An April's Worth of Paper

Well, we like what we like. That may be about all I can say about it.

For some reason, between the girls and me, what started out as just a simple paper chain to count down the days until the baby's birthday has...um, snowballed?

We make paper chains every day now.

I think the girls are pleased by the novelty of the new form--the strips of paper are fun to draw on and otherwise decorate, and it's fun, especially, for a three-year-old to see how her efforts add up into something concrete and hangable, and in one dark incident, it was discovered that a sister tearing up her sister's paper chain in secret can launch a day-long appetite for vengeance. Good times.

As for me, I think I'm mostly attracted to the paper chain's ability to mindlessly entertain. Often, while keeping the girls company in the work that they choose to do at the big table--pictures to draw, encyclopedias to page through, snacks to eat, dots to connect, random stuff to paint, etc., etc.,--I need something to do that is more interesting than just conversating (sorry, kids, but sometimes your conversation is boring, although I do agree, some dogs ARE brown, and yep, it IS weird that you can put a sock on either foot) and less interesting than writing a book proposal, or editing photos, or listing stuff in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, none of which will allow me to continue uninterrupted in the mindless conversating.

And that's why the living room has a little more bling, courtesy of a collaboration of scrapbook papers in blues:

And the bedroom has the more intellectual model, done with several pages torn from an old dictionary (we have better ones, I assure you, ones that are descriptive and not prescriptive, yuck):

I even posted some by-the-yard paper chainage in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

You should totally check out that listing, by the way, because I discovered, in the process, how gloriously these paper chains photograph, and so my listing is stuffed with all these awesome close-ups and artsy takes on the subject "Paper Chain."

And EVEN THOUGH I started a paper chain cut from comic book pages today (I know--SQUEE!!!), with my excuse being that I HAD to watch those last two episodes from the first season of Supernatural because it was due back at the IU media library today, I have to put my toys aside for the rest of the week, I fear...

Remember the last dinosaur quilt? With the last panel to be pieced right here on my work table? And a tutorial on back-to-front blanket binding, intended to be photographed using this quilt, scheduled for Crafting a Green World this weekend?

Turns out that those things don't tend to sew, photograph, write about, or sell themselves. Huh, who knew?

Us, Tonight

Considering that barely half an hour prior, Willow was being perp-walked out of the park, bellowing, as Sydney followed behind us, screaming just as loudly, this is a mighty peaceful scene:

Willow is making alphabet flashcards for Sydney, cut from one of those Everything Preschool activity books--this was her idea. Sydney is completing page after page in a 1-10 Dot-to-Dot book--also her idea. She requires a lot of positive reinforcement as she works, because she thus far lacks confidence that she actually knows what the numbers look like and in what order they run, although she does, and so I'm hanging out, as well, creating yet another paper chain, this time from an old dictionary.

It's nice to have those moments of peace, especially when you know that all hell will break loose again at bedtime.

Rainbow Party Project #1: Rainbow Paper Chain

On the one hand, some of us (Willow) are still in our pajamas at 7:00 pm--these will apparently be tonight's pajamas, as well. Others of us (Sydney) have worn a sparkly leotard and tights all day. Cookies were eaten. Magic School Bus computer games were played allllllll morning.

On the other hand, we also made the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, and a dandelion greens frittata for breakfast, AND had macaroni bar for dinner (available toppings: leftover dandelion greens, veggie parmesan, roasted red peppers, vegan chili, and avocado oil), and I did two loads of dishes (obviously, after all that cooking), and worked out, and we planted pie pumpkins and spinach in our community garden and spied what might be baby kale there, and I took some photos for ebay, and prepped a package for etsy, and we read lots of books, and of course there was some business with the glue stick.

Although I do not plan for Sydney's birthday party to cost a great deal, I do plan for it to be elaborate. Sydney enjoys elaborate planning, as does Willow, and they are VERY happy making lists and doing little projects to prep for the main event. VERY happy. Seriously. This rainbow birthday party is practically the only subject of conversation among the household under-six set these days.

To date, party plans range from spray-painting the EZ-Up to dyeing ice cubes with food coloring, but today was the first time that we actually put a plan into action:

Remember the birthday count-down paper chain that Sydney adores so much? Those packages of stash strips include every color of the rainbow, and they have been crafted into our first rainbow party decoration:

In rainbow order, of course.

I don't know how long the chain ended up being, but I'm hoping that it will drape nicely around the perimeter of the EZ-UP, both for the party and for future craft fairs. It looks EZ-Up size, doesn't it?

I haven't figured out any nice way of attaching it to the EZ-Up yet--I am SO over futzing with duct tape at sunrise--but still, one party decoration is achieved. Huzzah.

P.S. Speaking of huzzah, Crafting a Green World is back!!! Someday we'll split a pitcher of margaritas and I'll tell you the whole story, but for now just suffice with checking out my review of The Sewing Machine Attachment Handbook and my tutorial on painting with flowers. Huzzah!

We Can Stay All Day

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo!

How about you, you, you?

You can come, too, too, too!

Well, actually you can't, because we already went. Yay, day at the zoo! Having Matt come with us on a Sunday, even though it was CRAZY-crowded, caused the trip to not be the mom-chore that I had anticipated for tomorrow, but pure pleasure for today. We looked at stuff, I brought the zoom lens, I drooled over the Zoobooks in the gift shop (did you guys have those when you were little? They RULE!), there were butterflies, and then we came home.

And now I'm recharged and ready to get back to being super-busy tomorrow. Well, since it's a school holiday tomorrow make that super-SUPER-busy. So I'm not only planting in our community garden, and cleaning the bathroom, and finishing a dinosaur quilt, and putting some cloth diapers for sale on ebay, and making a rainbow felt bunting, but also playing LOTS of Uncle Wiggily, and going to the playground, and painting in the backyard, and baking cookies, and doing some Legos...

You know, your typical Monday stuff.

These Dinosaurs are for Monetary Gain

We are FINALLY back in the groove of business as usual over here. Meaning, of course, LOTS of business and good things that happen. We got the morning pain meds and antibiotics and bandage change done, with only one tantrum (big improvement!!!), and hit up our Montessori garage sale (and bought toy ponies and stuffed kitties and a board game about musical instruments and a wooden map of Europe puzzle and several children's craft magazines and a felt book about animal habitats with loads of little felt animals to put in it and a remote control T-Rex and another kit to paint a plaster T-Rex that I've been eyeing in the stores but it's been too expensive but this one is pretty much BRAND-NEW, SCORE!) and went to the Bakehouse for breakfast for Matt and the littles and coffee for me, and got free cookies and coffee cake there on account of our food took half an hour to come, and I love you, Bakehouse, and thanks for the goodies, but I am NEVER going in on a Saturday morning again.

And then Matt went to work out and the kidlets got so involved in that I actually got the chance to sew, which I have not done for a while now, THANK you infected lymph node.

I made:

 

and:

and:

Ah, bliss! You'll likely notice that these dinosaurs are also T-shirt fronts stitched to quilter's cotton in a log cabin pattern (Courthouse Steps, to be precise). These, however, are to be sewn into a quilt for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, or perhaps my May craft fair, for the season is again nigh.

Then, of course, I had to suck it up and submit to an item that the girls requested be put on the calendar almost a week ago, and I put if off as long as possible, but I could reasonably put it off no longer...

We ate lunch at China Buffet. Barf.

However, after China Buffet (the girls' favorite food items there? Macaroni and cheese, and ice cream. See? Barf!), we came back home, and while the girls and I picked interesting violets and followed the paths of bees and stared at spiders and pestered slugs, my Matt fixed up the compost bin and then assembled my most favorite item of summer infrastructure:

See, what did I tell you?

Bliss.

Dandelion Stir-Fry

My poor little lamb:It's been a bit of a job keeping her comfortable and content after the operation to drain and clean out that infected lymph node. She can breathe and think now, with the displacement of her trachea and the blockage of one jugular eased, but replacing those dangers are the active discomfort of that huge bandage around her neck, and the constant itching.

Oh, that itching!

We do have many distractions. We have Legos. We have Netflix (While her sister was at school, Willow and I watched a three-part Nova special on the evolution of humans. We are now experts on the subject). We have party planning. We have bubbles. We have our garden, in which we have just planted sunflower seeds:And we have dandelions. I have been wanting to cook with dandelions since last summer, just after dandelion season here, when dandelion season struck at 5 Orange Potatoes--seriously, dandelion syrup! Dandelion jelly! The awesomeness was overwhelming.

In consultation with Willow and I picked a mess of dandelion greens from our yard: Willow actually does this off and on all day, and so I tend to keep a Ziplock baggie of dandelion greens in the vegetable crisper for her. The greens are really the tenderest and tastiest BEFORE the dandelion flower emerges, but Will also honors no such distinctions, and so our greens contain a mixture of young, tender flowers, and the older, tougher, more bitter ones. No matter, really, as they're all going to be cooked.

Last night for dinner, I made Steve Brill's dandelion saute: There are loads of carrots and onions to go with the dandelion greens, and I added a sweet potsticker sauce to counter the bitterness of the greens until there was only tastiness left:And the saute was enjoyed with leftover pasta.

The little lamb has her huge bandage off now, although being left with a large, open incision, the large, sticky band-aid over which has to be peeled off and changed twice a day, is not exponentially better, IMHO, but as I always say, baby steps, my friends. Baby steps.

Oh, and hooray for narcotic pain meds!

Blowing Bubbles in the Garden with My Girl

While Sydney was at school the other day, Willow and I spent a calm afternoon out in the yard blowing bubbles:I don't know if you can see the big lump on the side of her neck, but it's about the size of Willow's fist. Late the other night she woke up crying and feverish, screaming that her neck hurt. Since I secretly read all those scare-tactic parenting magazines at the library, I immediately figured that it was meningitis and that she was going to die. I asked Willow to turn her head so that I could see if her neck was stiff, and as she turned I saw revealed that huge lump, which was not there when we put her to bed two hours previously, and I was forced to hasten the mental timeline leading to my child's death by quite a bit.

Fortunately, I am great in an emergency. Seriously, I am exactly the person that you want around you in a crisis. So ten minutes later, having driven under the speed limit and obeyed all traffic signs and signals, with wallet and insurance card and cell phone and ipod loaded with PBS Kids videos and Wee Sing mp3s, we were in the emergency room.

NOT meningitis, hallelujah. Lots of waiting and morphine and CAT scans and medical staff with questionable bedside manners and staff with great bedside manners and eavesdropping on other patients (this one guy accidentally stuck himself with his babymama's syringe! And she came to the ER with him! And they brought the baby! And then they yelled at each other!) and IV drugs later, the verdict became an infected lymph node. We got loaded up with drugs and sent home, and had one nice day to goof around in the garden--

--before we decided, in consultation with an ear-nose-throat surgeon the next morning, to submit Will to outpatient surgery that same day to drain the infected lymph node and clean it out. It was NOT fun, obviously, and I didn't tell Willow that it would be, but fortunately nothing has been too scary or too painful, and Will's big unhappiness today is primarily directed at the uncomfiness of the HUGE bandage on her neck and the itchiness that she can't touch just under it.

So our big plans for the near future include lots of Mythbusters, party planning for Sydney's birthday, and maybe some coloring pages. Oh, and apples. Lots of apples.

Easter Eggs are No Match for These Two

Painted wooden eggs hiding in the hay:Felted wool eggs hiding (sort of) on the wall:I covered some of the wooden eggs with a few coats of gesso before we painted them----which makes them look just a little more "eggy," don't you think?We made ample use of the plastic Easter eggs that we received in our Dinosaur Swap package from Craftster (thanks, 6iggle!):They were light enough to score some pretty sweet hiding spots:Of course, all of this was no match for my little bunnies----who are, as it turns out, VERY good egg finders:Yay for spring:
The girls are at a playdate and Matt is at work, so that means that any leftover chocolate rabbits belong, by rights, to me.

Nifty!

So all I needed to do was take a couple of photos of these Knifty Knitter lap looms so that I could list them in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:
And then I was all, "Wow! These looms are gorgeous!" And then I got REALLY carried away:

There's a possibility that I might start Willow with a this summer when we're in the car so much, and I, of course, have my Ravenclaw scarf that will likely be finished when I'm an old, old lady, but these Knifty Knitter looms are, alas, nothing but eye candy for me.

Although it is nice to have a photographic model that doesn't whine or make weird faces just as I'm snapping a photo.

Tulips in the Window

Willow has been very much her own girl lately, what with I Spy Fantasy, on cassette, and her guitar, leaving Syd and Momma with plenty of time on their hands for Syd and Momma stuff--paper chains, blueberry muffins, books about seeds and coloring pages about Easter, and other miscellany.

One of the novelties that we play with every so often is a set of window markers that I bought at deep discount sometime or other. They're not super-satisfying (I'm betting you could get better color saturation with straight dry-erase markers; must check sometime on a larger multi-color set of those), but we've been making a point lately to use what we have on hand, and that's why we've been baking with white flour after the whole wheat ran out and decorating our windows with these sort of pale window markers:As an experiment, I taped a stained glass coloring page to the other side of the window and traced it, thinking that Syd might like to color it in like a coloring page. That also wasn't super-satisfying, unfortunately, since you'd have to stay in the lines really well to make it work. Syd discovered that coloring over a previous mark would erase that mark--eh, just scribbling does just happen to be super-fun, so all was still well:And then my Matt brought me flowers home, also in pretty candy colors, and those get to go by the window, too:And did you notice? There's sunshine! Good for window decorations AND candy-colored flowers in a vase.