I'm a Less Bad Mother at the Beach

Sometimes, when I'm feeling on the verge of being a very bad mother who's crabby and rotten and acts like there are a million things more important for her to do today than be with her little girlies, I take those little girlies to Monroe Beach:It's a tiny little thing on the corner of Lake Monroe, and in the summer it's real redneck-y (trust me--I would know), but in the winter it's deserted. The girlies can frolick and just ALMOST get their feet wet in the freezing water----(until they do get their feet wet, and then it's time to go home), and I can have a little walk, and breathe, and remember that there's not much more important in the whole entire universe than those little babies of mine: (The fact that they're more than an arm's length away and not screaming at each other right in my face surrounded by the filth that is our house doesn't hurt, either).

Of course, other times we don't go to Monroe Beach and I AM a crabby rotten mother all day and I DO act like there are a million more important things for me to do today than be with my little girlies, and then late at night, after they're finally sleeping (for a couple of hours, anyway), I feel remorseful and have to lie down next to them and run my fingers through their little-girl hair and whisper apologies to them in their sleep.

I have to try to remember better next time.

We are Officially Artists, and We Have the Cards to Prove It

After many, many mornings of creative labor----Willow's ATC Kids' Swap is wrapped up and ready to mail: Watercolor remained a big hit, as did acrylics----but for all the tiny little detail work of the tiny little trading cards, I think that Willow found herself much more satisfied, in the end, with colored pencils. She's gotten pretty representative in her work lately----and only with pencils, probably, could you create an ATC that deserves a caption like this: I think we all found the ATC experience quite inspiring--Will freely calls herself an artist (She has the proof--they are ARTIST trading cards, aren't they?), Matt rediscovered Bristol board as a canvas for the comics he draws, and I'm thinking about organizing a Kids' ATC Swap on Craftster and about using ATCs as my business cards instead of my Moo cards this coming craft fair season (Moo cards are unbeatable, but can get pricey, and shipping from the UK? I can hardly justify it).

In other news, I actually got one of my kids to wash the other kid's hair today:

If these kids didn't need me to constantly pay them so much flippin' attention, my days would be just about made.

Treasure! Recycled Treasure!

My blog-friend cake and I, needing to exchange goods and services and being those kinds of blog-friends who actually sort of live only a block away from each other, arranged a couple of dead-drops at the local park this week.

I thought it would be super-fun but, I admit, that once I duct-taped (I over-use duct tape. I mean, I really over-use duct tape) a secret stash of one-inch pinbacks to the underside of a ladder leading up to a twisty tunnel slide, glared suspiciously at the lone basketball player forty or so yards away, and then LEFT that package to its fate, it actually became really sucky because I couldn't stop fretting. On the way out to the car to teach later I looked down the block and saw some kids ON that slide, and I had to stop myself from running over to double-check my treasure's safety. I kept saying to myself, "Your students will leave if you are late. If you are two minutes late they'll all leave," over and over to myself.

Of course later, after cake had received her package and she and Cosmo had left me a secret message on my light pole that told me that I had a package of my OWN to retrieve, well that was awesome fun.

I mean, look! A mysterious arrow pointing the way!We actually get to look in the hidden nooks inside a wall. We actually get to look there for treasure!And the treasure? Is encased inside something that I totally WANTED! A couple of issues of Family Fun magazine ago (Yes, I get Family Fun--what of it? It's awesome!) there was this tutorial for making a little orange juice carton wallet, and the coolest thing was that the lid was held on by the screw cap of the carton. What you see below...is that coin wallet:Do you think the kids liked their treasure hunt?
Yep. Awesome fun.

It is Banana Bread, but Does It Count As a Recipe?

If it's smack in the middle of the only two hours you have to yourself all day, the time in which you need to set up lesson plans and grade papers and answer emails and update your pumpkinbear etsy shop and work on your book proposal and maybe, I don't know...MAKE something, but the baby won't nap and hasn't napped all week and it's making you suspect that she's starting to give up her nap (oh, no, please no), what do you do?

You and the baby make banana bread.

Of course, you don't want to use refined sugar because you're so over refined sugar (why will the baby weight not come OFF?), so instead of refined sugar you use up the rest of the agave nectar and the brown rice syrup (which was a mistake, because now you have to find time on a Tuesday to go to Sahara Mart for more brown rice syrup so that you can make more baked nori). Oh, and you don't have cinnamon or nutmeg because you used them up making cinnamon cut-outs so instead you dump in some ginger and cut up some candied ginger, too. And if you're going to do that, you might as well throw in some dried blueberries and the rest of the bag of walnut pieces, right?

Anyway, if you make banana bread with the baby, you should absolutely turn your back so the baby can't see, and then pour some of the banana bread batter into a little heart-shaped tin. If you do that, and bake it, and then frost it with peanut butter, your babies----will be delighted. And when they see that you have cut the heart in two for them----so that they can break it apart like a puzzle--

Well, you know what little girls are like when they're happy and excited, right? They'll do that.

This banana bread that I made is nice and dense and moist and yummy. Again, I'm not really sure if what follows will count as a recipe--it's originally from the Bountiful Blessings Cookbook, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Indiana Midwives Association (I am also a sucker for cookbooks put out by churches and elementary schools and ladies' clubs and such--more on that later), and since out of the entire recipe I only accurately followed the cooking time and temperature and the number of eggs, AND since the recipe is technically for pumpkin bread, not banana bread...well, here it is, anyway. Do with it what you will.

Banana Bread

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mash up three bananas in a bowl.
3. Mix with four eggs and two-ish cups of agave nectar, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or honey.
4. Add in nearly a cup of olive oil or cocunut oil or butter or whatever fat you happen to have handy.
5. Dump in 3 and 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour and a little salt and soda and mix.
6. You forgot the milk--pour in 2/3 cup.
7. Add in a random assortment of spices--ginger, clove, etc.--and a random assortment of mix-ins--dried cocunut, nuts, seeds, etc.--and mix it all together.
8. Pour it into greased little loaf pans.
9. Bake it for about an hour. Seriously. An HOUR.

See? It's good.

Where our Hearts Reside

Quite a while ago I found some Scrabble Anagram tiles and so I made words out of them, then glued magnets onto the back for refrigerator magnets. Yesterday, Willow was playing with them, trying to find words she recognized and arranging them into patterns. She'd call out, "How do you spell 'Matt'?" and I'd shout back and a few seconds later she'd say, "Oh, there it is!" Then I'd hear, "How do you spell 'Julie'?" and I'd shout back and then I'd hear, "Oh, there it is!"

She asked for her own name, too, which is silly because she can spell it, and she asked for Sydney's, and I was working on something of my own and so I was a little distracted and just shouted out the proper spelling and heard her say, "Oh, there it is!"

It wasn't until later that I remembered that I'd never actually found all the letters to make her name and Sydney's name into magnets, and I was glad that she hadn't come to me disappointed, but when I went into the kitchen later this is what I saw on the refrigerator:
Of course. Clever girl, she found just the right word for herself and her sister, and she put it in just the right place, too.

Felt Rocks RAWK!

I think she likes the felted rocks and the little felt beads we've been making:

I used this hand-dyed wool roving that I bought from The Arts at Eagle's Find (which I highly recommend, by the way). You might remember that I bought some Dyeabolical Yarns wool roving at Strange Folk just for felting stuff, but I am an ignorant novice and that roving?

Superwash.

I'm thinking, though, that the superwash roving would make a really cute grassy nest for some really cute felted wool Spring eggs (like pagan Easter, which is really a modification of a pagan spring festival anyway, so...)!

If you're more into the recycled kind of felted wool, check out my tutorial for felting wool sweaters and my list of projects that utilize felted wool over at Crafting a Green World.

So anyway, I loooooove the felted rocks, on account of they feel so good and hefty and comfy and soft, but you know me and my recycled projects. So tonight, I stole a small rubber ducky out of the girls' stash of bath toys, and tomorrow I'm a-gonna felt it!

Wish me luck. And discretion.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Now We Have Button Eyes

I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman since my undergrad days (see this ode to Sandman that I sold on my pumpkinbear etsy shop a while ago?)-- --and when I was studying for my Master's in Library Science and took a class in children's literature, I developed an appreciation for his children's books, too (although I'm pretty sure that they're completely inappropriate for children-- --
*shudder*).

Anyway, Coraline is awesome. And creepy. With a kid who is just the way I was as a kid (also creepy). And the Other Mother? Her eyes?

Are buttons.

Crafty, right? And creepy-crafty, which is even better than crafty.

So even though Matt and I likely won't see the movie version until it's out on Netflix (and he has to read the book first, which is my one inflexible rule about that whole movie/book business), I was goofing around on the Coraline movie web site early this morning (I was supposed to be doing some etsy stuff, but there you go), and guess what I made?In the Other Mother's Workshop you can upload a photo into a frame and the photo's all antique-y and scratchy, and then you can choose from a whole bunch of buttons to make your loved ones look creepy. The cat looks creepy:And the baby looks really, really creepy:Now if you could just add some creepy crochet hair, we'd be all set.

In Which Each of the Groups Contains a Bedraggled Monkey

We left off last time in the weird story I wrote as a kid with me, a small child even in my story, having taken it upon myself to turn my bedroom into a home for abused animals (Matt ridicules to this day the poster that I still have from my childhood bedroom. I think my Aunt Pam gave it to me--she's known for her really thoughtful gifts--and she knew I would love it: a huge photo of a cat trussed up like the lead singer in a hair band, playing a guitar. Did she know that I would still love it 25 years later? Cause I do). As if that wasn't enough adventure, we happen upon an infinite, previously uncharted cave system that opens up one day from the backyard (It's the Ozark mountains--it could happen!): ...ball came back in the tunnel and pulled on my jeans leg. I got back on Choc and followed her. The gigantic cavern was luminous, too. There were three more branches leading into the cavern. As we watched, three more groups came out of the branches. I wondered what happened to the other fifteen. Each of the other groups had a bedragled monkey along to draw a map of the place. Our groups got together in one large group. Every bird flew up to the second level of the cavern with a rope and secured it. The three monkeys and I climbed the ropes while the four dogs held the ropes from below. All the mice explored the smallest holes leading from the cavern to see if they were safe. I had tied a string to all of them and each of them could explore to the length of a ball of twine. The birds explored aroudn the roof and the cats we took with us. The second level was just rock protruding out from the edge of the cave all the way around. It wasn't very wide. There were exactly four tunnels to explore. We each went into one. I had walked a long ways when I discovered something about the walls. Upon examining them, I discovered they were copper! Snowball dug at them with her claws and I discovered the copper was only an inch thick. But the copper extended a long ways. I could cut it all out and not make any damage to the caves. Just then Star, not more than a kitten, Popeye, a tough old tomcat, and Lelu, a mangy manx cat came in. Star had a piece of diamond, ...

...Popeye a hunk of gold, and Lelu a sliver of silver. I knew they would be the same as my copper. Then I heard barking from below that I would recognize anywhere. Bandit had found something! We all rushed out of the cavern and climbed down the ropes with the monkeys. What I saw next astounded me. One of my white mice was black and oil was tricling out of the hole he had been exploring. I took a bucket Bandit usually carried and put it under the hole becasue the mouse had been exploring a hole above the floor. Then I took Chalk, the mouse who had discovered the oil and put him on Barker's (a little daschund) back; I told him to find water and splash it on Chalk. I started wondering where the other fifteen groups were. I told R, G, and A (the monkeys) to go and get more natural wonders and put it in their knapsacks while I went back with Bandit to look for them. I was really worried. I could tell Bandit was, too. When we got back where we started, I checked on McKinley and Mickey. They were both dozing lightly. I softly whispered "Attention!" and they both snapped to their feet, staring straight ahead, and at the same time gave a squeak and a meow. Perfect! I lavished praise on them. Then I picked a tunnel at random but saw that it was the one we had just left so I let Bandit pick, instead. He walked into one and I followed. But by then I was exhausted so I called Bandit to me. I hooked him to his dog harness, then connected it to my miniature wagon I had stopped to get. I had painted it...

And friends, we've still got something like 26 more pages of this to go!

And, um... isn't copper strip-mined?

In Her Father's Footsteps

You may not believe that I was able to hold off this long, but y'all, I have signed my baby up for her first craft swap.

Well, really it's an art swap. House on Hill Road and Blair Peter are moderating what is possibly the FIRST Artist Trading Card children's swap. I am a super-big fan of Artist Trading Cards, but I've never joined in on any ATC swaps on my own behalf because, well... I'm not an artist. But mediating my baby's first forays into official artdom is actually making the concept seem a lot less intimidating and a lot more accessible, so I likely might jump in sometime soon.

And you know how I love arts and crafts materials, so one of the coolest benefits of Will doing this swap is that I'm being introduced to all those official kinds of artist's paper--watercolor paper, sketch paper, Bristol board, vellum, canvas, etc. You absolutely have to use a professional-quality artist's paper for an ATC; you can cut them down from larger pieces, but for this first time I just bought a few packs of each in the exactly correct size for an ATC (2.5"x3.5", if you're curious, or the size of a baseball card).

So this morning I explained the concept to the kiddos and off we went with our watercolors and our Strathmore watercolor paper:

And you know, it IS more fun to paint with watercolors on professional-quality watercolor paper--the way the colors flow, and they look so pretty, and the paper dries all nicely. The girls enjoyed painting with watercolors more this morning than they probably ever have previously, and I, too, was quite pleased with my efforts. I'd noticed that the Strathmore papers are on sale at Michael's this week, so this afternoon after school we went by and bought a pack of watercolor paper in every size--big, bigger, and poster-huge! I'm looking forward to a family-wide collaboration on that huge paper.

We're going to study art for a while around here, I think. I requested a ton of art books--kids' and adult, from the library, as well as
(which I'm pretty excited about), and I'm looking forward to exploring more hands-on art with the girls.

We can also incorporate some field trips--the IU Art Museum is terrific, and, so, of course, is the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Of course, Willow's last visit to an art museum went less than well. But she's what, six months older now? Whereas four-year-olds may shriek and act possessed the second they so much as enter the foyer of a world-class art museum, four-and-a-half-year-olds tend to appreciate their educational opportunities so much more, don't you find?

Don't you?

Doilies, The Day After

We've been happily integrating our newest purchases from the Goodwill Outlet Store into our daily lives. Two vintage puzzles, one of the entire world and one of the United States----have not left the living room carpet since they arrived, they're so fun. They're both crazy-intricate, with each tiny state its own tiny puzzle piece in the US puzzle and each tiny ocean its own piece in the world puzzle, although each big ocean is an awesomely big piece and each continent is its own piece, and? There's a compass built in!

I originally bought them for crafting because the world puzzle is missing a couple of its fiddly little oceans and the US puzzle is missing Kansas and Rhode Island, but the girls adore them (and actually I do, too), and Willow learned where California and Nevada live, so there you go.

I am a huge fan of divided plates (I would KILL for a set of elementary school cafeteria trays), so I'm all about these three orange divided plates that I found:
And do not worry, friends and family--Matt and I own these swab thingies that test for lead, and they're all-clear. Can you imagine, though? Instead of the CPSC bullying through that ridiculously overwrought CPSIA which will leave me without a job and without anyplace to buy stuff, they could just make lead swab test kits cheap and readily available, and we citizens could just handle our own shit, thank you very much.

The biggest hit of the day, however?

Paper doilies.

I almost didn't buy them because it was the day after Valentine's Day and doilies are kinda Valentine-y, don't you think, but then I was all, "Oh, they're going to cost like five cents and the girls will like them."

The girls do like them--negative space is fun space--but I think I may like them more. On account of look at the awesome stuff I made:

Goth doily pinbacks! I heart them crazy much. I like how they're partly fussy, but also all cool in their black-and-white at the party way, and I'm an especial fan of how the intricate and fancy doily pattern makes no sense in such a small scale.

And in yet another example (as if you needed another example) of how the girls inspire me and how all my work is collaborative work with them, blah blah, their interest in rainbows--drawing rainbows, reading about rainbows, having me pull up Google Image photos of rainbows, etc.--has led me to create, off and on in my sketchbook, an entire list of rainbow-themed crafts that I'm excited about doing. And when faced with doilies, a hole punch, and pretty paper, I made this:

I made a bunch for myself and my girlies, but I'll be putting these two sets up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop tomorrow. My pinbacks have been hitting the spot lately for some people, and I'm interested in seeing how these versions, which I like kind of crazy much, go over.

You can expect to see lots of frantic paper crafting out of me in the next few days, because Matt took my sewing machine to the repair shop (either it needs a new face plate, or the little girls need to stop touching it when I'm not looking), and the repair shop man said that we could expect it back in about 10 days.

He was just kidding, right?

Right?

The Fourth Photo

Here is the fourth photo in the fourth folder in the Photos folder on my computer:It's a photo of Willow's tricycle on one of those playground mornings that you might only have if you live really close to a playground and go there every day, even if the weather's cold or lousy out--one of those mornings when you're the only ones there, and your kid turns to you and says, "Nobody's visiting my playground today."

This is the tricycle that was Willow's special present after she toilet-trained herself at around two-and-a-half, the tricycle that was stolen out of our yard one morning while we were at the library for storytime, along with a green ride-in car and a brand-new-to-us toy wheelbarrow.

I still miss that tricycle.

Thanks, cake!

Here are some examples of how other bloggers have responded to the Fourth Photo, Fourth Folder project:

• Just a Plane Ride Away
• Terri Terri Quite Contrary
• Giggles-n-Gulps
• KatieAlender
• These Go to Eleven

P.S. I have a new obsession. Check out my post about crafty podcasts over at Crafting a Green World.

We Heart Caribbean Cove

It was another awesome Valentine's/anniversary weekend, thanks to Caribbean Cove water park--it's my super power that no matter where I am outside of the Southern United States, I can still find somewhere to go to be redneck. And indoor water parks, they are the awesomest things ever established in the Northern United States (especially in winter), but soooey!, they are redneck.

Nevertheless, we frolicked in the water----and watched HBO, and played miniature golf in the lobby----and ate heart-shaped bagels at Einstein Bros., and frolicked in the water some more----and made Matt Margaritas (a randomly-measured mixture of tequila, margarita mix, and ice in a little plastic hotel cup) after the girls went to bed, and made crafts (of course!) in the Kid's Club----and shopped at Half-Price Books and the Goodwill Outlet Store (speaking of redneck...), and tricked Matt into standing under things that would dump water on him----and let the girls spend two whole dollars in the arcade (a huge deal, actually, because my thrifty self loathes myself some arcades), and frolicked in the water just a little bit more----and graded all the rest of my papers while watching a Sci-Fi channel original movie (Wyvern!) after Sydney crashed at 6 pm, and there was also some relaxing that took place in the water, too:
See you next Valentine's weekend, Carribean Cove!

Valentine's Day with the Class

I have told you that I used to not be festive at all, right?

Well, I really, really, really love celebrating the holidays with the kids. Even the boring ones--the girls and I are planning to make a memory game next week with images of the U.S. presidents on them (probably just the iconic ones, because who really needs to know what William Henry Harrison looked like?) for Presidents' Day. So yeah, I really love the holidays now.

Today was Willow's class party for Valentine's Day. There was much excitement this morning (if only excitement made little girls act sweet and peaceful and so very well-behaved, and not crabby and hysterical and overwrought and prone to the biting and kicking of sisters). There was the creation of the Special Holiday Outfit: They're really quick and easy--small piece of acrylic felt (I choose the felt made from recycled plastic bottles over wool felt as part of my crafting ethic) cut into a heart shape, with a little slit cut into the center, and buttoned onto your button--but the other Montessori moms gratified my vanity by acting like I had invented something AWESOME! I've actually seen these little hearts on several blogs, including Going Starfishing, and I've heard tell that it was actually invented by Martha Stewart years ago (OMG--It's true! You have to flip through her Valentine's Day Projects for Kids gallery to get to the Felt Heart Button Covers), although frankly I seriously think that she steals the original ideas of small indie crafters and plays them off as her own.

Anyway, then comes the creation of Extra Valentines:Montessori classrooms are very large (30 kids ages 3-6 in Will's class), and the children are encouraged to make Valentines, then, not for everyone in the class, but only for as many or as few people as they choose. I always worry that some kid will just sort of get overlooked by all the other kids and not get any Valentines, and this, combined with my other worry that some kid will forget their Valentines at home, causes me to every year make an extra blank ten or so Valentines in case of Valentine-related emergencies. These are made from hearts cut out of red file folders with more little felt hearts hot-glued onto the centers.

And finally, we have the Viewing of the Handmade Valentines:

If you look closely through her work, you can see all the ones she made during our various collaborations--there are hearts from scrappy heart pinbacks, hearts from comic book Valentines, paint chip tags from paint chip matching games, and even a rogue denim heart from a denim heart quilt.

Will's Final Report: The Valentine's Day Party was the bestest! They got to eat a small cookie, they sang a song, they looked at all their Valentines (Is it wrong to judge a mother because her three-year-old child gave my child a Hanna Montana Valentine?). What more could you ask of heaven?

Lastly, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

I always pick bad news first, too: Craft magazine has announced that their current issue, #10, is their final print issue. They are pretty renowned for their rockin' digital version of the magazine, so in these trying economic times I guess they're just going to concentrate on that.

Y'all, Craft magazine is the magazine to which I sold my matching game tutorial. And that tutorial? Scheduled to be printed in issue #12.

Matt, who is, um, "practical," is all, "Dude, it's not the end of the world. You already got paid, and you'll be in the digital edition." But..... I want to be in print. PRINT. The kind of print that's on paper, and my mother can go to a bookstore and find me there on the shelf. And people all over the country can go to the library and find me there, too. The LIBRARY, y'all. I was going to be in the LIBRARY.

Yes, there will be lots of other articles by me in print. And books. Lots.

But this was going to be my first. And I am so sad.

Good news? Every Valentine's Day weekend, which is also the anniversary of the date that Matt and I started "dating" 12 years ago, our whole family spends the weekend at Carribean Cove. Indoor water park + middle of winter + cable TV + a new romance novel = Happy Valentine's Day!

Tomorrow, look for me out on the Lazy River.

Her Sister was Never This Rotten

After I set the girls up with lunch yesterday morning, I snuck off into the study for a few minutes to see if I could get another paper graded--we're deep in the midst of Project #1 in my Freshman Comp classes, and grading 44 papers containing an uninsightful application of Seger's hero myth formula to Spiderman makes me want to strangle myself every single semester.

So I grade a paper (70%--sigh), come back to see if anyone wants seconds, and find this:

Peanut butter is really hard to scrape off of the wall. Being a mom, this gets to be one of the things that I now know.

P.S. Check me out on whip up! It's one of my super-favorite blogs, and it's featuring my post from Crafting a Green World about making Valentines from comic books.