Tree Monkeys

After a morning spent making glycerine soap with the girls and reading back issues of My Big Backyard to them and folding laundry while finishing up watching the first season of Big Love from the library and calling Matt to come home early for lunch because the girls wanted him to grill them hamburgers, it finally stopped raining this afternoon and we could quell our antsies over at the park. I was supposed to be taking photos of this

and thesebut it was a weird afternoon for taking photos of shiny stuff, and I'm not in love with any of them.

So instead, I burned through my entire CF card taking photos of this:

Yep, it's the infamous climbing tree. Today is a special day on the climbing tree, because today, instead of staring up at her sister climbing like a monkey and whining, ground-bound (I'm mean in that I don't give boosts--my playground philosophy is that if you're not able to do it independently, then it's not safe for you to do. If you are able to do it independently--go crazy, kid!), Sydney figured out how to climb into the tree: She's pretty proud of herself, right?

So why would I want to keep taking stupid photos of my stupid one-dollar buttons with this going on just over my head?

Awesome kids.

In other news, I phoned Matt this afternoon in the middle of a big Southern fit because I'd just received YET ANOTHER letter from the library stating that we owed them five dollars because the DVD box set of Aqua Teen Hunger Force had a damaged case. I don't know how often the freakin' library charges us for crap stuff that we totally did not do! We got charged five dollars for a back-issue of Bust with water damage, five dollars for a missing case to a Bright Eyes CD, and fifteen dollars for a board book with the cover torn off. Okay, to be honest, we did do all those things, but we did not damage Aqua Teen Hunger Force! So I call Matt, throw a big Southern fit, and you know what he says? "Let's talk about it when I get home."

Let's talk about it when I get home? I see. So I say, "What did you do to Aqua Teen Hunger Force?" Turns out that Matt, biking to work, thought that he might as well return some DVDs to the library on his way. He's holding them in his hand, hits a bump, drops Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and manages to run over it on his bike. We're lucky we're just having to pay for the case, frak him. Anyway, does anybody know a good pattern for sewing some bicycle saddlebags?

A New Freezer and...A Really Big BOX!

Ah, the joy of the really big box. Last night we trekked over to Menard's to buy a chest freezer, and it was probably less than twelve hours between Matt nearly herniating himself hauling the boxed freezer down to the basement and this:

  

Hello, ratty basement playhouse in the playroom I painted pink because I didn't remember how it would crazy up colors when I photographed in it!

The kids and I are fond of projects we can immerse ourselves in for days (I mentioned that I'm obsessive, right?), so I expect the playhouse decoration and interior design to only get better, but while Syd napped her afternoon nap Will and I were able to get a lot of work done on one side wall--

--and the front door--

I donated the scrapbook paper that I bought as part of a set but that is way too cheezy for me to actually use (surfing? the American flag?)--

--and Will and I worked some collaborative finger-painting, as well:

 

And then after Syd woke up, both kids had a good long play down in the basement with the playhouse while I went about my own productive business. Of course, the playroom floor now looks like this--

--but whatever, it's not like it looked that much better before.

The chest freezer is 7.2 cubic feet, and we got a pretty good sale on it. The idea is to freeze stuff, duh, but dinners mostly--this coming fall semester I'm teaching the same hours that I worked last fall semester, Monday through Wednesday, 5:45 pm to 8:30 pm. And last fall semester, Matt would come pick me up after teaching, kids in the car past their bedtimes, and likely as not, as soon as I got in the car he'd ask, "What do you want for dinner?" If he didn't ask that question, you can bet there would be a hot pizza in a cardboard box waiting on the passenger seat. 

And mind you, I'm not going to fill our new chest freezer full of gourmet home-cooked dinners--when left to my own devices every day, I feed the girls Quorn nuggets/grilled cheese sandwich/peanut butter sandwich/Boca dog/leftovers from last night's dinner with the additional possibilities of cheese cubes, whole wheat crackers, or soy yogurt, and no less than two different raw fruit/vegetable combinations--but I can fill it with lots of bulk frozen dinner options from Sam's Club. Matt and the kids are both inordinately fond of plain cheese tortellini, no sauce--barf.

What I Waste My Time With When I Waste My Time

So I have a craft fair this weekend to prepare for, a new syllabus to prepare that takes into account the administration's assignment of a different grammar text for freshman comp classes (grr!), an upcoming California vacation to think of fun things to do during, and four people's library queues to sort through and find where all the overdue books are buried, not to mention the general household upkeeping of getting rid of the gnats from the kitchen and the pee smell from the bathroom, so what did the girls and I spend the whole day making? This!!!

No, sweetie, I'm not going to make you guess. It's a bunting for the girls' big summer birthday party! I looked at a few tutorials, but in the end I didn't do anything that they suggested and instead just winged it, and I think it looks highly festive for it. The flags are all hung on a long piece of hemp twine and I attempted to sew them to it, but I didn't get too fussy if the thread didn't catch. The flags themselves, all from scrap, are all different sizes, only they are all isosceles triangles, because I like the symmetrical look.

Willow helped me pick out the fabric from my stash. Can you tell?

I also didn't turn the fabric to hem it or anything--I'm just going to let the sucker fray.

The girls helped by constantly trying to leapfrog over my cutting mat on the floor while I worked, and they made their own "banners" from the scraps, and I actually have those banners in my pocket right now because I confiscated them before dance class. To be a kid--doesn't it just make you sick how awesome their lives are?

Speaking of, the big summer birthday plans just keep on happening. We've got a date, which is July 26, a Saturday that doesn't conflict with Matt's softball team party and during which Willow's best little friend will be in town. We have ordered--wait for it--a freakin' jump house!!! At least I think we have--when I asked Matt if he'd called and ordered it today, his exact words were "Don't worry about it." That means he ordered it, right, and not just that he's dicking around about it but doesn't want to be nagged? The price was nothing to sneeze at, but also not totally outrageous when you consider that not only is the party the girls' actual birthday present from us, but that also, since we have a jump house, we can forgo additional games and prizes and other hoopla. And our adult friends who just hang out on the couch and grit their teeth and grin throughout the weirdo kids' activities will absolutely be on board with a jump house. And, and Matt insists that this is the only reason why we got one, I totally want a jump house!!!

So now my current conundrum consists of the fact that Willow wants a cake shaped like a dinosaur. Hmmm. Have a mentioned that I don't know how to cook? Or bake, or whatever? We do have awesome food coloring, however, and Matt claims that if we get a big enough cake pan and throw enough boxes of cake mix into it, he can cut out the silhouette of a dinosaur into that cake. Should we get cake mix that bakes up red inside, so it looks like the dinosaur is bleeding as you cut it? Oooh, maybe with red pudding? Do they make red pudding? No, I can make red pudding! And put candy bones in it! And little cavepeople! Okay, I'm going to bed now.

The Pillowcase Dress Obsession Revealed!

I mentioned in a previous post my latest obsession for making pillowcase dresses. To illustrate the madness, my partner and I took the girls to the park this afternoon for a candy-bribed photo shoot. I have made a freakin' lot of pillowcase dresses, y'all.

One thing I really like about the pillowcase dresses is their versatility. It's partly the fact that for the armholes, I made a casing for a drawstring ribbon so that you can adjust the fit for length and width, but it's also, I think, the fact that the style is so classic that it works as a dress or a top. This dress that Sydney's wearing, for instance, would be a long dress on a one-year-old, probably, and would just get gradually shorter until it's a swingy little top on a five-year-old. On Sydney it's just the right length to show off her chubby little Sydney knees:I also like a lot how you can adjust the fit with the ribbon ties. On these matching dresses I made for the girls, I made them a little big on them on purpose, so I scrunch the underarm material down and tie the shoulder ribbons for a pretty high neckline: On this dress, though, I tied the shoulder ribbons really loose for a much wider neckline: And yes, because I'm totally nuts I made matching drawstring bags out of leftover pillowcase material for almost all the dresses:
I finally decided that I liked this narrow ribbon best for the shoulder ties. You can tie it in a really tight knot, if you want, so that your kiddo can't pick it out or so you can leave it the exact same size through several washes, or you can tie it in just a bow and be able to undo it quickly and easily:
This one, of course, is Willow's most absolute favorite. Is she too far away, or can you see the dinosaurs? Oh, and see her brand-new tricycle? Donated by a neighbor, after he bought his daughter a big-girl bike and then heard me holding court at the pool about our recent theft. I tell ya, people can be nice.
Do you see the cross-stitch on this pillowcase? It kills me!

So, yeah, that's a lot of pillowcase dresses for two little girls. We'll be keeping some of them, the matching dresses and the dino dress for sure, but I'm going to have to list most of these on etsy. I know there are lots more vintage pillowcases in the world, and I have to make room!

Blog List

I'm sure this will be big news for you, but... I tend to be a little obsessive. No, seriously. I know, I know, I'm really subtle about it, but yeah, there it is. So, you know, if we get a DVD box set from the library, and I discover that I really like the series (hello, Joan of Arcadia!), I will watch all 36 or whatever hours of that series before I do anything else in the world besides eating, sleeping, and basic parenting. If there's a cookie cake in the house, I literally cannot settle down until that cookie cake has been consumed in its entirety. Preferably by me. The average time it takes me to read any good novel, no matter the length? About a day. You know, obsessive.

For a week now, I've been flat-out obsessed with making pillowcase dresses. I bought a few pillowcases at a Goodwill 50%-off storewide sale months ago and stuck them in the stash and in the back of my mind, and there they sat, but a few weeks ago during my forced felted wool stegosaurus sweat shoppe, I started thinking, "Pillowcase dresses. Pillowcase dresses. Pillowcase dresses." So I made the girls a matching set for their friend Phillip's birthday party last weekend:

It was fun, so I made another the next day. And another. When I ran out of pillowcases, we went to Goodwill--they're 99 cents there! I bought several, including one dinosaur-print(!). I knew I had it bad when on Thursday, dropping Willow off at a playdate, I bragged to my mom-friend that I'd made Sydney's little pillowcase shirt just that morning. In the afternoon, re-exchanging kids at the library, Noel noticed that Sydney was in a different pillowcase dress, and asked if I'd made that one, too. I said, "Yeah... About half an hour ago, actually." Oh, well. Sydney had another new hot-off-the-presses pillowcase dress for the Fourth of July parade, and then another one this morning for errand-running (Willow wanted to wear it, but Sydney said yes first. So I promised I'd make Willow her dinosaur-print pillowcase dress this afternoon). So, um...yeah. Obsessive.

Another thing I've been obsessed about lately is the finding and reading of crafty blogs--you know I list them sometimes here in the blog, but I tend to lose track of which ones I've mentioned. Hence the new feature I've been playing with, on the right above the archives and below the wist gallery: a blog list!!! Now both you and I can obsessively have handy not only the names and links of my favorite crafty blogs, but also snippets of their latest entries and a tag for how long ago they were last updated! Ooh, so helpful for keeping obsessively up-to-date.

Do you heart a crafty blog?

America the Delicious

Possibly because of the big build-up to Independence Day, possibly in anticipation of our summer trip to California at the end of the month, or possibly because the girls are growing up to be big nerds like me and they just like stuff, but for the past week, along with snails, dinosaurs, magic, fossils, and tap-dancing, the girls have been obsessed with maps. I found the web site Megamaps, which has these free, printable maps of the world and the continents and the countries and the states of the US, and I printed off an 8x8--yes, a 64-PAGE!!--map of the United States for the girls. I taped it together for them, and it stayed in the smack-middle of the living room floor for several days (Hey! Walk AROUND America, would you?) until both little people agreed it was finished, and then we hung it on these IKEA picture-hanger-thingies (well, I started to hang it on the thingies, and then I accidentally knocked a big hole in the wall, so Matt had to actually do it, but that makes a "we," right? Anyway, IKEA sucks) in the basement playroom that I'm almost finished painting after about two months, and anyway, it looks like this: You can't really tell in this picture, but we did a lot of discussing of the way in which maps use symbols to represent real things in the world, so along with the general coloring and pasting pretty things, I showed the girls where on the map our families live, and they glued hearts, and they glued flowers where friends live, and stars where we've visited together as a family, and then we cut relevant photos out of old National Geographic and out-of-date schoolbooks to glue on places. Children's geography textbooks from the 1950s SUCKED! It was all about the different industries in the country, so I'm all, "Look, an auto manufacturing plant! Go glue that onto Michigan. It's the one above Indiana with the heart for Grandma Shoemaker. No, the other heart. Okay, good, but that's Arkansas there, with the picture of the cotton field. Look higher." Etc. Here's our Indiana, but you can see Chicago and southern Michigan and Lexington, Kentucky, too:

Here's good old Arklahoma:And here's busy California, where most of Matt's family lives: Of course all this map work should have its happy outlet in the excitement of the Independence Day parade, right? Yay, America! Eh. Here's what we were doing at 10:00 this morning:
Yep, Clue #8,684,933 that we love our kids.Although this was apparently a good moment for me:

And so what did we do this afternoon, after walking home from the parade and hanging up our soaking clothes and taking hot baths? We made another freakin' map, the craaaaziest yet!

Does it even look like the United States? Matt was supposed to be in charge of forming the dough, but he had to be excused because he is generally incapable of handling messy family activities without, you know, screaming at the kids. So he had to go clean the bedroom, and I had to utilize my rough three-dimensional visualization skills. But I think it looks pretty great. We've got icing water and grass, chocolate chip mountain ranges, a sour strip Mississippi River, gummy compass points, etc. And, of course, gummy fish and worms and frogs and fruit and mini M&Ms ("They represent the PEOPLE, Momma!").

Here's a close-up of the Northeast. Notice the big mounds of flour that Willow kept dumping on the map--"It makes things not sticky!" Um, yes, sweetie, but when I told you that I was talking about your HANDS. There's supposed to be coconut up north for snow, but it toasted in the oven.

You can't know you've had a good time unless you're feeling a little sick, right?Ugh. Wish me luck--I'm about to go inform the girls that I have a bootleg stash of firecrackers hidden away in the linen closet. Happy Independence Day, fellow Americans.

Photo Shooting

Another good photo shoot day. Some highlights:

Some things will be going up daily to my etsy shop, the dinosaurs will probably be heading over to the gallery shop at the Waldron Arts Center, and the little girl--well, I'm keeping her.

I Heart

One of my favorite things about etsy is the ability to heart, or mark as a favorite, certain items or even entire stores. I admit that I feel validated when people heart me, not only because it lets me know that my shop is being seen and that something might prove to be popular even if it hasn't sold well yet, but also because, well, I like being hearted. I like even better, though, to mark and keep the items I love--I rarely have the disposable income to actually buy any of my favorites, but I like to have them at the ready to moon over. Here's what I heart lately:


The Atlantis Found Pendant no. 37 takes the simple concept of a broken china pendant to a whole new level with beading and wrapped wire. I like how the shape of the wire matches the pattern in the china fragment:

The Discarded Books Make Great Jewelry resin necklace has my favorite animal in an unexpected color, works from the recycling ethic, and is contained in a really simple and elegant form, I think:

The Little Prince is also a piece of recycled art. The character is from my favorite and most awesome video game ever, . Seriously, that game is the most fun that anyone could ever have at any one time. Or, the most fun that type A completionists with a hoarding compulsion could ever have.

It's generous of the Custom Order Hoodies people to offer custom ordering, but I can't imagine that I would be alone out of all the other people to say, "I totally want one of these. Um, can you make mine look exactly like the one in your picture?"

I have the feeling that I talk about this Birth pendant all the time, but I find it so moving. A realistic depiction of a gently assisted natural birth is what I see in it. Of course it was one of a kind, and of course it was sold, and if I'm ever lucky enough to see the neck that it's on right now, I will snatch it off that neck and run away really fast.

What do you heart?

Rainbow Play Dough: A Tutorial

As the kids get older, they tend to get themselves invited to some snazzy birthday parties. I've got a go-to list of birthday presents--on the super high end, you get a handmade quilt, if I'm on my way to your party right now, you get two blank puzzles at a pitstop at Learning Treasures, and if I was sick as a dog a couple of days before (I'm as sanitary as the next person, but I seem to get sick A LOT--faulty gene? Lousy immune system? Seriously, I get the stomach bug when not even my breastfeeding toddler does. Weird.) but I have a little time right now, you get my personal favorite, handmade play dough. Let the party begin.

Handmade Play Dough

1. Make your stove and counter top look nice and pretty-ish:

Eh. Good enough.

2. In a small pot, mix together

• 1 cup flour (the bleached white stuff--I buy cheap flour only for this)
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon oil
• coloring (optional). The cheap food coloring works, but you can get some amazing colors with professional-grade food coloring. If your kids no longer shove stuff in their mouths, you can even spring for liquid watercolors or powdered tempera!

3. Heat slowly while stirring continually.

4. When the dough becomes solid rather than liquid and tends to ball up in the pot, remove it from heat and pop it on a plate to cool off. While it's cooling, you can wash the pot out to cook up another batch in another color, but while your back is turned, I warn you, the baby might get into the professional-grade food coloring. Hello, yellow poop for the next three days!

5. When the dough is cool enough to handle, knead it some to finish mixing it and to get the right elastic consistency. You can also knead in some glitter, if you'd like, or an essential oil to scent it.

When you're finished, you should have enough play dough both for your kids to do a little play doughing, and this:

Happy Birthday, Phillip!

And so how was the party, you ask? It went like this:

Um, yeah, it was awesome.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, confrontations with gross men, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Christmas in July

I'm an atheist, my partner's agnostic, but who doesn't love a good holiday? You got it, we'll celebrate it. Add to that the fact that I'm a lapsed scholar of the medieval period, with its flat-out obsession with Jesus, and we've got Christmas covered. Never mind that our family believes neither in God nor Santa, we've still got Santa hats and homemade cookies and hand-made gifts for all the loved ones. We're still a young family, though, with the chaos of two kids two and under barely behind us--add to that the fact that we always spend the week around Christmas not in our own home, but with my parents in Arkansas, and perhaps you won't be so surprised to learn that we have nearly no holiday decorations. We've never had a real tree yet in the house, we have only a very few tree ornaments, we have a hand-made quilted tree skirt from Grandma Bangle and two hand-made wooden reindeer from Grandpa Bangle, and about a thousand strands of Christmas lights that are part of the general interior decoration of our house, and yeah, that's it.



This year will be different, however. Willow is old enough now not only to participate in the making of holiday decorations (heck, I consider an infant who can hold its own head up old enough to "participate" in pretty much anything), but she's also old enough to really want decorations. My etsy shop is up and running enough that I'll be able to sell decorations on it, if I make any that are nice enough. And my Christmas in July Stashbuster swap is providing me with the impetus to think about all this and even make or plan the making of a few things well, well in time.


Obviously, we prefer handmade in this house. We prefer to craft with recycled materials, and we prefer our stuff to be, if not entirely badass, at least not Country Christmas. I've been playing around with sewing some tree ornaments out of denim with cookie cutters as templates, but these are still in the works (just last night, one really, really, REALLY ugly example went straight from the sewing machine to its new home in the trash bag--sigh). I've also found in reference sources some really cool project ideas that I plan to try with the girls:


Simply Swank has a cool gallery of soldered glass ornaments on their web site. Last year I made ornaments with the girls' photo inside for the great-grandmas in the family--they were cool, but very small. Larger sizes would be more in proportion with most people's larger trees, and I also plan to utilize the random selection of old holiday cards we've got hanging around in a scrapbook box somewhere.


Since Willow was a baby, we've been making these cinnamon ornaments for every holiday. Here's the recipe:

Cinnamon Cutouts

• 
  
  one cup cinnamon (yes! one cup)


• 
  
  1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves


• 
  
  1 1/2 tsp. allspice


• 
  
  1 1/2 tsp ginger (the spices are just to smell nice, so really you just put in whatever you want)


• 
  
  1/2 to 3/4 cup applesauce

Mix everything up and knead it with your hands until it's a nice dough ball. If the dough is crumbly, add a little more applesauce. If it's sticky, add a little more spices.

Sprinkle a flat surface with spices and roll out the dough to 1/4".

Cut out shapes with a cookie cutter, using a drinking straw to make holes for hanging.

Preheat oven to its lowest setting. Bake cutouts on an ungreased cookie sheet for 2 hours, then turn off the oven and leave them in overnight to dry out completely.

When we did this recipe last winter, Willow spent the whole time making "Christmas poops" out of the dough. We might try this recipe for Salt Dough Ornaments this year, because I like the fact that it incorporates different colors. Rainbow Christmas poops?

The Craftypod blog includes a photo of an ornament the author's mother made:

It looks very much in the style of a beautiful pendant necklace I bought at the farmer's market craft fair last month, with the spiral wire and the large bead--and we know I currently am up to my butt in beads, right?

I've seen several tutorials for stacked fabric trees, and they all look pretty easy, but these might look the easiest. I like how this tutorial in particular lends itself to the use of a variety of not necessarily mitchy-matchy fabrics.

Other ideas--felted wool ornaments and stockings, garlands and ornaments made from our dress-up jewelry, wall hangings or banners from children's picturebooks--shoot, the baby's crying.

Do you ornament?