WIPs: These are for the Babies

Some WIPS currently being worrisome in my brain:

• a roadtrip to plan (Arkansas+Tennessee-Nashville+Kentucky+the kids-my partner=yikes!)
• a book proposal to finish, which is spiraling OUT OF CONTROL!!!
• a timeline to draw on the basement walls--sort of like the roll of paper timeline, but on the walls
• unit studies on Arkansas and Tennesse and Kentucky (and Elvis) to create
• children's swim lessons to schedule
• etsy products to list
• Crafting a Green World posts to write in advance of beforementioned road trip
• laundry to do
• etc., etc., etc.

However, I've put much of that aside for the short term to focus on a project that's been on my to-do list since the last Goodwill 50%-off Storewide Sale:

Baby bags!!!

T-shirts I'm transforming into bags for Barefoot Kids include Velvet Revolver, Wolverine--

--and Jimmy Hendrix, hell YEAH:

I've decided to use my jersey knit binding method for the neckline hem on ALL the bags, now, because I think it looks terrific in the same pattern that I use for the contrasting sleeves, and no, I canNOT get Electric Ladyland out of my head while I'm sewing.

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!

Birthday in Blocks

I know a certain father-in-law who is VERY loved by a certain couple of little girls whom I also happen to know:

Happy Birthday, Charlie! The girls often use the many swears that you've taught them.

Our Little Clay Moveable Alphabet

Rain, rain, RAIN!!!

We had a nice (though temporary) break from the rain this morning, so the older child and I spent some good hours scrubbing the deck and deck furniture and trimming down the shrubbery (my little kid is a hard worker when she puts her mind to it, and made the deck table and all four chairs sparkle with a scrub brush, dishwashing detergent, and the garden hose), but much of our time lately has been spent occupying ourselves while it rains, with coloring, puzzles, Berenstain Bears cartoons, the Wonderlab, and various little projects that I squirrel away until the time is right.

Yesterday morning, the time was right for FIMO. I've collected the odd little block of this polymer clay off and on whenever it's been on big sale, but I hadn't yet presented it to the girls. FIMO clay probably isn't the absolute bestest product in the world--I really ought to be using its US-made clone, Sculpey, since I try to buy American whenever practical, and even though FIMO is technically non-toxic, it IS a plastic and does contain PVC, so don't eat it or inhale it or sculpt with it every day for hours--but I love this stuff anyhow. I have a bit of a thing for bad boys.

The girlies, of course, went to town sculpting their own awesome little pretties--

--but I have been dying for a while now to do my own little project with these:

I made a moveable alphabet for the kiddos!

A moveable alphabet is a very big deal in the Montessori world, because it disassociates the cognitive practices of reading and composing from the physical practice of writing. Isolating a particular cognitive OR physical skill allows a child to focus, and better achieve mastery according to her own internal clock.

These letters are a little wonky, because I made them while kneading clay and mediating the girls, etc. Next time--and there will be a next time, and a time after, because a moveable alphabet requires numerous duplicates of every letter--I'll roll out the clay nicely onto parchment paper, and cut the alphabet and bake it without moving it around, so that the letters will look neater. The important thing, however, is that they're sturdy, being oven-baked, and fun--

--oh, and also educational:

And the letters get to play with their new pet tree, which Sydney created for them:

Or that might be the dog that she made. Definitely not the unicorn, because that one had an orange head.

P.S. Check out my latest posts over at Crafting a Green World--a tutorial for spraypaint reverse-stenciling on an EZ-Up, and a round-up of DIY options for price tags.

One of the MANY Reasons Why I Fear Clowns

He looks enough like a serial killer already--he couldn't even muster up a smile? Seriously, he looks like he's about to snatch me and screech off in his windowless van:

In other news, however, I LOVE that little top that I'm wearing. I wish that I still had it.

After the Cereal Bar: Cereal Box Matching Game Tutorial

One thing about buying a LOT of cereal when it's on big sale is that you then eat a lot of cereal. And when you eat a lot of cereal, you accumulate a lot of cereal boxes. Cereal boxes, like toilet paper tubes, are one of those things that I just can't throw in the recycling bin. I KNOW I'll need them sometime.

And that's how my house accumulates a lot of cereal boxes and toilet paper tubes.

The shelf in my study held one too many empty Cascadian Farms Cinnamon Crunch box yesterday, and so the girls and I took some time off from goofing off and reading books and watching Clifford's frakking Puppy Days to first, of course, do the activities on the backs of all the boxes:

A board game played with dinosaur avatars is fun.

Some of the boxes didn't have stuff so elaborate on the back, but instead word searches and riddles and picture puzzles, etc., so I cut those backs off to save as a quiet car activity for Willow. A QUIET car activity--wouldn't that be nice?

I've seen cereal box matching game projects off and on all over the interweb--plumpudding's cereal box matching game is the one that I can most readily recall--and my matching game isn't much different. Since all my cereal boxes are Cascadian Farms boxes, all with a big bowl of whatever cereal it is on the front, I made my matching pairs from that big bowl of cereal. I cut two large circles out of each bowl--

--until I had enough for a good game. The nice thing about using boxes that are all from the same brand is that the insides of the boxes are all from exactly the same kind of carboard, and so match exactly.

This is a good matching game for Sydney, especially--

--because although the pairs clearly belong together, they don't match exactly. This requires pattern recognition and sorting skills to make a positive match, and these are good skills for little children to practice.

I still have more cereal boxes left--can you believe it? I may make a cereal box puzzle next...

A Mother's Day Miracle

If you happen to know anything about my Willow, my talented, incredible, painfully shy Willow, a child who refused to participate in her school's kindergarten ritual of Reader's Chair, a child who weekly declines to participate with her classmates in their class ritual of Speaker's Rug, a child who didn't even want to stand in front of the class on her birthday to be sung to, then you will likely be as amazed as I am at what I am about to tell you.

Willow played in her first guitar recital today.

I am amazed. Awe-struck. Astonished.

Much of the credit goes to Willow's sweet guitar teacher. On the way to her latest lesson, Willow said to me, "I decided that I don't want to do the recital." I said, "Oh, that's fine, sweetie. Just tell Maja that when we get there." We walk in the door to Maja's house, Maja greets Willow and then asks, "Are you excited about your guitar recital?" Willow pauses for a couple of seconds, then quietly answers, "Yes."

Much of the credit also goes to the IU Pre-College Program in Guitar, which I cannot recommend highly enough. If you've ever been the victim of a preschool teacher who treats a class concert with all the solemnity and pomp of a major Broadway opening, leaving a path of weeping children with stress ulcers in her wake (and I have been the victim of this, OFTEN), then you, too, would appreciate the calmness and matter-of-factness in which the director of this guitar program ran the recital: small, well-lit concert hall; children who sit with their parents until their turn and then return to their parents immediately afterward; ample applause both before and after; no microphones; and duets with their teachers for all the youngest players. The only telling point that this small concert was actually taking place in a venue of great importance was the niceness of the outside scenery--

--which was perfect for some pre-concert romping:

Ample pre-concert romping is absolutely essential:

Before the concert began, I gave Willow my camera to keep her entertained. This is how she saw her own first guitar recital:

Guitar Music (Willow performed "Little Bunny," as translated from Serbian

and transcribed by her Serbian guitar teacher)

Guitar (held by Daddy)

When Willow's name was called she marched right up to her smiling teacher on stage, played her (terribly dischordant, out of tune, and off-beat, but who cares?) song in duet with her, and marched right back to us again.

It was a miracle.

Fortunately, I am well versed in miracles:

I've made a couple of my own, you know.

Go On! Let the Baby Spray Paint!

What harm can it do? It's not like she going to sneak out after you put her to bed with her lullabies and stuffed lovies and go out to tag the city.

And if she does do that...well, at least she'll have mastered proper spray paint technique. I HATE it when I walk by some graffiti and I see those big splotches with drips coming down, like the tagger accidentally got the spray paint too close to the wall. Amateurs, seriously.

To teach your baby to spray paint, you will need:

• BIG paper. Seriously, spray paint is not a miniature art. We use those big pads of Strathmore drawing paper, but rolls of newsprint would also work awesomely.
• spray paint. 
• a vertical surface, not an easel. An easel just isn't big or vertical enough. Find a clothesline or a fence to clip your paper to, or attach it to the backs of a couple of chairs that you've got outside. You are outside, aren't you? Because you also need to be outside.

1. Show your child where to stand to maintain the proper distance from the paper. This is really important, because it's instinctive, it seems, to want to creep in closer and closer as you work, but that's not how spray painting is properly done. Spray paint a line on the grass for the kid to stay on, perhaps.

2. Depending on how strong your child is, the proper form that you show them for holding the spray paint will vary. Spray paint actually takes a bit of strength to use. Willow, who is five, can easily spray paint by holding the can in both her fists, fingers toward her paper, and depressing the nozzle with both her thumbs together.

3. Set your kid free!

For us, spray painting is a nice large muscle activity, one of those things that it's fun to do when you want to do some art but you're tired of the kid being a couch-lump in the house all day. Because the spray paint doesn't cake up on the paper, the artwork itself also remains a nice background medium for additional artwork. Will turned the particular piece of art that she created on this day into a sign for the craft fair, and it worked very well.

Next I think I'll have her spray paint her name real fancy across the side of the garage.

Four

One

Two

Three

FOUR!!!

Happy Birthday, wonderful, wonderful Sydney. May your year be filled with as many pink doughnuts and toy ponies as any child could wish for.

Spray Paint and Felt Cake: Craft Fair WIPs

Don't even ask me about my foot. I'm clearly going to have to go back to Promptcare tomorrow and have it amputated or something. Did I mention that the girls were playing with my sewing stuff yesterday and made a mess and therefore I stepped on a hand-sewing needle with my bare foot? Blunt end first? And I had to pull it out with my own two hands, although I thought for a minute that I was going to have to get some pliers?

SAME FOOT!!!!

So no, we're not talking about that foot anymore.

In other news, I've been hobbling around getting my butt in gear for the start of craft fair season on Saturday. The beginning of the season is always so panicky--so many signs to make! Change to aquire! Where's the duct tape? The last-minute panic hasn't yet set in, so today was mostly spent making felt cake--

--in large numbers:

Pimping the EZ-UP:

And no, we're also not talking about the sudden rainstorm that's occuring right now on said EZ-Up before the paint can cure. Just swear a few times inside your head for me.

And, of course, if I'M going to spray paint, then so must the child:

The other child was napping, after having screamed the entire walk home from Chocolate Moose about her skinned side. The second that we got home and I put a Band-aid on the skinned side, it was miraculously all better and she stopped screaming. I did not smack her.

And when Matt got home from work and saw that I was NOT lying down with my foot elevated, but instead SPRAY-PAINTING THE EZ-UP and LETTING THE CHILD SPRAY-PAINT and LETTING THE OTHER CHILD NAP IN THE LATE AFTERNOON SO THAT SHE WON'T GO TO SLEEP TONIGHT he didn't smack me, either. In fact, he brought home pizza (such act is entitled "Cooking Dinner on the Nights When Julie Doesn't Cook") AND helped me finish spray-painting AND took a photo of me looking all happy and relaxed:

Wait until he sees how many craft fair signs I need him to design for me tomorrow...

Good Foot vs. Bad Foot, and the Dinosaurs

My feet are making me very unhappy of late:

See that foot on the left? The one that's bigger than the foot on the right now? The one that's all swollen and hurts to walk on and has that huge, red, gross infection on top?

Yeah, I may have to get rid of that foot. It's been a big disappointment recently.

These are better:

I've been up and about more than I should, but even last night, after that darned disappointing foot forced me into bed with Grey Gardens for company, I could still cut out these felt dinos with my foot up. They're for my craft fair season that starts this Saturday, ideally to be joined by many more things to be sewn and done and otherwise manufactured, ideally to be done on two feet that are well and whole and permit me to stand and walk for as long as I want to.

As far as not meeting that ideal...we won't even discuss that.

P.S. Check out my latest posts over at Crafting a Green World--a round-up of DIY business cards (got to get mine done this week...) and a tutorial for repairing a puzzle by making a handmade puzzle piece.

A Rainy Rainbow Day

Turns out that on a stormy day, an indoor rainbow is just as good as an outdoor rainbow.

Rainbow fruit and veggie kabobs:

Also to eat: rainbow goldfish crackers, leftover rainbow M&Ms, and a rainbow of juices (well, except for the blues--turns out there are no blue juices, so for blue we had Hawaiian Punch, and it was a BIG hit!).

Rainbow reading nook:

Also to do: making rainbow edible bracelets out of Froot Loops and stretchy elastic thread, coloring on a mural wall of butcher paper duct-taped up in the living room, running around in the yard and getting muddy and spraying the hose between rain showers, and all of the  toys in the house. Toys are good.

The masterpiece:

And after:

Thrilling, this cake.

The rainbow party kids:

They were excellent party hosts, polite and generous and grateful and friendly. Well, at the exact end point of the party, when my partner was spraying children's feet mud-free with the garden hose, the older kid did throw mud right in his face, but like we always say, if you're not carried screaming hysterically from a party, then you clearly didn't have any fun.

Oh, and she apologized later.

In other news, one of the nice things about throwing a children's party is the plethora of sensible parents who also attend. As I limped barefoot across the front yard, one mom friend asked me why I was limping. I explained to her that I'd managed to puncture the top of my foot with a stick over at the community garden on Wednesday, and it was still red, sore, and swollen. Immediately, I seemed to be surrounded by a swarm of lecturing mothers, under whose close investigation I do come to wonder, myself, at my situation. I mean, I can't put on my shoe! That's probably not good, now that one comes to think about it.

Therefore, as soon as the party finished, I got on the phone with my insurance's nurse help line (she also lectured me), then bullied on the shoes, got in the car, and after only a brief stop at Vintage Phoenix for Free Comic Book Day, I found myself at the walk-in clinic, with a tetanus shot, an antibiotics prescription, and an order to stay in bed with my foot elevated today.

A day in bed?!? It's like Mother's Day came early this year.

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!

Rainbow Party Project #6: Rainbow Cakes Aplenty

Rainbow cake has basically been a week-long project. But yes, I am pleased to tell you that tonight, the night before Rainbow Party Day, the dream has been achieved.

Tonight, on top of the stove, rests a seven-layer cake waiting to be frosted and decorated with M&Ms on the morrow. Its layers, from top to bottom: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Y'all, the rainbow cake is REAL!

But no, you can't see it yet. That would spoil the birthday party surprise!

A LOT of thought went into Rainbow Cake. I toyed with the idea of a straight-on rainbow cake, and was VERY inspired by the rainbow birthday cake over at ChocolateSuze, and her awesome rainbow Mario mushroon cake. But I really, really wanted a rainbow layer cake, and I just almost made the 20-layer rainbow cake, also at ChocolateSuze (I am still ABSOLUTELY going to make that one, just another time...).

Most of the 20-layer cakes that people post online are done with crepes, or otherwise very thin layers. So then I planned to just slice each layer in half horizontally, saving one half of each for a later date, but a very smart mom-friend of mine suggested that instead, I pour a small amount of batter into a regular 8" round pan and just watch it carefully to see when it was done. Done and DONE!

And that's how the rainbow cake was built: plain box of cake mix (on Manager's Special for 86 cents!), one cup of batter taken out and colored and spread into the bottom of an 8" round cake pan, cooked for 15 minutes. Perfect.

The girls, of course, were pillars of strength and sources of unending aid, and they also talked me into making an entire batch--24 cupcakes!--of rainbow cupcakes earlier this week just for them to eat. I'm still not sure what that was all about, but it certainly has not spoiled their taste for rainbow cake any, so it's all good.

And how nice to be able to rest my arm for a few of the 450 strokes called for in the recipe:

She learned to do silly voices while stirring from me.

The food coloring that we used is CRAP for your body--seriously, it's made entirely from high fructose corn syrup and those D&C dyes that make kids super-wild--but it's amazingly vivid, and we love it. And how many times have I told the children NOT to put it into straight into their mouths?

Many times. I have asked them not to do this many times.

We did do old-school rainbow for the cupcakes--yes, it's crazy, I baked a seven-layer rainbow cake and then two dozen rainbow cupcakes (well, I ate three, so 21 rainbow cupcakes), because I INVITE TOO MANY PEOPLE TO PARTIES. I need to feel loved, or something. Sydney helped with the cupcakes, in the most excrutiating manner imaginable:

Seriously, multiply that by seven colors and 24 cupcakes. My soul died an hour before we were done, but the child was filled with bliss, what can you do?

I love the randomness of the color when the cakes are ready to bake:

If we don't have our fill of rainbow edibles by the time this party is over tomorrow, it will NOT be for lack of trying on my part.

One of Many Uses for an Overhead Projector

It's old-school, I know. The overhead projector, as a tool of classroom technology, is so old-school that Matt actually scored this one for free from campus, and I heard a nasty rumor that our local public school district, which is going broke and therefore firing librarians and teachers and cutting world languages and music and nature education, etc., dumped off all its overhead projectors during the city's recent day for free electronic waste disposal.

However, we of this house are THRILLED to have an overhead projector. It is crucial to my future plans to write neatly on the walls in Sharpie (stay tuned), and the kids thoroughly enjoy themselves with transparencies, markers, and huge newsprint pages taped to the wall for muralizing. See thusly:

I use my scanner and inkjet transparency film for my part of the enterprise, and the kids use their awesomeness in telling me what they want me to make for them. So far, in addition to the horse skeleton, we have a map of the spread of horses throughout the world, a United States outline, an outline of the 13 original colonies (I love you, Megamaps!!!), and later tonight I promised to make a transparency of the Greek alphabet.

I know, no rainbow project today! But don't worry--the big kid's rainbow party shorts are waiting for me to add a waistband and bias in purple flannel, and in the stove are rainbow cake layers orange and yellow, while the red layer finishes cooling on the counter before being laid in the freezer. And also?

I found the Hawaiian dude's cover of "Somewhere over the Rainbow." This party is going to be AWESOME!