Let There Be Light

I've been in desperate search of light lately--well, mostly I've been in desperate search of over-the-counter and breastfeeding-safe pain relievers, but I've also been in search of light.

Our house is in a great neighborhood and is in good condition and is a good walk to most places we like to go, but it has basically no natural light. The windows are teeny-tiny little things stuck on odd walls in all the numerous teeny-tiny little rooms, and none of them face south. But I have this absolutely terrific assignment to write and photograph a craft project tutorial for Craft magazine (Make's little cousin), and I am desperate for good light in which to photograph.

So I'm limping around the house this afternoon, and all of a sudden I'm all, "Hey! That one window, now that the leaves are off the silver maple, actually gets pretty good light. If only there was a table next to it." I have numerous traumatic injuries, y'all, and yet many heaves and ho's and curses and whimpers later......there's a table next to the one window in the house that lets in terrific natural light. Never mind that it's shoved up against our old dorm couch on one side and the wall on the other, and that the entire bare wall that the table used to be shoved up against is all gross now from being next to the table. Just...never mind.

And the table? Looks like this: I barely even deserve to have furniture.

So I had myself a happy little time trying to figure out some ways to photograph my piece.

Straight above?Looking down at an angle?Definitely not straight on:My digital color enhancements are also pretty off because I have terrible eyesight, even with glasses. I may have to whip out my 500-page camera manual for this project.

But all afternoon I have been obsessed with photographing the light at this window. For our afternoon snack I set the girls up with some cut-up bananas, a couple of handfuls of dark chocolate chips melted in our new crockpot, and a little bowl of crushed pistashios--dip, roll, munch--and I insisted that we do all this at the table by the window, even though the crockpot cord wouldn't really reach and nobody could therefore sit comfortably:
But ah, the light.

Wow, though, I really need to wash the window now.

p.S. Check out my tutorial for aromatic herb ornaments over at Crafting a Green World.

For My Mother, Who Wants to Know What I Want for Christmas

jewelry (from SuchPrettyColors)

a book about making jewelry

warm hat (from 16BIT)

soap (from FlameWorks)

sturdy briefcase recycled from an old tire (from Used Rubber USA)

embroidery patterns (from Sublime Stitching)

Jar of stuff for the making of other stuff (from The Naughty Secretary Club)

P.S. Check out my tree hugger booklist over at Eco Child's Play.

If You Think I Look Bad, You Should See the Bananas

Choosing to carry several bunches of bananas in my arms rather than hold onto the railing this morning, I fell down half a flight of stairs into my basement. Wow, that hurt. After moaning and writhing for a while on the cool concrete floor, I rallied long enough to make it back up the stairs, through the hallway, and into the girls' bed, where I called Matt on the cell and panted something like, "Killed myself. Come home."

It really didn't take him that long to get back here.

We ascertained that nothing is broken except possibly for my coccyx (which could be), but I am currently occupying what is commonly known as "a world of hurt." It involves lots of ibuprofin, lots of moaning, as little movement as possible, and quite a bit of parenting using mindless forms of entertainment.

Hello, coloring pages. Hello, Netflix.

I have found myself completely unable to sacrifice my Netflix subscription solely because of their "Watch Instant" feature. It's brilliant--click a couple of clicks, and you're streaming a movie, or a documentary, or an obscure TV show from the 1980s. This morning, when I was more in the whimpering and writhing in pain stage, the girls watched a lot of episodes of Caillou, but this afternoon we all watched SEVERAL episodes of PBS's Nature--one on The San Diego Zoo, one on Dogs, and bizarrely, I was so out of it that I can't even think of the third. Anyway, Watch Instant rules.

And even though I think that in general, coloring pages are not only NOT art, but also detrimental to the natural development of children's art, they're so handy in a pinch that I do keep myself well-stocked for emergencies. I have a lot of these coloring pages from Sprout, for instance--nothing with a character, but a lot of number pages and letter-sound illustrations and sea creatures and dinosaurs, etc., so later this afternoon when I was sick of nature documentaries but not feeling capable of actually thinking through an interaction with my children, I whipped them on out. And fortunately, I think I so far utilize them rarely enough that my girls still have their own agendas with them. Syd mostly "writes":
(she's asking me to spell "Dadda" for her, and every letter I say gets another little circle), and although Will does like to color the pictures, she's really into cutting these days:
Cutting is kind of a hard skill for a lefty to master, but she's plugging away.

I also got to cancel my classes tonight (woo!), and so lay in bed for another few hours watching Netflix movies while Matt cooked dinner (um, pizza and French fries?), goofed around with the girls, bathed them, and read them to sleep.

Will the coccyx be better tomorrow? We'll see.

The Soapmaker's Newest Companion

So Matt's in the nursery right now doing this-- --with two bathed, sleepy little girlies, but I get to goof around because I literally just finished this:

Uh-huh, two loaves of made-from-scratch multi-grain bread AND some oven-roasted tomatoes. The oven-roasted tomatoes are my specialty, except that I kind of burn them usually, but the bread is quite the accomplishment. Y'all, my bread has been RISING lately. RISING!!!

It was only yesterday that I took this awesome workshop on soap-making from The Kitchen Girls over at Barefoot Herbs Barefoot Kids, and I am already all about the soap-making. I'm all, "I must make soap. I can't BELIEVE I don't already make my own soap." As if it's a character flaw or something, which it kind of is.

The best thing about the workshop was that The Kitchen Girls had these little soap-making kits for sale, with all the stuff you need for a nice big batch--all your oils, already mixed, your little container of lye, some essential oil in its own little container, a spatula, some rubber gloves, and some safety goggles. I bought another buck's worth of dried spearmint from Barefoot Herbs, requested
from the library, and I am in business.

Except, of course, that I need a crock pot and an immersion blender. Well, that's what Goodwill is for, right?

And at Goodwill this afternoon, that's where I committed a crime against morality.

It wasn't the crock pot--I found a little one that I can maybe use for small batches of soap, the idea of which I like better than the making of one big batch, anyway--and it wasn't the immersion blender, which I'm still searching for. It was the woman with a big armful of T-shirts, so big that when she wanted to flip through another rack of clothes, she had to lay her big stack of T-shirts on a trolley behind her. I come walking past, minding my own business, and then, on the very top of her stack of T-shirts, I see it.

An Angel T-shirt. With the whole cast. Have I mentioned that I'm a big fangeek?

I thought for a second, I started to walk away, and then, quick as lightening, I SNATCHED this woman's T-shirt from the top of her pile and kept walking. And then, my friends, I bought that shirt.

Am I sorry?

Do I look sorry?

Caps, Caps, and Caps

For days now, I have had this kind of crazy headache that also makes me feel like I am sort of observing everything, but not really connecting with it, like I'm just sort of visiting inside my skin--pending psychotic break? Brain tumor? I dunno, but I can sure tell you that I haven't been the life of the last couple of parties I've been to.

That being said, this weekend, excruciating headache and psychotic break and all, I've still been to a couple of parties, and a soap-making workshop where I met an awesome blog friend and bought some lye, and I've read a hundred picturebooks to little girls and fed them soup and oatmeal and macaroni & cheese, and graded homework, and made caps. And more caps. A lot of caps, really. Is that another symptom of a pending psychotic break?

I started making caps inspired by SouleMama's Mama to Mama site, which is collecting newborn caps for safe birthing kits to give to moms in Haiti, and remembering both a simple little cap pattern I made up when Syd was small, and a stash of jersey tubes given to me by a friend I met at a craft fair, I sewed up these ones for Haiti while Syd napped and Willow wrote up a list of friends to invite to a party (Planning theoretical parties is a hobby of hers), often consulting me on spelling tips ("Does Owyn's name start with a blue letter or a purple one?" Hmmm): They were so easy that I figured I'd use up the rest of my stash of jersey tubes--yay, stash-busting!--so I sewed up some more blank ones for future baby gifts:I can always embroider them in about a minute for a nice, quick gift.

With the scraps I sewed Syd up some doll caps and I experimented by making a cap for myself (Note: This style is NOT attractive on the average adult head). I had much better luck with the black jersey knit: I figured Haitian moms or my mom-friends might not appreciate the stylish chique of a black baby cap as much as I do, so I instead freezer paper-stencilled some dinos on the black ones I made to put up a little later in my etsy shop: Here they are just chilling out on the towel bar in the bathroom while the fabric paint dries, but nonetheless, I'm kind of stoked by their awesomeness.

Of course, though, the whole point of any crafty excursion is to Make. Stuff. For. My. Girls. So yeah, they got caps. Caps to wear inside while rockin' the Goodwill Outlet Store marble maze with Dadda.

Caps with freezer paper stencils of every little girl's favorite things: ponies and dinosaurs.Little girls in pony caps and little girls in dino caps: do they totally slay you, or what?

P.S. Check out my post about the Caps for Cap-Haitien project over at Crafting a Green World.

Animal, Vegetable, Two Kids? Unpredictable

I think I've mentioned before (many times) that neither Matt nor I are either able or willing cooks, that I have caused numerous kitchen fires, that Matt has never caused a kitchen fire mostly because he confines himself to boiling tortellini and grilling things on his wee little George Foreman, that things that I make generally turn out weird and even though I know exactly why this happens (in a madcap manner, I make healthier and apparently unworkable substitutions, and I treat all amounts and times as approximate), I can't seem to stop myself from keeping on doing it...

Y'all, this book is gonna change my life

Barbara Kingsolver is awesome, and if you haven't read her before, read The Bean Trees: A Novel and The Poisonwood Bible, too, but first read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Sure, the premise is cool--she and her family eat locally for a year, growing a huge garden, befriending local farmers, raising chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat, learning to make cheese, etc.--but it is all integrated within a larger discussion of the ethics of food production, food transportation, food pricing, in just a clear-headed, evocative, plain-spoken manner.

If anything can inspire me to cook at all, much less locally, this book can.

Of course, I obviously ran right out to Bloomingfood's with the girls to buy some wholesome, locally grown produce, and of course the prices nearly knocked the food ethic right out of me. I mean yeah, we try to eat healthfully and organically, but we're also totally dirt poor--we buy organic milk just for the girls because I don't want them to go through puberty at age seven, and I was thanking god that the College Mall Kroger's put in a big, swanky natural foods section so that I could buy bulk nutritional yeast and rolled oats without having to save up. The smack end of the growing season, and Bloomingfood's, was possibly not the best place for a dirt-poor family of four to begin their locavore adventure: I ended up with two locally grown tomatoes, four apples, some milk, and some cheese.

And, um, a sprouting jar? Don't even ask, cause I. Don't. Know.

Anyway, at least when we got home it was a fine afternoon for a change, so I got a chance to rake what used to be here----over the tops of my brand-new lasagna garden beds (although the prospect of the leaf vacuuming team driving by and sucking up all my lasagna beds, which are near the road, is DESTROYING me!), and the girls got to goof around outside a little:
Then, in honor of Barbara Kingsolver, I did not turn to the girls and say, "Peanut butter or cheese? Name two fruits or vegetables," which is how, um, I usually feed them. Instead, we made a whole wheat pizza crust from scratch and, praise be (or perhaps it was the salt and soda I snuck in), the mess actually rose this time, and we all got our own quadrant of deliciousness to decorate: Yummy looking, right? Things like that don't usually come out of our kitchen. Syd did up her lower left quadrant in mozzarella, grape tomatoes, brussels sprouts, and one artichoke; Will did hers in brussels sprouts, one tomato, and one artichoke, Matt had all tomato, and I had pepperjack (local, thank you very much) and artichoke.

And oranges are for making faces with: P.S. I've got tutorials for these here and here, but I also have some new handmade blank books and a set of bigger Christmas-colored crayons up on my etsy shop.

Upcycle Your Crayons!: How to Make New Crayons from Old Crayons

When I was researching melted crayon tutorials for my last post on upcycling crayons, I realized, "Hey! Everybody else does it wrong!" By that I mean that everybody else does it, um, differently than me, but since you can trust that I know the absolute best way to do pretty much anything, here's how to melt crayons better:

1. Gather up all of your kids' old broken crayons. Look under the couch, among the sheets on the bed, in all the toyboxes, and in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. Ignore all the other disgusting things you find in your search--it's important to stay focused here.

I'm an art snob, so my kids only use Crayola brand crayons--Prang are good, too, but Crayola is more readily available. You should know, though, that if you mix crayon brands, your crayons won't melt as neatly--the brands all have slightly different melting temperatures, and if they have a lower melting temperature than I'm accounting for they'll get so hot that the pigment will separate from the wax, and if they have a hotter melting temperature, they won't melt at all in this oven. They'll look fine and be perfectly serviceable for your own kiddos, but might not be the peak of perfection if you're making them as gifts.

2. Peel all the paper and cat hair off of your crayons, break them into small pieces, and sort them into your molds.
While obviously you should encourage your kids to organize their crayon bits however the heck they want, if you want to make yourself a couple of very attractive crayons, consider limiting your color palette to two or three choices per crayon, and strictly limit the amount of darker colors that you put in each mold--the darker crayons will show up really well, and can be quite overwhelming.

As for molds, the muffin tin is the standard choice, but it can be very difficult to pop the crayon out when it's finished, and the same goes for bakeable candy molds. My personal favorite choice is a flexible silicone baking mold--it's much better for easing your crayon out when you're done, and it comes in lots of fancy shapes. For a silicone mold with small shapes like the heart mold in the back of the above photo, two crayons are ample; for one with medium shapes like the mold in the forefront, five or more crayons will work.

3. Put your mold into the oven, turn it to around 200 degrees, and wait at least an hour. You can melt your crayons quicker with a higher temperature, but this will also tend to separate the pigment from the wax, so you'll have a muddy brown bottom and a translucent top on every crayon.

Check on your crayons every now and then, and when all the pieces are liquid, turn off the oven and let the crayons set until they're solid again. If you need to, you can remove your mold, but this will tend to mix up your colors--if you leave the mold until they're set, they'll look much more nicely striated.

4. When your crayons are at least solid, even if only barely so, you can remove the mold to a countertop to finish cooling completely. Don't unmold the crayons prematurely, even if you want to, or you'll moosh them a little.

5. When your crayons are completely cooled, flex the edges of each mold away from the crayon, push gently on the bottom of each mold until you feel the crayon release from the bottom, and then gently ease out your crayon. You only need to be particularly careful about this part if your mold includes any fiddly bits--sticky-outies or such.

6. Do a lot of coloring.

P.S. Interested in more upcycled craft projects? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Festive at Clearance Prices

You will never find me out and about at your various retail establishments on the day after Christmas, snapping up wreaths and wrapping paper and little baby Jesuses or whatever, but the week after Halloween? Back off, sister, 'cause I need me some stuff!

On Monday, the girls and I barreled over to Joann's, a coupon for 10% off of my total purchase just burning a hole in my pocket, to find all of the awesome Halloween stuff still left on sale at 70% off. That's 80% off, my friends. 80% off is good.

So now the dress-up corner is richer by two fairy costumes (one pink, one blue), one skeleton costume, one dinosaur and two sequined fairy wands. Willow is sporting four new pairs of Halloween socks (I'm a goth girl at heart, in that I think that you should absolutely wear skulls and bats and ghosties all year round). The craft area now boasts even more face paint(very "Why So Serious?", right?) and a big box of foam stickers (another box is in storage, waiting to be given out as Halloween treats next year). The girls don't often get stickers just handed to them, so their work this morning was quite inspired:Sydney's all about pointing to and naming the stickers--bat, pirate, punkin--and instructed me as to which of the many display boards around the house she wanted her masterpiece pinned to.

I'm pretty impressed by Willow's art in particular today because she used four different media--crayon, markers, watercolor, and stickers--and incorporated it all into one narrative work: There are houses with Jack-o-Lanterns on the porches, and some of the houses have steps that lead up to them, and cats sit in front of all the houses. There's a spiderweb in the middle with a spider coming down, and in the sky, which is dark, are the things that fly and the moon and the big green wind.

In other news, the party for Will's little girlfriend went very well. The coloring pages were a huge hit

but I still feel like a tool because one mom's RSVP didn't get passed on to me and so two little kids didn't have coloring pages of their own (How does this sound? "Here's a very special drawing page, just for you! It doesn't have your name because it's for you to color your very own picture on it! Even better!").

Eh, at least there were cupcakes aplenty.

P.S. Check out my list of autumn-themed nature projects for adults over at Crafting a Green World. And, if you're into rubbernecking, check out the comments for my wool felt rant--I throw a huge hissy because one reader calls me a Very. Bad. Name. Look for it and reassure me--highly inappropriate, right?

Collaborating with my Girls

In honor of the fact that my retirement fund, the one consisting of money I've been working to earn since I was sixteen years old, performing jobs ranging from menial to demeaning, the one I'd planned to borrow from to provide my girls with secondary education, the one that's my cushion to enable me to be a mostly stay-at-home mom, the one that's made up entirely of stocks and bonds and mutual funds and other imaginary creatures, is down $12,000 for the year (freakin' economy), I've been working on updating my etsy shop for the holidays. It had taken a backseat to my teaching and writing for a while, but now that the entire family is steadier within the flow of the school year, I've had more time to devote to crafting with my girls.

Yep, with my girls. I consider all my work collaborative with my two children, sometimes very directly, sometimes very indirectly. For instance, the girls helped at every step in creating our melted and recycled crayon hearts and autumn leaves and their color choices could be quite beautiful, but for the personalized buntings, they rather inspired the idea, chose the colors for their own buntings, and kept me company by playing on the floor at my feet while I sewed: Sometimes my work is guided by a child's passion, such as when I made up a bunch of dinosaur postage stamp soldered glass pendants, and stuffed dinosaurs from new materials or felted wool, and dinosaur doll blankets

all because Willow is obsessed with dinosaurs. She chose the fabric or pattern or stamp for each, and both the girls are dedicated pin-holders when I layer materials. They also like to race around the perimeter of a quilt that I am pinning on the floor, leaving barely enough room to move around it on either side--it's a game to race around and around and around, because they know that whoever ends up falling on the quilt first gets grumped at by Momma, as if I didn't know what was going to happen all along.

Some things are collaborations in honor of my girls. The cross-stitch panels on this little quilt are duplicates from a cross-stitch book that my mother hand-stitched for Willow:And some things are made just because we're big dorks, like this Christmas ornament. We met Darth Maul, y'all, and he is SO NICE!

Some things I make directly for the girls, such as dressesor dolls then make a few extras to sell or give away, and some things I make in honor of my relationship with my girls, such as items to honor or encourage breastfeeding.

It's because I'm a mostly stay-at-home mom (unless my stocks keep tanking)--together all day, the girls do work and I do work, and their work and my work always reflect, even when we do it alone, our togetherness. Momma is always there to hand a girl a marker, to reach under the couch for the last elusive matchbox car, to read a couple of books, to make a couple of snacks, to wash four hands. In return, the girls are always there for me--goofing around in the cart while I shop for supplies, cutting collages while I cut patterns, sitting on my lap while I try to work the sewing machine around them, playing in the park a few feet behind me while I take pictures of what I made. I collaborate with them simply because they're an inherent part of everything I do.

Just try getting some privacy in the bathroom.