Adventures of the Green Goth

I went and did it! I made a Papel Picado banner consisting solely of skulls, using the templates from my newest secret girlfriend, The Toymaker. I upcycled pages for this banner from an old and really boring encyclopedia--I first tried out using glossy magazine pages, but they were pretty slippery and I dislike fiddly activities.

And then? And then I hung my brand-new skulls banner in the master bedroom, right above our bed. Totally not weird, right?

Speaking of fiddly activities...I also spent two hours at Parents' Workday at Will's school today writing up a very detailed Collection Development Policy for the Parents' Library. Don't even get started on the fact that the Parents' Library has about 15 books in it, total. I have dreams, people.

P.S. Check out my post about The Toymaker's Papel Picado (I know, that makes three posts about this! But she's my secret girlfriend!) over at Crafting a Green World.

Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper Paper

After an excitement-filled morning watching Sydney repeatedly hang----and then drop to her doom----over and over and OVER again, in the afternoon we chilled down in the playroom.

The girls busied themselves industriously----if by industrious you mean that they tore up a bunch of my scrapbook paper and then drew on it and then taped it to the wall with the carpet tape that Matt was supposed to use to tape down the flooring four MONTHS ago and then fought over the same square inch of a six-foot-long roll of butcher paper.

The girls wanted me to hang with them, so instead of washing dishes or folding laundry or blogging for bucks I took some scrapbook paper and the Halloween Papel Picado paper bunting templates (a free download from The Toymaker )and created this: I didn't realize how much I would love these paper buntings until I started making them. I mean, seriously, look how awesome:

I like how the scrapbook paper doesn't necessarily match the overt theme, and since Will now wants another bunting just for her room, I think I'm going to try making a couple of more buntings from recycled materials--magazines, old book pages, newspaper, etc.

The downloadable templates for this bunting also include a cat and an owl, but I thought I might save those for a different activity. In upcoming years it would certainly be interesting to explore the Papel Picado with the girls as well as other aspects of the Day of the Dead, but for this year we're mostly exploring Halloween as a celebration of autumn. Why, then, you may ask, did I put skulls in our bunting?

Well, as Willow would explain to you, "Momma just likes skulls." What can I say--I'm an existentialist.

Tree People

We were tree people today. Tree people can spend half a day frolicking in the half-tree's worth of leaves that fall from the next-door-neighbor's maple in one day, enjoying their soft yellow awesomeness before they get all damp and gross and have to be raked over onto the lasagna garden:
Tree people can spend the other half of the day going up and down, up and down the "climbing tree" over at Bryan Park. Our Sydney made one more leap into big-girl territory by climbing all by herself higher than my head:
This rationally leads, of course, to the next milestone, which is her first tree climbing-related injury:
She is so hardcore.

Perhaps motivated by the strange message left for me on my study table while I was out of the room--
--I finished our family's Halloween bunting:
It's another one with recycled blue jean pennant flags and bias tape made from a remnant of brown cotton. I printed the letters out onto freezer paper, which I then ironed onto felt. I hand-cut out all the letters, peeled off the freezer paper, temporarily attached the letters to the flags with a glue stick, and carefully appliqued them on using the freehand stitch attachment on my sewing machine:

I'm actually really fond of the felt, which is a brand called Eco-Spun that is made from recycled plastic bottles--I'm not in love with wool felt, on account of the sheepies it comes from, so it's nice to have an eco-friendly acrylic option.

Tomorrow, the girls and I are going to explore the joy that is Contact paper when creating Halloween tree ornaments. The day after that, I think I'll break out the power drill for the exact same purpose--mwa-ha-ha!

Two New

In between drinking coffee, moving shrubs, working on a Halloween bunting for the girlies, doing laundry, eating Chinese food, cleaning house, coloring autumn pictures with the girlies, buying matte net at Joann's for 40% off (the girls need Swan Lake-style pancake tutus, obviously--I'm going to use this tutorial from Burdastyle), eating more Chinese food, and telling Willow another chapter in the story about Princess Willow who accidentally sent her daddy to the other side of the world to get her a flying horse but went after him when she realized that if he did what she told him to he wouldn't be back for years and years (adventures ensue), I posted a recycled denim and burlap bunting--

--and a set of International Breastfeeding Symbol pinback buttons----to my etsy shop. You'll probably be seeing both of these things around more this season, since I was invited to sell some pinbacks at the Bloomington Area Birth Services (I was thinking I'd donate half the price? Too stingy? Profit does tend to keep me off of welfare, however...), and I am apparently now obsessed with buntings.

More on that later.