Ghosts of Goodwill Past and Present

It was a happy year at Goodwill. Our town's two locations (also known as the College Goodwill and the Townie Goodwill) and their quarterly 50%-off Storewide Sales allowed me to clothe my family and craft within my ethical belief system and also afford to feed my family, too, occasionally.

At the March sale, among other items, we got all of our springtime clothes:
See? Even our first-born wears SOMEBODY'S hand-me-downs. Is that fair, or what?

At the June sale, the start of craft fair season, I boosted my recycled/vintage craft supplies, among other items:
And then the girls threw them all over the floor.

At the September sale, we started living the dream with our brand-new DanceDanceRevolution mat:
I am getting REALLY good, and Matt is almost ready to start moving his arms when he dances.


At the December 6 sale, among other items, it was long sleeves and sweaters for everyone:

And bare feet, of course--oh so practical in the -20 degree wind chill.

And Saturday, happily, was a bonus before-Christmas 50%-off Storewide Sale. Among other items, we scored Uncle Wiggley--

(a terrific game for arithmetic concepts, by the way, and I was seriously in need of more math ideas); stretchy cotton sweaters for little-girl skirts--(somebody else had that idea first, but I can't find the link just yet); dinosaur fabric--for dinosaur quilts; a VERY nice coat that will get several years of use by two children for $2.50----a very nice shirt for me that you have to squint to see through the camera-shake, finger over the lens, and two two little girls----and? Best of all? A SECOND DanceDanceRevolution dance pad.

You know what that means, right?

Dance-off.

Gifts Given, Gifts Received

In the category of Gifts Given----handmade soaps, packaged in handmade gift bags, labeled with handmade gift tags. I used this terrific Recycled Junk Mail Gift Bag pattern and tutorial from Junk Mail Gems, and although it was a little fiddly (maybe I didn't need to, but I individually measured out and scored the score lines for each bag?), I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I actually don't like as much the ones that I made out of plain cardstock and had the girls decorate--they look too much like a purchased blank gift bag to me--but the ones that I made out of pages of text from old books are really, really cool, I think.
It was also a pretty engaging activity for Will to challenge her fine motor skills--here she is lacing ribbon through the holes for the handles at the top, stringing beads on them, and tying a knot:
It baffles me, by the way, as to why my children are constantly nude. The thermostat is set at 66 degrees, friends--I'm wearing a sweater, and Willow is in the living room, rollerskating naked.

In the category of Gifts Received:
I bought myself this beautiful pendant made by sushipot , made from a 1919 dictionary--I was supposed to put it in my stocking to open on Christmas, but when I opened the shipping envelope the little box was So. Beautiful. that I just had to open it, too, and then the pendant looked so much more awesome, even, in person that I had to put it on, and well, there you go.

Another empty stocking this year.

In the category of Gifts Received and Also Given:

At the Fair and Green Gift Festival, a local guy asked if I'd like to make him a couple of record bowls in exchange for some of his old records--um, yeah! And look at the stash he gave me!

Good stuff.

So I knew that the records he wanted me to make bowls out of were in the front of the box, but, uh...which front? I thought I had it figured out, and when I emailed him to double-check, I'm all, "Okay, you want bowls of REO Speedwagon, Peter Shicklee, and The Canned Heat Cookbook." And he emailed back and he's all (politely), "Um, no." Turns out that at the other end of the box there's, you know, George Harrison, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Genesis. BIG difference.

In other news, the girls and I spent the afternoon drinking hot chocolate while watching a DVD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Christmas carols.

Because we're dorks. Festive, but dorks.

The Dope on our Soap

Being as I've told the girls that the point of Christmas is to give a gift to each of our loved ones to represent how much we love them, you can imagine that it's important to me that they make gifts for the people who are meaningful in their lives.

What to give, however--that can be a toughie. It's important to me both that the gift be primarily the child's own creation, or at least her own invention, and that the gift be viable in its own right--that the recipient be genuinely pleased to receive this gift.

We still have some thinking to do on some ideas, but (SPOILER ALERT!) last night and this morning the girls helped me make their gifts for Willow's teachers and some of their relatives. Our awesome idea? Melt-and-pour-soap.

Now I know that melt-and-pour soap isn't REAL soap in most people's minds (Cold-process has it beat, and that's a skill that I almost have all the infrastructure to start learning, but a friend who tried and abandoned the hobby a while ago gave me a TON of vegetable glycerin, and using it really is super-fun), but it does have a lot going for it. It's quick and simple, for one, it results in a mild and moisturizing soap, for another, and you can fancy it up quite a bit with some nice essential oils and dried herbs, which is what we did:The girls took turns counting out the ounces of vegetable glycerine, then each girl chose an essential oil and a dried herb for her soap. The cool thing about kids is that they chose combinations I would never dream of trying together--peppermint essential oil with dried eucalyptus leaves? Vanilla essential oil with lavendar flowers:

I was following the suggestion of this tutorial on the Soap Queen's blog to stir in my herbs until they seemed mostly suspended in the melted glycerine, and then to pour it into the mold, but I didn't do it right and so our herbs mostly just escaped to the top:

Still very pretty, though, I think.

Of course, with two little monkeys as my primary assistants there were a lot of hijinks, I can assure you, and several blown batches. But the best thing about soap-making is that the failures can be the most fun, because instead of giving them away, we get to use them ourselves:

Now, for the gift bags.

Her Tuition is $317 a Month

You've seen me wax poetic on many occasions about my daughter's Montessori school (the birthday celebrations, in particular, are touching; the head teacher's penchant for folk-song group singing is pretty righteous in my book; and on Parents' Night the display of the children's abilities is astonishing)...


Well, one of the works children can choose is the calendar work. There's a preprinted sheet for each month, with the appropriate number of squares for the dates, and holidays and birthdays already marked in. The children may label the calendar for the appropriate month, write in the dates, and decorate the holidays. If they're not confident writers yet, they may ask an older child to put dots down as writing guides for them.


Will works much more slowly along the math concept works than she does the language arts or practical life works, for instance, so yesterday was the first time she chose to do the calendar work for December. Today's a snow day, but tomorrow when I take her to school I'm going to have to speak to her teacher about it. Can you see why?Did you see it? If not, here's a close-up:Merry Chirstmas, friends.

That Man, He'll Wow You

After dinner last night (Hmm? Oh--steamed cabbage, kale, and potatoes, with nutritional yeast. What? It's good!), by all rights it should have been bedtime, but the big kid had a hankering that could not be denied.

She had a hankering for watercolor.

So, sucker that I am for an art project, we cleared the table and got out the supplies, and had ourselves a little family watercolor evening:

The little kid painted circles, of course:

The big kid painted a present sitting on top of a couch:

(I'm irritated with myself about that, because I have this rule that I don't draw things for the kids, because I don't want them to model me in their artwork (seriously, read Drawing with Children--it's awesome), but the big kid saw me drawing a cliche little present picture on somebody's etsy package, and lo! here it is)

I remain firmly in the abstract:

But my Matt, goofing around with a child's paintbrush on typing paper, creates this:

I'm the one who's lucky enough to get to stay home all day with my gang and play with art supplies, but my guy, who has to spend all his days in a cube going clickety-click on a computer screen, he's the one with the skills.

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

Paranoid, Anyone?

I am totally paranoid about the mail. I am paranoid that one of my etsy purchasers will fail to receive their record bowls and be mad at me. I am paranoid that the reason this certain cousin of Matt's never thanks me for the handmade gifts I send her child is because she never receives them, because THEY GOT LOST IN THE MAIL.


And then there's this place. I mean, I absolutely want to go to one of those auctions, but who mails something and thinks, "Gee, I hope this gets lost on the way to Aunt Pam's and ends up in an auction of unclaimed merchandise at the dead letter office in Atlanta"? Nobody.

And that's why the packages I mail out look like this:
Yes, y'all, that IS duct tape. And newspaper. Wrapped around a cardboard box. With more newspaper inside. Oh, and the actual stuff? Is wrapped in a plastic bag, in case it gets wet.

I do like to pretty it up, however, especially for this one poor, unsuspecting etsy shopper, who mentioned that this box was going to go straight under the Christmas tree when it got to her:
See? I drew hearts with Sharpie markers in between the duct tape!

But that's nothing...I let the girls decorate the boxes going to family members all by themselves:Do they even let foam stickers go through the mail like that?

P.S. I was sold out of record bowl sets for a while (yay!), but there's one more brand-new Christmas-themed set up in my shop now.

Willow of the Corn

I love it when kids are old enough to create totally creepy, apocalyptic-style artwork:Here is my completely imaginary interpretation of Will's masterpiece:

"That's Sydney and Damian and me and we're standing in the middle of all the fire in the world. The wings of The Bad Man beckon, and Damian made all the grown-ups fall down, even you, Mommy. You all fell down, because you all have ouchies, and now the ground is sticky."

And Matt's been commenting lately that every evening when he leaves work, there are maybe a thousand crows just sitting in the trees around his building. A THOUSAND crows, friends.

Cooincidence?

You Can't Have Your Banana Bread, Eat It, and Photograph It, Too

Since when I asked my dear Matt to photograph me enjoying the banana-blueberry bread I'd just finished baking he did this----and when I said, "Oh, fine, I'll just take a photo of you eating the bread, then," he did this----I finally just had to take a photo myself-- --of myself. My favorite part of myself, too--the coffee part.

I used this recipe, with a scant 1/4 cup of brown sugar and the fancy-schmancy Bob's Red Mill white wheat flour. It's so delicious that I'm going to have to make another loaf if I want to have another slice with my coffee tomorrow.

P.S. Check out my post about Christmas craftivism in Crafting a Green World today, and there's some new stuff in my etsy shop to replace some other stuff that sold--yay, Christmas!

Family is for Failing with

The mighty Horned Frogs fell----but we still got to spend two hours exhuberantly and fruitlessly rooting them on together (in a stadium filled to the max with fans of the opposing HOME team, even):The marble maze fell, but we had lots of wild and wooly times constructing it all together:Hell, even the gingerbread house fell-- --pitiful redneck shanty, but we had an awesome sugar-high time with a dear friend throwing candy all over it, anyway:
Ah, family...even when you suck, you get to suck together.

Etsy for the Holidays

I'm super-behind on updating my etsy shop for Christmas (grading final papers--what a drag!), but since I made a sale today I figure it can't quite be too late, so I made one very last holiday update tonight:

A set of three Disneyland record bowls

A set of five gift tags featuring freakin' adorable vintage babies
A felted wool ball with a matching ornament
A stripey felted wool stocking
A set of four record bowls from albums of Christmas carols

It seriously is pretty late in the game for a Christmas update, but it was on my to-do list, and now it's checked off.

Yay.

Now if we could finish Will's charity project before the weekend of bloated grading and course grade assignments, I'd be pretty stoked. I came into a small bounty of pencils, so I was thinking about making some blank books for the little children, as well--fun, or perhaps too preachy-educational?

Busy Little Elves

It's been a season of bounty the last couple of days, with everything coming in stacks and piles of multiples.

A stack of papers graded and alphabetized, ready to hand out in my last class tonight:Four dozen chocolate chip cookies, to be awarded to my students in exchange for their final papers:

A long line of tiny little record boxes in the making, to be filled with beads and string for a charity project in Will's preschool classroom:

An orderly arrangement of dinosaur cut-outs, salt dough shapes, and popsicle sticks, drying after an exhuberant acrylic painting session:

Tomorrow will bring more of the same, with stacks of tiny little envelopes to cut out and glue and sheets of homemade temporary tattoos to print and cut out, also for Will's charity project, and a heap of candy to stick with mounds of frosting onto a gingerbread house, while visiting with a good friend.

Tonight, though...tonight, after my final class lets out, we have tickets to the IU basketball game. Who are they playing? Why, my alma mater.

Riff ram!

P.S. Check out my twin tutes--a tutorial for kitschy Christmas record album cover ornaments on Crafting a Green World, and a tutorial for kitschy Christmas record album cover sewing cards on Eco Child's Play.