Gumdrops. On a Stick!

There's always room for another building toy, especially if that toy is sharp and/or full of high fructose corn syrup.

So you take some gumdrops, and you take some bamboo skewers, and you stick the bamboo skewers in the gumdrops--

--and you make stuff!

The gumdrops are sticky on the inside, so they hold the skewers really well, but they're also gummy, so they're very forgiving if you want to change the angle of a certain skewer or fit it somewhere just a little different from where you'd originally intended.

We all had a lot of fun with this, and several massive creations resulted:

Another interesting point is that these structures sort of tell you how to build them as you go. For instance, Will made a vertical triangle, then stuck a skewer straight across from the top of the triangle, but it wouldn't stay. So she tried sticking a skewer straight down from the end of that triangle, but it was too long. So she build another vertical triangle to hold that opposite end of the skewer, which held it up, but the whole structure kept tilting, so she connected the two vertical triangles with skewers at both ends of their bases--

...and so on and so on, the engineering skills building apace.

As for Syd's obsession, have any of you ever read the Tripod trilogy of young adult novels?

Shudder.

Tough Choices

Would you rather paint?

Or snuggle the foster kittens?

You're free to do both, of course:

In other news, we're having an excellent weekend.

Prima Ballerina

Someone likes her brand-new ballet class uniform:

We had to purchase the uniform (and holy cow, that stuff is expensive!), but the "sparkly big pink tutu" that Sydney has requested? I can make that baby myself.

And maybe a matching one for me?

Pumpkin+Bear Paper+Dolls

Fortunately today was bright and sunny and happy and pleasant, so after a looong morning running errands--Learning Treasures for blank slides, slide covers, elastic cording, and the tiny plastic animals that the girls generally spend their allowance on; Hobby Lobby for adhesive cardstock and science magnets; Kroger for a passel of groceries, including nutritional yeast, soy creamer, and celery with the leaves on (another experiment in the making); and Costume Delights for one x-small youth ballet outfit--Willow found herself crashed out on the couch, reading a Black Stallion book and listening to the Oklahoma! soundrack, and Sydney and I found ourselves out in the front yard, conducting a photo shoot for the felt paper doll set in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

I'm not in love with the white felt background, but...eh. You do your best and you call it good.

I've got some pretty cool vintage wallpaper buntings to also list this weekend, and possibly more cut-out pinbacks, but I've also got tomatoes to buy and then can, and pesto and cookies to make, and a celery experiment to conduct, and some jingle bells to string on elastic cording, and some more antibiotics to beg out of the Humane Society for the foster kittens, so we'll see what I get done.

Whatever it is, though, I'll call it good.

Paper Dolls, Only They're not Made of Paper

It seems as if the girls have been everywhere this week, and I along with them--microscope, books, beads, playground, library, playdates, Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, hearts, glue, macaroni, butterflies,  Schoolhouse Rocks, markers, workbooks, rubber bands, guitar...get the idea?

I've dreamed about these felt playsets for a long while, but it seemed as if I put them together in fifteen-minute increments for almost as long as that. A few minutes of cutting, interspersed with helping a daughter over a sticky moment in a computer game, interspersed with a few minutes of cutting, then taking a break to bake yet another batch of vegan sugar cookies, and eventually--

--the paper doll felt playset gets created, piece by tiny piece.

My goal is to take many better shots of this playset tomorrow, to share here and on etsy and for craft fair signage, but since I also need to buy elastic cord so to make jingle bell anklets with the girls and a ballet outfit for Sydney to wear to class next week, and make the long-promised oatmeal cookies and the recently-desired mini-pretzel cookies, and read The Black Stallion and another Nancy Drew and however many other chapter books Willow has managed to devour recently, well...

We'll see.

Have You Climbed a Tree Lately?

She has!

Tutorial: Beaded Ribbon Necklace for She of Little Patience

Beading a necklace is actually a bit of a commitment.

I have beads and the kiddos have beads (actually, some of their beads are better than my beads, but who compares Christmas presents?), and they often like to do stuff with their beads. Who wouldn't? They're colorful!

Gluing beads all over something is cool, but beading an entire necklace, especially a necklace long enough that they can slip over their heads in order to dress themselves independently, is along the lines of "death do you part" for the under-7 set.

But you know what they say--tantrums are the mother of invention. That's how I invented this project that will turn any amount whatsoever of beaded strand into a beautiful, wearable necklace.

You will need:

• beading cord. We use plain old fishing line.
• beads and baubles--anything with a hole in the middle
• ribbon
• super glue--we use E6000

1. Give each kid enough fishing line in case she strings enough beads for an entire necklace. Tie a bead firmly to one end of the length of line.

2. Let the kids string beads to their hearts' content. I give each of my girlies one of their compartmentalized plates to work on--it gives them a couple of compartments to sort beads, and the largest compartment generally catches the odd dropped bead, IF they work over it (big if, I know).

3. Once the kid gets bored, have her give you back the line with whatever amount of beads that she's strung. Measure out the length of line that she has unbeaded, minus two inches, and match that, plus two inches, with ribbon. You're adding four total inches to the necklace's measurement, do you get it?

4. Use that extra inch of line and extra inch of ribbon on each side of the lengths to tie the two together. Try to make your knot on each side snug against the beaded line--if you make it perfect, the necklace will actually look like the beads have been strung on the ribbon itself. Kinda cool-ish.

5. Trim the extra ribbon and line sticking out from each knot so that it looks neat and tidy.

6. For extra insurance, coat both knots with super glue, then let dry for a day.

Because she just wasn't enough of a fairy princess already?

Tutorial: A Watercolor Crown Fit for a Princess

Lately, Sydney has gotten into the habit of poring over magazines and the few catalogues that we get, at every page pointing to something and saying, "I want that!"

"I want the shirt that's just like that, only I want it to be a dress, with ruffles at the bottom."

"I want leggings like that, but I want the shoes on that other girl."

"I want those fairy wings for my dress-up, only I want them rainbow. And I want a rainbow wand to go with it."

Of course, I always tell her that we'll either make what she wants or we can save up for it or remember it the next time that she needs shoes, etc., but the other day when she showed me a girl on the cover of a magazine, wearing a jewel-encrusted crown, I thought, "Aha! We can make THAT right now!"

And so we did.

You will need:

• scrap typing paper
• large-format Strathmore watercolor paper. You really do need that big size, because it's long enough to fit all the way around the baby's head.
• cloth measuring tape
• pencil
• ruler
• scissors
• watercolor supplies
• white glue
• beads and shells and glitter
• clear packing tape

1. The typing paper's length is a good length for the front of your crown, where the major decorative elements will be. Turning the typing paper landscape, draw the front of your crown. Sydney and I did some drawings freehand, and some making use of cookie cutters as templates. An attractive crown makes use of cut-outs, and it can get nice and tall.

Cut out the crown front when you're finished--that's your template.

2. Measure around the baby's head--that number is also the length of the crown. It's just made of paper, so don't bother leaving room for growth. You can always make a new one in a few months!

3. Also laying the large-format watercolor paper landscape, measure out the length of the crown. Center the crown front template in the middle of the length, and trace it onto the watercolor paper.

Between the crown front and the ends of each side, draw the crown's band about two inches wide.

4. Cut out your crown.

5. Decorate the crown with watercolor paints, and then let dry.

6. Using ample white glue, glue on all the decorative components that your heart desires--beads, shells, glitter, macaroni, etc.

And when you're done...

You're a princess!

Squeaky

What do you think is the first thing that Willow wanted to do after she got her leg cast cut off?

Isn't that the first thing that you'd want to do, too?

What Can't You Do with a Broken Leg?

You might have thought that a broken leg would slow my girl down:

Nope. Supervising my kids will still earn you a free heart attack, no proof of purchase required.

P.S. By the time I blog tomorrow, a certain little girl that I know of will be absent one twelve-pound holiday-themed fashion accessory. Stay tuned...

Time to Bake the Donuts

Baking makes for excellent homeschooling. Ah, the counting! The fractions! The ratios! The logical ordering! The recipe reading! The motor skills! Chemical reactions! Nutritional science!

Um...and deliciousness.

So far, our homeschooling has consisted of a LOT of baking. The girls love to do it, it's madly educational, gives them radical homemaking skillz, and results in actual food that we can actually eat.

In other words...why not?

Will found the recipe for baked donuts in Knead it, Punch it, Bake it! (store-bought with my swagbucks, woot!) and, praise the lord, we actually had all the ingredients on hand!

The dough was easy--although it used up TWO packets of yeast!--we let it rise, then cut out our adorable nesting doll donuts:

FYI: When you bake your donuts, you can make them any shape that you want. Will had herself quite a blast sculpting many magnificent donut sculptures:

You will also note that one of the benefits of baking vegan is that you can taste while you work.

The donuts already look quite nummy as they rise--

--and then bake, but they're going to get nummier. I have three words for you:

Butter. Cinnamon. Sugar:

You dunk 'em, then you douse 'em.

Repeat until plate is sufficiently overloaded:

Consume:

You think they were good, and you're right. Of course they were good. But they weren't just regular good. They were this kind of good:

When you close your eyes as you eat something, then you know that the something that you are eating? It is GOOD.

Big Tool

Like all good Southern women, I spent Sunday morning out on my front porch with my power tools--

--turning fallen branches from that damned silver maple into toys for the babies:

You can check out my tree blocks tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

C is for Cookie

One of my favorite things about homeschooling so far is the luxury of time that we're presented. We have all day and all evening, from waking up to bedtime, to make whatever choices that we want to make. I don't have to plan fun activities around a block of institutional school in the middle of the day, and now that I'm fully stay-at-home, I don't have to plan fun activities around evenings teaching and days grading. We make plenty of sacrifices for this luxury, mind you, PLENTY of sacrifices, but a luxury it does remain, and I appreciate it.

One of the most pleasant aspects of this luxury is my ability to say, when a child comes up to me and requests, for instance, that we make cookies, "Sure thing!" We have time to brainstorm what kind of cookies the child might want to make, time to dig out all our cookbooks and cooking magazines, time to search the web for good recipes. When it turns out that we have none of the ingredients required to make any of the cookie possibilities, we have time to go to the grocery store, even if it is an unscheduled visit. And since we're going to the grocery store, anyway, why don't we just write down all the ingredients that we need for all FOUR of the cookie recipes that looked the yummiest, and that way we can make all of them?

The girls and I have made three kinds of cookies so far this week.

Our chocolate bake-off cookies were inspired by the Great Cookie Bake-Off held by Journey into Unschooling. We made their cookie base, using Ener-G Egg Replacer and canola oil as substitutions, and then we, too, divided up the dough and we, too, went to town:

I believe that I laid out everything from flaxseed to jelly, cashews to coconut:

My cookies had sesame seeds, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. Willow's cookies had jelly, dried fruit, and cocoa. Sydney's cookies had a little of every single ingredient on the table:

They turned out a little on the dry and crumbly side, likely because of my vegan substitutions, but oh, my, they were delicious. Dried fruit in a chocolate cookie? Yum!

These vegan chocolate chip cookies from the Post Punk Kitchen blog were perfect. Delicious. Some of the best chocolate chip cookies ever consumed. They were so quick to make, and so nommy to eat, that I have no photos! Guess I have to make more...

The biggest hit of the parade so far, however, has been the vegan sugar cookies from John&Kristie. I mean, holy cow. I bought karo syrup on account of y'all, and it was totally worth it!

Even with no place to go and nowhere to be, these cookies were still a two-parter because they had to be refrigerated. I went ahead and left the dough in the refrigerator overnight, which may have been too long, because it was a little fiesty to roll out, and I was afraid that the whole business was just going to be too crumbly.

Never fear, however. With a little extra futzing in the transportation department, the girlies and I managed to make all the cut-outs of our dreams and get them safely transferred to the cookie sheet:

But the best fun? The icing! The recipe also includes a recipe for the hands-down BEST icing that I've ever made. Meant to be dipped--

--but also dabbled--

--it was the perfect consistency for decorating and dried nice and stiff and yummy:

And, once again, these cookies are GONE baby gone. Must be time, then for that vegan oatmeal cookie recipe...

Project Runway: Barbie

Since we were already in Indy and all, our Matty got me and the girlies a cheap-o Priceline hotel room (we were utterly miserable there, since there was an actual fire alarm that required actual evacuation in our pajamas, and actual firefighters in full gear, and the girls were hysterical, of course, but that's a different story, isn't it, La Quinta Inn that didn't give us a refund?), and the next day we went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.

We lurve the Children's Museum, and go quite often. If you go during a school day, NOT a field trip day, and you're a member, it's pretty sweet. The carousel dude didn't even make us get off between rides, there was no waiting at the big marble run, no line at the boat-building, no having to share the wall-mounted T-Rex puzzle with some tourist kid who hasn't done it a million times and will just delay getting it completed in order to hear the big roar, etc. I do find children's museums in general a little annoying because I loathe hyper-parenting ("Okay, Ichabod, now it's your turn! Climb the ladder! No pushing! Let the little girl go up first! Walk, Ichabod! Be careful! Okay, go down the slide now!"), making kids move along before they're done ("Come on, Jackson, let's go see something else! Hey, let's go look at the boats, Jackson! Let's go, Jackson! Jackson, come on! I mean it! One!"), and using your bitchy voice in the gift shop, especially if you tell your kid that you're going to buy them something but then all you do is gripe about what they want.

Even that is quite a bit lessened, however, by going during a school day during the school year, and our time was quite pleasant. And in the afternoon, quite by chance, we walked into a program that is hands-down the best thing that I've done in the Children's Museum so far...

Tell me, friends. How would YOU like to design and then make a real, live Barbie outfit?

We liked it very much.

First, Mr. Grant gave us a lecture on color and fashion and style. Then there was the design portion of the programme:

And during the design portion, Mr. Grant came around and told each person exactly why he loved their design so much. We like compliments, and we liked Mr. Grant.

Then each person picked out the fabric for their Barbie dress, and then we folded the fabric, pinned a real, live, Barbie dress pattern to that fabric, traced around it with tailor's chalk, and cut it out:

The pattern was simple and yet brilliant, and don't worry--I looked and looked and looked at it, and I think I can make up something along those lines for some future at-home Barbie fashion design.

Instead of sewing, we used double-sided tape to put the seams together--again, BRILLIANT!--and little Velcro tabs to make the dress closures wherever we wanted. And, and here's the best part, we put our dresses on LITTLE BARBIE DRESSMAKER'S DUMMIES!!!

I may have been in heaven for a bit.

After we all had our dresses on our dummies and they had been duly admired, Mr. Grant brought out the fabric scraps, and the ribbons, and the beads and bobbles and sequins, and the fabric markers, and the fun truly began:

Both the girls found this last part, especially, to be utterly absorbing. Willow dangled bits of scrap fabrics and ribbons down from the hem of her dress, and Sydney ended up with a ribbon bow on each shoulder of her dress, a ribbon bow in front and back, ribbons drawn all over the other free spaces, and tiny little cut-up bits of ribbon here and there and everywhere.

When the girls were finished, they were both VERY proud of their Barbie dresses:

As well they should be.