The Book Begins Thusly

Let's see...today I drank hot chocolate with my girls, I did an upper body workout with that bitch from YourselfFitness----I caught up on Battlestar Galactica while working on some more comic book Valentines, I made the girls' room all spic-and-span----I held office hours and the hands of many students as they bravely (or not) voyage their way through their first paper; I admitted that my cell phone, three times washed, has died and must be replaced by another; I gave my camera into the hands of one beautiful daughter so that she could capture with her own photographic eye the sublime beauty of another daughter-- --and, friends, I began my book:
It's a how-to and a manifesto treating upon lifelong learning as it applies to the family: essentially, the desire to learn and engage with our world is a lifestyle that we can model for our children and participate in with them. I'm interested in exploring not just ways in which we can offer our children enrichment in traditional (and non-traditional) academic areas, but also how we, ourselves can still learn in these areas with our children, and can enjoy learning.

The hands-on, DIY ethic is integral to this process, as is our responsibility to our community and our environment. I plan to include lots of projects, activities, and tutorials, lots of ideas for engaging in these areas within our larger communities, and an overarching premise of self-sufficiency and sustainability.

And, if possible, I plan to make it sound a little more entertaining than what you just read--I'm saving all the witty remarks for the book itself, apparently.

Now, friends...any advice on obtaining a literary agent?

Do You Know Your Joe?

I had a peaceful time today to work on some Valentines that we'll be sending out to friends and family (Christmas newsletter? Hokey. Valentine's newsletter? Fresh and original!). To make these Valentines I'm using some old comic books that Matt finally admitted I could have from his childhood collection. I think this set will be smaller and much simpler than the last set of Valentines I sent out, just because the comics are so cool in themselves that adding too much stuff would just kill it. Here, for instance, are some close-ups of my Valentines in progress. Can you tell what comic book each is from?

1) Spider-man 2) Wonder Woman 3) G.I. Joe 4) Captain America 5) Iron Man 6) X-Men

More interesting, perhaps, might be to try to figure out why I chose each particular image to be a part of a Valentine--usually a very obscure sexual reference that probably only I will find funny.

P.S. Check out the treasury that I'm featured in on etsy! Treasuries are only up for a limited time, so peek sooner rather than later.

The Concert Outfit and the Concert

The concert outfit: Pelvis pendant by sushipot; skulls tank top by Torrid; crocheted shirt from Goodwill (I very carefully cut it away from an old-lady cream-colored pink shell that it was supposed to lie over, because, come on--if you're going to wear a black crocheted top, you're going to wear it over bare skin. Duh.); jeans from Goodwill (awesome, ass-hugging jeans that I hemmed yesterday morning with bias tape made from the cut-away part of the jeans); vegan blue boots from Vegetarian Shoes.

The concert: The music was hot, tight, and just right
some guy made a pass at Molly (twice!)
and I got into a fight.

In other words, it was perfect.

Barbie Gone Wild

We all know that Ken ran into some seriously hard times, emotionally, after the break-up of their too-brief love affair, but Barbie?

Barbie seems to be doing alright.

P.S. My Old Crow Medicine Show concert at the Vogue is tonight! I mentioned to the girls yesterday (while having another marathon button-making session; y'all know how I feel about making buttons with the girls) that Miss Molly and I would be going out on an adventure tonight, and based on all the "Oooh, where are we going?" rhetoric that followed, getting out the door tonight might be...interesting.

But I later realized something that I'd never realized before, on account of I'm never actually on the door end of the getting out part: once I actually get out the door, I bet I won't be able to hear them scream anymore! Not, at least, over the hot rocking of Ketch on the fiddle.

Critter Caps: A Momma + Baby Tutorial

Will wasn't feeling well, and basically napped the morning away, leaving me as Syd's only playmate. Then, just after Will had rallied and gone happily to school (no snow day today!), Syd decided that a half-hour nap was quite sufficient, thank you, and wandered into the study to find me, just having wolfed down a veggie burger and another half-cup of coffee, setting out to grade my second student paper in a stack of probably 93.

You absolutely cannot grade papers with a small child around, but fortunately, as I discovered years ago, they do incorporate well into any manner of the home arts.

It's a funny throwback to my early parenting years, this collaborating with Sydney. Willow has always been the child I've collaborated with the most, from her babyhood when it was the only way to both work and parent, to Sydney's babyhood when it represented the special time Will and I would spend together during Syd's naps, to more lately when Will has turned into a kid who is able to do so much stuff--hot glue, handle a hole punch, work a cordless drill.

But as Syd gradually gives up her afternoon naps and I lose that very last bastion of time to myself in the day, I imagine that she and I will do much more inventing and working together.

Here's what we invented and worked on today: I call them Critter Caps.

You will need: some recycled or stash fabric that has a little horizontal stretch to it--cotton jersey, lightly felted wool sweaters, faux fur, etc.; a sewing machine with a wide zig-zag stitch or a serger; embroidery thread or yarn in a color matching or complementing your fabric.

1. Measure the circumference of your lucky hat-wearer's head and the distance from the crown of her head to the bottom of her ear. Fold your fabric in half and cut through both to make two rectangles whose length is twice the distance from crown to ear (plus a seam allowance) and whose width is half the circumference (plust two seam allowances). Remember--the circumference should have a little stretch to it.2. Stitch the hat, right-sides together, around both sides and the top, and finish the bottom brim however you'd like (zig-zag, serged, bias tape, or having taken care to cut the bottom brim from the finished bottom of a sweater).
3. You now have a big rectangular rectangle hat. Fold up the brim a couple of times (tack it into place if you want) and try it on your lucky hat-wearer. You can either pinch out where you'd like to gather your critter ears while your hat-wearer is wearing her hat, or you can use that crown-to-ear measurement.
4. Gather each top corner into a critter ear shape and tie some tight knots around it with embroidery thread or yarn. Get it really tight!
5. Try it on your critter. Does she like it?
6. Repeat until you have a critter for every member of the family. Don't forget to document important occasions:
P.S. I wrongly assumed that Matt would find faux fur too girly, and instead made him a critter cap out of a much more sedate felted grey wool. This, however, is the kind of man who orders mixed drinks that come with colored sugar and big skewers of fruit and fancy straws, so he totally wants a faux fur critter cap, too.

Snow Day

No school.

No work.

No teaching.

No grocery shopping.

No library.

No post office.

No crafting.

No alone time.

Just this:

Best. Day. Ever!

Look at Me and How Awesomely Famous I Am!

Y'all know how I am so cutting edge in the eco revolution, right? So I often watch Zaproot, which hosts these little news-show clips of breaking news on the enviromental front--they're nice because they usually report positive environmental acts or encourage people in concrete positive environmental acts they themselves can take, etc.--I'm really not so much into downer news because then I feel all bummed and powerless, so I like their method. Matt hates all their quick cuts, by the way, but I'm all, "Dear, it's supposed to be edgy. That's what kids like these days."

Well, imagine my surprise while watching the latest Zaproot to see...well, me!

Keep an eye out at around 51 seconds into the video, and you'll see a screenshot of my Crafting a Green World post about writing my reps to protest the CPSIA:


Ah, fame. I have become so powerful that my mere image can now be used as shorthand for what I represent.

Heart Handmade: I Made It!

Y'all, I received SEVEN Valentines in the mail today! (And one etsy order). The big news, though, is that I mailed out TWENTY-FOUR Valentines today (and two etsy orders from my pumpkinbear etsy shop).

I glued patterned paper (sheet music or scrapbook paper) to the fronts and backs of 4"x6" pieces of recycled cardboard (cut from pizza boxes or record album covers), except for a few cool-looking record album covers that I cut down to 4"x6" and glued front-and-back. Then I cut and punched hearts of different sizes from more sheet music and scrapbook paper, and punched 1" circles in some of the cardboard Valentines. I glued hearts to the cardboard Valentines in whatever pattern I felt like (a different pattern for each one), glued pages recycled from a tiny little quote book on some, and wire-wrapped beads (some vintage amber beads, some a Christmas present from my mother) to dangle in the 1" circles of some of the cardboard Valentines. I hot-glued tinsel or thrifted bead strands around the edges of most of the Valentines, and cut and glued each Valentine a custom envelope recycled from an old atlas.

The US Valentines cost $1.17 to send, the Canadian ones cost $1.18, and the Australian one only cost $1.40. I have got to start sending more things to Australia.

Here are just a few highlights:Today was the day that Willow also finally got to wear the Salvation Army sweater I bought for her. It's about four sizes too big and has a big pull-mark on the back, so I thought I was buying it as a pillow top for her or perhaps her best little friend, but noooooo...

See? It's a knitted horse. With a real yarn mane. And a blue button eye. Of course she's going to wear it. Every. Single. Day.

And speaking of true love? This Saturday, my dear friend Molly and I are driving up to Indianapolis (By ourselves! Without my babies! Without my husband! Has not happened since before Sydney was born!) to see Old Crow Medicine Show:

If you're jealous (which you are), you should totally come and meet us there. I'll be the 30-something lady in the jeans and T-shirt, acting like she hasn't been out in public by herself since 2006.

I am so freakin' happy.

His Further Fall

Since the awful aftermath of their too-brief love affair, Barbie has gone missing, but Ken? Ken, I fear, has taken his first steps down a dark, dark path:

P.S. Check out my tutorial for making envelopes out of recycled paper on Crafting a Green World.

Whole Wheat Makes It Sturdy, Agave Makes It Sweet

Having one overripe banana and one ready-to-expire egg (and an insatiable sweet tooth--sigh), and being rather tired of many failed attempts at making banana bread (a very simple recipe that apparently completely relies on white flour and white sugar? I never had a chance), yesterday I made banana cookies using this banana cut out cookie recipe from Hip Mama magazine: My favorite things about this recipe? I was able to sub in all white whole wheat flour and agave nectar (I use agave nectar at about 3/4 the amount of sugar I would use--do you think that's right?) and the recipe still worked--a little sturdier with the whole wheat, which you're fine with if you're already used to whole wheat, and a little thicker, but then again, I'm no whiz with the rolling pin, either, so we must leave open the possibility of human error.
I also really like that this makes a cut-out cookie that looks like a sugar cookie, blonde enough to ice and decorate, but with more flavor and a little healthier than a typical sugar cookie (I was a big fan of the banana taste--next time, should I use banana extract instead of vanilla?)

Because of course, the whole point of the sugar cookie is to ice and decorate it:

And in the process, I made this whole other crazy discovery that y'all probably already know all about. So Willow wanted to ice the cookies with strawberry jam (we don't often have jam and, like her mother, Will goes a little apeshit when something delicious is in the house), but I doubted the sticking power of strawberry jam to a cookie top, and anyway we still had some cream cheese left after making the half-birthday half-cake, so I shoved the rest of the cream cheese and the rest of the strawberry jam (sorry, Willow) into the food processor and pureed it all together, and when it was done, y'all--I had made a SCHMEAR!!!

There was an Einstein's Brothers just off campus of our undergrad, and even though my super-sarcastic best friend and I used to make massive fun of just the word "schmear"--"Go on, say it." "You say it." "I'll buy you a bag of iced animal cookies if you say it. " "Fine, but then you have to say "purse." Etc.--y'all, they are delicious.

So, two great food discoveries in as many days, and Matt is currently working like a dog around the house.

Yay, Saturday.

P.S. I fear that yesterday's affair did not end well for a certain pair of lovebirds:

P.P.S. There's also some leftover blueberry pie filling in the fridge--blueberry schmear, anyone?

Oh, Dear

Forget the kids--my own loose morals are starting to rub off on the dolls, now:

Heart Handmade: Paper Edition

It was a freak accident--Matt's carrying Willow out to the car for school, and somehow he manages to bend her arm back and catch it in the screen door. The man is oblivious on account of he has no ovaries, and so he's all, "Willow, let go of the door and come on!" and I'm all, "AHHHHHH!!! You're killing the baby!"


Yeah, she's totally fine, but since her arm was all red and scratched, and since it was already ten minutes past time for school to start, AND since she was totally going to show up with a tear-stained face and red arm and tell everyone that Daddy hurt her because she was acting naughty, I decided to have Will ditch school for the day--juvenile delinquency starts so young, and is an obvious result of parental abuse.


So even though this was my To-Do list for the day--

1. Buy hot glue.
2. Figure out the serger.
3. Blanket binding post for Crafting a Green World.
4. Post to Etsy teams.
5. List record bowl/album cover Valentine on my pumpkinbear etsy shop.
6. Make banana bread.

--instead the day went more like this----and this: I'll write more about that latter photo later, but let me just say--Plaster of Paris? Rules the World.

I'm getting pretty close to finishing my Valentines for the Valentines Classroom Card Exchange swap over at Craftster: I'm a little disappointed in myself in that I had wanted them to be entirely recycled, and they're not--there's obviously some stash scrapbook paper in there, and the tinsel was on Christmas clearance. I'm also having a little trouble finding recycled materials to fit my theme--I started using scrapbook paper because I ran out of sheet music of love songs, and I made a bunch of handmade envelopes for the Valentines, and they look cool and all, but they're from maps. Not so much of the love in a map, maybe. But since I'm a newbie at papercrafting, this is a good start for me. It takes a while to learn to suss out the possibilities of unconventional materials for your craft.

Here are the two beautiful handmade Valentines I've received so far in my exchange: Awesome, right? And I'm still going to get something like 21 more!

I Heart Obama

I just can't get enough of the Obama love--I've been all amped up for this inauguration since the election, and all amped up for the election since the primaries, and I'm so used to the anticipation that, except for a couple of moments in the car (moments in the car are occasionally peaceful, unlike the rest of my life) when I felt such relief at having a sane, intelligent, and compassionate person finally in charge around here, I've been a little twitchy today.

Is that, perhaps, why I've spent the past half hour not grading papers, nor working up tomorrow's lesson plans, nor emailing some very boring emails, but creating a bunch of Obamicons? Um...yeah.

The girls spent the morning out on one last adventure with their grandparents, but they arrived back home in time to witness one small moment in history with me:
Thank goodness for autofocus, because Momma was crying too much for manual.

P.S. Check out my post for other fun DIY Obama stuff over at Crafting a Green World.