I Glued More Things to My House

Searching for something novel the little girls could make for a friend's birthday party today, I dragged down my first-generation Crayola Crayon Maker from a high, high shelf and showed them how to use it. I never really found the crayon maker that fun or satisfying to use (hence its years-long residence on the high, high shelf)--I think it's fiddly, painfully slow, and prone to error.

The girls, however? Fascinated:
And in all honesty, other than having to seal the crayon mold with duct tape each time to keep the liquid crayons from leaking through the leaky crevices, the crayon maker does still work as advertised, and Will and Syd could work it independently from start to finish--isn't that the main benefit to the light bulb line of craft toys?

And yes, I put it back on a much lower shelf today, to facilitate easier child access.

In other news, I've been gluing things to my house again:
I scored a huge swatchbook of vintage wallpaper at the Upcycle Exchange during Strange Folk, and after discovering (by means of trashing my Cricut cutting mat) that it's all waaaaaaay too brittle to craft with, I decided to decoupage it to the built-in bookshelves in one living room wall.

I know it looks kind of crazy--

--but for me, really, it's rather sedate. First of all, the bookshelves are small, so it's a controlled explosion. Second, all the wallpaper swatches come from the same book, so their colors and patterns are largely complementary. Third, since the living room walls and trim are blue, I just used the wallpaper swatches in the blue color scheme. And fourth, the two shelves done up with florals are moderated by two shelves done up in non-florals.

See? I'm practically falling asleep, it's so sedate.

P.S. In case you, too, want to ruin your house's resale value (as if that hasn't already been taken care of for you), here's my tutorial for vintage wallpaper decoupage over at Crafting a Green World.

More Than One Photo Shoot is Usually Necessary

In preparation for a big update in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, I've spent the past couple of days taking tons and tons of photos of my stuff, glorying in still being able to take sunny outdoor shots, however chilly, before the long winter of grey indoor shots comes into play (my big winter plan is to build an indoor photo studio, btw).

Etsy photo shoots are a lot of work, especially with two little helpers--a half dozen photos here, before pushing the girls on the swings and then heading home for lunch, a half dozen photos there, in a sunny spot on the back deck just before the baby melts down, a half dozen photos on a pretty brick wall that we pass while walking to campus one afternoon. I generally have to utilize careful cropping, or a generous amount of retakes.

For instance, in this photo of a blue and polka-dotted superhero cape that I'm going to hopefully put up in the shop tomorrow (and offer a free upholstery fabric monogram with it, for as long as I have time to make them and mail them before Christmas, so tell your friends!), I meant for you to see Will running around and enjoying the cape and acting all super in it:I did not, of course, mean for you to see that she's running around and acting all super in Rose Hill Cemetery, where we found ourselves YET AGAIN late this afternoon after gymnastics:
I swear, I cannot stay away from that place. I wonder how the caretakers feel about people camping there?

Duct Tape Removes Warts

Y'all, don't think bad about me, but I used to have a wart. It's gone now, but it was totally gross. Just ask Matt--I was all the time showing it to him and saying things like, "This is so gross, look at it!"

It was a plantar's wart, I think, and smack on the bottom of my foot, which tells me that I need to start wearing sandals when I go to the public swimming pool, and it was crazy-painful to walk on, so much so that I was actually popping ibuprofin every morning just to take the edge off.

I tried that over-the-counter wart removal stuff, which just peeled away a bunch of skin which then callused and became even more painful to walk on, and I tried the doctor's office, where a physician's assistant froze it but told me that freezing didn't always work and told me to use duct tape.

And so let me tell you--duct tape is the business. You put the duct tape on to cover your wart, and then every now and then you rip it off and put on a new piece. You can leave the tape off for a while every now and then to let your skin rest, and the whole process does take a while. But it absolutely works.

Nothing happened for a couple of days after I started putting the duct tape over the wart on my foot, but then, on like day three, all these other tiny little warts suddenly started erupting all around the original wart--my theory is that this was other places where the virus was embedded in my skin, and the duct tape was just bringing them all to the surface at once, instead of one-by-one over time for the rest of my freakin' life.

Some people say that the wart will turn black and then fall off with the duct tape, but this isn't what happened with me. All the little warts, and the larger plantar's wart, turned to dead, callused skin, and then, every time I peeled off the duct tape, I would also take off some of this skin. Sometimes the tape would peel off a huge, thick chunk of skin, basically showing how deeply the wart had been embedded--seriously, it was crazy-deep, you should ask Matt--and then leave this huge crater in the bottom of my foot. It was disgusting. And also awesome.

The duct tape didn't hurt, although I've actually been trying this process on Willow, now, for a plantar's wart that she also has on the bottom of her foot, and she doesn't like it when the tape peels off part of the wart, although I think that it may just be the unpleasant sensation of peeling skin that she's reacting to, not actually pain. And it's working on her just the same, although I'm taking my time with the process and letting her foot have plenty of time away from the duct tape, as well.

And when we've used up all our duct tape on all our weird and disgusting skin ailments? I kind of want to make us some commemmorative duct tape roll bangles.

Walking on warts makes feet sore, so we both liked warm footbaths with tons of apple cider vinegar and a generous amount of tea tree oil and epsom salts, as well. But what doesn't a nice, warm footbath cure?

In other news, the girls and I have been spending an oddly large amount of time at cemeteries lately:

I've gotten really into photographing old headstones, because I'm weird and weird people have weird hobbies, apparently. I love looking at the entire landscape of an older cemetery, however--I mean, doesn't that photo above remind you of a sort of post-modern Stonehenge, with the huge chunks of limestone all skewed and plunked down into the green grass?

Once after visiting Stonehenge, I planned this elaborate hiking trip to visit all the mysterious standing stones all around the countryside in Great Britain. And then I grew up and got less weird, but I think I'm cycling back around to more weird again, so perhaps that trip will make it back on my to-do list someday soon.

Super Kids

One of my biggest pet peeves is parents who throw a birthday party for their child and say, "No presents, please."

Dude, it's not your grandpa's sixtieth birthday party--let your four-year-old get the prezzies!

Perhaps I'll feel differently when my kids are older and there's a birthday party every week (although there nearly has been for the past couple of months), but frankly, I have ALWAYS loved to get gifts for kids. When my baby cousin was born I was all of nineteen, and I vividly remember having the best time picking her out a little outfit with watermelons on it at Gymboree. I remember how awesome I felt when I scored another little cousin's most coveted Rescue Hero toy for Christmas, hidden behind some less popular toys on a shelf at Wal-mart. Another time I bought him a stuffed hedgehog that could really roll up into a ball, and I bought the baby cousin teeny-tiny little panties with hearts on them at Baby Gap to convince her to give toilet learning a go, and once my partner and I went in together on a cool little batting machine that had my cousin throwing a tantrum by 11:00 on Christmas morning because he couldn't hit the freakin' ball.

I've coalesced my present-buying strategy a bit over the years, into one in which I no longer actually buy presents, and I get an even bigger kick out of it. Last Christmas, with my partner's help, I made that former baby cousin a set of bookmarks with quotes from the Twilight books on them, and I made that former little cousin a redneck T-shirt quilt--John Deere logos, and Gone Fishin' illustrations, and a lot of camouflage. This year the baby cousin has requested a T-shirt quilt made from her own T-shirts, and the little cousin's present is still a secret, but can you say Tuba Playa?

Anyway, I don't attempt nearly that level of meaning when I make presents for the kids' little friends on their birthdays, but a five-year-old is a five-year-old, and they all like pretty much the same stuff. I've made buntings for kids, and crayon rolls, and play dough, but for my big kid's bestest little friend's birthday this weekend, a friend who has been a bestie for enough holidays that I do believe I've already given her a bunting and a crayon roll AND some homemade play dough, a new awesomeness was in order:

I'm super-excited, because I have been wanting to make the kids superhero capes for EVER. It took a while to figure out a pattern that pleased me (it's all about putting the proper angles on the trapezoid), and it took even longer to figure out the kind of closure that I wanted, but I think I nailed it. The capes are a little on the narrow side, the better to keep out of kids' ways, because the lamest thing around is to be flying around all super and to get caught in your stupid voluminous cape. But the closure? The closure?

Let me tell you about the closure.

I thought about ties, and these work pretty well because you can do them loosely, but I don't know a single kid who can tie her own shoelace, much less her own cape under her chin. Snaps are a sure-fire way to get a kid to hang herself from a tree limb or a chimney post or something, and Velcro? I dislike sewing Velcro, although I will under duress.

Instead I, and this is brilliant, used super-stretchy narrow elastic, stretchy enough that a kid can actually pull the cape on over her head, and stretchy enough that if she did snag herself on a fence, there'd be plenty of give to get herself untangled. Hello, Montessori independence!

So yes, one for my kid, and one for my other kid, and one for a little friend whose party is next weekend, and one for the little bestie, which looks like this:

It's monogrammed with her initial on it in upholstery remnant fabric (washed on the sanitary cycle first and hot-dried, because there will be no running dye on my watch), and on top of it are resting the kids' presents to her. A few months ago, feeling like I was sort of bogarting the whole birthday present business by taking it upon myself to make the present for each of their friends myself, I made up a rule for them:

When attending a friend's birthday party, my child must do one of the following:

1. Buy the friend a present with her own money (the only money around is earned by doing chores, mwa-ha-ha!).
2. Make the friend a present with things found around the house.
3. Give the friend something of her own.

And that's why my big kid bought her friend, with money earned sorting laundry, a set of Halloween yo-yos and a Christmas candy, and the little kid gave her the yellow ball with sparkles in it that is almost her favorite toy.

A super birthday, then, for a super friend. And I am absolutely going to stock my etsy shop this week with some capes made from fleece blankies, with the option of a free upholstery remnant monogram, and perhaps I could have done that today, but I didn't. The super kids had some super stunts to do over at the park, you see, so we were far too busy for money-making.

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!

Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl

I am not enjoying teaching right now, or grading papers, or dealing with the idiot student who thought it would be a good idea to steal some other idiot student's paper and pass it off as his own and now I have to fill out paperwork and meet with the Director of Composition and THEN meet with this student to give him his big fat F in my class before I can give papers back to any of my other students, and if you think those students are happy to have their grades delayed then, boy, you don't know students these days.

When do you think I'll get a nationally-mandated minimum wage for being a committed stay-at-home parent who engages my children and exposes them to enrichment opportunities and cooks them nourishing meals and constantly strives to do better by them? Cause I'd really like to stop moonlighting with these college students--they'd rather be moonlighting somewhere else as well, anyway.

In other news, my own happy kids are rockin' their own school, as usual. One of the sweeter traditions, in a classroom full of sweet rituals and traditions (don't take my word for it--the Montessori birthday ritual is gorgeous everywhere), is to have each child draw a self-portrait twice a year, just before the fall and spring parent/teacher conferences. The work table has a mirror set up in front of it, and blank paper and colored pencils, and the older children (and even the youngest ones, by the spring self-portrait), add a sort of handwriting sampler at the bottom. It's a fascinating look at how a child sees herself, and fascinating how that perception evolves over the months and the years.

I posted Willow's self-portrait at four years and ten months, and so here is her self-portrait at five years and nearly four months: Such an evolution in that kid!

Now, it's possible that Sydney didn't quite understand the purpose of the self-portrait work, since this is her first time, but frankly, I think she understood it quite well, and thus I think that her self-portrait is a pretty clear reflection of who my kid is inside:Yep, that's my kid. Her sister is introspective, socially cautious, and very concerned with understanding the social script of any situation. Sydney, however, is an extrovert who craves attention, and is extremely socially clever, particularly in regards to manipulating situations to achieve an optimum outcome. At the parent/teacher conferences Matt discovered, through shrewd questioning, that the two sub-teachers in the girls' classroom have apparently been unwittingly letting Sydney basically do nothing in the classroom except wander around and hang out. One teacher tells Sydney to hang up her coat. Sydney looks at her blankly, so the teacher demonstrates the activity, in the process hanging up her coat for her. This happens every single day. The other teacher demonstrates a new work to Sydney, and then asks if she'd like to try it. She says no. This happens every single time.

"She's very observant," noted one teacher.

"Observant, my butt. A Montessori classroom is not a cocktail party. It's an experiential education lab, and it's very expensive. Get the kid playing with something."

They promised they would.

Finding My Photography a Home

Well, it's not even really photography. I mean, some of it is--I have a whole set of the alphabet created from photographs of cemetery headstones that I'm working on this week--but most of my printwork consists of handwork pieces scanned at super-high resolution and cropped and color-corrected in my usual photography workflow.

What do you call that? Mixed media? Still life? No idea.

Anyway, with my vintage buttons alphabet I've had several download options available on my pumpkinbear etsy shop for a while now, but for a while now I've also been looking for some good print-on-demand options. My printer has good color and tone, and I'm reasonably happy about using it to print stuff for myself, and especially using it hard to print on freezer paper and fabric and whatever (knowing that if I do eventually break it from making it print on something weird, I'll get to buy myself a new one, yay), but I'm not confident enough in the durability or stability of its work to print so much as a greeting card for a friend with it, much less an art print or something to sell. At two different craft fairs this year, the same woman wanted to buy some prints I'd made for the girls and just had on display, and I was all, "Um...no."

I also don't particularly desire, anyway, to make or buy prints of my work and then sell them--my overall goals in life as well as crafting are to sell stuff and get rid of stuff, not buy stuff and then keep it on hand hoping to sell it later on.

So, yeah. Print-on-demand.

I decided (finally) to try out ImageKind, because I lurve their main company, CafePress--it's another overall goal of mine to someday woo my overworked graphic designer husband into putting some of his cooler free-time sketches on CafePress, but strangely enough, he balks at being stretched too thin.

After much futzing and fiddling, I got a profile (I'm Pumpkinbear there, of course), and a gallery of my vintage button alphabet:

I mostly imagine it being used for its high-quality printing process on greeting cards and notecards and postcards, but I have to admit that it is pretty fun to play around with all the high-priced matting and framing possibilities, and then get a preview of the fanciness that can be had for just a couple hundred dollars:

High-falutin', huh? And I'm quite happy to have this checked off of my to-do list, because now that I have a place to put them, I get to start on some other pieces that I've been wanting to start on...

Don't you love how completion of a to-do list leads to another to-do list?

Babies in Diapers, Babies on Film

Babies in diapers sitting:
Babies in diapers fleeing:Babies in diapers with Velcro:

Babies in diapers with snaps:

Babies in diapers getting bribed with whatever I have around to bribe them with:

I did a little photo shoot over at Barefoot Kids this weekend for a cloth diapering tutorial that I'm writing up. It made me realize that just as I didn't take enough photos of my baby girls breastfeeding, I didn't take nearly enough photos of them in their comfy cloth diapers. I still have a few of their diapers for my teaching stash, but not any of my own handmade wool recovers (what did I do with those? Who was so awesome that I gave them my own wool recovers, and yet so un-awesome that I don't even remember anymore?), and I have absolutely zero breastfeeding mementos, although to be honest, I NEVER, NEVER WANT TO SEE MY OLD NURSING BRAS AGAIN!!! I didn't even try to pass them on, or take off the bands or the elastic or the snaps to re-use. I JUST THREW THEM IN THE TRASH!!!

To be fair, I was nursing one to two people continuously from 2004-2009, so those bras and I were done with each other by the time Sydney weaned herself.

And also? You should totally see my new bras. Underwires and everything.

Two Girls, Two Elaborate Skeletons

This comes directly on the heels of Halloween, but it isn't really a "Halloween" activity, except that, you know, it involves skeletons and I got the idea from somebody else who was doing it as a Halloween activity. So okay, it's probably a Halloween activity, but we did it more in terms of human biology than Halloween.

So there you go.

Anyway...I was inspired by the skeleton puzzle over at Chasing Cheerios enough to dig out (after Halloween, of course) a really cool pdf of another put-together skeleton that I had downloaded and saved almost two years ago. Do you do that? See cool stuff on the internet and save it, even if you don't know when/if you'll ever do anything with it? I have an external hard drive, with something like a terrabyte of space on it, pretty much just for that and my itunes and my digital photography compulsion.

So two years ago I found this really cool skeleton pdf online, meant to be put together with brads as a Halloween decoration but pretty detailed as to its bones and stuff, and I saved it to my hard drive. And yesterday, I printed out two copies of that skeleton and gave it to the girls to color. The girls get really perfectionist and self-judgmental when it come to cutting, for some reason, so they made me cut all the pieces out. Which I did. I'll have to think about whether or not I should go cold turkey on the cutting assists in the future.

And today I got out some of my cheap stash scrapbook paper (I just remembered that I should have used my huge sample book of super-brittle wallpaper that I got from the Upcycle Exchange and that almost ruined my Cricut, it was so brittle. Shoot) and let the girls pick out pretty papers, then gave them glue sticks to glue the skeleton parts to the back of the pretty paper. While I cut that out (again), I gave them each a page on which I'd printed all five pages of that same skeleton all teeny-tiny on one page. They colored the teeny-tiny skeleton parts and I cut them out (ugh).

The girls arranged the big skeleton pieces, colored and backed with pretty scrapbook paper, sandwiched in the pockets of laminate, and we laminated them. Then, while I cut out those laminated pieces (definitely going cold turkey on the cutting assists), the girls glued their teeny-tiny skeleton to a new piece of cardstock, which we also laminated. Sydney made a lovely abstract arrangement of bones, but Willow made, as I encouraged her to, a teeny-tiny skeleton put together correctly to use as a key in putting together the large skeletons.

I had wondered if the whole fun of this activity would be in the creation, but the girls actually then spent quite a bit of time on the floor together putting together their skeletons. I had also assumed that each child would put together one skeleton, but I was pleased to walk by later and see that they were both working together on both skeletons:

And making them hold hands, no less, and go for a walk together.

Such friends that sisters can be sometimes.

Another Halloween for the Record Books

The clown costume was FINALLY finished:I could write books about that yarn wig, let me tell you. And the logistics of actually SEWING, on the sewing machine, with two little girls whose heads are about to explode, they're so excited. Made my head just about explode, too, if you know what I mean. But I digress.

The pumpkins were finally finished, too:

Although Matt had to take over that one after 1) I decided it would be a good idea to try to carve using my Dremel but without the Dremel pumpkin carving kit and turned the livingroom into a pumpkin slaughterhouse and 2) it was discovered, a little too late, that Willow's pumpkin was starting to go bad on the inside and, you may remember, I've had a little thing about smells and just grossness in general after being hyperemetic during both my pregnancies. Matt is now, officially, the yearly Pumpkin Parent.

Makeup was applied judiciously:
And then, with great glee, not so judiciously. Made Will a bit more of a horror film clown than I'd been expecting, but it worked.

It was a perfect night for trick-or-treating:
Our stickers were not exactly the hot item of the neighborhood (One kid, seeing Matt about to drop a handful in his bag, actually pulled his bag away and quickly said, "Uh, no thanks"), but we didn't get egged, either, so there you go.

Of course, all our neighbors are more awesome than we are, so OUR kids got plenty of candy.

Even some candy to share:
When they're too old to share candy, I figure they're old enough to start making their own costumes, don't you think?

With my kids, hopefully it'll never come to that.

One Deer Down, One Clown to Go

This year for Halloween, my baby wanted to be a "baby deer." Good luck finding yourself a toddler fawn costume at a costume shop, but we are crafty people, and we can make that happen:
Once again, as with Willow's zebra costume last Halloween, I used a long-ago thrifted Old Navy fleece romper as a pattern to sew a Sydney-sized romper out of tan stash fabric. I even sewed in a zipper, for goodness' sake--
--referring back to a handy zipper tutorial or two (the glue stick method=AWESOME!).

I ironed some stash white flannel to Heat n' Bond iron-on adhesive, freehand cut it into fawn spots, and had the girls help me lay out the spots-- --and then iron them down. And also? I am NEVER buying Heat n' Bond adhesive again. I thought it would be quicker just to bond the applique to the romper instead of sewing each one down. What I forgot is that heat-set applique is fiddly, in that you have to, you know, follow the RULES for it, and I have the constant companionship and assistance of two small children. What the use is of something that a three-year-old can't do correctly I just don't know. At least when you sew something on the sewing machine with a three-year-old, even if the stitches are sloppy or the seam wobbles, that thing at least has a fighting chance of STAYING SEWN. Heat n' Bond? Blech. I'm sorry, Heat n' Bond, that I was incapable of ironing you down with moderate heat for 8-10 seconds per section, overlapping slightly, but seriously, you're going to fall apart on me?

Seriously?

I've already had to take a glue stick to about half of these appliques after my child was instructed to show up at her gymnastics class in costume, so we'll see if the damn things last through tomorrow's school party and the Bloomington Area Birth Services party and the pipe organ concert, and Saturday's festival at the Mather's Museum.

Oh, and trick-or-treating. Can't forget that.

Anyway, the applique was simple to do before sewing the romper up, but I wish I'd taken the time to actually do them right.

I freehanded and sewed up a tail and attached it to the outside of the costume (it's white on the underside, because Sydney's a white-tailed deer fawn)--
--but I used a pattern for the hood of the deer costume, a vintage Simplicity 5739 that I scored during the Upcycle Exchange at Strange Folk in September. Hopefully, when the girls are between the ages of 10 and 12, they'll really want to dress up as some sort of faux-fur rompered creature with a tail and a furry hood with ears, because that's what this pattern is for. I freehanded the ears, but fortunately the hood, even though it's super-large, still fits fine:

Even skipping all the niceties that I ran out of time for, such as trimming the neckline with bias tape or lining the hood or adding elastic to the wrist and ankle hems, etc., I'm still quite pleased with the outcome, and fortunately, so is Syd.

And if all her applique does fall off before Saturday, I can always just fashion her some pipe cleaner antlers and make her a buck, I guess.

Autumn in Indiana

What does Sydney have in her hands?A ladybug, of course:But if that one's too hard for you to see, just look around--there are approximately a billion ladybugs all over everything.

One kid likes to swing low:One kid likes to swing high:I like the view straight up towards the sky:The hill currently being used for careening down like maniacs on bicycles will, in a couple of months, be used for careening down like maniacs on sleds:But as long as they can careen around somewhere like maniacs, they're happy enough:

About Those Halloween Candy Houses...:A Tutorial

As I thought they would be, the Halloween houses were the hit of the children's Halloween party. The gingerbread house's redneck cousin, the Halloween house isn't for a child too under the thumb of the sugar police, but it's really not the sugar orgy you'd expect. Frankly, I like to encourage my children to use food, especially candy, as art supplies--you still get much of the same sensory pleasures as you would eating the candy, but it allows an entirely new way to experience the candy that is creative and aesthetic instead of gluttonous.

But yes, they do eat quite a bit of candy while making these Halloween houses, so you have been warned.

The color scheme of the Halloween house is primarily black and orange--you can do a full-on "haunted" Halloween house with an older kid, but I clearly do not have that kind of kid yet. The beauty of the color scheme, however, is that it leads you straight into the awesomest kind of candy--chocolate.

For the infrastructure of the house, we usually go with chocolate graham crackers, but anything chocolate will do. Think about any kind of chocolate cookies, chocolate Little Debbies or other snack cakes, chocolate ice cream cones (they make super turrets), chocolate candy bars, chocolate doughnuts.

You could use icing for these, like you do with gingerbread houses, and some colors of icing would look really cool here, but I like to use peanut butter instead. It's super sticky, super easy to apply, and it's one less super-sweet thing for the kids to shove in their mouths while they work:
When I set this activity up for a party, I spoon peanut butter out into little bowls for each kid, and give them a popsicle stick for application. It works perfectly. I also give each kid a paper plate to build the house on, just so that each kid can take her house home. The paper plate leaves enough work area that the kids usually make little candy yards for their houses, as well.

And when I do this for a party, I usually ask each person attending to bring a small bag of something edible for decorating the house, to share with everyone else. This makes for a good variety. Some of my favorites:

• pretzels
• raisins
• candy corn and candy corn pumpkins
• marshmallows (they make good ghosts)
• Reese's Pieces
• gummy anything, especially worms
• novelty candy items, such as candy bones or spiders or whatever

One kid brought Jelly Bellies to our party this weekend, and they turned out to be a huge hit--each kid really liked picking out specific colors to use in their own art installations. One kid made a swimming pool using only the blue Jelly Bellies, for instance, and one kid made a grassy yard with the green ones, and one kid made "a big puddle of blood for the witch to fall in."

Ahem.

Other awesome people who also make Halloween houses (amazing how you can think that you invented something, and then here comes the internet to disabuse you of such naive notions):

• Make and Takes
• Amazing Moms
• How Stuff Works
• My Little Gems

The only other picky things I do are to ask the party kids to wash their hands before they begin, and to clean up and hide all the candy supplies as soon as everyone is done. Because you get kind of sick of candy when you're playing with it and it's right in your face, but run off to do a little pumpkin pounding or dress-up or whatever, and ten minutes later you'll find yourself thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if there are any more Reese's cups over there?"

Which there totally are, because even though I packed up all the candy for Matt and BEGGED him to take it to work with him, he forgot (HOW could you forget candy?).

I really should probably go eat those last Reese's cups, now that I think of it.

Pumpkin Pounding and Haunted Houses: A Children's Halloween Party

Some jack-o-lantern oranges, with grapes and apples inside:
Never make these, by the way--they're fiddly and it's nigh on impossible to get the orange flesh out of the peel without having a nervous breakdown. It was much better when I got frustrated and asked the girls to just draw jack-o-lantern faces on whole oranges, which we later peeled and segmented like normal.

Pumpkin-carrot muffins baked in an autumn-themed silicone muffin mold:

I doubled a pumpkin-carrot muffin recipe I found at Daily Unadventures of Cooking, only I used whole eggs instead of egg whites, which I have deemed fiddly. I wasn't sure if I liked these right after I made them--I can always taste the baking powder in the stuff I bake, it seems, even if I've actually followed the recipe--but I had them again for breakfast this morning and they're delicious.

Making Halloween houses (or gardens, or adventure places, or obstacle courses, depending on the child--more on that later):Making, very, very ELABORATE Halloween houses:
Then chilling out with a little light coloring:Pounding the heck out of an innocent pumpkin (more on that later, too):And then running off all that sugar over at the neighborhood playground:
Here's to a successful Halloween party and an early bedtime!

And a Tie Fighter to Sit On

Today is the birthday party for the kiddo of a mom friend, and frankly, I found it refreshing to craft for a change for a kiddo who's way into not unicorns or rainbows, but STAR WARS!!! Not that there's anything wrong with unicorns or rainbows, but now that you mention it, I AM a bit played out of the "let's pretend there's a unicorn and we ride it and it uses its magical horn to take us all over the rainbow to Candyland" game.

The Star Wars web site, sort of oddly, has a section for Star Wars-themed kids' crafts, and in that section I found some Star Wars stencils that are ostensibly to be used for pumpkin carving. But I'm hell not going to waste my 8.5x11" freezer paper sheets (my computer is finicky, so I daren't cut the freezer paper myself for it) on a pumpkin, so instead I dug around in Willow's shirts drawer to find a shirt that she doesn't often wear because it's not "beautiful," and I made the birthday kiddo a Stormtrooper shirt:
Awesome, right? I am VERY pleased with how it turned out.

When I do freezer paper stencilling, I actually end up preferring the negative stencil image almost every time (Do you know how to do freezer paper stencilling? One stencil will give you two images--one positive and one negative), and so, since I also didn't want to create a plastic bin for "half-used freezer paper stencils" in my so-organized study/studio, I found one of Matt's work shirts sitting unsuspectingly in his closet, and put the negative Stormtrooper image there:

Do you think he'll be able to wear it to work?

Sponge brushes work best for freezer paper stencils, in my opinion, and are also best used with the best-quality fabric paint that you can afford. I use a basic set of Jaquard Neopaque that's lasted me for way over a year now, and when that finally runs out I'll probably buy the exact same thing, only with more colors. When I make a negative stencil image, I like the outside edge to look like it has brush marks, but the way you actually do that with a sponge brush is actually just to dab, not brush. Now you know.

Then, of course (because you KNOW that if I'm going to make one thing I might as well just make a dozen), I decided that I couldn't fancy up shirts for other people and not fancy up any shirts for my babies, so Sydney got a castle----which she insisted on trying on even though it hadn't been heat-set yet, and then threw a fit when I wouldn't let her model it while jumping on the bed on account of the bed was covered in organized stacks of clean laundry.

Willow got the negative castle: See? I just think it always looks better!

And so THEN I got all irritated that I always make stuff for other people and never make anything for myself, so I stencilled a Tie Fighter on the butt of my jeans--

--and I didn't want to waste the negative, of course, so I ruined another one of Matt's work shirts:

Another handy trick: If you have a cheap-o iron like I do, it might actually not get quite hot enough to adequately heat-set fabric paint. I line my ironing surface with aluminum foil, shiny side facing the fabric, and if I'm feeling super-paranoid I also might sometimes put aluminum foil on top of the fabric, too, and then a pressing cloth on top of that. It radiates more heat into the fabric and heat-sets the paint at a more appropriate temperature.

I've never bothered to write a freezer paper stencil tutorial because 1) it's easy and 2) every other blogger and their dog already has one. If you seriously need some hand-holding, however, check out the tutorials on:

• Dabbled
• My Montessori Journey
• Monday Prints
• Neither Hip Nor Funky
• Angry Chicken

Okay, though, as I was just now making that list I thought of all these fiddly little things that I want you to know about freezer paper stencilling, not every point of which is addressed by any one of those tutes (although they're all excellent, but you know how I am with tutorials), so next time I stencil, I'm totally going to write my own tutorial after all.

Now...off to iron the butt of my jeans!