Thursday, November 27, 2008
Prepping for Black Friday
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Officially a Big Girl
So today was all about our Big Girl.
First, the Big Girl Present. I'd mentioned before that I thought Syd would really like a dollhouse, so this afternoon, after some phone calls and Web searching, we trooped over to Learning Treasures, a local, independent toy shop, and purchased the Ryan's Room Home is Where the Heart is dollhouse:It was about 25 bucks more than online, but local and independent are important, and as a celebratory gift for a two-year-old, it's certainly more powerful to go look at it and buy it and have it right then than to have it just sort of magically appear a few days after the Important Day. What can I say--I like myself some ceremony.
The dollhouse came unfurnished, of course, and Will, especially, was a little befuddled that I wasn't going for any of the thousands of dollars worth of accessories and people and pets and two-car garages also on offer at the store, so I was all, "Listen, Kid. It's just like the real world--you spend all your money on the house, and you can't afford any furniture. You think your dad and I sit around on an old purple dorm couch because we LIKE it?"
Besides, why do you need dollhouse people when you have dinosaurs?
And you certainly don't need dollhouse furniture when you have Legos:Other important parts of the celebration: The Purchasing of Big Girl Underpants (yeah, I just made Will a ton, but it was such a pain altering the pattern for her that I can't even contemplate yet cutting down the pattern again for Syd, so yes, we went to Gymboree) and The Baking of a Treat:
And I am now officially in the market for ideas about making dollhouse furniture. I'm thinking back to these paper-folding patterns, and again, I'm really, really tempted by these wooden people, only I have to contact the company to ask about the provenance of the wood. Other ideas for classy-looking DIY dollhouse projects?
P.S. Check out my tutorial for felted sweater stockings over at Crafting a Green World.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Reverse Applique Handprint Turkey Shirts
Inspired over my morning coffee this morning by this post from One More Moore about making her children reverse applique handprint turkey shirts, this became our morning project after breakfast (one half leftover veggie burger, handful of leftover fries, and half a pear each) and books (two from each kid is my at-a-time limit--in current heavy rotation are Nutcracker stories and the Henry and Mudge books):
The big kid's shirt, which once had a permanent marker stain where now there is a turkey, has a reverse applique with red plaid felt from my old undergrad dorm sheets, a button from my button jar, a beak and wattle from a felted wool sweater, and embroidery using the darning foot on my sewing machine.
The little kid's shirt, which I think came out even better, once had a Baby Gap logo where now there is a turkey. It has the green plaid set of my old dorm sheets, and I think the embroidered beak and wattle look better than the felt ones on this shirt.
I made both basically by following the blog post's instructions, except that I cheated by tracing the kids' hands onto freezer paper and then ironing it onto the shirt before stitching.
While I worked, I traced many more hands for the kids to cut out and color and just generally do stuff with. Other handprint activities include:
- Cutting out handprints and using them to measure stuff (the big kid claims that she is five hands high--accuracy is clearly not important for this)
- Comparing handprints of family members to talk about growing and aging, and making a collaborative family artwork with them
- Making inkpad handprints to see the wrinkles on our skin
- Pressing handprints into air-dry clay--I have one of these from when the big kid was a little kid, and it's one of my greatest treasures
- This beautiful embroidery from Plumpudding
- Encouraging collaboration by getting kids to trace each other's hands
- Encouraging non-dominant hand motor skills by encouraging a kid to trace her dominant hand
And so do sisters.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Sunday Update
I've now used up the last of my pre-cut glass stash, though, and I find cutting glass with a hand tool VERY tricky. I believe I'm in the market for a second-hand glass grinder.
I think it's a total rip that stockings are for kids, so in our house we also do stockings for everyone, and so Matt helped me design a pattern (he drew, I nitpicked) for some stockings to sew out of felted wool. Here are three blocked and drying:
The living room table, so recently moved (by me, with the back injury) to the lovely spot with the natural light by the window, was briefly shoved into a corner (by me, with the back injury) because Matt was being a dick about it, but my ability to throw a really big hissy fit (it's the redneck in me) with little to no warning fortunately trumped Matt's shove-everything-against-the-wall design ethic, and the table was moved back (by me, with the back injury) into the sweet spot a couple of hours later.
I drew a pattern for the perfect pair of T-shirt panties today, only, T-shirt material isn't as stretchy as regular panty material, and you may not realize this when you put your panties on every day, but your panties stretch a LOT to accomodate your body, and all this is a preface to the fact that I need to tell you that the panties I make for myself out of T-shirts are ENORMOUS. Seriously, they're huge. Looking at them, they make you kinda feel like crying, but ooh, they are comfy.
So I cut out a ton for myself, and they are ENORMOUS, and Willow wanted some, too, and she wanted them to be "matches" with Momma, so Matt used his graphic design skills to cut down my pattern to fit her. The style is a little more adult than I'd choose for her--a little hipster, slightly cheeky--but seriously, something about the idea of wearing matching panties with my four-year-old...I could not resist. Here's the stack of Will's all cut out:
So yeah, our Sundays tend to be ridiculous. I'm exhausted, but you know what? Matt cleaned out the refrigerator today, and we totally have an unopened bottle of cheap champagne back in there.
I'm gonna go get it.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Where We Go to Wonder
And today, the girls and I spent quite a bit of time learning at the Wonderlab.
The Wonderlab is our third-favorite public area in all of Bloomington. I've been taking Will there, daily, weekly, monthly, since she was just over a year old--Syd's been going there since she was a newborn. My favorite thing about the Wonderlab is that since they were old enough to put their hands on anything, each of the girls has been able to interact with every single exhibit there in some meaningful way. Mind you, the kids aren't necessarily grasping the finer points of how hot air makes the balloon rise, but they grasp the cause-and-effect of push the red button, watch the digital thermometer numbers rise, and up goes the balloon. It's that kind of learning that's especially valuable, I think--as the girls visit these same exhibits over and over throughout the years, old lessons are internalized and new discoveries are made.
Here were the favorites today: Our other favorite thing about the Wonderlab is their membership in the ASTC Passport Program. Every time we go on a trip, I always pull up the complete list of Passport Program participating museums, and we ALWAYS find some cool place to get free admission into--St. Louis Science Center, Chicago Field Museum, San Francisco Exploratorium, etc. On our California trip, Matt and I took the girls to the Exploratorium for the day two times, and the first time we basically recompensed our entire year's membership at the Wonderlab. It rules.
But in case you think I didn't do anything crafty today, you're wrong! Here's a little peek at a project I'm trying to work up out of some of my felted wool:
Can you figure it out?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Let There Be Light
Our house is in a great neighborhood and is in good condition and is a good walk to most places we like to go, but it has basically no natural light. The windows are teeny-tiny little things stuck on odd walls in all the numerous teeny-tiny little rooms, and none of them face south. But I have this absolutely terrific assignment to write and photograph a craft project tutorial for Craft magazine (Make's little cousin), and I am desperate for good light in which to photograph.
So I'm limping around the house this afternoon, and all of a sudden I'm all, "Hey! That one window, now that the leaves are off the silver maple, actually gets pretty good light. If only there was a table next to it." I have numerous traumatic injuries, y'all, and yet many heaves and ho's and curses and whimpers later......there's a table next to the one window in the house that lets in terrific natural light. Never mind that it's shoved up against our old dorm couch on one side and the wall on the other, and that the entire bare wall that the table used to be shoved up against is all gross now from being next to the table. Just...never mind.
And the table? Looks like this: I barely even deserve to have furniture.
So I had myself a happy little time trying to figure out some ways to photograph my piece.
Straight above?Looking down at an angle?Definitely not straight on:My digital color enhancements are also pretty off because I have terrible eyesight, even with glasses. I may have to whip out my 500-page camera manual for this project.
But all afternoon I have been obsessed with photographing the light at this window. For our afternoon snack I set the girls up with some cut-up bananas, a couple of handfuls of dark chocolate chips melted in our new crockpot, and a little bowl of crushed pistashios--dip, roll, munch--and I insisted that we do all this at the table by the window, even though the crockpot cord wouldn't really reach and nobody could therefore sit comfortably:
But ah, the light.
Wow, though, I really need to wash the window now.
p.S. Check out my tutorial for aromatic herb ornaments over at Crafting a Green World.