WIP Wednesday: A Long Story and a Manifesto on Apples

So I write sometimes for Crafting a Green World or Eco Child's Play, both part of the Green Options blog system. They don't pay much (duh, it's blogging, and not about politics or the economy, either), but they pay a little, which gives me a little play money each month for art supplies and presents, and I enjoy the comments, exposure, world-wide acclaim, etc.

Anyway, back in July, the general manager of Green Options offered a $500 bonus to anyone who reached 40 posts that month. Dudes, 40 posts is a LOT, but, you know, so is $500. There are some pretty sweet toys that I could buy with an unexpected $500, including one Cricut machine, which is a plaything so utterly ridiculous that I'm embarrassed to even want it and would certainly never buy it with my real money, but hey, I've seen too many of those Cricut infomercials late at night at my parents' house and I TOTALLY want one.

They have a die-cut cartridge that will do all the states! And one that makes all kinds of cards and envelopes! It's like heroin for crafters!

I worked my butt off in July writing those damn posts. I wrote tutorials, and editorials, and round-ups, and reviews, and then more tutorials, editorials, round-ups, and reviews. I wrote early in the morning, I wrote while the girls ate lunch, I wrote while Matt got them ready for bed at night, I wrote late at night, and then I wrote early the next morning.

Oh, and I also parented. And did a craft fair. And lost my BlogHer account because I wouldn't censor out a photo of Syd's butt covered with paint (and THAT'S a whole other story, let me tell you, and don't even get me started about freedom of speech and the sexualization of children and hyper-parenting). And hosted a birthday party. And went on vacation. During which time I wrote posts in the airport during layovers to post when we arrived, and I wrote posts early in the morning and late at night at my in-laws' house in California. Without wi-fi. While parenting. And vacationing.

Anyway, I wrote a lot of posts. Wrote a lot of posts while thinking about my bonus.

So two days before the end of July, still having two or three more posts to write before I hit my golden 40, all the writers got the same mass email from the general manager of Green Options, all "blah blah blah and because of the unprecedented response I'm going to have to end the bonus after the next person blah blah blah." And don't worry, because I wasn't that next person.
I wrote my posts, anyway, just in case, and then I sulked. And stewed. And I was angry. And pissed. And lots of other words that describe the anger that one feels when something hateful happens to one. And the whole time, Matt is all, "Dude, you have to speak up for yourself! You have to get aggressive!"

And I'm all, "Nooooooooooooo! I hate confrontation!" (And I do. Can't even watch it on TV. Used to have to mute The Real World New Orleans.)

But then the next month, I totally can't get up the energy to write my regular posts for Crafting a Green World. I mean, I'm going to let them screw me over and then just act like nothing happened? Get me to do a lot of extra work to boost their posting for one month and let them not even pay me what they promised? And then maybe try real hard for the million dollar bonus opportunity that will maybe come out in a few months?

And the whole time, Matt is all, "Dude, you have to speak up for yourself!"

So I finally do. I write an email to the general manager, and the editors, and the guy who used to own the blog system but sold it and is now their consultant, and I told them that I was promised a certain amount of money for doing a certain amount of work in a certain amount of time, and I did that work, and I did not receive the money, and maybe it was legal but it wasn't ethical, and without that bonus they could consider this my letter of resignation.

And then I wrote one of the forums that I belong to of fellow Green Options bloggers, because I wanted to explain where I went if they never heard from me again, and I copied the email that I sent to the general manager.

Turns out there were some other people who were pretty upset about not receiving their earned bonuses, either, and some other people who weren't trying for the bonus but were pretty upset to hear how those of us who were got conned, and one person who wrote all the posts for the bonus but somehow missed the email announcing the cancellation of the bonus and, since we have a Net-60 pay period, was just sort of blithely awaiting her extra $500 the next month.

Some of these people emailed the general manager, as well.

And what was my reward for sticking up for myself? Other than feeling MUCH better after I had done so, which Matt told me I would and I can't believe I waited so long before listening to him? Well, there was an email from the general manager, addressed to I guess everyone who wrote him to complain, announcing that he would investigate the "confusion."

And then, the next week, with no further explanation (none needed), was the transfer into my Paypal account of my $500.

And that's why I have a Cricut now.

Do you want to know what the point of that story was? I swear, it had a point. The point is this:

The girls and I are making books about apples: Here is the cover of my book:
In case you were wondering where I got all those nice and neat die-cuts, I made them on my brand-new Cricut.

So, apple books...Being ever more certain that we'll homeschool next year (love Montessori, are not willing to subsist on store-brand Saltines and white rice to afford Montessori), I've been sort of consciously practicing some ideas that I might want to implement more studiously when we do so. Nice to have plenty of time to play around with strategies, you know.

One of the things I've been thinking about is how to measure learning and performance and mastery and accomplishment, etc. Grades and testing are cookie cutter measures, obviously, designed so that a teacher can evaluate and compare students efficiently. In the larger perspective, however, they are meaningless--they bring no meaning to what has been done, allow no retrospection of the journey undertaken or its significance to one's life.

As far as measurement goes, then, I vastly prefer the portfolio method of the girls' Montessori school. The portfolio, however, really consists of mere snapshots of a child's overall undertakings--a worksheet here, some photos there, a self-portrait on the cover. I'd like something that better demonstrates the depth of one's study, that is creative, that allows the student to show real expertise.

So the girls and I are playing with the idea of making books about what we're studying and doing together. I'm imagining that each book will be thematic, and will incorporate the variety of projects and studies that we've done under this theme--this is less unschooling, and more unit study. I'm surprised, because I thought I would be an unschooler, but in the practicalities of each scenario, I tend to drift towards unit study with self-made curricula.

I'm playing with the idea of making my book (because of course I have to make a book, too--it looks fun!) a sort of project book, how-to book, not quite a lesson plan book, but if you want to dry apples on dowels or make a freaky apple-head doll, here's how to do it. Oh, and here's a list of some read-aloud books that are pretty awesome, too.

It might be nice to sell such a book as a little homeschool zine, but it also might be nice just to keep, too. The girls will have their records of being homeschool kids, and I'll have mine of being a homeschool momma.

I Should Have Majored in Something Practical

Highlight of our weekend trip to Arkansas:
I do love to walk with my girls to my old elementary school a few blocks away from my parents' house. There are some new pieces on the playground, but most of the wood and metal equipment that was around in my day is still around, and is still super-fun. Matt is desperately amused every time to peek in the windows into the classrooms and learn that yep, Morrison Elementary is still an open-classroom school (NONE of the classrooms had walls around them, due to the school being built during the heyday of the 70s open-classroom fad. The teachers basically had lots of little carts on wheels to make imaginary walls in their spaces, and I mostly remember how we all had to be really, REALLY quiet lest everything get really, REALLY loud). I enjoy regaling him with stories of the time in the sixth grade that Stephanie started claiming to have these visions about a shadow world infiltrating our own and she started a school-wide cult and had to have brain scans.

You know, typical elementary school hijinks.

Low point of our weekend trip to Arkansas:1) Run over...something on the highway 10 miles outside of Effingham late at night on the way home. Not a human body or anything, but not an empty soda can, either.

2) Blow tire, and good.

3) Pull over.

4) Drag everything out of trunk to get to the jack and spare.

5) Commence purely academic debate in full darkness about how to change said tire. I like to believe that I'm a little more practical-minded than my beautiful partner, but even I found the lugnut/hubcap/wheel well arrangement on this fairly-new-to-us Sable to be a tad bewildering, particularly in the pitch black of night.

6) Phone Papa, former owner of the new-to-us Sable, but before can get any useful information out of him, my mother, either hysterical or just having taken a few too many sleeping pills again, faints on him, and he has to hang up.

7) Reconsider my family relationships, looking for someone level-headed, sober, and with mechanical skills. Phone Uncle Art and he tells me how to put the spare on.

8) Back in car. New alarming lights light up when we start the engine, and ominous shudderings cause us to shut back down and renogotiate the entire process.

8a) Adjourn to engine, where we look at stuff. Am filled with inspiration and use my camera flash to illuminate the engine in second-long bursts:8b) Get distracted by how prettily the hazard lights photograph----but it doesn't really matter, since neither of us know what we're doing, anyway.

9) Sigh a big sigh and phone Papa again. Must first hear tale of how many times my mother fainted and how he finally got her back to bed all snug and tucked in, but then am rewarded with the valuable piece of information that is his roadside assistance member number.

10) Call roadside assistance. Spend long time waiting for tow truck, managing girls' expectations of soon! Seeing! A TOW TRUCK!!!

11) Tow truck is all it was imagined would be. Mechanic restarts blown fuel switch, and we follow him to his creepy little repair shop.

12) Will NOT even look at the corner of the room where his cot sits, and where I may have seen some porn.

13) Will NOT look.

14)Look, and then wish I hadn't.

15) Matt buys tire, tire is installed, and we arrive at our blessed home at around 2 am.

And THAT'S why I was grouchy during office hours, students!

Well, that and your inability to come up with a representation for your horror-genre artifacts that is meaningful within its cultural context, of course. I'm sorry, but "fear of the unknown" and "fear of death" is universal, kiddos!

From Sweater Tops to Sweater Bottoms

In the week's lull before planning the girls' Halloween party, grading my students' next big paper, thinking about Christmas gifts, worrying about an etsy holiday update, and trying to figure out exactly HOW TO MAKE a freakin' clown wig for a five-year-old (mesh cap, stash yarn, and a latch hook needle?), I pleased myself with some stash-busting.

In the spirit of "If you're going to make one, you might as well make a dozen," I dealt with my daughters' dearth of warm leggings and autumn skirts with the purge of all the sweaters currently residing in my stash of clothing for reconstruction. Here they are modeled by the daughters performing what is possibly their favorite indoor pastime:
I sewed the leggings from sweater sleeves, a project which took a while to get right but which outcome I am quite happy about now, and the skirts from the torsos of those same sweaters (check out my sweater skirt tutorial over at Crafting a Green World). Since the skirt takes up most of the torso of the sweater and the leggings use the sleeves, shoulders, and the turtleneck if there is one, the set actually results in a very small amount of wasted sweater. It would only leave a little more waste if you sewed leggings and two diaper covers.

The girls have almost the same waist size, although Willow is quite a bit taller than Sydney, but the nice thing about the leggings is that they cuff easily (much more easily than the wide-legged trousers that are popular now, and also much more easily than pajama pants, the cuffs of which I actually have to tack in place), so both girls can wear the same skirts and leggings--I always cut the elastic at Sydney's size, because Willow doesn't mind a little extra stretch, but Sydney probably wouldn't be that stoked by clothes that constantly fell off her body as she pranced:

I had some partial sweaters in my stash that I'd already cut up somewhat in some way or another, so not everything is mitchy-matchy, don't worry:

And I'm certainly not going to require, or even encourage, them to wear the mitchy-matchy combo. The orange/pink/red/purple leggings and skirt looked pretty cute together, for instance, but this matching combo isn't really doing it for me:

I like the layers in that a kid could take off either the skirt or the leggings and still be fully dressed (unless she's not wearing underpants, which my children basically think you only have to wear if you're going to school).

Stash busting, mental challenge, calming handwork, and two comfy, well-dressed kids: here's to another happy week.

P.S. Check out Craft Gossip, which picked up my sweater skirt tutorial this weekend. Must start working on the tute for the matching leggings now.

And the Rest of the Apples are Just for Eating

So we didn't make apple pie or apple pizza or apple cookies or whatever, but we did make apple cake and apple muffins and dried apple doll heads--
--which I'm pretty sure are going to freaking CREEP me out when they're finished, by the way, might as well have Willow dangle one of them from a string on a stick while she's walking around in the freaky clown costume I'm going to have to make for her, and six more pints of applesauce (thanks for the food mill, Cake--it was AWESOME!), and dehydrated apple rings:

We're going to be chillin' like villains in Arkansas this weekend, where my Papa will be celebrating his 90th birthday (Shout-out to the Great Depression! Save your rubber bands! And your bread bags! And when store-brand Jello or canned irregular peaches go on sale, buy them all!), and while I'm there I may explore the possibility that Mama may have an old food mill up in the back of a cabinet somewhere. Cause Cake's food mill was righteous.

And next week, although I do also have planned to get jamming on some huge denim quilts and some small flannel pajamas (because I am FREEZING!), I'm betting that a food mill would make processing a nice, big pot of pumpkin puree just that much simpler, as well.

But not more applesauce. I am DONE with apples.

Sauced

Tomorrow, three days post apple orchard, is officially our Day of Apples--dried apple chips, apple muffins, apple cookies, applesauce, dried apple doll faces, apple pie, clove apples--but yesterday, since I didn't have to teach in the evening, I did get one huuuuuuge pot of applesauce canned, of which these three cans are a mere fragment:

I made a big mistake, however, in that I followed the directions for making applesauce when you have a food mill--ie. I didn't peel my apples. Only problem?

I don't own a food mill.

I plan to save this particular batch only for intimates, those to whom I will not feel ashamed saying, "And, um, when you eat your applesauce, pick around the woody-textures peels."

Tomorrow's applesauce will NOT include the peels.

P.S. One of my student projects, entitled Squid Monster, is a student's response to an assignment prompt that asked him to create his own original horror-genre cultural artifact, containing a monster, that worked literally and also metaphorically to represent a fear relevant to our own contemporary cultural context. This animation is the reason why I sometimes love to teach.

To the Orchard and Back by Noon

Back and forth to the apple orchard, picking apples and exploring and seeing who can heft the biggest pumpkin (I win!), apples for breakfast and lunch, and still the littles got back to town in time for school (so did I, but that's not really an accomplishment since my class is almost 6 hours later. I did forget about my dentist appointment, however, so perhaps that counts for something).

We picked Golden Delicious (a sweet all-purpose apple), Scarlet Beauty (also a sweet all-purpose apple, but better for winter storage), Turley Winesap (a tart apple), and the yummy tart Ida Red:

This was my very first time ever picking an apple, as well, and I do savor those experiences, which happen more often than I would have previously thought, of not merely exposing my children to something new, but actually sharing in that new experience as another first-timer right along with them.

We ate a lot, too:
In fact, we may have eaten a very, very lot:

In the perennial compromise between two children, one bigger and one smaller, the smaller kid got cold and done first and had to stay a little longer than she preferred, and the bigger kid...

My Tree Girl (who, yes, I specifically told numerous times NOT to climb the apple trees) had to be basically dragged out of the apple orchard and off to the pumpkin patch.

Over the weekend I felt the call to go through some of my now quite organized clothing craft stash, and I modified a sweater skirt pattern that I'd been sort of happy with last winter to make the kids two new sweater skirts each that we're all VERY happy with:

The final tally:
And now to applesauce, toasted pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin puree!

P.S. Want to see what we're going to do with a bushel of apples, a gallon of cider, and two Jack-o-lantern pumpkins, one very large and one very weird? Follow along on my Craft Knife Facebook page, where cider cocktails and caramel apples are made, and the kids are in charge of the applesauce!

A Font from My Own Hand

When I was little, I always wanted to be the kind of girl whose handwriting was girly. Other girls could produce these wonderful fat bubble letters with curliques and flourishes--my handwriting was all crabby and awkward, primarily since my fat little hand couldn't seem to move nearly as fast as my fat little mind. It was pretty neat--I mean, I did get a lot of practice and all, what with regularly writing 60-page animal-rescue adventures stories, but no, it was nothing special.

Which doesn't mean that my handwriting doesn't deserve to be memorialized. Because oh, it totally does.

I've seen off and on the odd program that makes fonts from your own handwriting, but it always cost a pittance to use, and you know how I feel about that. But all this weekend I've been playing with a new beta from fontcapture, and although I'm not going to write my next seminar paper in my brand new Julie Handwriting Font or anything, it is fun for playing with:
It's freaky, because the font is created very simply, from a worksheet that you print out, fill out, scan back into your computer, and then upload to the site, but this font looks EXACTLY like my handwriting. Exactly. Dead on.

Matt's font doesn't look as much like his actual handwriting, in my opinion (I'm pretty sure that when he writes, his lowercase letters are just smaller versions of his capital letters--hoo-ah, public school!), but can you believe he was stupid enough to provide me with the means to produce a font that mimics his handwriting even this closely?Mwa-ha-ha! Don't tell him, but I'm likely to use this font to write out little contracts to myself that promise me things, or letters of guilt and apology, etc.

We even got our Willow into the act. It was a challenge, because the grid in which you're supposed to write each letter is a little on the small side for a five-year-old's fine motor skills to easily handle, so some of her letters are cut off at the top or bottom. If I ever wanted to use her handwriting font to do more than just goof around, I'd likely have her fill out several of these worksheets (she loves them), then cut and paste between them in Photoshop to make the most workable choice for each letter. We're just goofing, though, and besides, there's something else big on her mind these days. To wit:

It actually does look pretty much like her handwriting, although I don't know what's going on with the spacing between words.

So I'm thinking that these handwriting fonts would be super-cool for scrapbooking. I also have a plan to go home over the holidays and collect the handwriting fonts for all my relatives, because it just seems like a kind of cool keepsake to have. I

It seems kind of creepy, though, in some ways, to collect my family's handwriting as fonts on my computer. Handwriting is so individual and personal, it's like collecting their hair or something.

Of course, not all of my relatives have hair, but they do all have handwriting.

Vintage Bookmarks, Vintage Kid

I paid one dollar for a vintage Patridge Family dress for the kid. Hoo-boy, you gotta love the Salvation Army!

In other news, ever since the free day of the Red Cross Book Fair, we have been all record albums all the time! You should have seen me and the kids, at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning, the kids with their shopping cart and me with a big cardboard box, digging through every single box of records (and there were many) on the tables (many of those, too), running a full load out to the van in the pouring rain, and then back again to dig some more.

We scored some AMAZING vinyl, both to listen to and to craft with. Check this out: Free to Be You and Me (which is playing right now); Xanadu (sadly scratched, and now in the record bowl queu); Annie soundtrack (Broadway and film!); TOP GUN SOUNDTRACK (!!!!!); TWO recordings of excerpts from The Canterbury Tales, done in Middle English (and with excellent pronunciation, and I would know); a two-disc set of poetry for children; the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack; and all the Burl Ives and John Denver and Nutcracker Suites that you could want. I saw my friend Cake there, and she and I managed to dig through the record section at the same time without fighting over anything, although there was a LOT of gloating.

So while we've been listening to records all day, and I've been trying to whip out some more record bowls for my last craft fair of the year on Saturday, I am stoked to say that I have thoroughly mastered, not the comic book bookmarks yet, but the also-awesome record album cover bookmark:

I've got a tutorial for the record album cover bookmark up on Crafting a Green World, but I have to admit that fully half the tutorial is actually a sub-tutorial for tying an overhand eye knot. It's essentially a glorified overhand knot, so it's really no problem to figure out. I'd tried a lark's head with these bookmarks first, but it's too slippy--the overhand eye will stay nice and snug, even with the thicker ribbons and twine that I suggest.

Yep, add it to the tally: I'm a knot nerd.

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!

Where Little Girls Go to Sleep

When Willow came to me tonight and told me that her teeth were brushed and she was ready to lie down together and watch Mythbusters, I had to tell her that Momma still had five big student papers to grade, and that Dadda wanted to lie down with her tonight.

This was unacceptable, and weeping ensued.

Lying down together of a night and watching a segment of Mythbuster is one of our most super-special times together, and enables me to properly train my daughters up in the way of the fangirl. Other super-special times together each day include letting her have a little bit of my coffee and handing her a section of the newspaper I'm reading each morning, giving her fancy hair before school (upon request), letting her use my camera and then dutifully admiring the 60 photos of the toy shelves that she's taken, etc.

Point is, we do have other super-special times together each day. But giving up even one of these times, even to give it to Daddy instead, is still greatly unwelcome (to both of us, frankly, but seriously, those papers are not going to grade themselves).

So my young daughter, weeping copiously, flung herself over to my fabric shelves, opened herself a bin of stash fabric, crawled inside--

And fell fast asleep.

The closest thing she could get to her momma when her momma didn't have time for her? Or just darn comfy?

I Lost the Babies, But in Other Ways I Am Organized

Willow and Sydney had a playdate this morning because I wanted to get some work done. Specifically, I wanted to grade papers all morning, not read books and play board games about dinosaurs and see if the laminator will laminate leaves and playfight with sticks in the front yard and maybe watch a segment of Mythbusters--these are my favorite things to do of a morning, true, but grading papers? Must be done.

So we invited an adorable little schoolmate over to play with the girls, and there was much running up and down stairs and in and out of the house, etc.--your typical playdate. At one point in the morning, however, Sydney came in and asked for a snack, and so I thought I'd find Willow and the little friend and see if they wanted a toasted cheese quesadilla, too (the little friend claimed, however, that she isn't allowed to eat snacks at other people's houses, but that's a later story). I didn't see the girls upstairs, so I ran down to the basement playroom. No girls. I figured I must have missed them somewhere upstairs, so I ran back up and looked in all the rooms, calling their names. No girls. Now I figured I must have missed them downstairs after all, so I ran back downstairs, and looked in the bathroom off of the playroom and the closet under the stairs, calling their names.

No girls.

So now I think that they must be hiding, so I run back upstairs and look really well in all the nooks and crannies in all the rooms, calling their names sternly and announcing trouble to come if hiding places are not revealed.

No girls.

And now I start to panic. I think of all the places in which a mischievous hiding little girl or two could come to grief--did one girl lock another in a Rubbermaid bin made empty due to our recent organization, and then panic, herself, and hide? Could they have climbed into the broken dryer and then passed out? Emptied the chest freezer of food, hidden that food, climbed inside the freezer, and shut the door on themselves? Drunk a full bottle of hydrogen peroxide and crawled underneath the kitchen sink to die? I run back downstairs, like an IDIOT, and check the dryer, and the freezer, and the nook where the furnace lives, and the space around the chimney.

NO GIRLS.

And now I think, I HAVE WASTED TOO MUCH TIME. Whatever has happened, I have wasted lots of precious minutes running back and forth, while these children are in danger or dead. So I run back upstairs, heading straight to the cell phone so that I can call 1) 911 2) Matt 3) the little schoolmate's mother.

And as I pass the hall closet, which I have looked in at least four times in the past few minutes, I hear "gigglegigglegiggle." And from beneath the winter coats and behind the stroller and sturdy boots crawl Willow and her little friend, just giggling as hard as they can giggle.

And that's how I had my first heart attack.

In other news, the expansive organizational project of the girls' bedroom and our study/studio, the two messiest rooms in the house on account of they are constantly inhabited by three of the four messiest people in our family, is finished. I didn't finish grading papers this weekend, but I did finish putting all my favorite things, and all of the girls' favorite things, into clear plastic bins with sturdy lids. And then I labeled those bins. And, um, color-coded them. Because if you're going to do something, you might as well overdo it.

Here's part of the closet in the study:
You can see the bag in which I keep my teaching materials for my cloth diapering classes; the bin containing acrylic, oil, and tempera paints; the bin containing bulk colored pencils, the big jug of Mod Podge; the smaller box of plaster of Paris; four rolls of contact paper; the bin containing the one-inch pinback button machine and all its parts; the bin with all our hole punches; and the edges of small bins that contain seashells and artist trading cards. Oh, and at the very top, my brand-new and best-beloved Cricut, which I'll rhapsodize about some other time soon.

Here's another view of that same closet, if you can believe it:

You can see the big bin of bulk crayons, with our various pads of artist's papers stacked on top of it; bins of popsicle sticks, wooden cut-outs, and river rocks; the box of activated charcoal that, combined with the river rocks, goes into our terrariums; a bigger bin with all our paintbrushes; a small bin of pom-poms (and perhaps googly eyes); and bins of scrapbook embellishments and blank puzzles.

You probably can't see the labels on these bins, but every bin is labelled. And every bin has, below the label, one of three things on it--YES, NO, or WITH PERMISSION, and is underlined with either a green, red, or yellow marker. One of the main things I wanted to accomplish, as well as actually having a place to put all my crap, is to help the girls understand what materials they have access to. I take their roles as collaborators in our shared art and as artists in their own right very seriously, and I wanted to reassure them of what supplies they're permitted to use unsupervised, what they must be supervised to use, and what is off-limits. Basically, only the vintage beads, the jewelry findings, the soldering supplies, and the scrapbook embellishments are forbidden. The most important distinction in my mind is the WITH PERMISSION from the YES, or, for Sydney, the yellow underline from the green underline.

Bigger shelves elsewhere in the study hold bigger stuff:

Here are bins of blank papers, vintage papers, purchased scrapbook papers, scratched/warped vinyl record albums for crafting, and bulk markers. On top of one of the bins is a huge book of wallpaper samples--this is lots of fun for flipping through.

Even my desk received its fair share of attention, desperately needed, with a couple of nice, big paper bins labelled--

Although I'm not sure why I marked them NO--you'd think I'd welcome the help of anyone who wanted to do my paperwork drudgery for me...

Good News, Bad News, and Pumpkins

The good news is that I only have 19 more hero myth papers to grade. Okay, that's actually the bad news, but I'll think about it tomorrow when the usual insanity of attempting to grade papers with the girls sets in.

The real good news is yay, autumn! Here's the fall spread at the local farmer's market this weekend:

The girls each picked out their own baby pumpkin for 50 cents:
We also always let the girls buy a honeystick at 25 cents each from the Hunter's Honey Farm stand:

We didn't buy any of these yet, but we did buy some butternut squash and ugly peppers:

And apples, which I thought I might use for applesauce but which have since been mostly consumed:

I hope somebody saved one for me to have at breakfast, at least.

For the Living Room Wall

Although it's not much fun trying to organize stuff, sorting through trash and finding an actual liveable place for everything and buying ever more of those freaking clear plastic bins, I do have to say that the girls and I are finding a lot of fun in rediscovering the stuff we've had for ages and just forgot about because it was shoved in the closet on top of something else that was behind some other thing. That's not why I got the stuff in the first place, just to forget about it and never use it, and it probably goes a long way to explain why we have such a ridiculous amount of stuff in the first place.

Because as soon as the girls saw the small stack of stretched canvasses that I bought on big sale a few months ago and then put in the closet meaning to give them to the girls to paint someday soon and then forgot about, they were both all, "I want to paint!"

And seeing, now, a segment of stuff that perhaps wouldn't have to go back into the closet after all, as well as an opportunity to collect all the little bottles of acrylic, oil, and tempera paints that happen to be stuffed here and there in the closet, I said, "You betcha!"
We collect our empty egg cartons primarily to keep paint colors separate when we're working, but I thought the girls would like some experience in blending, so this time I gave them a plate. I have to admit that it resulted in some finished works that are a little on the monochromatic side, primarily of the "mud" tone of colors--
--but who cares, it was fun. And priceless to enjoy the look of deep concentration on my little mud-making girls' faces:

I had sort of planned these canvasses to be hung on our own living room wall (and I had sort of planned that Matt and I would paint a couple ourselves, but the girls were on a roll), but the youthful declaration was that they would be Christmas presents. Chasing Cheerios does these cute handprint canvas paintings that I had been contemplating making as presents, but original artwork, signed by the artist, always makes the nicest gift, don't you think?

So there you go--organizing, entertaining, educating, AND we got a couple of Christmas presents done, to boot.

Working and Progressing: Comic Book Bookmarks

My days are still quite occupied with putting things into clear plastic bins here (and teaching my students about racism in King Kong, sorting through the kids' clothes to see what needs winterizing, reading Melissa Gilbert's GREAT memoir, and shuttling the kids to various playgrounds and playgroups all over the world, it seems), and it really has become quite the revelation: SIX plastic bins of Legos? The bin I bought for toy dinosaurs STILL isn't big enough? I am getting sort of fond of watching the nice rows of stacked bins appear on shelves where previously were, you know, some pretty baskets and vintage tins with a huge mound of random stuff piled on top--it's starting to look like the Mythbusters workroom, and you know how much we love the Mythbusters over here.

The study/studio is coming together a little more slowly--I'm thinking of organizing the clear plastic bins into a system something like Montessori, or like the homeschool workbox method, for both me and the kids. Like the blank cardboard puzzles that the kids like to decorate go into one box along with a couple of packages of the markers they use to decorate them, and my solder and flux and copper tape and glass bits all go (sorted) into the same box since I use them together. And then you can take one box out, do your project, and put that box back away again--what a wonder that would make of my life.

Anyway, I did take a brief break yesterday after taking the kids to the local hands-on science museum and school and home again and before heading off to my own class with the DVD of the 1933 edition of King Kong in hand to make something that has been dwelling on my mind since the Strange Folk Festival craft fair:

At one of the handmade books vendors at Strange Folk, they were giving away a free record album cover bookmark with every purchase--a piece of album cover cut into a bookmark shape, punched at the top with a ribbon through it. Super cool, and I immediately wanted to try it out with comic books. Above is my first attempt, out of an old Dungeons and Dragons comic--I like the size and shape of the bookmark, and the sturdiness of the laminate, and the look of the cording at the top, but my partner wants to see a version that's thicker, and I want to try some options that will let me tie a vintage bead or two onto the cording.

Tutorial will appear when I've got it down--stay tuned.

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!

I Go Over to the Dark Side

Goodbye, quirky vintage containers and lovely baskets made of natural materials. I wanted to be one of those cool crafters whose entire space is crafty, all personalized and unique and yet organized. Not so much SouleMama's craft room, exactly, because she's way too mellow for me these days, but definitely YummyGoods' craft space.

Only, those vintage containers don't really hold all my stuff, which I then pile on top of other stuff. And I'm really short, so I can't see what's in the containers above my head, which is pretty much three-quarters of the space in my house. And those lovely baskets of natural materials get dragged around by the girls, which is fine, but then also spilled and toppled and tumbled, and, you know, just all messed up.

So I've given it a good long haul, and I'm still going to utilize the awesome quirky vintage mason jars and chipped Fiesta ware and all the other random stuff that I've been trying to put stuff in, but 90% of the girls' toys and our craft supplies?
Clear plastic storage bins, baby. I've gone over to the dark side, and it's made of non-degradable petroleum by-products.

But you can stack these petroleum by-products. And see what's in them. And because you have to buy them new, you can buy them to fit whatever you want to put in them (this alone is novel and good). And they have lids. Sturdy, snapped-closed lids, enabling a three-year-old to carry, not a handful of crayons that are going to be left both here and there and everywhere even after officially designated "clean-up time," but the entire stash of crayons, upside-down if need be:

And they look like candy in there, which more appropriately models the role that crayons play for us here in this house.

Stay tuned for more clear plastic storage bin godawfulness as it occurs.

Our Second Year at Strange Folk

Oh, how I heart St. Louis! It's so funny, because when I was a kid I HATED St. Louis. It was the place we'd get up before dawn to drive six hours to every now and then, straight to an old lady apartment (belonging to my Great-aunt Della), sit there for a reeeeeeaaaalllllllllyyyyyy long time (if I was lucky, she'd bring out her Norman Rockweller coffee table book for me to look at--barf), and then drive six hours back home again. That SAME day.

I couldn't believe it when I grew up and realized that there's stuff TO DO in St. Louis. Awesome stuff. Stuff like sliding down the free-fall slide at the City Museum:
And witnessing there the extent to which a little sister will go to not be bested by a big sister:
Stuff like discovering what my husband thinks is the very best way to deal with the fact that the eggs he's attempting to cook in the hotel kitchenette have just set off our room's smoke alarm: That's a PILLOW he's waving, friends. Not a blanket or a towel, but a pillow. Note that he has not even called down to the front desk yet to say, "Hey, I know the smoke alarm is blaring and maybe people are evacuating, but it's just me, I'm just cooking some eggs." And notice how, even though the smoke alarm is screaming in their faces, the girls are so focused on this thing they've just discovered called the Disney Channel that it doesn't even faze them.

Oh, right, and stuff like the Strange Folk Festival. Which, thank you for asking, was AWESOME! Last year at Strange Folk was good, but this year was awesome. The record bowls are nearly gone, the pinbacks I had to keep replenishing as fast as I could make them-- --and the bathroom breaks were as few and far between as I could make them, and accomplished at a dead run. It was THAT kind of craft fair. The good kind.

I also think that Strange Folk has the best atmosphere of any craft fair I've been to, big or small, conventional or indie. It's in a huge park, with plenty of green, empty space for children to play in, a huge playground, and some activities (sandbox, handmade hula hoops, milk jug igloo) imported in by Strange Folk just for the kids. That makes it a much more restful place for someone with kids to shop or sell--Will and Sydney played in the grass and under the trees, and walked together to the sandbox, and befriended random kids like they wouldn't be able to do at a fair on a city street or in a convention center.

And the music is good, and the trees are shady, and the people are just plain nice. One customer gave me the last two cookies that he'd bought from the gourmet cookie vendor across the way. Another customer said, "Your stuff rocks!" and then high-fived me! And you know how I feel about high-fives.

Willow made her entrepreneurial debut at Strange Folk. She wrapped hunks of grass in duct tape and sold them for 25 cents each (she actually sold four), and my shy girl was officially in charge of giving each customer, after the transaction, a business card, saying "Here's a business card for you." It was terrific for honing her awareness of social cues, because she had to figure out just the right time to hand over the card so as not to interrupt the sale but not to let the customer walk away, either, and she had to interact with each person, and she got tons of positive reinforcement, because you know that all adults do really like to be addressed nicely by a little child. Take that, socialization!

But for the customers with children, Willow prepared a special treat. She made Artist Trading Cards, wrote her name on the back, and let me write my web info, as well, and then gave one to each customer's child:
Animals was the theme, can't you tell?

Whew! Three days in St. Louis makes for three long days, but if it takes some long, long days of hard work and play to make sisters be this nice to each other on purpose--

Count me in.

Busy/Exhausted/Sore/Damp/HAPPY!!!

Too tired to type. Just know, Strange Folk Festival RULEZ!!!

Willow Blogs: Wild Cats

I love kittens because they are playful and they play and they fight all around the house. We got them at the Humane Society because we love them. We're keeping them until they're old enough to go back and get a new family.

This is Gracie. She is my favorite kitten because she's nice and grey and she's playful with her little ears.
Gracie is the oldest kitten because I think she ate a lot more canned cat food and we are going to make treats for our kittens.

This one is Jesse. She is black and white. She is a very runsie kitty because every time she runs away when I go toward her, even if I'm not going to get her.

This is Hillary. She is also a very runsie kitty and she is very nice and scratchy. She is very squirmy.

This is Whitsie because she has lots of whites on her even though she's black. Her skin is white; I don't know why.

This one's Blacksie. She's a nice kitty and she's very black. She likes to play all the time. She is a very nice kitty and always very mischievous, but all the kitties are mischievous. They climb on the table.

This is the day that they finally get to find a new family. They'll be good kitties for their new families and these are their names: Gracie, Blacksie, Whitsie, Jesse, and Hillary.

I love them.