There's a New Play Dough Size in Town!

And by "town," I mean my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, of course.

I'm running out of my current stock of containers that I've been using for my 1-pound play dough listings for years, so the other day I bought some new containers that said they were 16 ounces. It turns out that either I don't know what 16 ounces is, OR that my play dough is so fluffy that it defies common standards of weight and measure, because these guys only hold TWELVE ounces of my super soft, super fluffy, dye- and fragrance-free homemade play dough!

Oh, well. Guess I've got a new Pumpkin+Bear listing, then!

You can still buy my play dough in its original 1-pound containers for a little longer, and at some point I'll get back to the big restaurant supply store to experiment with a new container, but I'll keep around these 12-ounce guys, too:

I do need to test how much of my dyed play dough will fit in these containers, though, yikes. My dyed play dough is EVEN FLUFFIER than my dye-free play dough!

P.S. Want to make my absolute best play dough yourself? Here's my recipe!

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Tutorial: Make a Favorite Quote Bookmark

I first wrote this tutorial for Crafting a Green World way back in 2014.

Even if you’ve got a favorite passage from a favorite book, you don’t have to go through the trouble of cutting up that favorite book just to make a bookmark out of it.

Instead, make your bookmark even more special by using your own handwriting to write out that favorite quote on upcycled paper. Whether your handwriting is awesome or ugly, Tolkien’s best is still the most meaningful when written in your own hand.

To begin, source out a truly special piece of upcycled cardstock-weight paper; the back of the bookmark will remain unembellished, so this is a nice place to use an old record album cover that has a lovely graphic, or the box that contains your favorite brand of granola.

If you don’t mind the back of your bookmark being blank, you can use an old file folder, and if you want total creative control even over the back of your bookmark, you can sand down even an existing graphic and paint or embellish it however you’d like.

I think the most pleasing dimensions for a bookmark are 2″x6″, but, of course, the dimensions of your own bookmark are up to you. Measure out your favorite dimensions and cut the bookmark out by hand, or make yourself a template so that you can make tons of bookmarks for everyone in your life who has ever wanted a bookmark.

Using a miniature hole punch, you can either punch the hole at the top of your bookmark before you write your quote or after. You might like to punch your hole before, so that you don’t punch through any of your writing later; I like to punch after, so that my writing doesn’t get misaligned by trying to avoid that hole.

The most important part of this bookmark, however, is the writing! Choose a pen or pencil that is archivally safe, if you don’t want your writing to fade over time–it’ll happen more quickly than you think! I like to use a black Flair pen, but if you’re feeling extra fancy, calligraphy is always an option.

If you want the entirety of a particular passage on your bookmark, practice it in advance in the approximate space. Otherwise, you can just continue until your space runs out. I write pretty small, and I was able to write just about one entire page from a paperback on the particular bookmark in the photo above.

To make the bookmark’s tassel, cut twice the length of the bookmark from embroidery thread or yarn, then thread it through the hole punch and tie it around the top of the bookmark. Knot the ends of each thread and yarn piece so that it doesn’t unravel.

The only problem with this bookmark is that whenever I’m reading a book that’s NOT Harry Potter (it happens less often than you’d think…), glancing at my bookmark as I find my place always makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read Harry Potter again.

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How to Make a Comic Book Bookmark

I originally wrote this tutorial for Crafting a Green World way back in 2017.

Don’t you dare dog-ear that book! That’s what bad people do.

To make it even easier to not deface great works of literature, you can make yourself a set of bookmarks out of my *other* favorite genre of reading, the comic book. Comic books or any other upcycled papers, are easy to turn into sturdy, fun, useful bookmarks. Here’s how:

1. Source some comic books. My local comic book shop has a back room full of comic books that are a quarter each. There are no diamonds to be found in this rough, you can be sure, but it’s pretty easy to find a bad comic book featuring your favorite characters (you can’t tell how 70s corny Tony Stark is drawn if he’s in his Iron Man suit!), or a comic book so awful that it’s awesome again (those dinosaur mercenaries *might* have seemed cool to kids, but they also dated strippers, soooo… yeah) there. 

Another great place to find comic books is any garage sale, anywhere, and that’s also where you can find other great books that would also make good bookmarks. Seriously, wouldn’t you love a bookmark made from a page from Sweet Valley High? Or that Harry Potter with its cover ripped off? It needs to be made into bookmarks!

2. Fussy cut bookmark fronts. On a piece of scratch cardboard, draw a simple rectangle that’s about 2″x6″. Cut it out, round the corners if you’d like, and use it as a template to trace and cut out bookmark fronts.

Cut outside the lines of the bookmark fronts, and you’ll be able to neatly trim them after they’re attached to the bookmark backs.

3. Adhere the bookmark fronts to cardstock backs. The quickest, easiest method is to stick the bookmark fronts to adhesive-backed cardstock, then cut inside the lines of the bookmark to cut out the complete bookmark, front and back together.

You’ll have more options for cardstock, however, if you use glue or adhesive spray. You could use the cardboard from cereal boxes or other food packaging, record album covers, file folders, or anything with cardstock consistency that will give the needed sturdiness to the paper bookmark fronts.

Once the fronts and backs of the bookmarks are attached, and you’ve given enough time, if needed, for any adhesive to dry, cut just inside the lines of the bookmark front to neatly trim both front and back together.

4. Add a tassel. Use a hole punch with a small diameter to punch a hole in the top center of the bookmark, then add a tassel. Options for the tassel include embroidery floss, yarn, twine, necklace chains, or strips cut from T-shirts or plastic grocery bags.

No matter the material you use, cut it to twice the length of the bookmark, thread it through the hole, then double knot it at the top of the bookmark. Pieces such as embroidery floss or yarn will also need to be knotted at the other end to keep them from unraveling.

5. Seal the front? Maybe! If you’re worried about the fact that your bookmark front is likely made from a non-archival material, you may choose to seal it. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though.

I think it’s better to have too many bookmarks rather than too few, so make as many of these bookmarks as you’d like, and to get buy-in from the kids, be sure to make some bookmarks out of their favorite things, too–that’s how our bookmark collection now includes Harry Potter, Thor and Iron Man, Garfield, G.I. Joe, Sherlock Holmes, and Spider-man.

And I'm always on the lookout for a super beat-up copy of The Hunger Games, if you've got one!

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I Want To Smoosh This Rainbow Unicorn Pillow Into My Face While I Scream

From happiness, of course! Because LOOK at it!

This pillow was a birthday present for my niece, who is at the perfect age for rainbow unicorns, and whose bedroom, when I visited this summer, looked like a rainbow unicorn threw up all over it, but in, like, the best of ways. 

My bedroom looks like a 1980s yard sale had a fight with a tornado and they both took turns throwing up afterwards. I should dust, and I really should declutter.

So I knew I wanted to sew the kid something rainbow unicorn (I got the feeling from looking at her bedroom that anything from Disney or having to do with construction equipment would also work, but I was really personally feeling the rainbow unicorn vibes), but it took a while to settle on what I wanted to make. Maybe a little unicorn stuffie with a rainbow yarn mane? A much bigger unicorn stuffie with a tubby little tummy VERY stuffed with fluffies? This hat is stinking adorable, but I JUST finished using up almost all the fleece in my fabric stash and I loathe the idea of collecting more. I didn't feel like learning paper piecing for this project, but it was seriously getting on my nerves that all the paper piecing rainbow unicorn projects were so pretty!

I kept coming back to this Lisa the Unicorn quilt block pattern, and eventually I convinced myself that it wouldn't be as tricky to piece as it looked, and that its giant (26"x26"!) size would work as a giant decorative pillow after the big kid pointed out that this is literally the standard Euro pillow size that she's used on her bed for years and the last time I bought her a new pillow didn't I bitch that I could only buy them in packs of two and so I'd just have a second big-ass pillow kicking around my linen closet for years on end?

My memory is NOT a steel trap, but I do tend to at least vaguely recall my bitchiest moments, so I did sort of remember the entire bitchfest that was shopping for the kid's first college stuff. I checked Amazon, and indeed, back in 2022, just in time for college dorm shopping, I did buy two ridiculously big-ass 26"x26" pillows (See? I even remember the content of my bitching!), and when I dug back into the dark depths of my linen closet I DID find a brand-new 26"x26" pillow insert still in its packaging. I also found a brand-new throw pillow insert in a packaging meant for two that I have NO memory of what I could have possibly done with the first pillow, but now I can make the big kid a cute throw pillow cover for the couch in her college apartment, and omg I have so much room in my linen closet!

I had a LOT of help picking out the rainbow unicorn colors of the mane--

 

--and I think this is the first project in which I've actually had to label all my pieces to keep them straight:

Although I'm sure it actually didn't, it felt like cutting out all the pieces took a LOT longer than it did to sew them all together. The piecing felt like it went really quickly, and it came together so nicely!

It took long enough, though, that while I worked I watched almost the entire first season of Vikings, before deciding I didn't really like it all that much and bailed, so then I rediscovered a long-ago old favorite, the Double Love podcast, so I sewed all the rest of my unicorn listening to Jessica's machinations and Elizabeth's justifiable dithering over whether or not she actually even likes Todd:

Just between us, Todd deserves better, and I don't even like him!

Fortunately, it was summer when I sewed this, so I had my living captives adult children home and could make them come admire every new part I pieced. It just kept getting cuter and cuter!

Here it is completely pieced and ready to quilt! I was stoked to use stash batting leftover from my flannel foster kid quilt, but ugh, I really need to find a nice, big bolt of a good cotton-poly blend batting that I can just pull from forever. Lmk if you ever run across a good sale!

And here she is all quilted and ready to be sewn into a pillow cover! I don't like the look of a lot of quilting, but just between us I probably should have put at least one more line of quilting, maybe some stitch in the ditch, in the unicorn's face. Hopefully it won't fall apart after a few washes...

Every summer, a few random and stupid things around our house break, and it always takes us FOREVER to fix them. One year, it was the dryer. One year, it was the oven. One memorable year, it was the entire fucking roof. We've had summers of multi-day power outages and summers in which one car or another just would not stay working. Anyway, this summer it's the riding lawnmower AND the dryer. Working in concert and only spending about twice as much money as we probably needed to, my partner and I finally got the riding lawnmower fixed-ish, provided you agree that stripping a couple of wires, twisting them together, and wrapping the whole thing in electric tape is "fixed," but guess what still isn't working?

Tbh I'm not personally even that mad because hanging laundry to dry is eco-friendly and makes it smell awesome, but the kids were beyond over it by the end of the summer, and probably the only kids at their colleges excited to get back to school so they could do laundry. 

At some point before the weather really kicks in I'm going to have to buckle down and watch one thousand How To Repair Your Electric Dryer YouTube videos, but that day was not this day, and so Lisa the Rainbow Unicorn got to dry prettily on a line in my front yard:

My partner didn't know this so you might not either, but quilting is supposed to be wrinkly and scrunchy after the first wash. Those scrunches are what make it comfy!

And then she got to put her pillow on and pose prettily in that same front yard!

I am so pleased with how she turned out! The instructions were, indeed, complicated, and I highlighted a lot and checked steps off as I completed them, but if you followed them carefully, nearly everything comes out perfectly and all your seams line up just where they should. 

I'd like to make another Lisa the Unicorn as a wall hanging, perhaps with a colorway of blacks and greys, but that's currently pretty far down my list. First I've got to embellish hoodies with the name of the kid's school done in patchwork for her and her best college buddies, then make the other kid a throw pillow, then I need some new pajama pants since that's all I seem to wear these days so I might as well lean into it, and then this ghost patchwork quilt is honest to god SHOUTING my name at me, and then by that time I'll probably have thrifted a couple more hoodies that I can put patchwork ghosts on, too, and by that time I'll need to be thinking about sewing Christmas presents for people.

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Want to Have Nightmares for a Week? Read This Book about the Johnstown Flood

Last December, the big kid and I fulfilled her childhood Junior Ranger dream of stopping by the Johnstown Flood National Memorial on the way to pick her little sister up from college. The sun was setting as we walked around the site of the former Lake Conemaugh, just east of the former South Fork Dam. In the distance is the former Unger homestead, with the national park site's visitor center next to it.

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Johnstown Flood was an absolute literal living nightmare OMG. This book was so scary that I actually had to put it down for the night a couple of different times, because reading about such abject terror and such mass destruction does not make for easy slumber.

McCullough really leans into the terror, too, with lots of retellings of harrowing first-person accounts--I just wish that he’d included footnotes, because I’d be interested in sourcing and reading some of these for myself as a way to honor the victims.

The Johnstown Flood National Memorial Visitor Center contains this terrifying display of what flood survivor Victor Heiser experienced. At just sixteen, his last memory of his father was him standing in their home's second-story window, gesturing for Victor to get back in the barn. Victor obeyed, and climbed through the barn's brand-new trapdoor to the roof, an innovation that his father had recently installed for no particular reason. From his viewpoint on the barn roof, he saw his family home crushed by the flood, and then the barn came unmoored and Victor had to stay on top of it while it raged down the river. He was his family's only survivor.

I love that McCullough especially highlighted the heroes of the story--the train engineer who essentially raced the flood, blowing his whistle to give the residents the only warning most of them were to get, the people who stopped in their flight to help others, the rescue and aid workers and private citizens who helped with the cleanup and recovery. I’m still thinking about six-year-old Gertrude Quinn, and the total stranger, Maxwell McAchren, who jumped into the flood not even because he had a way to rescue her, but literally just to be with her. They floated down the raging river until they got close to a house that was still standing at the edge of the water, with other total strangers hanging out the window trying to rescue people. One of the strangers shouted at McAchren to “throw them the baby,” he somehow did so, and a guy named Henry Koch managed to catch her by lunging so far out the window that another guy, George Skinner, had to hold him by the legs. McAchren continued floating down the flooded river alone, but happily he, too, survived.

The sign in the foreground states that we're at the approximate level of Lake Conemaugh before the flood that broke the dam, and to the left is the top of the former South Fork Dam just a few feet higher than the lake level. The dam was also allowed to wear down and sag in the center to make a weak point, and a former owner had disassembled, removed, and sold off the pipes that were previously used to lower the water level. Add to that the fact that the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club blocked the spillway by installing both a bridge and fish guards to keep the fish they'd stocked in the lake from escaping, and the break seems completely inevitable.

Okay, I just discovered that Gertrude Quinn Slater wrote her own book about the Johnstown Flood! I am currently trying to get Internet Archive to generate an epub of it as I write, but I’m sorry to tell you that it’s not going well.

There were a lot fewer flood artifacts than I thought there would be, but this was one of them.

At first, shortly after finishing the book, I was irritated that McCullough didn’t write more about the South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club and the consequences the members faced, etc., but I finally got it through my head that this is because… there weren’t really any? They just kind of all… got away with criminal negligence? So much for Eat the Rich, I guess!

Here’s the thing that I REALLY do not understand, though--why does everyone not know about this? Why didn’t we study it in school? It would have been a terrific addition to the unit on American Industrialization and the development of factories and classism in the 1800s, etc. I only knew about the flood because my older kid was flat-out obsessed with earning Junior Ranger badges when she was little, and the Johnstown Flood National Memorial was a badge she could earn by mail, so we did our own DIY unit study of it (including a trip to visit our own local dam and spillway--they look sturdy and sound, thank goodness!), and what we learned during that study was so ghastly and shocking and downright bonkers that we’ve never stopped talking about it. And I do not understand why EVERYBODY is not constantly talking about it! It was so famous at the time, and now it’s just… not? In 2137, if we’re not in our full on zombie apocalypse Mad Max era, are people no longer going to remember anything about 9/11? Crazy how the memory of human suffering can just dissipate like that.

We're looking across the former Lake Conemaugh, with the former South Fork Dam to the left. You can also see the creek that was dammed there in the middle.

P.S. View all my reviews.

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If You Didn't Go to a Mumford and Sons Concert, Was It Even Summer?

Spoiler alert: no. 

I think that loving music must be at least partially genetic, because both my younger kid and I LOVE music. LOVE it, which I used to think was the default setting for all of humanity, until I met my partner, who has never once purposefully listened to a song for pleasure. And our older kid is the same. When she was little I thought that she did love music, because she was all about They Might Be Giants and Victor Johnson, but what she was actually doing was listening over and over again to the They Might Be Giants album Here Comes Science, which is all about science stuff, and the Victor Johnson album Multiplication and Skip Counting Songs, which is all about math.  

But to be fair, if you've ever listened to that Victor Johnson album, you'll understand that all the songs on it are indeed bangers!

Oh, and this obscure 2002 SteveSongs album. We still put this on occasionally and we all STILL know all the words!

Anyway, I think that happy willingness to engage in a non-preferred activity must also be genetic, because both the younger kid and I pout our heads off if we're not doing exactly what we want literally every second of every day, but my partner and older kid are happily willing, even if they don't give a flip about the music, to simply pal along with me and the younger kid to all the sweaty, rainy, uncomfortable outdoor concerts that, in my eyes, define summer:

Thanks to getting there super early and standing in line forever, we got lawn seats right at the front for this Mumford and Sons concert. We spread our butts out as much as possible to hold our ground, but people didn't really cram in like they should, so after the opening act, when I saw a couple meandering down the aisle in front of the lawn section and peering into the crowd, I was all, "Those two are about to bogart themselves a spot. Do NOT let them push you back!"

Indeed, the couple pointed at us and then made a beeline over, and ended up squeezing themselves into the six square inches between our blanket and the blanket behind us. It's definitely one way to avoid having to get to the concert early! Anyway, we're pretty mean and judgmental when you can't hear us, so we have discussed this couple numerous times since then, and there's always something new and rude for us to chew over. So I guess they did in the end pay the mandatory emotional fee for sitting next to us! The family on our left put the younger kid with them under their own giant umbrella when it began to bucket down rain, and the couple on our right gave the older kid their spare pair of Loops because she was in such obvious discomfort by the third song of the opening act. So see, getting roasted in absentia for two full months is practically nothing!

OMG that rain. In all my outdoor concertgoing life, only once has it ever not rained on me! Last year, when we got evacuated to a storm shelter over a mile away on foot, was absolutely the worst, and at least this time we didn't have to leave the venue, but omg did it absolutely pour. 

Whatever. I will sit on a blanket hunched over like a dog suffering through any amount of rain, as long as afterwards, Mumford and Sons plays for me!

My partner took all the photos and videos so I could enjoy the concert, and he happened to be filming during "Ditmas" when Marcus Mumford left the stage, ran through the audience right next to us, and I lost my mind with happiness:

I love it when musicians make an effort to give those of us with the plebeian tickets something special, too, and this was honestly one of the coolest concert moments I've ever experienced. Like, I don't think he even had a path set out ahead of time, or a plan--he was dodging picnic blankets and slipping in the mud and I don't know how his lighting and security guys kept up with him. It was the BEST.

After the concert, a kind stranger saw me struggling to take a family selfie and offered to take it for me. I LOVE how it turned out, even though you can't see us at all, lol:

Because if you don't take a terrible family photo while you're all soaked and bedraggled from sitting outside during a rainstorm, muddy from standing in a wet field for four hours, and anticipating the midnight fast food stop in your immediate future, was it even summer?

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When in LA, You Must Observe an Octopus and Eat a Doughnut

At least, that's what you must do if you're in LA with me!

Aquariums don't photograph well, so I have to make memories with my brain and not my camera, ugh. Not that there's room in my brain for additional memories what with all the 1980s TV theme songs I've got memorized, but whatever. I did my best!

Nevertheless, I did get a few good shots at the Aquarium of the Pacific:

The kids and I were ALL about these embossing stations for our aquarium guidebooks. It was like a little Junior Ranger activity!

We were OBSESSED with the octopuses. They're so beautiful, and they always seemed so busy!

This kid will NEVER pass up a toddler activity. 

There's her axolotl swimming around on the big screen!

I was also personally pretty obsessed with this Giant Japanese Spider Crab. Its legs are so spindly, and it can grow to be 12 feet!

The only thing the big kid likes better than a toddler activity is a touch tank.

This is the first time that I have EVER encountered a jellyfish touch tank! It was even kind of tucked away in a back area away from the crowds, as if a jellyfish touch tank isn't the coolest thing in the zoo?!?

We touched ALL the jellyfish.

I've only ever seen sand dollars washed up on the beach. I had no idea that they're fuzzy!

We spent most of an hour watching this California Twospot Octopus bop around busily in its tank. 

Considering that we'd gotten to the Aquarium of the Pacific right when it opened, leaving mid-afternoon was a pretty good run, but still, we were only able to convince the big kid to come away with us by reminding her that the next item on our agenda was a DIY food tour of the Long Beach area. I didn't keep track of everywhere we went since we were navigating by committee, but check out my delicious spicy machaca burrito with endless pours of jamaica on the side:

Parking in Long Beach is MISERABLE, but we found a doughnut shop where we could park at a laundromat down the block and sneak over in case there are, like, laundromat parking police--which I'm sure there are! You can't tell by the look of it, but each of us ordered one single doughnut at this shop:

I don't know if they were about to close or the doughnut dude was just overstocked or what, but for each of us, he put our doughnut in its baggy, then literally poured doughnut holes in until each bag was crammed full. They only don't look crammed full in the above photo because we'd been stuffing ourselves with doughnut holes as fast as we could before I remembered that I wanted a photo.

Did we leave room for In-n-Out?

Nope, but we still did our best!

Is the most cliched California experience spending sunset on the beach, your tummy full from In-n-Out?

Probably not, but that's what feels the most like California to me!

Don't worry, because we DID follow our tradition the next day of having the most miserable experience traveling home from vacation. Why does flying home always suck SO badly and in such unique ways? I had a panic attack on my first (and last!) Southwest flight when people kept telling me the seat next to them was saved for literally every single available seat--apparently, you're just supposed to sit down anyway because you can't actually save seats on Southwest, but I did not know that so I just wandered up and down the aisle having flashbacks to lunchtime at my first day in junior high, when I ALSO couldn't find anyone who'd let me sit with them. AND you don't get movies, which I guess is fine because I had my nook but I wanted to read my nook AND watch a movie. But then there was bad weather at our layover airport so we had to go to a different airport, but there wasn't actually room for us at that airport so they wouldn't let us off the plane and we just sat on their runway for two hours. You know what would have made that way more bearable? A movie! After that, we waited another hour to refuel and then flew back to the now super crowded layover airport where we thankfully got squeezed onto the last flight of the night, which was a redeye, so instead of getting home at 8 the previous evening we got home at 6 the next morning and we all went straight to bed.

Each vacation's uniquely miserable return experience is probably the universe's way of making sure I'm happy to be home!

And here's the rest of our trip!

• Day 1: Cabrillo National Monument
• Day 2: Palomar Observatory and Borrego Springs sculptures
• Day 3: San Diego Zoo
• Day 4: Maritime Museum and Somali food
• Day 5: Sea lions and San Diego Padres
• Day 6: La Brea Tar Pits and Beverly Hills
• Day 7: Aquarium of the Pacific and a DIY food tour

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