At Turtle Park

Turtle Park in St. Louis is one of our favorite spots in the world, created by one of our favorite artists (the late Bob Cassilly, artist/creator of another of our favorite spots in the world). On our road trip last week, we spent an overcast afternoon there, climbing around and taking goofy pictures of each other:

While we were here goofing around, I was struck by the revelation that my children are now handy enough with my large and unwieldy camera to actually use it to take non-blurry photographs of me and their father:

Look at that! A photo of the two of us, in the same frame and everything! So THAT'S why people have kids!

In Which I Rave about Instagram

I'm WAAAAY behind the times, I know. I should have been raving about Instagram 18 months ago, right?

Instead, I've only been raving about Instagram since April. April was when Instagram first became available for Android phones. And now I rave about Instagram.

The accessibility of artistic tools is really important. One of my academic interests is outsider art, ranging from the medieval period's affective piety to contemporary fanfic, and I am all for putting the best tools into the hands of every single person everywhere, and then letting them do whatever the hell they want with it. That's why I also love good camera phones--you tend to create with what you have, and you always have your phone with you. And to combine a good camera phone with professional-quality photo effects? It really has reinvented the art of photography.

dissecting flowers

Even with a wonderful camera that hangs around my neck most of the day, I still take tons of Instagram photos of our daily lives:

kid looking at flower parts through our Brock Magiscope

biking home from the library after a tea party in the Children's Dept.

painting on the front porch

 

I also had a LOT of fun editing on the fly photos from our road trip last week:

St. Louis City Museum

driving and driving and DRIVING!!!

crossing the Arkansas River at sunset

kid taking a photo outside Laura Ingalls Wilder's house

And now that I'm home and my external hard drive is on the fritz (oh gods of computer hardware, if you just fix my external hard drive this time, I swear I'll invest in a back-up storage device right away!), I used some of those same Instagram photos of the City Museum, the ones that I took with my phone after my camera battery died, in tomorrow's CAGW post about the City Museum. 

I can guarantee that I wouldn't have posted grainy old old-school camera phone pics on any of my nice, beautiful blogs!

Hershey Bar Multiplication

It's gimmicky and product-focused, yes, but this Hershey's Milk Chocolate Multiplication Book that we checked out of the library was a VERY fun way to introduce the girls to multiplication arrays!

The book mostly shows rectangles of Hershey chocolates set up in arrays--Matt had the girls do the same along with the book, then threw in some new ones for them:

They also did multiplication with grouping:

As you can see, they more or less got the idea!

Of course, we'll be doing the arrays and grouping with tons of other less edible stuff, too--pattern blocks, Cuisenaire rods, coins, counters, stones, and whatever else we find--but the kiddos were just as thrilled as I'd thought they'd be to play around with candy. I was also thrilled to note that they really didn't eat very much of it--certainly not an entire Hershey bar each, and I think that there were a total of three Hershey bars in play during the project. So much of the joy of candy is simply the access to it--PLAYING with CANDY!!!--and also the pleasure of touching it, smelling it, looking at it, and manipulating it into different patterns. Tasting the candy is pretty great, as well, but when you're getting so much stimulation from all those other aspects, then I think that it takes a great deal away from the need to just shove it in your mouth and keep shoving it in.

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Wood Painting and Soap Carving

a round-up of non-toxic methods to paint and seal wooden toys

and a tutorial on setting up a soap carving activity for your kiddos

A TARDIS on a T-Shirt

Along with my lovely TARDIS laptop sleeve, I also now have a freezer paper stenciled TARDIS T-shirt, once again putting something geeky onto one of the very few plain items of clothing that I own (even the pants are affected--I have a pair of jeans with a TIE Fighter on them, a pair of cargo pants with a volcano on them, and a pair of shorts with a starry constellation on them):

I asked Matt to take some photos of me wearing my new shirt, but then I immediately got busy forming no-rise baguettes out of very sticky bread dough--

--so I'm afraid that this is all the modeling you get!

I have two more fangeeky projects ready to be done this week:

1. freezer paper stenciling a TARDIS onto a baby gown in preparation for a baby shower next weekend, and 
2. writing the entire Gozer the Traveler monologue onto the back of my thrifted Ghostbusters T-shirt.

And, of course, there's homeschooling and making dinner and doing my writing gigs and prepping for a road trip, etc., but all that pales compared to geeky fan art!

Chess Bag

We do not have a complete set of chess pieces; instead, we have what seems like a dozen incomplete sets of chess pieces. When we play, we organize them like "I've got the darkish pieces, and you've got the light-ish ones," or "I've got the browny ones, and you've got the reds," or "I've got the big ones, and you've got the tiny ones."

Will used to keep all her pieces in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, until I finally got embarrassed enough about watching her cart a dirty plastic bag of mis-matched chess pieces to chess club and tournaments, surrounded by those kids with the competition-style chess sets and the private chess tutors, to sew her up a bag for holding chess pieces that is worthy of my own little chess-playing kid.

The pattern for the bag is as simple as it could get--it's just my drawstring bag tutorial, sized up to match that big old Ziploc bag that I was pretty happy to throw in the trash. The real fun came in finding a stencil of chess pieces online, cutting it out of contact paper and ironing it to the bag, and then having Willow paint it:

We both ended up VERY pleased with our efforts:

And then off it went to chess club!

Propagating the Wandering Jew

It's the plant that keeps giving!

I can't even tell you how many years ago I bought my original Wandering Jew, at a garage sale no less. It's the perfect plant for our house with its dearth of windows, since it doesn't require a ton of natural light--with a diet of more natural light we'd have flowers on our Wandering Jews, but even without it we still have happy plants that need to be repotted every year.

My favorite thing about the Wandering Jew is that it takes exactly one plant to create an entire household of potted plants. They are SO easy to propagate!

When a Wandering Jew gets really long tendrils, and also starts looking a little puny, I pinch off each long tendril and plop it into a Mason jar of water:

The plants will happily grow in their water for months, with you just remembering to refill the jar regularly, but really, as soon as those tendrils have roots, you can do this: 

And that's four new potted plants! After these start to look happy and growing in their new pots, I'll do the other method of propagating the Wandering Jew--with wire cutters, snip a paper clip in half, then use the u-shaped curve of each half to pin a tendril of Wandering Jew to the soil. When that tendril begins to form roots into the soil (and it will!), clip the piece away from the main tendril and remove the paper clip; this will fill out the plant.

THE Summer Pastime

Never mind about the toys.

All my children need to be happy, at least in the summer, is a Wading Pool of Unusual Size:

They pop in and out of this behemoth all day, every day, in swimsuits, play clothes, various states of undress, and occasionally in no clothes at all. They add more water using the hose, scoop water out with buckets, splash each other, swim, play ball and ponies in it--for extra fun, add soap! 

It's reminded me again of how little my little girls still are, and how they thrive, still, in such open-ended, exploratory play. I've made it a point this week, as we've started school back up, to also set out each day a large, messy, process-oriented creative project for the girls to engage in at their leisure.

Yesterday they painted our front door. Today, I think I'm going to get out the woodworking supplies.

My Latest Over at CAGW: Sticky Jar Labels and Recycled T-Shirt Dresses

a tutorial on removing the paper labels and sticky glue from glass jars

and a review of the Lil Blue Boo Recycled T-Shirt Sienna Dress pattern

Of course, sewing new things for two little girls is simply an excuse to go to the park and have a photo shoot!

I think I'll be making a lot more of those T-shirt dresses. 

The Ubiquitous Turtle Sandbox

So, about that de-stashing...

My kids are funny kids, in that they don't play with a lot of their toys. They play with all their toy horses, big and small. They don't play with any of their other toy animals. They play LEGOs sometimes, and blocks sometimes, if I bring them temptingly out. They don't play with any of their three Playmobil sets, all major purchases for special occasions. They play with their bikes and their scooters.  They don't play with their dollhouse or their toy barn. They play with their jump ropes and their pogo stick. They don't play with their Beyblades or Hexbugs. They play with their stuffed animals. They don't play with their wooden swords and shields, or their dress-up clothes. They play with some of their games and puzzles, but not others.

Frankly, it has me baffled. If I could discern a pattern, I'd be happy to buy them only what I knew they'd play with, but I'm so far clueless. And I can't even go by what they want, necessarily: Willow pined for that special Playmobil pyramid for over a year before I finally found it on sale (and still it was expensive!), and she loves it, but has she played with it? Nope!

If y'all have heard me say once that we're on a tight budget, y'all have heard me say it a million times, so I'm not ashamed to tell you that I find it upsetting when I stretch our money to buy my kids a special gift, or even just use our regular spending money to buy them something ordinary at a garage sale, and they don't play with it. At the same time, a good toy is a good toy, and I hate to get rid of, say, the Beyblades and Hexbugs and the wooden swords and shields even though they're not played with, because they're great toys that I could see the kids really getting into, if they ever do.

Nevertheless, of course things have got to go, and every summer I agonize over sorting out the children's things that they've aged out of, that I don't think they'll ever play with, that might as well be re-homed while they're still in good shape, since the kids don't love them. This year, while going through their belongings and deciding that all the toy animals can stay, but that the stuffed animals that they're not actively playing with regularly can go, that all the wooden blocks and the LEGOs and the Geomags can stay, but that all the big cardboard blocks and the plastic ball pit balls can go, that most of the board games and puzzles can stay but the baby-ish ones can go (goodbye, Uncle Wiggly!), that the Playmobil sets and the dollhouse and barn can stay, but that all the dress-up stuff except for their wooden sword and shield sets can go, that only the handmade dolls and doll clothes can stay, and that the kid-sized wooden table and chairs can go, I came upon the girls' old turtle sandbox--who knew I still had THAT?!?

Willow played in that sandbox as a baby. Sydney played in that sandbox as a baby. They played there together as toddlers, and then I must have forgotten about it, because it hasn't been out in years. And, mirabile dictu, sitting right next to it in the garage was a big bag of sandbox sand.

It was an act of faith in setting that sandbox up instead of setting it aside for our garage sale. It's a pain to set up and a pain to tear down, and you have to remember to put the lid back when you're done, and the grass will die underneath it as it's too heavy to move, blah blah blah, and who knows if my kids would even want to play with it, really, even though they said they would? However, as a free-form toy, out in the outdoors, it counts for me as a "good" toy, and that's what ultimately got it its new summer home in the side yard.

So Matt set it up, and immediately one kid wandered over--

--and it wasn't long before she'd lured her sister over and they were deeply immersed in their imaginary play:


I'm attempting to build some parameters--a Collection Development Policy, if you will, for you fellow Library Science degree holders--about what possessions I buy my children, especially since it's so hard for me to let the children's things go if I've already acquired them. Here are a few ideas I've gleaned so far, although nothing complete:

• NO to play sets, wooden or not, high-quality or not
• NO to dress-up clothing and costumes
• YES to more play silks
• NO to more LEGO sets or add-ons to any of their building sets, unless they begin to show more interest in them
• YES to active toys and outdoor toys
• NO to new and different art supplies, unless they begin to show more interest in the variety of art supplies that we already own
• YES to more games and puzzles
• NO to "toy" anything--toy kitchens, toy doctor's kits, toy tools
• YES to real tools
• NO to more toys that have specific methods of play, such as Beyblades and Hexbugs
• NO to more craft or science kits, unless they begin to show more interest in completing the kits that they already own
• YES to fine coloring books, maze books, and other high-quality activity books

It's hard for me to fight my desire to give my children the widest range of experiences possible, including a multitude of high-quality toys, with the facts of our budget and our lack of space. I comfort myself with the plan to use some of the money that we make selling many of the children's things to buy Willow a real pocket knife, and Sydney some more play silks to dye, and the both of them a few more puzzles. 

Oh, and spending money for Disney World...I'm sure NOBODY will be tempted to buy the kids any more crap they don't need at Disney World, of all places. 

...ahem.

New Blue Tablecloth

It wasn't until AFTER we completed the Great Room Switch that I realized that this, my children's former bedroom, my current study/studio, is REALLY small. I mean really small. It's basically an enlarged hallway with a closet.

I've been used to working in my former study/studio, now my children's bedroom, which was larger and also completely stuffed full with many upon many shelves and bins of stuff, stuff that simply won't fit tidily into this smaller room, stuff that now spills out messily onto the floor and sits in piles and makes me feel like a hoarder and an awful person.

All this is to explain, of course, why I have been stash busting so single-mindedly this year. I've been listing random bits of extra supplies in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop--

--sewing the girls entire wardrobes of summer clothing from a few years' accumulation of awesome thrifted T-shirts, and finishing up projects that have been long dead in the water.

For instance...do you like my new tablecloth?

I strip pieced it sometime in 2011 entirely out of blues from my stash fabric, most of which was given to me by other crafters getting out of the sewing game over the years, then decided that I hated it and folded it away and stuffed it in a closet.

Nothing gets stuffed away in this new tiny room, so last week as I was attempting to pull something else out of the same space, a bunch of crap fell out (and it's still on the floor), including this pieced top, and I thought, "Hmmn, why did I hate that? I love it now!"

Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me enough that it's now a thing--if I make something and hate it, I just have to put it away for a bit and the next time I see it, I'll love it.

I backed it with plain blue fabric, also stash, stitched and turned it, quilted it, and set the table:

I'm not perfectly happy with it; I think because of all the different types of fabrics that I used in the top (I attempted to get all cotton, but since I don't know the provenance of most of this I'm thinking that I mixed a lot of cotton and cotton blends together, and of course a lot of slightly different weights), it simply does not lay flat, but instead is lofted and rumply and, well, quilted:

It does make the table look comfy and homey, however, like having a picnic on a quilt outdoors. We're on a brief hiatus from schoolwork right now, so I haven't yet decided if, when we begin again next week, I'll want to roll the tablecloth back from our work surface or finally get around to making the Waldorf-style painting boards that I've been contemplating making for...well, my children's whole lives, likely.

I Let My Kid Get an MRI for Fun: The Child Scientist Program at Indiana University

One of the fun things about living in a university town is that graduate students love to conduct experiments on our small children. The first experiment that Willow did, she was a baby sitting on my lap in a dark room in the Cognitive Studies department, wearing a teeny little headset that tracked her eye movements as she watched stuff on a computer screen--I don't know exactly what stuff, because I had a hood on my head so that I couldn't react, myself, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Willow has conducted experiments to test her memory, her ability to name familiar objects (except for the photo of a crib--she studied it for a while, then said to the grad student, "little cagey box?"), her overall vocabulary, and her ability to estimate numbers. Syd has conducted several experiments to track her slight speech impediment, as well as the same vocabulary and math experiments that Will did at her age.

If you don't live in a university town, yourself, it might seem a little weird to shuttle your kids over to campus a few times a year to have experiments run on them, but nearly everybody here does it, and the Child Scientist program is actually pretty great. The grad students that we've worked with have always been excellent with little children, really upbeat and friendly and engaged; for Willow, especially, who went through a long phase of being extremely--I don't want to say shy, because she wasn't timid, but she just did NOT want to interact with adults--whatever she was, it was terrific positive reinforcement, because these young adults playing with her were just so nice that she couldn't HELP but engage with them, and even Syd, who did go through a shy and clingy phase, loved interacting with these friendly adults who really wanted to play with their interesting little toys with her.

The experiments are also valuable for the medical information that they provide. Will's vision experiment came with a complete eye exam--I have miserable vision and insurance that doesn't cover eye exams, so I was glad to have it for her. All of Syd's speech experiments came with complete speech evaluations, which our insurance also doesn't cover, which were, again, absolutely free, and which were crucial to obtain, since she did have a speech impediment.

The best part for the kids, though? The stuff! When the girls were little, they got to pick out toys at the end of each experiment; now that they're older, they get cash. Poor Willow, who is left-handed, is ineligible for most experiments now, since they mainly call for right-handers, but Sydney has aged into some pretty awesome experiments that have a pretty awesome pay-out. A couple of months ago, I took her in for a math and vocabulary evaluation (the grad student asked Sydney to define "vacation", and Syd said, "That's where you drive a long time in the car and you get to eat fast food"), and at the end of it, Sydney was handed twenty bucks. We went straight to the toy store from there, and Sydney came home with several new toy horses.

This month, Syd went back for the second half of the experiment. First, she got to play in a "practice" MRI machine. Then, she was set up in the practice machine to rehearse the experiment several times. Finally, she was set up in a real MRI machine; the grad students alternated between telling her stories and asking her math problems, the answers to which she was to tap with her finger while staying quiet and still, while they scanned her brain. At the end of the experiment, she was handed THIRTY dollars and this:

Here's a picture of Sydney's brain:

Not only do we now have a great picture to frame for her room, and we have evidence that her brain is beautiful and perfect, but we're also starting a study on brains/geography when we get back to our regular schoolwork next week, so now we can do our labeling not on an image downloaded from Google Images, but on an image of my own kid's own brain!

Oh, and about that cash? It BURNS in Sydney's pocket, which is why we headed straight to the toy store after that first experiment. But Matt took Syd to the second experiment, and after it was over...

He took her to the gas station.

To buy candy.

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Business Cards and Business Cards

a tutorial for making business cards out of recycled papers, with stitching instead of glue

 and a tutorial for substituting fabric scraps for that recycled paper, and top stitching the business info on