The Secret is Kid-Made Melt and Pour Glycerin Soap

Being as I've told the kids that the point of Christmas is to give a gift to each of our loved ones to represent how much we love them, we're kind of doubling down on the kid-made gifts over here this year.

What to give, however--that can be a toughie. It's important to me personally that the gift be primarily the child's own creation, or at least her own invention, and that the gift be viable in its own right--that the recipient has at least a fighting chance at being pleased to receive this gift.

For a VERY specific definition of "pleased," ahem. Kid-made gifts are kid-made gifts, you know?

We still have some thinking to do on some ideas, but (SPOILER ALERT!) last night and this morning the kids helped me make their gifts for the older kid's teachers and some of their relatives. Our awesome idea? Melt-and-pour-soap.

Now I know that melt-and-pour soap isn't REAL soap in most people's minds (Cold-process has it beat, and that's a skill that I almost have all the infrastructure to start learning, but a friend who tried and abandoned the hobby a while ago gave me a TON of vegetable glycerin, and using it really is super-fun), but it does have a lot going for it. It's quick and simple, for one, it results in a mild and moisturizing soap, for another, and you can fancy it up quite a bit with some nice essential oils and dried herbs, which is what we did, or at least tried to do, although as you can see we got a bit lost in the weeds of heavy-handed kid pouring:The kids took turns counting out the ounces of vegetable glycerin, then each kid chose an essential oil and a dried herb for her soap. The cool thing about kids is that they chose combinations I would never dream of trying together--peppermint essential oil with dried eucalyptus leaves? Vanilla essential oil with lavendar flowers:

I was following the suggestion of this tutorial on the Soap Queen's blog to stir in my herbs until they seemed mostly suspended in the melted glycerin, and then to pour it into the mold, but I didn't do it right and so our herbs mostly just escaped to the top:

Still very pretty, though, I think.

Of course, with two little kids as my primary assistants there were a lot of hijinks, I can assure you, and several blown batches. But the best thing about soap-making is that the failures can be the most fun, because instead of giving them away, we get to use them ourselves!

Now, for the gift bags.

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Her Tuition is $317 a Month

You've seen me wax poetic on many occasions about my daughter's Montessori school (the birthday celebrations, in particular, are touching; the head teacher's penchant for folk-song group singing is pretty righteous in my book; and on Parents' Night the display of the children's abilities is astonishing)...


Well, one of the works children can choose is the calendar work. There's a preprinted sheet for each month, with the appropriate number of squares for the dates, and holidays and birthdays already marked in. The children may label the calendar for the appropriate month, write in the dates, and decorate the holidays. If they're not confident writers yet, they may ask an older child to put dots down as writing guides for them.


Will works much more slowly along the math concept works than she does the language arts or practical life works, for instance, so yesterday was the first time she chose to do the calendar work for December. Today's a snow day, but tomorrow when I take her to school I'm going to have to speak to her teacher about it. Can you see why?Did you see it? If not, here's a close-up:Merry Chirstmas, friends.

That Man, He'll Wow You

After dinner last night (Hmm? Oh--steamed cabbage, kale, and potatoes, with nutritional yeast. What? It's good!), by all rights it should have been bedtime, but the big kid had a hankering that could not be denied.

She had a hankering for watercolor.

So, sucker that I am for an art project, we cleared the table and got out the supplies, and had ourselves a little family watercolor evening:

The little kid painted circles, of course:

The big kid painted a present sitting on top of a couch:

(I'm irritated with myself about that, because I have this rule that I don't draw things for the kids, because I don't want them to model me in their artwork (seriously, read Drawing with Children--it's awesome), but the big kid saw me drawing a cliche little present picture on somebody's etsy package, and lo! here it is)

I remain firmly in the abstract:

But my Matt, goofing around with a child's paintbrush on typing paper, creates this:

I'm the one who's lucky enough to get to stay home all day with my gang and play with art supplies, but my guy, who has to spend all his days in a cube going clickety-click on a computer screen, he's the one with the skills.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, random art, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Paranoid, Anyone?

I am totally paranoid about the mail. I am paranoid that one of my etsy purchasers will fail to receive their record bowls and be mad at me. I am paranoid that the reason this certain cousin of Matt's never thanks me for the handmade gifts I send her child is because she never receives them, because THEY GOT LOST IN THE MAIL.


And then there's this place. I mean, I absolutely want to go to one of those auctions, but who mails something and thinks, "Gee, I hope this gets lost on the way to Aunt Pam's and ends up in an auction of unclaimed merchandise at the dead letter office in Atlanta"? Nobody.

And that's why the packages I mail out look like this:
Yes, y'all, that IS duct tape. And newspaper. Wrapped around a cardboard box. With more newspaper inside. Oh, and the actual stuff? Is wrapped in a plastic bag, in case it gets wet.

I do like to pretty it up, however, especially for this one poor, unsuspecting etsy shopper, who mentioned that this box was going to go straight under the Christmas tree when it got to her:
See? I drew hearts with Sharpie markers in between the duct tape!

But that's nothing...I let the girls decorate the boxes going to family members all by themselves:Do they even let foam stickers go through the mail like that?

P.S. I was sold out of record bowl sets for a while (yay!), but there's one more brand-new Christmas-themed set up in my shop now.

Willow of the Corn

I love it when kids are old enough to create totally creepy, apocalyptic-style artwork:Here is my completely imaginary interpretation of Will's masterpiece:

"That's Sydney and Damian and me and we're standing in the middle of all the fire in the world. The wings of The Bad Man beckon, and Damian made all the grown-ups fall down, even you, Mommy. You all fell down, because you all have ouchies, and now the ground is sticky."

And Matt's been commenting lately that every evening when he leaves work, there are maybe a thousand crows just sitting in the trees around his building. A THOUSAND crows, friends.

Cooincidence?

You Can't Have Your Banana Bread, Eat It, and Photograph It, Too

Since when I asked my dear Matt to photograph me enjoying the banana-blueberry bread I'd just finished baking he did this----and when I said, "Oh, fine, I'll just take a photo of you eating the bread, then," he did this----I finally just had to take a photo myself-- --of myself. My favorite part of myself, too--the coffee part.

I used this recipe, with a scant 1/4 cup of brown sugar and the fancy-schmancy Bob's Red Mill white wheat flour. It's so delicious that I'm going to have to make another loaf if I want to have another slice with my coffee tomorrow.

P.S. Check out my post about Christmas craftivism in Crafting a Green World today, and there's some new stuff in my etsy shop to replace some other stuff that sold--yay, Christmas!

Family is for Failing with

The mighty Horned Frogs fell----but we still got to spend two hours exhuberantly and fruitlessly rooting them on together (in a stadium filled to the max with fans of the opposing HOME team, even):The marble maze fell, but we had lots of wild and wooly times constructing it all together:Hell, even the gingerbread house fell-- --pitiful redneck shanty, but we had an awesome sugar-high time with a dear friend throwing candy all over it, anyway:
Ah, family...even when you suck, you get to suck together.