List Maker

Surely you suspected that I'm a list maker, right? An incorrigible one. And I make lists for other people. Sometimes I'll call Matt up at work, and dictate these really long lists to him of stuff he's supposed to be doing--making a dentist appointment, emailing back the Human Resources lady, finding a cheap flight to Mexico, etc.--and he'll be all, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, okay." It took YEARS before I realized--he's not actually writing it down! He's just pretending!

And that, my friends, is why I have to do everything myself.

Last night in the car, sometime in between bouts of "I'm bored!" and "I have to go bafroom!", the girls and I wrote up these learning maps for them. Basically, you have each kid name four or five things they'd like to learn about, and then together you think of all the things you can do to learn about those subjects. Circles are topics, cloud-shapes are activities, underlines are field trips; interconnections between subjects are highly prized, but challenging, sometimes, to make. Here's Willow's learning map: The fun thing about a map is that it brings up possible activities that I hadn't thought of before--I know, for instance, that Willow likes rocks and fossils and shells, and has innumerable ones, but I hadn't yet thought of helping her make them into an official "collection": organizing, labelling, displaying, etc. A possible trip to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center is a new idea, too.

I think that the topics Sydney suggested for her learning map are pretty cool--Christmas, Baby Beluga, ponies, and cows.

Notice that I tried, for her, to focus mostly on hands-on stuff that wouldn't be totally over her head: taste-testing cheese would be super-fun, for instance, as would be learning to play horseshoes.

And since this coming weekend is the big The Nutcracker production that Willow and I are attending, I sort of zoomed in on The Nutcracker part of her learning map and expanded it to come up with even more things we could focus on this week: Some stuff is ordinary, like the dance class the girls attend every week, but I like how some stuff is for me to do, like possibly sewing their pancake tutus and making them freezer paper stencilled Nutcracker shirts, and some stuff is stuff that we'd need to do anyway, like making ornaments. Ideally, I'd find a way to cover more academic subjects in each learning map--math, science, geography, languages, etc. And of course, these are just ideas, so a lot of this we won't actually find time to do--but if something feels inspirational, there it is.

And here's a list I made for myself this morning, because things are getting a little crazy around here, with my freshman comp classes, an upcoming craft fair and cloth diaper workshop, Christmas prep, as well as the two usual little monkeys:

Can you find the unexpected event that threw all other planned projects into oblivion? Sydney hasn't yet repeated the incident, luckily, but I still have probably another seven hours of laundry before me, and I have just a little touch of a phobia about vomiting (yeah, YOU try being hyper-emetic for two months while pregnant, and tell me if you don't lose your will to live for a little while, too), so I am still FREAKING OUT.

Okay, the blog is about to be a check; on to the Craft Magazine photo shoot!

A Retrospective or, as Matt Calls it, a Clip Show

For some reason, holidays in my parents' house always inspire in me the long, unwieldy project. It's an old house crammed full of the treasures of two grandparents who grew up during the Depression and aquired then, as did most people, a slight hoarding fetish (Twist tie? Butter tub? Bank statement from the 60s? They have it), and it screams for the kinds of organizational projects that quickly snowball out of all hope of control. One year, I cleaned out the attic, utilizing a large stock of both trashbags and Rubbermaid bins; another year, I looked through all the photo albums and scanned all the photos of...well...me. Last Christmas, I sorted through my dearly departed Mama's entire adult wardrobe, most of it very well-used--I donated much and cut down some into outfits of remembrance for my girlies, but the majority, too worn and stained to be anything other than someone's else's trash? Well, they weren't Papa's trash, but his treasures, and back into the closet they went.

This Thanksgiving, oddly, I've spent the past two days sorting out the crafty photos from my nearly 13,000 digital photos that I store in an external hard drive (Yep, 13,000, and I DO look at them. Often.). It was by turns tedious and sweet, as I'm sure you can imagine of such a big project. Here are a very few of my favorites of those 4,000 crafty pics:

As you can tell, some of the photos reflect my pride in the things I make to give or sell, but most reflect the pleasure I take in creating for and with my family, and the pleasure of watching my little girlies growing creatively.

Speaking of creative growth, I have a date tonight to go to the Southside High School football game to watch my little baby cousin Zachary, somehow a freshman in high school, play the tuba in the marching band. That sweet little lamb with the short-alls and the mop of bright red hair, who called me "Jewee" and played me in Super Mario Bros., is pretty much a man now, and a good one at that.

If only he didn't have to attend my rival high school--Southside? Ugh. Northside High School RULEZ!

Prepping for Black Friday

Here I sit in Joplin, Missouri, in the fine establishment that is Elliott Lodging--at 1:00 am, when Matt and I were finally looking for a motel, Matt all cracked-out from snorting energy drinks and Twizzlers all night, me groggy and desperate from sitting on my broken tailbone for 9 hours, I was all, "We have to get a place with wi-fi! Does that one have wi-fi? Cause I need one with wi-fi!" and Matt's all "Dude! I HEAR you!" So here I sit, seven hours later, blogging. Watching the Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon on TLC. Cable, y'all! I love myself a good motel.

I'd meant to have all my holiday stuff updated on my etsy shop today--Christmas- and baby-themed record bowls, gift tags, felted wool stockings, a denim quilt--and of course, that did not happen. Next week, hopefully?

Here's what I have updated so far:

Soldered glass Christmas ornaments made from vintage holiday sheet music

Recycled crayon leaves in autumn colors

Baby cap with a stenciled triceratops

Black on black blank books, with some shiny crayons to write on them with.

These join a few other of my favorites:

Ooh, Matt's out of the shower. In half an hour we'll be having breakfast (I wonder if there's a Shoney's near here?), and in five hours we'll be at Aunt Pam's house. Uncle Art makes THE best devilled eggs.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

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?