Officially a Big Girl

No more diapers (except for nighttime, of course)--my baby is officially a big girl. And in our house, that is a Big Deal. More so, probably, because we never really did toilet training with a capital T--potty chairs kind of make me retch a little, and so each time a little girl first began the big climb up to the big toilet consistently, it's just seemed really amazing how kids can pick things up all by themselves.

So today was all about our Big Girl.

First, the Big Girl Present. I'd mentioned before that I thought Syd would really like a dollhouse, so this afternoon, after some phone calls and Web searching, we trooped over to Learning Treasures, a local, independent toy shop, and purchased the Ryan's Room Home is Where the Heart is dollhouse:It was about 25 bucks more than online, but local and independent are important, and as a celebratory gift for a two-year-old, it's certainly more powerful to go look at it and buy it and have it right then than to have it just sort of magically appear a few days after the Important Day. What can I say--I like myself some ceremony.

The dollhouse came unfurnished, of course, and Will, especially, was a little befuddled that I wasn't going for any of the thousands of dollars worth of accessories and people and pets and two-car garages also on offer at the store, so I was all, "Listen, Kid. It's just like the real world--you spend all your money on the house, and you can't afford any furniture. You think your dad and I sit around on an old purple dorm couch because we LIKE it?"

Besides, why do you need dollhouse people when you have dinosaurs?
And you certainly don't need dollhouse furniture when you have Legos:Other important parts of the celebration: The Purchasing of Big Girl Underpants (yeah, I just made Will a ton, but it was such a pain altering the pattern for her that I can't even contemplate yet cutting down the pattern again for Syd, so yes, we went to Gymboree) and The Baking of a Treat:

And I am now officially in the market for ideas about making dollhouse furniture. I'm thinking back to these paper-folding patterns, and again, I'm really, really tempted by these wooden people, only I have to contact the company to ask about the provenance of the wood. Other ideas for classy-looking DIY dollhouse projects?

P.S. Check out my tutorial for felted sweater stockings over at Crafting a Green World.

Reverse Applique Handprint Turkey Shirts

It's a joyful thing to be inspired over one's morning coffee...

Inspired over my morning coffee this morning by this post from One More Moore about making her children reverse applique handprint turkey shirts, this became our morning project after breakfast (one half leftover veggie burger, handful of leftover fries, and half a pear each) and books (two from each kid is my at-a-time limit--in current heavy rotation are Nutcracker stories and the Henry and Mudge books):

The big kid's shirt, which once had a permanent marker stain where now there is a turkey, has a reverse applique with red plaid felt from my old undergrad dorm sheets, a button from my button jar, a beak and wattle from a felted wool sweater, and embroidery using the darning foot on my sewing machine.

The little kid's shirt, which I think came out even better, once had a Baby Gap logo where now there is a turkey. It has the green plaid set of my old dorm sheets, and I think the embroidered beak and wattle look better than the felt ones on this shirt.

I made both basically by following the blog post's instructions, except that I cheated by tracing the kids' hands onto freezer paper and then ironing it onto the shirt before stitching.

While I worked, I traced many more hands for the kids to cut out and color and just generally do stuff with. Other handprint activities include:

• Cutting out handprints and using them to measure stuff (the big kid claims that she is five hands high--accuracy is clearly not important for this)
• Comparing handprints of family members to talk about growing and aging, and making a collaborative family artwork with them
• Making inkpad handprints to see the wrinkles on our skin
• Pressing handprints into air-dry clay--I have one of these from when the big kid was a little kid, and it's one of my greatest treasures
• This beautiful embroidery from Plumpudding
• Encouraging collaboration by getting kids to trace each other's hands
• Encouraging non-dominant hand motor skills by encouraging a kid to trace her dominant hand

A super-awesome project, right? One More Moore RULES!

And so do sisters.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Sunday Update

I think I post often about the entity that is Sunday in our house. Saturdays, now--Saturdays are fine. We cooked, the girls and I invented a board game (more on that later), we hung out at the Wonderlab, did a little shopping (little-girl mittens at the west-side Goodwill), had dinner, and enjoyed Family Movie Night (Mary Poppins--Matt does an AWESOME Dick Van Dyke doing a cockney accent). But Sunday? Here we go...

The Nutcracker

As part of my attempt to make Willow into Someone to Go to the Theater with (This is the same kind of emotion, I think, that some moms feel when they talk about how they wanted to have a little girl in order to have Someone to Go Shopping with), I practically put a second mortgage on the house in order to buy the two of us AWESOME seats at the IU Ballet Theater's The Nutcracker in December. Because nothing is fun unless you study for it, not only have I checked out several versions of the ballet in book and DVD form from the library, including one ON ICE, and some Tchaikovsky CDs, but today while I soldered (see below), Matt took the girls to a public library program on The Nutcracker. The girls were thrilled by the dancing----although not quite as much by the craft activity: A crown, I think?

Soldered Glass Ornaments

Soldering doesn't really fit with my work ethic, since I can't manipulate molten metal with two little kids underfoot, but I obsessed about learning it at one point when I had lost my mind studying for my qualifying exams, and I still find it a lovely craft. Here are some ornaments I soldered while the rest of the family was at the library:
I've now used up the last of my pre-cut glass stash, though, and I find cutting glass with a hand tool VERY tricky. I believe I'm in the market for a second-hand glass grinder.

Officially a Big Girl

I had to be a bit insistent with Matt about this, but once we switched to a panties-only during waking hours policy, Syd seems to have finished her own personal switch to a toilet-only during waking hours policy.

In our house, toilet-learning is the first time that a kid warrants her own big gift, just for her. Will got a tricycle; I think Syd would like a whole lot more something like this

from Ostheimer Wooden Toys, but it costs Four. Hundred. DOLLARS!!! I'll be looking this week for something similar that I won't, you know, have to trade Sydney for.

For Hanging by the Chimney with Care

I think it's a total rip that stockings are for kids, so in our house we also do stockings for everyone, and so Matt helped me design a pattern (he drew, I nitpicked) for some stockings to sew out of felted wool. Here are three blocked and drying:

You can't tell in the photo, but the grey ones are really beautiful--they're from a cable-knit sweater, lightly felted, with the tops the finished bottom of the sweater. One will be Syd's and one I'll put in my etsy shop; the striped one is Matt's.

The Battle over the Table

The living room table, so recently moved (by me, with the back injury) to the lovely spot with the natural light by the window, was briefly shoved into a corner (by me, with the back injury) because Matt was being a dick about it, but my ability to throw a really big hissy fit (it's the redneck in me) with little to no warning fortunately trumped Matt's shove-everything-against-the-wall design ethic, and the table was moved back (by me, with the back injury) into the sweet spot a couple of hours later.

Parts of the House are Clean

Parts of the House are Still Very, Very Filthy

Can you even find the baby--excuse me, big girl--in the photo?

Panties are Prepared

I drew a pattern for the perfect pair of T-shirt panties today, only, T-shirt material isn't as stretchy as regular panty material, and you may not realize this when you put your panties on every day, but your panties stretch a LOT to accomodate your body, and all this is a preface to the fact that I need to tell you that the panties I make for myself out of T-shirts are ENORMOUS. Seriously, they're huge. Looking at them, they make you kinda feel like crying, but ooh, they are comfy.

So I cut out a ton for myself, and they are ENORMOUS, and Willow wanted some, too, and she wanted them to be "matches" with Momma, so Matt used his graphic design skills to cut down my pattern to fit her. The style is a little more adult than I'd choose for her--a little hipster, slightly cheeky--but seriously, something about the idea of wearing matching panties with my four-year-old...I could not resist. Here's the stack of Will's all cut out:

So yeah, our Sundays tend to be ridiculous. I'm exhausted, but you know what? Matt cleaned out the refrigerator today, and we totally have an unopened bottle of cheap champagne back in there.

I'm gonna go get it.

Little Felt Things

Sydney circles:Photography experiments:Sort-of sewing:Help with felting:Drying in a row:

Where We Go to Wonder

First, my continuing project: I'm still working out some test shots for my Craft magazine piece. The colors still look a little washed out to me and the image isn't sharply focused (my eyesight sucks, so I rely a lot on autofocus, but autofocus? Eh.), but I figured out that the overall tone would look better if I didn't pose my artifacts on, you know, a BRIGHT GREEN background. You learn something new every day...

And today, the girls and I spent quite a bit of time learning at the Wonderlab.

The Wonderlab is our third-favorite public area in all of Bloomington. I've been taking Will there, daily, weekly, monthly, since she was just over a year old--Syd's been going there since she was a newborn. My favorite thing about the Wonderlab is that since they were old enough to put their hands on anything, each of the girls has been able to interact with every single exhibit there in some meaningful way. Mind you, the kids aren't necessarily grasping the finer points of how hot air makes the balloon rise, but they grasp the cause-and-effect of push the red button, watch the digital thermometer numbers rise, and up goes the balloon. It's that kind of learning that's especially valuable, I think--as the girls visit these same exhibits over and over throughout the years, old lessons are internalized and new discoveries are made.

Here were the favorites today: Our other favorite thing about the Wonderlab is their membership in the ASTC Passport Program. Every time we go on a trip, I always pull up the complete list of Passport Program participating museums, and we ALWAYS find some cool place to get free admission into--St. Louis Science Center, Chicago Field Museum, San Francisco Exploratorium, etc. On our California trip, Matt and I took the girls to the Exploratorium for the day two times, and the first time we basically recompensed our entire year's membership at the Wonderlab. It rules.

But in case you think I didn't do anything crafty today, you're wrong! Here's a little peek at a project I'm trying to work up out of some of my felted wool:
Can you figure it out?

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.