New Blue Tablecloth

It wasn't until AFTER we completed the Great Room Switch that I realized that this, my children's former bedroom, my current study/studio, is REALLY small. I mean really small. It's basically an enlarged hallway with a closet.

I've been used to working in my former study/studio, now my children's bedroom, which was larger and also completely stuffed full with many upon many shelves and bins of stuff, stuff that simply won't fit tidily into this smaller room, stuff that now spills out messily onto the floor and sits in piles and makes me feel like a hoarder and an awful person.

All this is to explain, of course, why I have been stash busting so single-mindedly this year. I've been listing random bits of extra supplies in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop--

--sewing the girls entire wardrobes of summer clothing from a few years' accumulation of awesome thrifted T-shirts, and finishing up projects that have been long dead in the water.

For instance...do you like my new tablecloth?

I strip pieced it sometime in 2011 entirely out of blues from my stash fabric, most of which was given to me by other crafters getting out of the sewing game over the years, then decided that I hated it and folded it away and stuffed it in a closet.

Nothing gets stuffed away in this new tiny room, so last week as I was attempting to pull something else out of the same space, a bunch of crap fell out (and it's still on the floor), including this pieced top, and I thought, "Hmmn, why did I hate that? I love it now!"

Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me enough that it's now a thing--if I make something and hate it, I just have to put it away for a bit and the next time I see it, I'll love it.

I backed it with plain blue fabric, also stash, stitched and turned it, quilted it, and set the table:

I'm not perfectly happy with it; I think because of all the different types of fabrics that I used in the top (I attempted to get all cotton, but since I don't know the provenance of most of this I'm thinking that I mixed a lot of cotton and cotton blends together, and of course a lot of slightly different weights), it simply does not lay flat, but instead is lofted and rumply and, well, quilted:

It does make the table look comfy and homey, however, like having a picnic on a quilt outdoors. We're on a brief hiatus from schoolwork right now, so I haven't yet decided if, when we begin again next week, I'll want to roll the tablecloth back from our work surface or finally get around to making the Waldorf-style painting boards that I've been contemplating making for...well, my children's whole lives, likely.

Still Life for Sydney

Yes, there really is all that magenta:

In their shared bedroom, each of the girls has one long shelf that is for her stuff alone. They put their favorite toys there, their favorite artwork, their favorite natural finds, their various little ribbons and medals, etc. Sydney also has quite a stash of make-up and jewelry on her shelf, but that's the subject of another post, sigh.

I recently wrote a review for Inca-Eco yarn for Crafting a Green World; I allowed Sydney to choose the color of yarn that we received, and since her choice, Wine, complemented not only the paint on that bedroom wall (and our tulips!) but many of Sydney's treasures, AND fit her own personal color palette so well, I wrapped her special shelf with the yarn to make a better display for treasures such as this:

It looks so nice (in my humble opinion), that I'm now officially on the garage sale/thrift store lookout for other yarns in which to wrap the rest of the girls' shelves.

The Homeschool Shelves

One of the best things about switching the girls' bedroom with our study/studio is the mindful reorganization that has taken place. Fabric is neatly folded and visible, reference books are accessible, the paint is all together in one place, what was once lost is now found, etc.

In our NEW study, I've been paying special attention to how we store and display our homeschool supplies. I try to follow the girls' interests from week to week, which means that most of our homeschool work is done in unit studies, which means that the more I can keep like-minded materials together, the better.

The big and unwieldy stuff sits on the floor, so here we've got the conventional globe and the chalkboard globe, a model rocket kit, a crate containing all the base ten blocks (nine thousand cubes, nine hundred flats, and loads of ten bars and unit blocks) and the Cuisenaire rods, and the state quarter map.

Above that is the math shelf--math games and boxed activities, a Playskool abacus and a traditional Chinese abacus, playing cards and dice, a binder for worksheets and flash cards (I'm a big proponent of math fact memorization), lots of workbooks (I'm also a big proponent of math drills), and math manipulatives, such as pattern blocks, tangrams, mosaic tiles, and a geoboard. To the right side of each shelf I've glued little magnets, to hold the various accessories of homeschool work--scissors, bar magnets, drawing compasses, staplers, etc.

Moving to the left and up a level:

That lower shelf is science stuff--magnets, board games, the plaster of Paris volcano, science activity books, the microscope and its accessories, and a chemistry set. Above the science shelf is the art shelf--specialty markers and crayons, extras of the crayon, marker, and colored pencil sets that we use regularly, the stapler and extra glue, books for cutting up, extra lined paper and dry erase boards, pipe cleaners, the UV-reactive beads, and the acrylic-dyed school glue.

To the right, on the same level:

The lower shelf on the left has biology stuff, with the plaster of Paris skeleton mold, the human x-rays, a couple of anatomy books, and several biology and medicine DVDs. Then we've got some environmental science stuff, with sun-reactive paper, a kite, and wind energy stuff. In the front is ferrofluid and iron filings for more magnet play, then biology encyclopedias and children's magazines, and then books on all branches of the sciences.

The top shelf is still art, with a glass bowl of acorns on the far left, then Waldorf window star paper, professional-grade art supplies, and modeling beeswax in the front. To the right is language arts, with workbooks and mad libs, sticker letters and sight word flash cards, and Scrabble and Boggle on the far right.

Higher on the shelves is the stuff that requires my prep work, or the stuff that the girls don't usually choose without my encouragement:

The lower shelf there is history on the right, with Magic Tree House books (the girls have these memorized, and regularly re-read library copies, so I usually only bring our own copies down when we're studying something relevant), all the Story of the World activity books and other children's history books, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. presidents flash cards, and the ink that we use with our quill pens.

To the left on the lower shelf is geography--a map quilt project of Willow's, some atlases, a blank U.S. map paper pad, and a sailor's valentine kit from Florida. Above that is the art materials that require either adult prep or adult supervision--powdered tempera, professional-grade artist's acrylic paints, watercolor paints, things like gesso and sealant, and beads.

The top shelf is stuff that we're not ready for yet--higher-level workbooks, and cut-and-assemble paper model kits. There's also a bag containing a ridiculous number of little paper bags, good for goodness knows what.

Here's what the shelves, or most of them, at least, look like in panoramic, including one show-off and a colored dinosaur picture:

And when the girls aren't simply digging around in the dirt or playing with toy ponies all day, that's some of what we have to do!

The Great Room Switch: Painting the Study

When Will was a toddler and we first bought this house, we moved all her toys into the second of the house's three bedrooms, really just an enlarged pass-through from the hallway into our own bedroom. It's big enough for a full-sized bed if you keep it low so that it doesn't block the window (although having that window sill above the bed has been the reason for one child's visit to the emergency room so far), has a couple of good walls to build shelves on to hold the girls' ridiculous amount of toys, and it's just a doorway away from our bedroom, so that when little girls make a peep, the Momma and the Dadda are just a doorway away.

Just a doorway. No door. Ahem.

Add to THAT the issue that the girls are early birds and turn on the lights in their room before the sun comes up, AND that they don't want to share a bed anymore, and you have the storm that caused me to hatch the plan that I sometimes see as brilliant and sometimes see as hare-brained:

We're switching the girls' bedroom with the third small bedroom that lives in the front of the house, a room otherwise know as our Study/Studio.

Can you think of two rooms that are MORE full of a truckload of crap to have to exchange? Nope, you can't.

Friends, this move has been ridiculous. Absurd. Worthy of a nervous breakdown. First, we moved all the girls' stuff down to the playroom, where you can no longer even walk due to the accumulation of that on top of the playroom nonsense. I went through a bunch of our stuff. We had a garage sale. I went through a bunch more of our stuff. We took a load to Goodwill. I went through a bunch MORE of our stuff, and we put some stuff out by the side of the road with a sign that read "FREE."

We still have a bunch of stuff.

When we first moved into this house, we were in a big hurry, and so we didn't change anything or make anything look nice. We also had this toddler, so there wasn't really much time to do a good job on whatever we did try to do, like painting or gardening. And then we had another kid just a few months later--you should have seen the lousy paint job that I slopped on their bedroom walls, with them rolling around my feet making messes and getting into trouble.

This time around, one of the things that I'm most looking forward to is the chance to make each room look...nice. Do a little planning. Use a little forethought.

And then I went ahead and painted our new study silver anyway:

And I let the girls help:

No, it's not turquoise like the studios of all the famous crafty ladies, and it doesn't make the room in this already very dark-ish house any brighter, but that's what track lighting is for, and I love how the walls are shiny--it's like living in a treasure chest, or a magpie's brain.

The former gigantic toy shelves are getting all set up with homeschool supplies, and I wrenched my back moving our brand-new IKEA table, and the fabric looks all neat and tidy so far, and you would not BELIEVE the number of fights that Matt and I have had so far about super-important details, like the locations of power strips...

This study is going to be so excellent.

Timeline

I've had this timeline project in my head for probably a year. It was always one of those ideas that I'd think of often, then dismiss with, "Well, that's something for when we homeschool."

And now we homeschool.

It involved repainting the basement hallway from the top of the stairs all the way down and down the hall and around the corner, a lot of thought work in allocating appropriate space to different time periods (it was never an option to make an uniform allocation of space--too many billions of years in which nothing interesting went on), and, yes, I lowered our house's resale value just a little bit more, but the girls and I worked hard on its preparation, and we're all three very pleased.

We begin at the top of the basement stairs. There's a foot and some change at the very top where nothing's happened yet because it's in the future, but soon enough, we're far back enough in time that interesting things have begun to occur.

I had not intended to permit the children to graffiti the wall, but as I worked on the timeline with Sydney at my side, and she began to draw all over with our Sharpies, VERY excited about "making our timeline pretty," I thought to myself, "Eh."

And so the timeline is pretty as well as informative:

I want our timeline to grow as the children's learning and interests grow, so I tried to keep my beginning entries as minimal as possible on subjects about which the children aren't yet interested (if you want to see an AMAZING and comprehensive on-the-wall timeline, check out the timeline at Ordinary Life Magic). Instead, I tried to only lay out markers, so to speak, placeholders that will help us put dates down accurately without a lot of figuring. So I've noted the beginning point of American history, for instance:

The Medieval period:

The Christian era begins at the bottom of the stairs:

The Classical Age:

Don't worry--when we get to a part of history that we're interested in, you'll be able to tell:

And when we get to a part of history that we're really, REALLY interested in, I think that you'll be able to tell that, too:

As much as possible, I want to enhance the timeline with images--photos, magazine illustrations, ideally lots of stuff created by the girls--and of course I hope that the girls will take charge of adding anything from small notations to entire essays of their own writing as they grow. These current images come from a second copy that we somehow have of the Smithsonian Handbook on dinosaurs--we just cut that sucker up and glued it to the wall (remember what I told you about lowering the house's resale value?) Will and I cut out the entries on various prehistoric creatures that we're the fondest of. Syd's cut-outs are different, but also pretty awesome:

Eventually we go back so far that continuing in a straight line would be either wasteful of space or misleading as to the time involved, so instead I switched to a spiral layout:

And in the center of the spiral?

BOOM!!!

We love our timeline, and already I can tell that it was a great idea. Context is everything, layering new information over old, putting events into perspective...

And we get to draw on the walls!

P.S. If you like the timeline, wait until I show you the maps wall.

On the Wall

It has taken, literally, YEARS to figure this out, with lots of bad ideas and a huge stack of all kinds of photo frames set aside for our garage sale later this spring, but I have finally achieved wall art perfection:

So I didn't like the photo frames because I could never get their placement measured out perfectly (me and my math...sigh) and they always hung a little crooked and our walls are crap, I mean CRAP. They're plaster over metal lathe, and can you imagine a more nightmarish scenario for trying to hang something from a wall? Half the time you hit the steel, and the other half of the time a huge chunk of plaster falls out. And poor Matt, who has the primary responsibility shelf-making in the house--he has uttered swears that I have never heard before, and I have heard a lot of swears.

Anyway, inspired by these Photojojo vinyl wall frames that just stick right to the wall (vinyl decals are way trendy right now, because, I don't know, people need more vinyl in their houses?), I first tried to make my own removable frames with Velcro for re-stick-ability. Cardboard record album covers were a bust because they curled, especially if I tried to decorate them with wallpaper or collage, but even thicker corrugated cardboard tended to curl, and EVEN mat board curled, as well.

So I brought out the big guns. Foamcore, baby. Never gonna bend.

The photos themselves I laminated to make them sturdy to be on the wall without a glass cover over them. My plan is also to swap out the photos and other artwork fairly often, so I needed something quick and dirty. Here's my VERY dirty application method:

Pushpins through the laminate and into the foamcore hold everything nice and secure, doesn't leave much of a mark, and makes it a cinch to swap stuff out.

Now if only a person didn't pretty much have to donate plasma to afford new ink cartridges.

I Glued More Things to My House

Searching for something novel the little girls could make for a friend's birthday party today, I dragged down my first-generation Crayola Crayon Maker from a high, high shelf and showed them how to use it. I never really found the crayon maker that fun or satisfying to use (hence its years-long residence on the high, high shelf)--I think it's fiddly, painfully slow, and prone to error.

The girls, however? Fascinated:
And in all honesty, other than having to seal the crayon mold with duct tape each time to keep the liquid crayons from leaking through the leaky crevices, the crayon maker does still work as advertised, and Will and Syd could work it independently from start to finish--isn't that the main benefit to the light bulb line of craft toys?

And yes, I put it back on a much lower shelf today, to facilitate easier child access.

In other news, I've been gluing things to my house again:
I scored a huge swatchbook of vintage wallpaper at the Upcycle Exchange during Strange Folk, and after discovering (by means of trashing my Cricut cutting mat) that it's all waaaaaaay too brittle to craft with, I decided to decoupage it to the built-in bookshelves in one living room wall.

I know it looks kind of crazy--

--but for me, really, it's rather sedate. First of all, the bookshelves are small, so it's a controlled explosion. Second, all the wallpaper swatches come from the same book, so their colors and patterns are largely complementary. Third, since the living room walls and trim are blue, I just used the wallpaper swatches in the blue color scheme. And fourth, the two shelves done up with florals are moderated by two shelves done up in non-florals.

See? I'm practically falling asleep, it's so sedate.

P.S. In case you, too, want to ruin your house's resale value (as if that hasn't already been taken care of for you), here's my tutorial for vintage wallpaper decoupage over at Crafting a Green World.

I Go Over to the Dark Side

Goodbye, quirky vintage containers and lovely baskets made of natural materials. I wanted to be one of those cool crafters whose entire space is crafty, all personalized and unique and yet organized. Not so much SouleMama's craft room, exactly, because she's way too mellow for me these days, but definitely YummyGoods' craft space.

Only, those vintage containers don't really hold all my stuff, which I then pile on top of other stuff. And I'm really short, so I can't see what's in the containers above my head, which is pretty much three-quarters of the space in my house. And those lovely baskets of natural materials get dragged around by the girls, which is fine, but then also spilled and toppled and tumbled, and, you know, just all messed up.

So I've given it a good long haul, and I'm still going to utilize the awesome quirky vintage mason jars and chipped Fiesta ware and all the other random stuff that I've been trying to put stuff in, but 90% of the girls' toys and our craft supplies?
Clear plastic storage bins, baby. I've gone over to the dark side, and it's made of non-degradable petroleum by-products.

But you can stack these petroleum by-products. And see what's in them. And because you have to buy them new, you can buy them to fit whatever you want to put in them (this alone is novel and good). And they have lids. Sturdy, snapped-closed lids, enabling a three-year-old to carry, not a handful of crayons that are going to be left both here and there and everywhere even after officially designated "clean-up time," but the entire stash of crayons, upside-down if need be:

And they look like candy in there, which more appropriately models the role that crayons play for us here in this house.

Stay tuned for more clear plastic storage bin godawfulness as it occurs.

Not Inspiration, but Ornamentation

You've probably heard about the inspiration wire--a wire, with clips, near your creative space, upon which you can hang small objects that inspire you. I'm pretty sure SouleMama thought of it first, but feel free to disagree.

I don't personally right this minute really find myself in need of more inspiration, since I spend all day and a lot of the night running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to bring to fruition some of the ideas I've already got, thank you very much, but I do like the idea of a wire.

With clips.

Near your couch.

Upon which you can hang small objects that look pretty.

My invention? The ornament wire:

After much fussing and feuding (Why does the man with the hammer feel that he can offer suggestions? He is clearly there solely to wield the hammer), Matt tacked about eleven feet of jewelry chain (bought on clearance at Joann's months ago) into swag-shapes on the underside of the living room bookshelves. I attached some little clips on hooks (Where, oh where, can I find more clips on hooks?) to some of the links, clipped up some of my Valentines, and--festive!
I'm pretty excited about how we can change the ornaments out whenever we want, and I especially like the swagged chain instead of strung wire, because I think the swags will add more vertical dimension and hooking a clip through an individual chain link will keep my things exactly where I want them.

In other news, I have been so weirdly stressed and twitchy all day. I blame it on Matt, obviously--last night my coughing (I have a nasty cold) was keeping both of us awake, so Matt offered me some medicine. I had just a terrible night's sleep after that--waking up every hour, exhausted but unable to get back to sleep, antsy dreams whenever I did doze--and as I was telling Matt this, he's all, "Hmmm...what color were the pills I gave you last night? Cause the green ones are Nyquil, but the blue ones might be non-drowsy Sudafed."

Thanks, dear.

Sunday Update

I think I post often about the entity that is Sunday in our house. Saturdays, now--Saturdays are fine. We cooked, the girls and I invented a board game (more on that later), we hung out at the Wonderlab, did a little shopping (little-girl mittens at the west-side Goodwill), had dinner, and enjoyed Family Movie Night (Mary Poppins--Matt does an AWESOME Dick Van Dyke doing a cockney accent). But Sunday? Here we go...

The Nutcracker

As part of my attempt to make Willow into Someone to Go to the Theater with (This is the same kind of emotion, I think, that some moms feel when they talk about how they wanted to have a little girl in order to have Someone to Go Shopping with), I practically put a second mortgage on the house in order to buy the two of us AWESOME seats at the IU Ballet Theater's The Nutcracker in December. Because nothing is fun unless you study for it, not only have I checked out several versions of the ballet in book and DVD form from the library, including one ON ICE, and some Tchaikovsky CDs, but today while I soldered (see below), Matt took the girls to a public library program on The Nutcracker. The girls were thrilled by the dancing----although not quite as much by the craft activity: A crown, I think?

Soldered Glass Ornaments

Soldering doesn't really fit with my work ethic, since I can't manipulate molten metal with two little kids underfoot, but I obsessed about learning it at one point when I had lost my mind studying for my qualifying exams, and I still find it a lovely craft. Here are some ornaments I soldered while the rest of the family was at the library:
I've now used up the last of my pre-cut glass stash, though, and I find cutting glass with a hand tool VERY tricky. I believe I'm in the market for a second-hand glass grinder.

Officially a Big Girl

I had to be a bit insistent with Matt about this, but once we switched to a panties-only during waking hours policy, Syd seems to have finished her own personal switch to a toilet-only during waking hours policy.

In our house, toilet-learning is the first time that a kid warrants her own big gift, just for her. Will got a tricycle; I think Syd would like a whole lot more something like this

from Ostheimer Wooden Toys, but it costs Four. Hundred. DOLLARS!!! I'll be looking this week for something similar that I won't, you know, have to trade Sydney for.

For Hanging by the Chimney with Care

I think it's a total rip that stockings are for kids, so in our house we also do stockings for everyone, and so Matt helped me design a pattern (he drew, I nitpicked) for some stockings to sew out of felted wool. Here are three blocked and drying:

You can't tell in the photo, but the grey ones are really beautiful--they're from a cable-knit sweater, lightly felted, with the tops the finished bottom of the sweater. One will be Syd's and one I'll put in my etsy shop; the striped one is Matt's.

The Battle over the Table

The living room table, so recently moved (by me, with the back injury) to the lovely spot with the natural light by the window, was briefly shoved into a corner (by me, with the back injury) because Matt was being a dick about it, but my ability to throw a really big hissy fit (it's the redneck in me) with little to no warning fortunately trumped Matt's shove-everything-against-the-wall design ethic, and the table was moved back (by me, with the back injury) into the sweet spot a couple of hours later.

Parts of the House are Clean

Parts of the House are Still Very, Very Filthy

Can you even find the baby--excuse me, big girl--in the photo?

Panties are Prepared

I drew a pattern for the perfect pair of T-shirt panties today, only, T-shirt material isn't as stretchy as regular panty material, and you may not realize this when you put your panties on every day, but your panties stretch a LOT to accomodate your body, and all this is a preface to the fact that I need to tell you that the panties I make for myself out of T-shirts are ENORMOUS. Seriously, they're huge. Looking at them, they make you kinda feel like crying, but ooh, they are comfy.

So I cut out a ton for myself, and they are ENORMOUS, and Willow wanted some, too, and she wanted them to be "matches" with Momma, so Matt used his graphic design skills to cut down my pattern to fit her. The style is a little more adult than I'd choose for her--a little hipster, slightly cheeky--but seriously, something about the idea of wearing matching panties with my four-year-old...I could not resist. Here's the stack of Will's all cut out:

So yeah, our Sundays tend to be ridiculous. I'm exhausted, but you know what? Matt cleaned out the refrigerator today, and we totally have an unopened bottle of cheap champagne back in there.

I'm gonna go get it.

Handy Matt

Attention, cable TV viewers everywhere! The family and I will soon be appearing on a public access channel near you!

This morning my old friend Christina, one of the friendly neighborhood children's librarians over at the Monroe County Public Library, had us helping to film an informercial about early literacy. I got to be a talking head going on about why I take my girls to storytime and how exposure to books benefits them (being pedagogical helps when being interviewed, although the cameraman at one point did ask the boom operator to move the mike further away from me...ahem. I'm used to projecting to a classroom, people!), and then we all participated in some shots for the "B-roll" to go over disembodied voice footage. Matt read a book to Sydney, Will flipped through some books independently, Syd played with a workbench in the playroom, and Christina forced us to all hold musical instruments and sing together as a family because she needed that particular activity for a shot. Knowing that the footage of us would be soundless (um, right?), I belted out this particular Kimya Dawson household favorite:

After that and bicycling all over town, I retired to finish my slog through my freshman comp student papers, and Handy Matt built a dress-up area in the girls' room, with a rod for hanging dress-up outfits, a big mirror for showing off in front of (to be fronted by a ballet barre at some point in the future), some bins and baskets underneath the hanging stuff for other stuff, and plans for hooks for jewelry.

The man can do anything, right? (...except help the Momma put some clothes on the kids and pose like normal people for a family portrait!)

The idea and basic arrangement of this dress-up area is taken from my favorite blogger, SouleMama, and her awesome book,
I find her really inspirational, y'all.

Sunday is our Day of Slog

We did basically zero fun stuff today. I folded and put away about a gazillion pounds of this----while finishing up Joan of Arcadia Season 2 on DVD (Adam Rove, to think how much I loved you, and you are awful! An awful person!); I washed another gazillion pounds of this----while making beer bread savory muffins with dill and two cheeses with the baby----(along with the dinner I cooked out of cabbage, potato, onion and nutritional yeast, it was delicious--when I do have to cook, I tend to just throw cheese or veganaise or nutritional yeast at my food until it tastes good); and Matt, much more slowly than I think he needed to, built----the most awesomest bookshelves in the known universe:

Cause it's not how much stuff you have that's important, it's just having a place to put it.

Will, as seems inevitable based on how she's standing right at her father's feet and staring straight up at him while he drills heavy metal stuff to the wall, eventually got her face busted on a metal railing; it's been so long since a kid has busted her face at home that I think they both forgot that Momma gives out popsicles for face-busting (juice frozen into a mold--ices the wound, provides counter-pressure, and they think they're getting a treat so they stop screaming). Sydney walked around for the rest of the afternoon saying, "I got ouchie, too. I need 'sicle." I'm all, "Show me the blood, kid. Show me the blood."