There is Nothing Like a New Box of Crayons

I bought these Stockmar beeswax crayons, then said the magic words:

"Hey, girls! I have a brand-new box of crayons for you!"

I've been experimenting with setting out more than one art supply at a time when the girls are creating, and nothing goes together better than watercolors and crayons:

Eventually these crayons will make their way towards leaf rubbings and headstone rubbings, etc., but it's good to know that they also make a pretty handy rainbow.

We used:

Handmade Dresses For Two Little Girls Who Live in Haiti

We don't know these two little girls, but thanks to the Homemade Dress Drive for Haiti, we do know the exact orphanage in Port Au Prince, Haiti, where they live.

We know exactly the perfect sundress to make for them.

We know exactly the perfect thrifted sheet from my fabric stash to use:

It should be cool and comfy in such a warm climate. Even though the sheeting is mostly white, it didn't seem thin enough to need a lining. I'd likely have added one, anyway, and made the dresses reversible, if I'd been the one sewing them, but I was not.

Each little girl sewed her own sundress for a little Haitian girl, and we know that the little girl who receives that dress will be just size of my own little seamstress, because each little girl sewed her dress in exactly her own dress size.

I printed out the sundress pattern in a 5 and a 7, assembled them, and handed them off to the girls, who were in charge of making sure that I cut out each of their pattern pieces the right way and in the right number. Will took pictures, presumably as evidence that I was going about the whole thing properly:

You can, of course, sew the yoke and straps in a complementary fabric, and perhaps use bias tape to hem the dress instead of a simple folded hem, but we just kept things simple:

This is, after all, each girl's largest and most complicated sewing project ever, to date. Can't you tell?

I did have the girls do french seams for the sides, however. French seams are just about as simple a way to finish a seam as you can find, and extremely sturdy.

I laid the pieces out, ironed and pinned them, then called each girl in when it was time to sew her piece--

--then ironed it, laid out the next piece and ironed and pinned it for the next girl when she was done. The girls went back and forth from their play to sewing and back to play, and I was delighted (and not a bit surprised) to see that every single time I called to them, for every single piece that they had to sew, they always ran to me immediately, screaming "YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!".

I often feel that way about sewing, myself.

I sewed the straps myself, and I basted the bottom hem, but the entire rest of the dress--yoke in the front and yoke in the back, each sewn at the top and the bottom; two side hems with wrong sides together, then again with right sides together to make the french seam; and the bottom hem--each girl sewed entirely by herself:

It was a big undertaking, and a big accomplishment for two little girls:

I hope that the two little girls in Port Au Prince who receive these dresses will find them useful, and pretty, and that they'll be just the exact sizes of my own little girls, who got such pleasure out of sewing for them.

She Made Blue Jello

So one of the problems with our original kitchen, that I'm attempting to remedy as I move the necessities back into our remodeled kitchen, was that I really didn't have a good place to put anything. All the cabinets were deep and dark and high overhead, so a shorty like me better have an excellent memory or the gumption to get up on a kitchen stool every blessed single time that I wanted to cook anything.

Want to guess if I have either of those things?

You know what happened next. As I'm clearing out the old cabinets, I am HORRIFIED to discover how much food I have. Five jars of peanut butter, because there were all those months when Sydney wanted a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and lunch every single day, so I'd buy a new jar of peanut butter every time I shopped, and then one day she wanted oatmeal. Roughly three times as much rice as I really need, stored in three different locations. A box of bread machine mix--HOW long has it been since I've used the bread machine? In the past two years, I've attempted perhaps three times to cook some recipe or other that calls for cardamom. Want to guess how many jars of cardamom I found?

Three.

Anyway, I also have a side project of exposing Willow to logic, following directions, math skills, and, most importantly, common sense, by giving her food to cook completely by herself--refrigerator biscuits, slice and bake cookies, instant oatmeal kind of stuff to start--so when I pulled out that one last box of blue Jello left over from Willow's ocean party, I handed it straight over to the kiddo and asked her, "Do you want to make some Jello?"

Did she!

I always tell Will that it's best to read all the instructions through before she begins, and to gather everything that she'll need, but she never does, and I don't care, because much humor ensues from this. For instance, first Willow had Sydney fetch the cup of cold water, which took FOREVER, but then when Sydney had gotten it Will looked at the instructions again and said, "Wait, we have to have boiling water first," so Syd had to go pour the cold water down the sink.

Then Willow asked me to boil a cup of water, which I did, and when I arrived with boiling water in a measuring cup Willow looked at it, stymied, for several long, thoughtful seconds before saying, "Hmmm, we need a bowl."

A bowl was obtained and the boiling water was poured in, Sydney was dispatched for cold water, which was poured in, and then the girls stirred the boiling water and cold water together for a while until Willow finally asked, "Shouldn't this be blue?"

The directions were consulted, and blue was, indeed, added:

Will asked Sydney to stir, then tried to stop her after about two seconds, but (masterful quick thinker that I am) I insisted that since stirring was Sydney's job, she should be permitted to stir as long as she thought it necessary. Whew!

Finally, the blue jello was sent to the refrigerator, to be visited about two minutes later by Willow, who interrupted her clean-up to go check on it "and see if it's almost ready."

At this point, I'm curious to know exactly what one would have to do to have jello NOT turn out correctly, but I do have to say that oh, my goodness, those girls surely thought that their jello was just about the tastiest food in the whole world.

Sweets made by sweeties. They're not wrong.

Giant Cardboard Constructions

Sometimes you just have to give the babies every cardboard package that's come your way in the past six months, along with the promise of an infinite supply of hot glue:

When I proposed the project to Sydney, she immediately exclaimed that she wanted to build a play castle, big enough for her to sit in. I was imagining what I thought these smaller boxes were more suited to--namely, a model castle, that she could paint and play with her ponies in. I started to say, "Or, you could make a smaller castle," and then managed, through extreme force of will, to snap my meddling mouth shut and make myself available as the mute construction assistant that I was meant to be.

And, by using entire boxes as one wall each, by hinging that one big Playmobil box (it held the beloved unicorn playset from Grandma Beck, which doesn't even have a home because it's out being played with all the time) open so that one side could be a swinging door, by gluing a blue Jello (Willow's birthday ocean) box on top of another box to make the fourth wall tall enough to glue a shoebox (my new-ish running shoes) on top of the lot as a roof, and then by gluing a series of ever-smaller boxes together as a tower, and then gluing that tower on top of the roof for the castle's turret, I'll be damned if Sydney didn't make herself a play castle just exactly big enough for her to sit in.

And that's how I learn something new every single day.

Rainbow Umbrella, Good as New

Did you know that you could mend an umbrella?

Good thing, too--can you imagine the horror of a rainy day walk with two little girls, only one of whom sports a rainbow umbrella?

Playing Chess with My Daughter

Please forgive my constant, indulgent photographs of nothing more ordinary than the regular afternoon chess game between me and my daughter, but one of my favorite things about being a parent

is being a parent of this particular daughter, this dinosaur-loving, horse-loving, tree-climbing, mud-digging daughter

 who reads as much as I do, who cares just as much about clothes as I do (that being not at all), who is being carefully guided by me out of the same social awkwardness that I'm still learning how to guide myself out of

 and who loves to play chess, loves it as much as I might have loved it at that age if I'd had a chessboard and these long, slow, quiet afternoons with someone beloved to play with

Your kids aren't always like you, of course. Most of the time, they're so blazingly themselves that you have to change your worldview just to understand them and parent them well. It's just sometimes, you know, that you see yourselves in them, or see yourself as you once were, and those are the times that, if you had a certain kind of life, you can heal yourself a little more by treating them in the best way that you, yourself, might have wished that you had best been treated when you were a little kid quite a lot like that.

Name/Nickname Birthday Bunting

What do you do when you want to make a name bunting as a birthday present for a kiddo who goes by her nickname?

I mean, you want the bunting to last, so what if one day she doesn't want to use her nickname anymore and only wants to go by her given name?

But what if in the future she doesn't care for her given name, and only likes her nickname?

Well, you can make her a bunting with her given name on one side--

And on the other side, her nickname:

That way, depending on the kiddo's mood, she can turn the bunting around--

or around--

--or around:

Oh, dear:

If the kid's nickname doesn't center perfectly on the back side, you can add a star, or a heart, or some other little icon. And then you apparently have to go make some for your own kiddos!

Garage Sale Find of the Week

Paper Doll Coloring Set:

For a quarter!

Our Giant Multi-Colored Play Silk Canopy

I of course didn't want to mess up the hand-dyed, multi-colored play silk canopy that I was preparing to list in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, so I let the girls' own copy, as identical as two handmade pieces can be, stand in for the official version:

And yep, that's pretty much a typical day for the play silks!

A Basketball-Sized Gameboard Made of Chalk

I've told you before, I believe, that Willow creates giant chalkboard games across the entire basketball court at our neighborhood park, games large enough that we can be our own game pieces.

Not to belabor my two favorite points to make from this or anything, but:

1) My kids are enchanting and awesome and clever.
2) Homeschool, itself, is also pretty enchanting and awesome and clever, because let me tell you, by 3:30 pm every weekday, that basketball court is full up with the big kids. All day until then, it's ours!

It's also enchanting (and awesome and clever, yes) for me to see how Will's reading and other informal studies of  her personal interests inform her games. We've studied Ancient Egypt extensively, Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece less so, and all of these giant chalk games of Will's seem to be about the journeys of ancient soldiers, and the quirky way that she's internalized them.

You're always a soldier, headed to the battlefield, which is at the finish line. On the way, however, you land on objects that other help or hinder you. Here Will's explaining the rules to Sydney, and you can see in the spaces in front of me some money, a turkey leg, a river to cross, a packed lunch, a blank square, and then another river:

Syd's passed the river, and the water horse (have you read The Water Horse? It's enchanting, awesome, and clever):

Then there's a dog, a bow, an arrow, a deer, and a river that's three spaces long:

Sometimes you can only take advantage of an item that you land on if you've landed on certain previous items. For instance, you lose a turn if you land on a river that's more than one space long, unless you've already landed on the water horse or the water dog, both of whom will take you across. Similarly, you cannot hunt the deer in this space unless you've already landed on EITHER the bow and arrow (separate spaces!) or the hunting dog (NOT the water dog).

Will likes to land on the dog, because she likes dogs:

Near the end of the game there are various arenas in spaces, and if you've got the right items--the dog for the animal show arena, the spear or bow and arrow for the hunting arena--you can win and get more money.

Of course, none of this actually matters, ultimately, since the end goal is to get to the finish line first. And so, while Willow and I take our time, throwing our sticks just a space or two to grab up all the treasure, a certain other enchanting, amazing, and clever little thing barrels up ahead and, treasureless, wins the game every single time:

And when you win, you run back to the beginning and play again!

My homemade sidewalk chalk tutorial lives over at Crafting a Green World.

A Pink, Purple, and Cream Twirly Girly Skirt

The weather has already taken a turn--a small turn, but a turn--and the younger girl is anxiously awaiting something special of her own, so I put aside my shorts experimentation (dreaming of Spring...) and turned myself, as well...

To skirts.

To be specific, to the Twirly Girly Skirt in Little Girls, Big Style, which may be Sydney's favorite book ever, and from which she wants what seems to be every single garment except for the peasant frocks.

We began, however, with the skirt, which has, I think, the best use for scraps and pieces of stash fabric, and doesn't require a pattern, to boot. Sydney chose, all independently and all, the pieces from my stash--a purple, two pinks, and a cream--and I fiddled and pieced each piece until I had the right length.

I definitely got my feet wet learning to gather, let me tell you--that bottom tier is a doozie! And yet...I now know how to gather!

Fortunately after all that gathering, the hem is a simple hem, and the waist is a simple elastic waist. The fashion show/photo shoot, is, OF COURSE, not a simple photo shoot, however, because the young miss has ideas. We couldn't just walk across to the park, nope--we had to head back to the library, where I had done Willow's first photo shoot for her Oliver + S shorts. Of course.

And then a nice stranger walked by, saw me snapping photo after photo of my babes, and asked if I'd like him to take a photo of all of us. And that's how we got a bit of a family photo shoot in, too:

They love those bear sculptures outside the public library:

They've cracked their heads there many times, but fortunately not on this day:

And then...well, we ARE at the library. Might as well go in for a while, grab a few books, maybe a computer game, before we head home:

Syd declared it the perfect skirt, and a perfect day.

We used: