Tied Tutus for My Two, Too

The plan was to tie some tutus for my tent at Strange Folk, but somehow, amongst the GeoSafari and the gumdrops and bamboo skewers and Magic Tree House and the Mythbusters, only these two tutus for my two got tied:

Gotta have your priorities, you know.

Strange Little Busy Bees

What have I been busy doing? Why, getting ready for Strange Folk! Many, many things have to be done before next weekend.

Have to put together the chia in a cup kits.
Have to water the cups o' chia already planted.
Have to water the dinosaur garden, as well:

Have to make signage.
Have to make record bowls.
Have to find the Pumpkin+Bear business card stamp.
Have to read some tongue twisters:

Have to sew colored pencil rolls.
Have to sew an I Spy quilt.
Have to tie, not sew, some tutus.
Have to tie some tutus for my two, too:

Have to put together an I Spy quilt kit.
Have to put together the clothespin doll kits.
Have to put together the color-your-own bunting kits.
Have to color an example, so everyone knows how cute they come:

Have to figure out a Barbie dress pattern.
Have to figure out a balancing butterfly pattern.
Have to get that toy fossil triceratops out of its slate prison!

Have to bake the crayon pops.

Have to go get some geodes.
Have to drill holes in colored pencils.

Have to take pictures on a sunny day.

Have to play Quirkle when it's cloudy:

At this rate, have to have a margarita tonight after the little pumpkinbears are sleeping.

Beware the Terrible Cat Monster

Willow is terrified of all feature films. Whether they be adventure or comedy, cartoon or live-action, she hates them.

This is tiresome, and has fairly ruined Family Movie Night.

Recently, my Matt had the idea that, since Willow mainly watches documentaries, perhaps she just doesn't understand the concept of acting. In the nature programs, when the lion chases the gazelle and the gazelle runs in fear, it's cause the gazelle is about to be actually eaten, you know, but when the hound chases the fox and the fox runs in fear in The Fox and the Hound, nobody's going to get eaten, and yet Willow finds this scene, especially watching the victim's fear, VERY upsetting.

And don't even get me started about how hard she sobbed watching the old lady dump the fox off in the nature preserve. What is up with you and your childhood abandonment issues, Disney war machine?

And that's why in their free time Matty and the girlies are making themselves a movie.

I am uninvolved in the process, but it apparently involves script-writing, costuming, the foster kittens, the whole shebang.

Here's a clip from the dailies:

Stay tuned for the trailer.

Another Page in Sydney's Scrapbook

Save the Date!

Blue Celery

Willow was given a science workbook, and in that science workbook she found perhaps the most ubiquitous science experiment among all science experiments: celery and colored water.

You will need:

• leafy celery. This was actually hard to find, since it seems that most grocery celeries have the leaves cut off--my theory is that the leaves begin to spoil before the stalks, and so impedes the celery's shelf life. Next spring, we may try to grown our own leafy celery for science experiments.
• liquid food coloring. For cooking and baking, I use professional-quality food coloring gel or paste, but liquid food coloring is often the best for crafting.
• clear glass. We used a Mason jar.

1. Remove a leafy celery stalk from the rest of the bunch, and cut off the bottom half-inch or so with a sharp knife. I cut my stalk at a diagonal, to expose more of the stalk to the water.

2. Fill the glass jar 1/3 to 1/2 full of water, and dye it a dark color with several drops of food coloring. Blue and purple and even a dark red work well:

3. Set the celery stalk in the water, and let it sit all day.

As the celery stalk sits in the water, it acts like any plant, in that it draws water up into its leaves. Because this water is colored, very gradually, over the course of several hours, you will begin to notice spots of color in the leaves as the colored water reaches it. Over time, these spots of color will become larger and more numerous:

If you have a microscope, you can cut a thin slice off of the celery stalk to examine, and also a section of the smallest and thinnest of the leaves. The leaf section is especially dramatic at around 600x, at which magnification you can see the cells, but also very clearly the veins through which the blue water is traveling, now set apart from the green leaf in blue.

And now you may add to your mental picture of what our messy living room table looks like, a jar of celery sitting in colored water, for this experiment apparently often bears repeating.

Remembering

One-Two-Three-Star!

Sydney gets very, VERY frustrated when she wants to draw or write something particular and can't quite manage it. Watching her throw a tantrum each time she tried to draw a star, for instance, would have been hilarious if it wasn't so pitiful. So I made her a dot-to-dot--

--and now she can draw a star.

More Wallpaper on the Wall

Buntings are on my mind for some reason. Here's my newest vintage wallpaper bunting in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, made with my much-treasured vintage wallpaper and my much-, much-treasured vintage beads:

While I'm on the subject, I also have in mind buntings made from comic books, buntings made from dictionary pages, buntings made from Shakespeare, and child-decorated buntings.

I like where this is going.

Gumdrops. On a Stick!

There's always room for another building toy, especially if that toy is sharp and/or full of high fructose corn syrup.

So you take some gumdrops, and you take some bamboo skewers, and you stick the bamboo skewers in the gumdrops--

--and you make stuff!

The gumdrops are sticky on the inside, so they hold the skewers really well, but they're also gummy, so they're very forgiving if you want to change the angle of a certain skewer or fit it somewhere just a little different from where you'd originally intended.

We all had a lot of fun with this, and several massive creations resulted:

Another interesting point is that these structures sort of tell you how to build them as you go. For instance, Will made a vertical triangle, then stuck a skewer straight across from the top of the triangle, but it wouldn't stay. So she tried sticking a skewer straight down from the end of that triangle, but it was too long. So she build another vertical triangle to hold that opposite end of the skewer, which held it up, but the whole structure kept tilting, so she connected the two vertical triangles with skewers at both ends of their bases--

...and so on and so on, the engineering skills building apace.

As for Syd's obsession, have any of you ever read the Tripod trilogy of young adult novels?

Shudder.

Tough Choices

Would you rather paint?

Or snuggle the foster kittens?

You're free to do both, of course:

In other news, we're having an excellent weekend.

Prima Ballerina

Someone likes her brand-new ballet class uniform:

We had to purchase the uniform (and holy cow, that stuff is expensive!), but the "sparkly big pink tutu" that Sydney has requested? I can make that baby myself.

And maybe a matching one for me?

Pumpkin+Bear Paper+Dolls

Fortunately today was bright and sunny and happy and pleasant, so after a looong morning running errands--Learning Treasures for blank slides, slide covers, elastic cording, and the tiny plastic animals that the girls generally spend their allowance on; Hobby Lobby for adhesive cardstock and science magnets; Kroger for a passel of groceries, including nutritional yeast, soy creamer, and celery with the leaves on (another experiment in the making); and Costume Delights for one x-small youth ballet outfit--Willow found herself crashed out on the couch, reading a Black Stallion book and listening to the Oklahoma! soundrack, and Sydney and I found ourselves out in the front yard, conducting a photo shoot for the felt paper doll set in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

I'm not in love with the white felt background, but...eh. You do your best and you call it good.

I've got some pretty cool vintage wallpaper buntings to also list this weekend, and possibly more cut-out pinbacks, but I've also got tomatoes to buy and then can, and pesto and cookies to make, and a celery experiment to conduct, and some jingle bells to string on elastic cording, and some more antibiotics to beg out of the Humane Society for the foster kittens, so we'll see what I get done.

Whatever it is, though, I'll call it good.

Paper Dolls, Only They're not Made of Paper

It seems as if the girls have been everywhere this week, and I along with them--microscope, books, beads, playground, library, playdates, Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, hearts, glue, macaroni, butterflies,  Schoolhouse Rocks, markers, workbooks, rubber bands, guitar...get the idea?

I've dreamed about these felt playsets for a long while, but it seemed as if I put them together in fifteen-minute increments for almost as long as that. A few minutes of cutting, interspersed with helping a daughter over a sticky moment in a computer game, interspersed with a few minutes of cutting, then taking a break to bake yet another batch of vegan sugar cookies, and eventually--

--the paper doll felt playset gets created, piece by tiny piece.

My goal is to take many better shots of this playset tomorrow, to share here and on etsy and for craft fair signage, but since I also need to buy elastic cord so to make jingle bell anklets with the girls and a ballet outfit for Sydney to wear to class next week, and make the long-promised oatmeal cookies and the recently-desired mini-pretzel cookies, and read The Black Stallion and another Nancy Drew and however many other chapter books Willow has managed to devour recently, well...

We'll see.

Have You Climbed a Tree Lately?

She has!

Tutorial: Beaded Ribbon Necklace for She of Little Patience

Beading a necklace is actually a bit of a commitment.

I have beads and the kiddos have beads (actually, some of their beads are better than my beads, but who compares Christmas presents?), and they often like to do stuff with their beads. Who wouldn't? They're colorful!

Gluing beads all over something is cool, but beading an entire necklace, especially a necklace long enough that they can slip over their heads in order to dress themselves independently, is along the lines of "death do you part" for the under-7 set.

But you know what they say--tantrums are the mother of invention. That's how I invented this project that will turn any amount whatsoever of beaded strand into a beautiful, wearable necklace.

You will need:

• beading cord. We use plain old fishing line.
• beads and baubles--anything with a hole in the middle
• ribbon
• super glue--we use E6000

1. Give each kid enough fishing line in case she strings enough beads for an entire necklace. Tie a bead firmly to one end of the length of line.

2. Let the kids string beads to their hearts' content. I give each of my girlies one of their compartmentalized plates to work on--it gives them a couple of compartments to sort beads, and the largest compartment generally catches the odd dropped bead, IF they work over it (big if, I know).

3. Once the kid gets bored, have her give you back the line with whatever amount of beads that she's strung. Measure out the length of line that she has unbeaded, minus two inches, and match that, plus two inches, with ribbon. You're adding four total inches to the necklace's measurement, do you get it?

4. Use that extra inch of line and extra inch of ribbon on each side of the lengths to tie the two together. Try to make your knot on each side snug against the beaded line--if you make it perfect, the necklace will actually look like the beads have been strung on the ribbon itself. Kinda cool-ish.

5. Trim the extra ribbon and line sticking out from each knot so that it looks neat and tidy.

6. For extra insurance, coat both knots with super glue, then let dry for a day.

Because she just wasn't enough of a fairy princess already?

Tutorial: A Watercolor Crown Fit for a Princess

Lately, Sydney has gotten into the habit of poring over magazines and the few catalogues that we get, at every page pointing to something and saying, "I want that!"

"I want the shirt that's just like that, only I want it to be a dress, with ruffles at the bottom."

"I want leggings like that, but I want the shoes on that other girl."

"I want those fairy wings for my dress-up, only I want them rainbow. And I want a rainbow wand to go with it."

Of course, I always tell her that we'll either make what she wants or we can save up for it or remember it the next time that she needs shoes, etc., but the other day when she showed me a girl on the cover of a magazine, wearing a jewel-encrusted crown, I thought, "Aha! We can make THAT right now!"

And so we did.

You will need:

• scrap typing paper
• large-format Strathmore watercolor paper. You really do need that big size, because it's long enough to fit all the way around the baby's head.
• cloth measuring tape
• pencil
• ruler
• scissors
• watercolor supplies
• white glue
• beads and shells and glitter
• clear packing tape

1. The typing paper's length is a good length for the front of your crown, where the major decorative elements will be. Turning the typing paper landscape, draw the front of your crown. Sydney and I did some drawings freehand, and some making use of cookie cutters as templates. An attractive crown makes use of cut-outs, and it can get nice and tall.

Cut out the crown front when you're finished--that's your template.

2. Measure around the baby's head--that number is also the length of the crown. It's just made of paper, so don't bother leaving room for growth. You can always make a new one in a few months!

3. Also laying the large-format watercolor paper landscape, measure out the length of the crown. Center the crown front template in the middle of the length, and trace it onto the watercolor paper.

Between the crown front and the ends of each side, draw the crown's band about two inches wide.

4. Cut out your crown.

5. Decorate the crown with watercolor paints, and then let dry.

6. Using ample white glue, glue on all the decorative components that your heart desires--beads, shells, glitter, macaroni, etc.

And when you're done...

You're a princess!

Squeaky

What do you think is the first thing that Willow wanted to do after she got her leg cast cut off?

Isn't that the first thing that you'd want to do, too?

What Can't You Do with a Broken Leg?

You might have thought that a broken leg would slow my girl down:

Nope. Supervising my kids will still earn you a free heart attack, no proof of purchase required.

P.S. By the time I blog tomorrow, a certain little girl that I know of will be absent one twelve-pound holiday-themed fashion accessory. Stay tuned...