The Party has Encountered a Dragon: A Dragon Party for Will's Ninth Birthday

cardboard shields and balloon swords

a castle to paint and play in

a treasure hunt for the dragon's hoard

This is exactly like an Easter egg hunt, only I used the painted rocks from my DIY Treasure tutorial. 

 Dragon Tag

Rip old fabric into "tails." Have the kids close their eyes, and pass out tails to the majority of kids, who should tuck them into the backs of their pants so that they hang down. Have the tailed kids, who are the dragons, start running first, then let the other kids, who are the knights, open their eyes and chase them. A dragon whose tail is pulled off becomes a knight, and helps chase dragons. The last dragon is a champion, and so is the knight who has the most tails. We played this a second time without closing eyes, and with each kid choosing whether she wanted to be a dragon or a knight.

 watermelon, chess cookies, chocolate ice cream, and a castle cake

Yes, the cake did look about as bad as I was afraid of, but I don't care. I let the girls decorate it--can you tell? I've started making these super-long birthday candles for the girls now; Willow requested blue and yellow.

 friends and sisters to celebrate with

presents that are always so thoughtful

and, of COURSE, a walk to the park to finish

And that's how a great kid has herself a GREAT birthday party. Nine is going to be a good year, I can already tell.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Candle Bling and Kid-Made Jewelry

Both of my tutorials this week came from projects that were really, REALLY big hits with the kids. Over our post-Christmas staycation (oh, how we NEEDED those six days all at home, altogether!), as I worked on a new design for a rainbow beeswax candle--

--Syd worked very hard on a rainbow candle of her own:

Syd maps out her candle design before she begins.

She was pretty thrilled when I showed her how we could personalize her candle with these beeswax sheet cut-outs:

 On another day, I had the idea that the girls might like to use their brand-new, SUPER awesome gel pens (Thanks, Grandma Beck!!!) to make themselves some jewelry, so I cut pendants out of old cardboard record album covers for them. I had planned that they could decorate the blank backs of these pendants, so I fussy cut interesting abstracts from the front cover side, but Willow, who in general is less interested in creating her own drawings from scratch, discovered a passionate interest in (and quite a knack for) embellishing the printed images:

Don't they look great? Gel pens are the perfect tool for an artistic activity like this, because they're vibrant and they stick to a very wide variety of media, looking equally well on rough materials like newspapers and smash books and smooth materials like glossy magazine pages and photographs.

Grandma Beck bought each girl her own large set of gel pens in a metal case, and I keep unabashedly stealing each girl's set for my own work. Every now and then a kid, who has been well-ingrained to pick up her own stuff and who prizes her pen set and so WANTS to keep it nice, will walk by, notice her pen set mysteriously open mysteriously near me, and, giving me a quizzical look, will quietly pack it up and put it away again.

They don't yet know that their mother is a thief--don't YOU tell them!

A Big Rainbow Candle, and Taking Photos in the Snow

Newly listed, an 8" rainbow beeswax taper candle that I designed over the break:

I normally dread etsy photo shoots, because we have just zero nice lighting in our house, and finding nice outdoor photo locations for every single thing is a pain in the butt, but Will and I took these photos on Wednesday, while Syd was spending the day at day camp (a couple of times a year I'll enroll Syd in one of those day camps that the city runs on the days that public schools are out--we call these her "mental health days," because she gets to get away from me and Willow for the day!), and I discovered that taking photographs in the snow?

Is awesome!!!

I'd been waiting to take my photos until it was a blue sky day, then I took them in the shade with the perfectly white snow as a backdrop. I could not be happier with the results:

I'm contemplating going into crafty overdrive this weekend, to see what else I can come up with to photograph before the snow starts to melt later next week.

My Latest over at CAGW: Wooden Pallets and Sydney's Latest Moneymaker

My latest over at CAGW:

a round-up of DIY wooden pallet projects

and a way to store melted wax between uses

The kids had SO much fun with their melted wax play--scooping it, pouring it, melting crayons in it, spilling it, scraping it up--

You get the idea.

Sydney, my entrepreneurial child, had another idea, as well. With her sister's help, she set up "Sydney's Beeswax Crafts" on our front sidewalk, directly on the frequently walked and biked path to our neighborhood park:

Here's the first dollar that she earned:

She sold her hand-dipped beeswax candles and her poured beeswax shapes (still warm!), all for $1 each. Including the elderly gentleman who paid her $1 to go inside and go to bed that first evening--it was 8:30 pm, getting dark, and I had long ago despaired of getting the kid to come back inside, myself--my child earned eight dollars selling her beeswax crafts.

This is better than I have done at some craft fairs.

This Week on CAGW: Beeswax Candles

poured beeswax candles in recycled containers

and hand-dipped beeswax candles

Sydney, especially, had a huge amount of fun with a crock pot full of melted beeswax in the past few days, making candles with me:

She used to be my kid who gagged when she felt oobleck for the first time, but now she loves nothing better than a huge, messy, elaborate, free-form, all-day art project. Will used to be very much that kid, and she'll still immerse herself in projects, but much of her energy and creativity is internalized these days, into reading and absorbing what she's read. Syd used to want to sit on the couch and be read to, or look at picture books, or listen to audiobooks, all day, but these days she's a hands-on girl, ready to jump into an activity and stay there. The two types call for very different learning styles, it seems. Willow's intellectual focus is good for reading, memorizing information by rote, learning languages and grammar, and computation. It's less suited for handwriting, art, mastering math concepts that call for manipulatives, and science projects. Syd's hands-on focus is great for handwriting, art, learning math concepts such as measuring and graphs, science projects, dance, and other physical skill-building. It's less suited for learning to read, math computation, memory work, and knowledge building by rote.

I still require them to do all of the above, of course (learning to read commences, regardless of our inability to get through a reading lesson without exactly one tantrum at some point, because Syd continues to improve, and screw the haters), but these trends are good to notice, because they help explain some things, and help guide me to better methods. Of COURSE Willow likes mental math these days, and resists learning how to carry (which I've been explaining using Base Ten blocks), I finally realize.

New math strategies coming up!

And in the Blink of an Eye...

...she's six!

We celebrated our girl with homemade rolled beeswax birthday candles--

--on top of Momma-made blue birthday bundt cake with chocolate frosting and heart-shaped sprinkles (love those post-Valentine's Day sales!):

Life, indeed, is sweet.

Just One Candle

The schedule in the past couple of weeks has become that end-of-the-school-year-hectic thing that I always forget it does, what with ballet recital rehearsal twice a week (have I mentioned yet that the pre-college program is doing a kiddie version of Swan Lake for their recital? It's either brilliant or mad), and fashion show rehearsal three times a week (The Trashion/Refashion Show is TOMORROW!!!), so although it's been weeks since I snapped the photos, only this morning did I finally manage to get the long-promised One Rolled Beeswax Birthday Candle listing up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

I'd planned to publish the One Rolled Beeswax Waldorf Candle listing, too, but I discovered that when I did the photo shoot of COURSE I forgot to snap pictures of the single Waldorf candle, especially since I had a million Waldorf candles out for the shoot and DID manage to get photos of the single birthday candle...

Sigh.

A Full Set of Waldorf Ring Candles

I don't actually own a Waldorf ring. It's on my to-do list to make one (someday...), but the idea of candles specifically designed to fit into Waldorf rings wasn't even on my radar until several customers asked me for them.

And now I FINALLY have a full set of Waldorf ring candles listed:

The lighting isn't quite what I'd like with these--it can be VERY hard to accurately render such a wide variety of colors--but you do your best and move on, you know? If I decide later that I simply can no longer live with the purple tint to the photos, then I'll reshoot, but I'm surprised at how much I can live with if the alternative is putting forth a great deal more effort.

Deep Breath

I'm pleased to confess that my yesterday ended much better than it began. 

I'm supposed to remember that if I'm having a bad day, we should just leave the house, and unfortunately I did not remember that, but fortunately a good friend texted me not long after I finished writing my post to tell me that she and her kiddos were hanging at the park just down the street from us. When I got that message, I tell you, we were out of the house thirty seconds later and at the park the next minute.

Fresh air always helps, the girls and I were thrilled to get away from each other in the wide open spaces, and whether or not, in the running around and shrieking and pretend kitty games that my kids played with their little friend, they took the time to confess to her what a nightmare their mom had been all day, I certainly found relief in confessing to my dear friend what a nightmare those kids of mine had been (and, yes, what I nightmare I had been, as well). She comforted me by confessing all the nightmare things that she and her own kids had been up to lately, and then we settled down for a couple of hours of happy conversation while following her toddler around on the grass. 

We stayed at the park until dark, by which time Matt had come home, too, and heard the whole story. After we walked back home I shut the door of our study/studio and finished my etsy orders while watching re-runs of The Colbert Report; in the other room, I do believe that Matt clarified some very important issues of policy and procedure with the children, and together they tidied the living room and kitchen, figured out what to eat for dinner, and steam mopped those sticky floors!

Here's my current work in progress, now that (I can't believe it!) school and work are done for the day (what did Matt SAY to those children? Frankly, I don't even want to know...), and the only other activities on the docket are baking cookies, playing outside, and attending our online Magic Tree House Club meeting later:

Two dozen sets of rainbow birthday candles--that's 168 candles! I might get completely caught up on my entire Hulu queue with this order.

The Rainbow Fairies' Favorite Candles

Are anybody else's kids as rabidly into the Rainbow Magic series as my kids are? Willow's been reading them since back when she first began to read, which means that my Sydney may very well have been weaned on them, and is now just as obsessed as Willow ever was.

The Rainbow Magic books are notorious between the adults in our family for putting the both of us straight to sleep when we read from them. Syd, who can't yet read, of course, checks out piles of them every time we're at the library, and since there are no audiobook versions of the Rainbow Magic series yet (GRRR!!!), Matt and I find ourselves reading them out loud to her. Every day. For hours. It was our little joke that in the summertime, I'd always read to Sydney out in the backyard in the hammock, with a nice pillow and a summer-weight blanket, and when I'd finished the book, Syd would climb out of the hammock, give it a little push, and send me off on a nice afternoon nap.

Everything is rainbow around here again these days--the fairies, Syd's design for this year's Trashion/Refashion show (more on that later), the play dough that we're making today, the Kool-aid-flavored bubble gum that we're also making today, and all our candles. As I was out in the yard last week in the suspiciously mild weather, taking photos of some new etsy listings, I took a second to update my rolled beeswax rainbow fairy candles listing:

For no other reason than that taking yet another photo of these little fairy candles is one more excuse to bask in their yummy, tiny rainbow-ness.

Rainbow Rolled Beeswax Waldorf Ring Candles

Completing a custom order a couple of weeks ago, I was called upon to research the diameter of candles used in traditional Waldorf birthday rings.

Having FINALLY discovered the right number, I whipped up a set of rainbow rolled beeswax candles the perfect size for a Waldorf ring:

These Waldorf ring candles are twice as thick as my birthday candles, and twice as long as my fairy candles. I'm hearting them so much that I'm starting to think that I my girls REALLY need a Waldorf ring to put them in.

Rolled Beeswax Rainbow Birthday Candles

I've had it in my head to make a simple set of birthday candles in rainbow colors for quite a while, and I do believe that I've had them made for nearly that long, but winters are so grey in Indiana that it can seem a long time between those sunny days that I love so much for product photography.

And although these unseasonably mild, warm, sunny days that we've had lately have given me nightmares of a post-apocalyptic global warming collapse in which we're all forced to migrate south on foot, pushing shopping carts full of canned goods in front of us, these entire days that the girls have spent playing with toy ponies and Duplos outside, or kicking a soccer ball around with me at the park, or having the kind of mid-morning playground playdates that we've haven't done since summer sure are making me very, very happy, as is the opportunity to get plenty of product shots done.

And that's why I've done something nearly unheard of this Fabruary: I put a brand-new listing up on etsy!

rolled beeswax birthday candles, rainbow set of seven

At least Global Warming is productive!

What I've Been Busy With

Whew! Now just two more orders to make tomorrow, and then I'm going to do something entirely non-productive.