Do Not Eat This Cake

Have you seen my new felt cake playset?

It's inspired by Sydney's rainbow birthday, and by the Montessori pink tower, which Sydney also loves--she dreams about the pink tower sometimes, and draws pictures of the pink tower in which it is surrounded by rainbows. I wanted something colorful, that could be played with creatively, but that could also be used as a mathematical activity. Stacking the cake layers teaches the order of smallest to biggest, and each of the trims will match only with the layer that fits its length exactly.

The cake stand is just for cuteness.

Spray Paint and Felt Cake: Craft Fair WIPs

Don't even ask me about my foot. I'm clearly going to have to go back to Promptcare tomorrow and have it amputated or something. Did I mention that the girls were playing with my sewing stuff yesterday and made a mess and therefore I stepped on a hand-sewing needle with my bare foot? Blunt end first? And I had to pull it out with my own two hands, although I thought for a minute that I was going to have to get some pliers?

SAME FOOT!!!!

So no, we're not talking about that foot anymore.

In other news, I've been hobbling around getting my butt in gear for the start of craft fair season on Saturday. The beginning of the season is always so panicky--so many signs to make! Change to aquire! Where's the duct tape? The last-minute panic hasn't yet set in, so today was mostly spent making felt cake--

--in large numbers:

Pimping the EZ-UP:

And no, we're also not talking about the sudden rainstorm that's occuring right now on said EZ-Up before the paint can cure. Just swear a few times inside your head for me.

And, of course, if I'M going to spray paint, then so must the child:

The other child was napping, after having screamed the entire walk home from Chocolate Moose about her skinned side. The second that we got home and I put a Band-aid on the skinned side, it was miraculously all better and she stopped screaming. I did not smack her.

And when Matt got home from work and saw that I was NOT lying down with my foot elevated, but instead SPRAY-PAINTING THE EZ-UP and LETTING THE CHILD SPRAY-PAINT and LETTING THE OTHER CHILD NAP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SO THAT SHE WON'T GO TO SLEEP TONIGHT he didn't smack me, either. In fact, he brought home pizza (such act is entitled "Cooking Dinner on the Nights When Julie Doesn't Cook") AND helped me finish spray-painting AND took a photo of me looking all happy and relaxed:

Wait until he sees how many craft fair signs I need him to design for me tomorrow...

Felted Wool Cupcakes--I'm Obsessed!

Today was Willow's first day of summer vacation back here at home, and so we spent the morning riding the bus to the library for storytime and a craft, playing in the playroom, picking out books, getting lectured by a really mean librarian at the Circulation Desk because Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule and are overdue (seriously, you should have to pay the fine OR listen to a lecture, not both), eating a picnic lunch outside by the bear statues, and riding the bus home, and then the afternoon playing outside, stringing beads for necklaces, reading a thousand books, playing Dinosaur Bingo, walking to the playground, walking home in the rain, playing outside in the rain, reading more books, cooking macaroni and cheese for dinner, eating dinner, taking a bath, and watching a Trout Fishing in America DVD. As Willow is laying on the study floor drawing a picture and I am cajoling her into getting ready for bed, she says, "I wish summer vacation was over. It's boring." Sigh.

So while Matt was bathing the girls, I stitched together yet another felted wool cupcake. I am obsessed! I don't know how many felted cupcakes the girls really need to have in their pretend food collection, but I do know that I've got at least another half dozen laid out on the study table to cut out and stitch up. But come on, they're sooooooo cute:

I thought they needed a little something, so I tried adding bows...I dunno. Tips if you're going to make these, though:

• Cut the cupcake wrapper at an angle so that the bottom comes out narrower than the top, since real cupcake wrappers look like that, not straight cylinders.
• If you're making these for kids, skip the part in the instructions that asks you to glue the bottom of the cupcake wrapper on. It's not noticeable, and obviously much sturdier, if you hand-stitch it.
• If you're making these for kids, also forget the part where you stick pretty straight pins into the frosting as decoration--seriously, no. I'm thinking about stitching beads on for the same effect.
  

And, of course, here's the action shot, in which you can see my lovingly crafted felted wool cupcakes at play:

"Look, Momma! Cupcake smashes the other cupcakes, and then they fall over, and then the cupcake shots them. Shot! Shot! Shot!" Sigh.

Cupcakes, Dinosaurs, Pink Chucks, and Arkansas

Since it's craft fair season, obviously I've been spending almost all my time this week working not on record bowls, T-shirt quilts, and melted crayon hearts, but on cupcakes, dinosaurs, pink Chucks, and Arkansas.

The girls and I have been way into , which I swear is, along with my other great favorite, , the only cookbook I have ever cooked from in which what I cook actually comes out even remotely similar to the photo in the book, and even remotely delicious (I'm a disastrous cook, with a near-manic tendency to make ill-advised substitutions and a certainty that all measurements are only approximate). So far we've made the chocolate mint cupcakes twice and Matt has made, of all things, the margarita cupcakes with them once. Margarita cupcakes? Awesome.

I've also been, during Sydney's precious afternoon naptimes, watching Dexter - The First Season on Netflix and making the girls a bunch of the felted wool cupcakes I found in . They stopped looking like cupcakes to me once I got deep into making them, the same as when you say a word over and over again it loses all meaning, but out of the three I've made so far, there's one that even I'll admit is just darn cute.

And then there are the dinosaurs--I promised the girls a dinosaur quilt this summer, and I am darn well going to deliver a dinosaur quilt, so for a couple of days I put the iron and the dishtowel in semi-permanent residence on the livingroom table (I got so used to intoning, every time I heard little feet thud by, "Don't touch the iron. The iron is hot," that I started even warning Matt as he went by. This is similar to, when I'm laying out a quilt on the livingroom floor, my intonations of "Don't step on the quilt. Walk around the quilt") and knocked out these sweet babies: I'm not a hundred percent happy with the frame conceit, and I doubt that I'll do another one just that way, but hey, it's dinosaurs. The more, the merrier.

The vegan cupcakes are ostensibly a rehearsal for the girls' big summer birthday bash next month, and one of the things I've been trying to do all month, only it keeps raining two out of three days, is take a photo of the girls in their matching candy pink Converse Chuck Taylors to put on the invitation. Finally, a break in the weather, and I managed to find matching socks for everyone, and I only once had to fiercely threaten Willow with not going to dance class if she didn't sit down for this picture for five minutes (I know, I know, but usually I am the kind of mother you don't want to call Social Services about), and I got this photo:

It's so cute it kind of makes me feel sick to my stomach a little. Of course, I cropped off the part where they're sitting with dirty faces cramming their mouths with Quorn nuggets and pineapple.

In upcoming news, today is Willow's last day of school for the summer--I blew her mind yesterday by informing her that when she comes back to school in August, she'll be a MIDDLE-GROUPER! (As opposed to the Youngest Group and the Kindergartners, the other kiddos in her class for those of you not in tune with Montessori lingo). So after school, and after dance class, and after stopping by a party for my friend Tim, who has just successfully defended his dissertation (I sigh, because I can no longer attain the academic single-mindedness it takes to get a PhD), we're all trekking down to Arkansas for the long Memorial Day weekend. Papa and my mother have been talking about taking the girls to McDonald's for their collective birthdays, and hopefully the city pool will be open, and I'm eager to look through my Mama's collection of old recipe books from the various elementary schools and churches she was involved in throughout her life, a collection that is both beloved to me and awesome in its ingredients and preparation methods (7up cake! Jello molds! Oleo!). Willow and Sydney are begging to take their new favorite toy, which Matt bought for them at Goodwill for five dollars on Sunday. That favorite toy is this:
Whew! What did you do this week?

Felt Food for Fun

Today was both a school holiday for Willow, an occasion that I love because I love having both my girls with me all to myself all day, and a rainy day--a double cause, therefore, for some weird, elaborate project that filths up the house and keeps us excited all day. And so today, the girls and I were felt food fools!

Look at the awesomeness we created:

We just kept on thinking of things to make for the entire day. The simplest stuff to make, of course, is in the "flat" category. Bread is just a brown bread shape with a white smaller bread shape stitched on--if you're into a pleasing shape, by the way, or you're just not a skilled hand-drawer as I am not, it's simple to find a template for most of this stuff by doing a Google Image search for, say, bread slice, printing out a picture that has a shape you like, and cutting it out. And once you have bread, all the other sandwich fixins are easy--cheese slices (don't forget a holey Swiss or my own personal favorite--American!), lunchmeat, the peanut butter and jelly I made above, etc., don't even require sewing, and items like lettuce leaves or tomato slices just need some embroidery for definition.

And with flat stuff, you can always pile on more flat stuff, and then you have...frosted cookie and slice of pizza! Even though we never have either sausage or pepperoni on our pizzas (we always, always order half sundried tomatoes or broccoli for me and half pineapple for Matt), Willow requested the above "saussaroni" on her pizza.

For foods that you want to have a little more body but that are still pretty flat, you can cut out two identical front and back pieces, sandwich another, slightly smaller piece of felt or low-loft batting or fleece or whatever scrap in between them, and sew around the edge for something like...

Mmm, pancakes, but I actually had to cook eggs over-easy for the girls this morning, because they'd never seen this exact food before.

And then you can quilt through your layers for additional detail if you want. And notice that this ain't necessarily super-realistic--if you want to make really elaborate and detailed and perfectly realistic felt food, that's awesome and you can, but that's something that's all about you. If it's something you're doing because it's cool to do with kids, then remember that kids don't want perfect, they just want you to finish up their grapes, already, so they can add it to their lunchbox and go on the pretend picnic.

Stuffed foods are a lot like the quilted foods except that instead of putting a layer of batting in between the front and back pieces, you leave an opening when you sew them up, then stuff them--in my case, with the fill out of an old pillow--then finish sewing. If you want to add a stem or leaves, don't forget to put it between the layers before you sew.

But probably the best part about making felt food is using your creativity and your three-dimensional constructions skills to make awesome stuff that doesn't fit into these easy categories. For the watermelon, for instance, you can start out with just a red circle, but then you've got to make and trim a paper mock-up of the rind to figure out just what shape and size it needs to be, and then you'll probably want to hand-sew it and stuff it. You can make seeds just by sewing back and forth through the stuffing to both sides of the flesh and taking tiny stitches. This was Willow's special request, and it's her favorite piece of food from today:

I'm the one who likes sushi, and these are really easy: roll up long rectangles, hand-stitch the felt nori closed, and take a few stitches back and forth across the whole piece to keep it all together.

The fortune cookie is another circle with a little hand-stitching to close it, but it's kind of weird to fold unless you pull up some real fortune cookies off of Google Image to look at for reference:

Such an easy, fun, and satisfying creative outlet. What felt foods do you make?