of their own, personal fangeek obesssion on their own ornament.

The littlest kid loves Pokemon: Pikachu is on the other side of his ornament, of course.

The little girl likes the Junie B. Jones book series: A cover from another of the books is on the other side of her ornament.

The other girl loves Green Day (awesome kid):

A photo of the entire band is on the other side of her ornament.

The eldest kids loves Magic, the Gathering:

Another player's card is on the other side.

My partner's husband loves Aqua Teen Hunger Force:

Master Shake is on the other side of his:

And my partner loves Harry Potter, especially Slytherin House:

The other half of this battle scene, depicting the good guys, is on the other half of her ornament.

Eh, it was fun to make stuff for other people, even if I don't hear back from my partner's family to see if they liked it. It is good practice for Christmas, anyway, you know--sending lovingly handmade gifts to family members who don't send thank-you notes, or watching them open presents you spent hours on and not totally fawn over them--not that I make gifts for other people in order to be fawned over. Ahem. Yep, happy Handmade Holiday!