Spring is Nigh

How do I know?

Well, the windows occasionally get opened now, so that the dinosaurs can look out:The first flower was photographed.

The girls, unsupervised, raided the neighbor's yard to gather a huge bucket--
--of beautiful green and rich and earthy moss:We are apparently not the good kind of neighbors...ahem. Mental note: teach the girls to use a trowel, and then we could make terrariums!

The Wylie House heirloom seed sale has come and gone, although their antique quilt exhibition remains, I believe:

And yes, I do think that there are little critters down there in the creek, once again:

Happy of happies, I got some sewing done today! I swear, there is nothing like blissfully ironing and measuring and sewing while watching streaming videos online--it's like a tiny piece of heaven trapped in the middle of my cracker-crumb day.

I'll show off my babies' new marker roll tomorrow, and yep, you'll love it, too.

Shrink Plastic Buttons You Need a Microscope to See

I've been really really REALLY wanting to get my hands on , but it's not yet my turn in the library queue, and anyway my vintage button stash is dismal (it's a dream of mine to someday go to a garage sale and find a gallon jar of vintage buttons marked at something like 50 cents...someday), but I heard that there's a shrink plastic button project somewhere in the book, and I did have an old empty container of Kroger's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies languishing in the #6 Plastics crate on the kitchen counter (yep--we have a storage container in the kitchen just for #6 plastic. That stuff is useful!), so...

I punched a bunch of one-inch circles out of #6 plastic, punched a couple of buttonholes in the center, and the girls and I got out the Sharpies and worked--

--and worked----and worked. I had a plan to make some buttons around the alphabet for my VWX Alphabet ATC Swap over at Craftster (you'll see in a moment why this is no longer part of the plan), and Sydney seemed to greatly enjoy making entirely black button after entirely black button, but Willow did this funny thing where she made faces out of the buttons, using the buttonholes as eyes:

Ahhhh, negative space.

With more forethought, I would have cut out circles of varying sizes and thereby avoided the below phenomenon in which all of our shrink plastic buttons are now nearly microscopic--But, eh. It's crafting!

What fun is forethought?

P.S. Check out my shout-out in the Weekly Craft Round-up over at The Long Thread. Woot!

P.P.S. I think it's really funny when people rename my posts when they link to them--they're all, "I'm sorry, but I am not putting the word "RAWK" on my blog!" Justifiable, I think.

The Flight of Europa, Re-Imagined

The other day on a school holiday, I took both the girls up to Indianapolis to visit the Indianapolis Museum of Art. You might remember that the idea of this trip filled me with trepidation, on account of the huge, screaming fit that a certain 4-year-old threw within eight minutes of entering (after standing in line for over an hour) the San Francisco Modern Art Museum. This trip was certainly better, in that we got the chance, you know, to see some actual art this time-- --but it did end, of course, in me tersely escorting the girls from the museum an hour after entering, and I wasn't quite successful in convincing Willow, at least, that a museum without anything to climb on is still super-fun, but after spending 5 seconds looking intently at The Flight of Europa--

Willow did sit down with her sketchbook and colored pencils and create this:

When Willow asked me why the lady was riding the bull, I told her that it was a big, friendly bull named Zeus and it was taking the Europa lady off on a special ride across the ocean. For anyone else who knows the myth of Europa, you can join me with a quiet "ahem" inside your heads, as well.

Next time (probably the IU Art Museum), we'll spend ten minutes looking at art, twenty minutes hanging out with sketchbooks (the girls were inspired to draw in the museum for quite a while after looking at the art, even if they weren't necessarily impressed by that art, so I'm calling the enterprise a success)--

--and then we'll move on immediately to some very different activity that requires a lot of climbing upon things.

If only art museums had a playroom.

Teeny Tiny Little Quilt Blocks

I'm taking a little mental health break from query letters this week (my worst rejection so far--"pass but god bless") and re-charging my creative batteries, so to speak. There's been a lot of list-making in the sketchbook (birthday ideas for my cousin Katie, projects I want to make and modify from ), lots of planning of crazy-elaborate projects I may or may not make (Will wanted a pretend birthday cake, so I was thinking some high-density foam, denim, piping, and Eco-fi felt applique decorations?), and hopefully some sewing to come soon (rainbow birthday buntings, help me make time for you!), but today, during Sydney's all-too-short nap, I had an extremely happy time watching the first four episodes of Dollhouse on hulu while cutting out blocks for my postage stamp quilt squares swap over at Craftster:For those of you not CRAZY like I am, postage stamp quilt blocks are 1.5" square; when pieced, these blocks will appear to be 1" square. I do already have a ton cut out from a previous swap, but I've been afraid of touching them for a really long time after I somehow messed up piecing them, I do not know how, and ended up with a bunch of quilt blocks whose finished size when pieced was 1"x1.25". I'm still scared by the fact that I DO NOT KNOW what I was doing wrong.

The fun thing about cutting out postage stamp quilt squares is making fussy cuts, so that you preserve the image of a flower, or a kittycat face, or whatever, in your tiny little block. The challenging thing is cutting extremely accurately. A gridded self-healing mat and a gridded clear plastic rule make this much easier:See how, at the left edge of the picture there, you can line up the clear ruler on the gridded mat at the appropriate lines so that the fabric to the right of the ruler is cut accurately?

Good times.

In other news, Willow took a photo of the first flower of springtime in our yard:Since she's just started using my camera this winter, I think this is her very first photo of a growing flower. Ever.

How cool is that?

P.S. Check out my list of art museum web sites that offer interactive children's activities--it's over at Eco Child's Play.

Shout-Outs

First of all, a shout-out to Sydney's most favorite toy in the world, photographed by herself:She honestly hasn't seen The Land Before Time or any of its eight thousand sequels often--a sick day of her own every now and then, a sick day of mine every now and then--but they've really captured her imagination. She pretends about all those little cartoon dinosaurs all the freakin' time, using wooden blocks, or her fingers, putting them into time-out, whatever.

I was really quietly irritated about all of it for a while--I mean, here are two kids who can tell a brachiosaurus from a diplodocus and that a pteranodon and a plesiosaur are NOT dinosaurs, and here they are talking about three-horns and the sharptooth and "I'm not a long-neck, YOU are!"

But you know, I finally figured that Matt and I are certainly big enough fangeeks in our own right--comic books, Buffy, sci-fi TV shows--let the kid own her fandom. So while we certainly don't let Syd watch the shows all the time, I did do some web research and downloaded her a DIY mobile, and some masks, and some coloring pages from the Land Before Time web site, and put some easy-reader Land Before Time books on hold at the library, and even checked out ebay to possibly buy her more of those little plastic critters (not for love nor money, apparently).

So, yep, baby's a fangeek. And now the rest of the shout-outs are all about me.

So Matt came home from work yesterday, and sat me down at the computer first thing, and he's all, "Now, Newsarama and Comic Book Resources are the premiere comic book resources, blah blah blah, but Robot 6 is the most popular blog and blah blah blah, and so I was taking a break at work and thought I would check it out, blah blah, and in this one post I was scrolling down, and I see a link to a tutorial for making gift tags out of comic books, and I know you like that stuff, so I click on it, and what do I see? YOU!!!"

I guess Robot 6 was kind enough to pick up my post on Crafting a Green World about making comic book gift tags, and now I have officially impressed my husband.

In other news, I have warned everyone and warned everyone about how bad I am at interviews (this one time, after I won a spelling bee at my junior high, the five o-clock news interviewed me on television, and... it was not pretty), but nilochlainn was nice enough to risk it anyway and interviewed me for the INCrowd Team blog over at etsy. She asks me a lot of interesting, nice questions and I basically go on and on pedantically. Apparently you do not need to get me started about the concept of traditional "women's work."

And if I can go on about that, remember that my official field of study is actually medieval studies, and think about how much more it is possible for me to go on about a single field of study.

P.S. Check out my ode to Artist Trading Cards over at Crafting a Green World.

Bye-Bye, Birthday Bunting

This past weekend I spent sewing up a personalized bunting from my pumpkinbear etsy shop and sending it off to its new home in Alaska!My favorite thing about doing custom sewing for people is that I'm usually called upon to use color combinations that I normally wouldn't consider--you never could have told me before this project that I would like the combination of lime green, lavender, and rose......but after sewing with it, I love that combination! It's youthful and playful and fun without being too childlike--the colors are a little unexpected together, but the fact that they're all pretty light versions of themselves allows them to pop without being garish:So now, of course, I'm all about the birthday bunting. I'm thinking of adding a listing just for a pick-your-own-colors Happy Birthday bunting in my shop (with a simple symbol on either end as well as in between the words----it comes to 16 pennant flags), as well as sewing up a few in some more traditional colors to be able to sell instantly and to show at craft fairs, and I've also, of course, been planning out some bunting ideas for my own girls' happy summer birthdays.

And of COURSE each girl has to have her own. Sydney's I'm thinking of doing in rainbow colors, but I asked Will to draw me a design of what she'd like her birthday bunting to look like:Oh, dear--where to even begin?

And If You, As Well, Like Things That are Free...

I'm taking a break from my Yourself Fitness workout (Five minutes of heel jacks? Really, Maya?) to participate in this meme I found at One Gal's Trash (she got it from Vintage Rescue Squad). It's super-awesome, because here's what I get to do:

The first 5 people who respond to this post will get something made by me...it will be my choice, but made especially for you. This offer does have some restrictions & limitations...

*What I create will be just for you, and it will, like most of my work, include recycled elements as primary components.
*I make no guarantees that you will like it...but I hope you do! Feel free to tell me the kinds of stuff you're most fond of, ESPECIALLY if you're a big, dorky fangeek just like me.
*You will receive this item before the end of the year...or sooner.
*You will have no idea what the item will be, or when you will receive it.

*****The BIG catch is you have to repost this Meme on your blog and put together something to be sent out as 5 surprises of your own. These surprises can be anything....a piece of art, a photo, a poem...whatever you choose...

On account of I have always wanted to be involved in my own pyramid scheme, of sorts.

So, friends, put on your thinking caps, send along this meme and then comment back here to let me know that you, too, will send a surprise into the lives of five more friends this year.

P.S. Look what I made! I'm going a little crazy with the comic book love, I know. These particular bad boys will be going up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop as soon as I've finished my workout, fed the girls lunch and gotten them dressed, written my lesson plans and homework for tonight, and baked beer bread and roasted tomatoes so that Matt doesn't feed the girls sauce-less tortellini for the THIRD night in a row while I'm teaching tonight--
--but if you happen to be local, I dropped 50 more over at the gift shop of the Waldron Art Center yesterday afternoon. My goal is to eventually inspire the entire town to walk around wearing non-sequiter comic book dialogue by the end of the year.

We Love Books. We Also Like Them to be Free.

It's a well-known fact that the girls and I can generally be counted upon to know the time and location of every large garage sale free day, thrift store store-wide sale, and book sale free day. Monday, of course, was the free day of the Monroe County Public Library Friends of the Library book sale, and therefore, on Monday, there we were:Mind you, the book sale free days are actually really important to me professionally, because as part of my students' work analyzing gender ideologies, I give them each a romance novel to analyze. That's 46 Harlequins a semester, and no, I don't get funds for supplies. Fortunately, book sale free days are often just teeming with Harlequins, and I can usually even score a volunteer who's so stoked to get rid of some of them that she'll actually sit down on the floor with me and help sort through them ("How about this one, dear?" It's about a cowboy and a Russian czarina, although I'm afraid it looks a bit racy...").

With my two little girlies also scoring free books, with their own perfectly-sized real metal shopping cart (I once had to scream at a lady ACROSS A WAREHOUSE to stop stealing some of the free crap from my kids' shopping cart while Willow stood there right in front of her and cried--some people will do anything for a creepy vintage doll), I, as a rule, never get to look for my own reading material, but I did manage to grab several awesome 80s Christmas crafting books, a whole wheat cookbook, and some California travel guides for cutting up for scrapbook embellishments.

The girls, too, got lots of awesome-to-them stuff--books about Botswana, the digestive system, the making of the 80s-era Ramona the Pest TV show, etc.--and I usually respect their haul, but this one I had to take away when they weren't around:Really?I mean, really?

The worst thing is that it totally makes me want a cigarette right now. Seriously--the picture of the smoking cat makes me want a cigarette.

My week is turning out to be a little stressful.

P.S. Check out my tutorial for making scrapbook embellishments from comic books over at Crafting a Green World.

Sharks are Made of Delicious Sabotage

Considering my goal to lose at least SOME of the baby-weight that I put on approximately three years ago, you might be surprised to learn that Matt brought home this book from the library the other day:
Of course, if you have a Matt of your own at home, perhaps you won't be surprised.

So the girls and I spent days and days poring over all the sugary confections contained within, until they finally made their choice: sharks.

The shark cupcakes require cupcake mix, chocolate chips, Nilla wafers, frosting, and TWINKIES! Dear god, Twinkies. I have eaten Twinkies this week. And they're not even that good, but they're so, so, so insanely sweet that after you eat one you're all, "I feel kind of sick, and yet somehow I could totally go for another Twinkie."

Fortunately I have some commissioned sewing to do this weekend, so after many strict instructions for Matt to not YELL at the girls while baking with them, I left them to it. Here's the basic shark infrastructure--cupcake, Twinkie, and Nilla wafer:
Here they are staring in a disgruntled fashion at the shark cupcake in the book because they don't know why Matt can't use my fancy food coloring correctly and made them tan instead of grey--so much for this being a homeschooling moment about sharks:And the final product--From what unholy marriage consummated in the uncharted depths of the sea did these abominations creep forth?Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder:

And they do seem to taste just fine, so I suppose it was a successful venture after all:

Matt likely does not have a future career in catering to look forward to, but at least he has an appreciative audience at home:

I'm a Less Bad Mother at the Beach

Sometimes, when I'm feeling on the verge of being a very bad mother who's crabby and rotten and acts like there are a million things more important for her to do today than be with her little girlies, I take those little girlies to Monroe Beach:It's a tiny little thing on the corner of Lake Monroe, and in the summer it's real redneck-y (trust me--I would know), but in the winter it's deserted. The girlies can frolick and just ALMOST get their feet wet in the freezing water----(until they do get their feet wet, and then it's time to go home), and I can have a little walk, and breathe, and remember that there's not much more important in the whole entire universe than those little babies of mine: (The fact that they're more than an arm's length away and not screaming at each other right in my face surrounded by the filth that is our house doesn't hurt, either).

Of course, other times we don't go to Monroe Beach and I AM a crabby rotten mother all day and I DO act like there are a million more important things for me to do today than be with my little girlies, and then late at night, after they're finally sleeping (for a couple of hours, anyway), I feel remorseful and have to lie down next to them and run my fingers through their little-girl hair and whisper apologies to them in their sleep.

I have to try to remember better next time.

We are Officially Artists, and We Have the Cards to Prove It

After many, many mornings of creative labor----Willow's ATC Kids' Swap is wrapped up and ready to mail: Watercolor remained a big hit, as did acrylics----but for all the tiny little detail work of the tiny little trading cards, I think that Willow found herself much more satisfied, in the end, with colored pencils. She's gotten pretty representative in her work lately----and only with pencils, probably, could you create an ATC that deserves a caption like this: I think we all found the ATC experience quite inspiring--Will freely calls herself an artist (She has the proof--they are ARTIST trading cards, aren't they?), Matt rediscovered Bristol board as a canvas for the comics he draws, and I'm thinking about organizing a Kids' ATC Swap on Craftster and about using ATCs as my business cards instead of my Moo cards this coming craft fair season (Moo cards are unbeatable, but can get pricey, and shipping from the UK? I can hardly justify it).

In other news, I actually got one of my kids to wash the other kid's hair today:

If these kids didn't need me to constantly pay them so much flippin' attention, my days would be just about made.

Treasure! Recycled Treasure!

My blog-friend cake and I, needing to exchange goods and services and being those kinds of blog-friends who actually sort of live only a block away from each other, arranged a couple of dead-drops at the local park this week.

I thought it would be super-fun but, I admit, that once I duct-taped (I over-use duct tape. I mean, I really over-use duct tape) a secret stash of one-inch pinbacks to the underside of a ladder leading up to a twisty tunnel slide, glared suspiciously at the lone basketball player forty or so yards away, and then LEFT that package to its fate, it actually became really sucky because I couldn't stop fretting. On the way out to the car to teach later I looked down the block and saw some kids ON that slide, and I had to stop myself from running over to double-check my treasure's safety. I kept saying to myself, "Your students will leave if you are late. If you are two minutes late they'll all leave," over and over to myself.

Of course later, after cake had received her package and she and Cosmo had left me a secret message on my light pole that told me that I had a package of my OWN to retrieve, well that was awesome fun.

I mean, look! A mysterious arrow pointing the way!We actually get to look in the hidden nooks inside a wall. We actually get to look there for treasure!And the treasure? Is encased inside something that I totally WANTED! A couple of issues of Family Fun magazine ago (Yes, I get Family Fun--what of it? It's awesome!) there was this tutorial for making a little orange juice carton wallet, and the coolest thing was that the lid was held on by the screw cap of the carton. What you see below...is that coin wallet:Do you think the kids liked their treasure hunt?
Yep. Awesome fun.

It is Banana Bread, but Does It Count As a Recipe?

If it's smack in the middle of the only two hours you have to yourself all day, the time in which you need to set up lesson plans and grade papers and answer emails and update your pumpkinbear etsy shop and work on your book proposal and maybe, I don't know...MAKE something, but the baby won't nap and hasn't napped all week and it's making you suspect that she's starting to give up her nap (oh, no, please no), what do you do?

You and the baby make banana bread.

Of course, you don't want to use refined sugar because you're so over refined sugar (why will the baby weight not come OFF?), so instead of refined sugar you use up the rest of the agave nectar and the brown rice syrup (which was a mistake, because now you have to find time on a Tuesday to go to Sahara Mart for more brown rice syrup so that you can make more baked nori). Oh, and you don't have cinnamon or nutmeg because you used them up making cinnamon cut-outs so instead you dump in some ginger and cut up some candied ginger, too. And if you're going to do that, you might as well throw in some dried blueberries and the rest of the bag of walnut pieces, right?

Anyway, if you make banana bread with the baby, you should absolutely turn your back so the baby can't see, and then pour some of the banana bread batter into a little heart-shaped tin. If you do that, and bake it, and then frost it with peanut butter, your babies----will be delighted. And when they see that you have cut the heart in two for them----so that they can break it apart like a puzzle--

Well, you know what little girls are like when they're happy and excited, right? They'll do that.

This banana bread that I made is nice and dense and moist and yummy. Again, I'm not really sure if what follows will count as a recipe--it's originally from the Bountiful Blessings Cookbook, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Indiana Midwives Association (I am also a sucker for cookbooks put out by churches and elementary schools and ladies' clubs and such--more on that later), and since out of the entire recipe I only accurately followed the cooking time and temperature and the number of eggs, AND since the recipe is technically for pumpkin bread, not banana bread...well, here it is, anyway. Do with it what you will.

Banana Bread

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mash up three bananas in a bowl.
3. Mix with four eggs and two-ish cups of agave nectar, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or honey.
4. Add in nearly a cup of olive oil or cocunut oil or butter or whatever fat you happen to have handy.
5. Dump in 3 and 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour and a little salt and soda and mix.
6. You forgot the milk--pour in 2/3 cup.
7. Add in a random assortment of spices--ginger, clove, etc.--and a random assortment of mix-ins--dried cocunut, nuts, seeds, etc.--and mix it all together.
8. Pour it into greased little loaf pans.
9. Bake it for about an hour. Seriously. An HOUR.

See? It's good.

Where our Hearts Reside

Quite a while ago I found some Scrabble Anagram tiles and so I made words out of them, then glued magnets onto the back for refrigerator magnets. Yesterday, Willow was playing with them, trying to find words she recognized and arranging them into patterns. She'd call out, "How do you spell 'Matt'?" and I'd shout back and a few seconds later she'd say, "Oh, there it is!" Then I'd hear, "How do you spell 'Julie'?" and I'd shout back and then I'd hear, "Oh, there it is!"

She asked for her own name, too, which is silly because she can spell it, and she asked for Sydney's, and I was working on something of my own and so I was a little distracted and just shouted out the proper spelling and heard her say, "Oh, there it is!"

It wasn't until later that I remembered that I'd never actually found all the letters to make her name and Sydney's name into magnets, and I was glad that she hadn't come to me disappointed, but when I went into the kitchen later this is what I saw on the refrigerator:
Of course. Clever girl, she found just the right word for herself and her sister, and she put it in just the right place, too.