Animal, Vegetable, Two Kids? Unpredictable

I think I've mentioned before (many times) that neither Matt nor I are either able or willing cooks, that I have caused numerous kitchen fires, that Matt has never caused a kitchen fire mostly because he confines himself to boiling tortellini and grilling things on his wee little George Foreman, that things that I make generally turn out weird and even though I know exactly why this happens (in a madcap manner, I make healthier and apparently unworkable substitutions, and I treat all amounts and times as approximate), I can't seem to stop myself from keeping on doing it...

Y'all, this book is gonna change my life

Barbara Kingsolver is awesome, and if you haven't read her before, read The Bean Trees: A Novel and The Poisonwood Bible, too, but first read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Sure, the premise is cool--she and her family eat locally for a year, growing a huge garden, befriending local farmers, raising chickens and turkeys for eggs and meat, learning to make cheese, etc.--but it is all integrated within a larger discussion of the ethics of food production, food transportation, food pricing, in just a clear-headed, evocative, plain-spoken manner.

If anything can inspire me to cook at all, much less locally, this book can.

Of course, I obviously ran right out to Bloomingfood's with the girls to buy some wholesome, locally grown produce, and of course the prices nearly knocked the food ethic right out of me. I mean yeah, we try to eat healthfully and organically, but we're also totally dirt poor--we buy organic milk just for the girls because I don't want them to go through puberty at age seven, and I was thanking god that the College Mall Kroger's put in a big, swanky natural foods section so that I could buy bulk nutritional yeast and rolled oats without having to save up. The smack end of the growing season, and Bloomingfood's, was possibly not the best place for a dirt-poor family of four to begin their locavore adventure: I ended up with two locally grown tomatoes, four apples, some milk, and some cheese.

And, um, a sprouting jar? Don't even ask, cause I. Don't. Know.

Anyway, at least when we got home it was a fine afternoon for a change, so I got a chance to rake what used to be here----over the tops of my brand-new lasagna garden beds (although the prospect of the leaf vacuuming team driving by and sucking up all my lasagna beds, which are near the road, is DESTROYING me!), and the girls got to goof around outside a little:
Then, in honor of Barbara Kingsolver, I did not turn to the girls and say, "Peanut butter or cheese? Name two fruits or vegetables," which is how, um, I usually feed them. Instead, we made a whole wheat pizza crust from scratch and, praise be (or perhaps it was the salt and soda I snuck in), the mess actually rose this time, and we all got our own quadrant of deliciousness to decorate: Yummy looking, right? Things like that don't usually come out of our kitchen. Syd did up her lower left quadrant in mozzarella, grape tomatoes, brussels sprouts, and one artichoke; Will did hers in brussels sprouts, one tomato, and one artichoke, Matt had all tomato, and I had pepperjack (local, thank you very much) and artichoke.

And oranges are for making faces with: P.S. I've got tutorials for these here and here, but I also have some new handmade blank books and a set of bigger Christmas-colored crayons up on my etsy shop.

Upcycle Your Crayons!: How to Make New Crayons from Old Crayons

When I was researching melted crayon tutorials for my last post on upcycling crayons, I realized, "Hey! Everybody else does it wrong!" By that I mean that everybody else does it, um, differently than me, but since you can trust that I know the absolute best way to do pretty much anything, here's how to melt crayons better:

1. Gather up all of your kids' old broken crayons. Look under the couch, among the sheets on the bed, in all the toyboxes, and in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. Ignore all the other disgusting things you find in your search--it's important to stay focused here.

I'm an art snob, so my kids only use Crayola brand crayons--Prang are good, too, but Crayola is more readily available. You should know, though, that if you mix crayon brands, your crayons won't melt as neatly--the brands all have slightly different melting temperatures, and if they have a lower melting temperature than I'm accounting for they'll get so hot that the pigment will separate from the wax, and if they have a hotter melting temperature, they won't melt at all in this oven. They'll look fine and be perfectly serviceable for your own kiddos, but might not be the peak of perfection if you're making them as gifts.

2. Peel all the paper and cat hair off of your crayons, break them into small pieces, and sort them into your molds.
While obviously you should encourage your kids to organize their crayon bits however the heck they want, if you want to make yourself a couple of very attractive crayons, consider limiting your color palette to two or three choices per crayon, and strictly limit the amount of darker colors that you put in each mold--the darker crayons will show up really well, and can be quite overwhelming.

As for molds, the muffin tin is the standard choice, but it can be very difficult to pop the crayon out when it's finished, and the same goes for bakeable candy molds. My personal favorite choice is a flexible silicone baking mold--it's much better for easing your crayon out when you're done, and it comes in lots of fancy shapes. For a silicone mold with small shapes like the heart mold in the back of the above photo, two crayons are ample; for one with medium shapes like the mold in the forefront, five or more crayons will work.

3. Put your mold into the oven, turn it to around 200 degrees, and wait at least an hour. You can melt your crayons quicker with a higher temperature, but this will also tend to separate the pigment from the wax, so you'll have a muddy brown bottom and a translucent top on every crayon.

Check on your crayons every now and then, and when all the pieces are liquid, turn off the oven and let the crayons set until they're solid again. If you need to, you can remove your mold, but this will tend to mix up your colors--if you leave the mold until they're set, they'll look much more nicely striated.

4. When your crayons are at least solid, even if only barely so, you can remove the mold to a countertop to finish cooling completely. Don't unmold the crayons prematurely, even if you want to, or you'll moosh them a little.

5. When your crayons are completely cooled, flex the edges of each mold away from the crayon, push gently on the bottom of each mold until you feel the crayon release from the bottom, and then gently ease out your crayon. You only need to be particularly careful about this part if your mold includes any fiddly bits--sticky-outies or such.

6. Do a lot of coloring.

P.S. Interested in more upcycled craft projects? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Festive at Clearance Prices

You will never find me out and about at your various retail establishments on the day after Christmas, snapping up wreaths and wrapping paper and little baby Jesuses or whatever, but the week after Halloween? Back off, sister, 'cause I need me some stuff!

On Monday, the girls and I barreled over to Joann's, a coupon for 10% off of my total purchase just burning a hole in my pocket, to find all of the awesome Halloween stuff still left on sale at 70% off. That's 80% off, my friends. 80% off is good.

So now the dress-up corner is richer by two fairy costumes (one pink, one blue), one skeleton costume, one dinosaur and two sequined fairy wands. Willow is sporting four new pairs of Halloween socks (I'm a goth girl at heart, in that I think that you should absolutely wear skulls and bats and ghosties all year round). The craft area now boasts even more face paint(very "Why So Serious?", right?) and a big box of foam stickers (another box is in storage, waiting to be given out as Halloween treats next year). The girls don't often get stickers just handed to them, so their work this morning was quite inspired:Sydney's all about pointing to and naming the stickers--bat, pirate, punkin--and instructed me as to which of the many display boards around the house she wanted her masterpiece pinned to.

I'm pretty impressed by Willow's art in particular today because she used four different media--crayon, markers, watercolor, and stickers--and incorporated it all into one narrative work: There are houses with Jack-o-Lanterns on the porches, and some of the houses have steps that lead up to them, and cats sit in front of all the houses. There's a spiderweb in the middle with a spider coming down, and in the sky, which is dark, are the things that fly and the moon and the big green wind.

In other news, the party for Will's little girlfriend went very well. The coloring pages were a huge hit

but I still feel like a tool because one mom's RSVP didn't get passed on to me and so two little kids didn't have coloring pages of their own (How does this sound? "Here's a very special drawing page, just for you! It doesn't have your name because it's for you to color your very own picture on it! Even better!").

Eh, at least there were cupcakes aplenty.

P.S. Check out my list of autumn-themed nature projects for adults over at Crafting a Green World. And, if you're into rubbernecking, check out the comments for my wool felt rant--I throw a huge hissy because one reader calls me a Very. Bad. Name. Look for it and reassure me--highly inappropriate, right?

Collaborating with my Girls

In honor of the fact that my retirement fund, the one consisting of money I've been working to earn since I was sixteen years old, performing jobs ranging from menial to demeaning, the one I'd planned to borrow from to provide my girls with secondary education, the one that's my cushion to enable me to be a mostly stay-at-home mom, the one that's made up entirely of stocks and bonds and mutual funds and other imaginary creatures, is down $12,000 for the year (freakin' economy), I've been working on updating my etsy shop for the holidays. It had taken a backseat to my teaching and writing for a while, but now that the entire family is steadier within the flow of the school year, I've had more time to devote to crafting with my girls.

Yep, with my girls. I consider all my work collaborative with my two children, sometimes very directly, sometimes very indirectly. For instance, the girls helped at every step in creating our melted and recycled crayon hearts and autumn leaves and their color choices could be quite beautiful, but for the personalized buntings, they rather inspired the idea, chose the colors for their own buntings, and kept me company by playing on the floor at my feet while I sewed: Sometimes my work is guided by a child's passion, such as when I made up a bunch of dinosaur postage stamp soldered glass pendants, and stuffed dinosaurs from new materials or felted wool, and dinosaur doll blankets

all because Willow is obsessed with dinosaurs. She chose the fabric or pattern or stamp for each, and both the girls are dedicated pin-holders when I layer materials. They also like to race around the perimeter of a quilt that I am pinning on the floor, leaving barely enough room to move around it on either side--it's a game to race around and around and around, because they know that whoever ends up falling on the quilt first gets grumped at by Momma, as if I didn't know what was going to happen all along.

Some things are collaborations in honor of my girls. The cross-stitch panels on this little quilt are duplicates from a cross-stitch book that my mother hand-stitched for Willow:And some things are made just because we're big dorks, like this Christmas ornament. We met Darth Maul, y'all, and he is SO NICE!

Some things I make directly for the girls, such as dressesor dolls then make a few extras to sell or give away, and some things I make in honor of my relationship with my girls, such as items to honor or encourage breastfeeding.

It's because I'm a mostly stay-at-home mom (unless my stocks keep tanking)--together all day, the girls do work and I do work, and their work and my work always reflect, even when we do it alone, our togetherness. Momma is always there to hand a girl a marker, to reach under the couch for the last elusive matchbox car, to read a couple of books, to make a couple of snacks, to wash four hands. In return, the girls are always there for me--goofing around in the cart while I shop for supplies, cutting collages while I cut patterns, sitting on my lap while I try to work the sewing machine around them, playing in the park a few feet behind me while I take pictures of what I made. I collaborate with them simply because they're an inherent part of everything I do.

Just try getting some privacy in the bathroom.

Indianapolis Hearts Children

A happy day at the Indianapolis Children's Museum:

As we pulled into our neighborhood tonight, car both much less full from a big sale to Half-Price Books and a little more full from a few little sales from the Goodwill Outlet Store, bellies happy with cheap noodles, one child sacked out with her head resting on her brand-new-to-her dinosaur toy, the other contentedly mumbling, "Nurse, nurse, milky-nurse" to herself in her carseat, Matt commented, "It seems like we've been gone all weekend."

Isn't that the sign of a good day trip?

Crayon Crayonis

We have just been on a melted crayons kick here today. You know, along with buying discounted Halloween costumes and face paint (both a BIG daily deal around our house), reading a lot of Dr. Seuss, discovering that the College Mall Kroger of all places has bulk nutritional yeast for sale, taking Matt to the doctor to get his pinkeye(!) diagnosed (will we never see the end of gross bodily ailments over here?) having the weekly phone conversation with my mother in which I beg her to PLEASE stop stockpiling plastic toys for the children's next visit (the latest atrocity? My Little Pony), cooking and consuming peanut butter oatmeal with honey, getting flat-out robbed selling gently-used children's clothing to Once Upon a Child, discovering that I do NOT like hazelnut-flavored coffee (barf!)--stuff like that.

I mentioned before that I collect those silicone baking molds when I can catch them on sale, just for making crayon crayonis (Latin for "crayon of crayon"--I have two Master's degrees. Sigh), and so today we made more leaves in autumnal colors:

and two sizes of hearts in Christmas colors: and pumpkins, of course, in very special Willow and Sydney colors:

And just so you know that I'm really a consumer at heart, here are other silicone molds that I covet:

But what do you do with big fat fancy crayons, you ask? Why, we colored:

And we colored:

And we colored, right up until Willow just randomly fell into bed, eyes already closed (I hate you, Daylight Savings Time!!! Freakin' MyManMitch!!!)

What did you color today?

P.S. Check out my rant about wool felt over at Crafting a Green World.

Party Hero, Party Foul

So I'm helping a friend get ready for her kiddo's fifth birthday party, and it's a school holiday for my own kid today. Both things are AWESOME, by the way, because I love love love birthdays, and I love love love having my kid home from school for an afternoon. But yeah, it does change the way things roll around here. Instead of having a non-"productive" morning and then a couple of super-productive hours in the afternoon while the big kid is at school and the baby naps (pleasepleaseplease), I can have, perhaps, a slightly productive day by working all day and including my two little co-collaborators in everything.

First, we make books. I need to fold and sew up 17 blank books for the kiddo gift bags that I'm putting together. During this time, I'm periodically asked to make additional blank books for my own kiddos, who are digging through my cardstock stash and apparently finding gold. The baby dictates a book that goes something like this: "Now a cat. Now a cow. Now a horsie. Now a pig," and the big kid dictates a book about a pony princess who sails the ocean in search of polar bears. Illustration is crucial:

The kids are working so happily that I sneak off into the study to stitch up my 17 blank books, yet something seems awry...

Obviously, what fun is a creative and engrossing activity engaged in on your own at the living room table, when you can run off into the study and squeeze into the three inches of space in between Momma and the wall and run little dinosaurs up and down her arms while she tries to sew?

We did books and blocks and lunch and nap after that. But while the baby (I can still call her a baby, right? She is only two-and-a-half) napped, the big kid and I made some melted crayons with a new mold that I got on big sale--I've been itching to try it out. Although I'm sure it's an enviromental nightmare, I LOOOOVE silicone baking molds. I don't actually bake food in them, but they're terrific for melting crayons:

The mold comes out of the oven and separates from the crayon so easily that it's just pure happiness itself. You can't tell, but this mold is half pumpkins and half leaves. The big kid did all the pumpkins, which came out AWESOME, and I did fall colors, red/orange, orange/yellow, green/brown, with the leaves.

And so after an entire day, here's the party stuff so far:

We have all 17 blank books in the back, the birthday kid's birthday bunting, TWO birthday crowns in the making (the baby insisting upon her rights as the baby, I suppose), and some little tchochkes from Learning Treasures to fill out gift bags. Coloring pages made from the party attendees' names are still in process at my computer, manilla envelopes for the birthday kid to decorate for gift bags are with the birthday kid, the party music mix is being compiled in my iTunes, and a citywide search is underway for the best price for Crayola 8-packs, on account of I do NOT use RoseArt.

And that's the party hero. Party foul--At 6:30 pm, getting ready for Soup Night at another friend's house, the big kid throws a big screaming fit so I, who am exhausted anyway, lie down on her bed and invite her to lie down with me and snuggle. She lies down, sings the continents song to herself a few times, plays with her fingers a bit, and falls soundly asleep. Apologetic phone call is made.

Curse you, Daylight Savings Time!!! Curse you, MyManMitch!!!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!