An Ode to Floam, Whatever it's Made of

Fun as Christmas is, it does involve, for us, a ten-hour car trip (twice), a week-long stay in a relative's house (on an air mattress), lots of unfamiliar food (i.e. sugar), and constant exposure to people we don't often see (grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins). The four-year-old is just this year old enough to thrive on this (except for the car ride), but the two-year-old has spent an unsurprisingly large amount of time coping by crashing out at unusual times...
...and in unusual circumstances:
I'm finally learning a couple of parenting tactics, however, and so as you might have noticed in my last post, every single present in the girls' stockings was something To Do. I can make my babies quilts and clothes and lovies any day, but what they need when they're away from home in a house with no kid infrastructure of its own and no same-age kiddos around is wholesome, creative, engaging activities.

Hence the Floam. I don't know what this stuff is made of, and my sense is that it's likely an ecological nightmare, but wow, it's fun. It's made of these little pellet things held together by something sticky but that doesn't make your hands sticky, and you can squish it and pull it and tear it-- --and mold it and squeeze it--

--and when you're done with the highly cathartic sensory experience, you can make a snowman----or a heart for your suspicious-looking lover:

And perhaps because our generous loved ones also gifted my babies with lots of colored pencils and stickers and books and puzzles and musical instruments, and the coveted BALANCE BIKES, or perhaps because the babies are older now and a little more sure of themselves in an unfamiliar surrounding, but there has been a *little* less fussing and fighting and TV-watching and candy-eating this holiday, and a LOT more happy coloring and listening to books and working puzzles and playing games with Grandma Beck.

If this keeps up, I might someday renege on my vow never again to step on a plane with them.

Christmas Stockings on Parade

The best thing about sewing felted wool stockings for my babies is seeing them fulfill their happy purpose in life:

(the matching bracelets sewn by my Christmas in July swap angel)

(travel-sized blank sketch books for everybody)

(stickers and coloring and Floam)

(see the crocheted dolphin, also made by my swap angel)

And then we ate breakfast and played Rock Band and opened presents and ate Christmas dinner and played with blocks and ate more of Uncle Art's devilled eggs and put together dinosaur puzzles and ate blueberry pie and put together the girls' train set and ate pumpkin pie and sketched in our sketch pads until Sydney fell asleep face-first on the dining room table.

P.S. My adorable Cousin Katie, currently eating party mix and playing on her new Linux laptop, says hi.

Teeny Tiny Trainland

Last night we completed one of our happiest holiday traditions--a Winter Solstice evening trip to the Indianapolis Zoo (here's how I feel about zoos) for Christmas lights, carolers, a holiday dolphin show, and Trainland, the conversion of the White River Gardens greenhouse into a giant showcase for dozens of model trainscapes.

Um, yes, it was 3 degrees, with a windchill of 20 below. We wore hats. And scarves. And coats. And jackets with hoods under that. And sweaters under that. And long-sleeved T-shirts. And socks up to our knees. And boots. And jeans. And snowpants for the littles. And mittens (all but Momma, who loves the fancy camera with its tiny little buttons more than she loves her fingers).

My Papa, who since my dear Mama died has discovered a love of model trains, asked for photographs of the Trainland exhibit for Christmas. Here (Spoiler Alert, Papa!), are my favorites:

Don't you wish you'd come with us?

Next year.

Ghosts of Goodwill Past and Present

It was a happy year at Goodwill. Our town's two locations (also known as the College Goodwill and the Townie Goodwill) and their quarterly 50%-off Storewide Sales allowed me to clothe my family and craft within my ethical belief system and also afford to feed my family, too, occasionally.

At the March sale, among other items, we got all of our springtime clothes:
See? Even our first-born wears SOMEBODY'S hand-me-downs. Is that fair, or what?

At the June sale, the start of craft fair season, I boosted my recycled/vintage craft supplies, among other items:
And then the girls threw them all over the floor.

At the September sale, we started living the dream with our brand-new DanceDanceRevolution mat:
I am getting REALLY good, and Matt is almost ready to start moving his arms when he dances.


At the December 6 sale, among other items, it was long sleeves and sweaters for everyone:

And bare feet, of course--oh so practical in the -20 degree wind chill.

And Saturday, happily, was a bonus before-Christmas 50%-off Storewide Sale. Among other items, we scored Uncle Wiggley--

(a terrific game for arithmetic concepts, by the way, and I was seriously in need of more math ideas); stretchy cotton sweaters for little-girl skirts--(somebody else had that idea first, but I can't find the link just yet); dinosaur fabric--for dinosaur quilts; a VERY nice coat that will get several years of use by two children for $2.50----a very nice shirt for me that you have to squint to see through the camera-shake, finger over the lens, and two two little girls----and? Best of all? A SECOND DanceDanceRevolution dance pad.

You know what that means, right?

Dance-off.

Gifts Given, Gifts Received

In the category of Gifts Given----handmade soaps, packaged in handmade gift bags, labeled with handmade gift tags. I used this terrific Recycled Junk Mail Gift Bag pattern and tutorial from Junk Mail Gems, and although it was a little fiddly (maybe I didn't need to, but I individually measured out and scored the score lines for each bag?), I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I actually don't like as much the ones that I made out of plain cardstock and had the girls decorate--they look too much like a purchased blank gift bag to me--but the ones that I made out of pages of text from old books are really, really cool, I think.
It was also a pretty engaging activity for Will to challenge her fine motor skills--here she is lacing ribbon through the holes for the handles at the top, stringing beads on them, and tying a knot:
It baffles me, by the way, as to why my children are constantly nude. The thermostat is set at 66 degrees, friends--I'm wearing a sweater, and Willow is in the living room, rollerskating naked.

In the category of Gifts Received:
I bought myself this beautiful pendant made by sushipot , made from a 1919 dictionary--I was supposed to put it in my stocking to open on Christmas, but when I opened the shipping envelope the little box was So. Beautiful. that I just had to open it, too, and then the pendant looked so much more awesome, even, in person that I had to put it on, and well, there you go.

Another empty stocking this year.

In the category of Gifts Received and Also Given:

At the Fair and Green Gift Festival, a local guy asked if I'd like to make him a couple of record bowls in exchange for some of his old records--um, yeah! And look at the stash he gave me!

Good stuff.

So I knew that the records he wanted me to make bowls out of were in the front of the box, but, uh...which front? I thought I had it figured out, and when I emailed him to double-check, I'm all, "Okay, you want bowls of REO Speedwagon, Peter Shicklee, and The Canned Heat Cookbook." And he emailed back and he's all (politely), "Um, no." Turns out that at the other end of the box there's, you know, George Harrison, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Genesis. BIG difference.

In other news, the girls and I spent the afternoon drinking hot chocolate while watching a DVD of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Christmas carols.

Because we're dorks. Festive, but dorks.

The Dope on our Soap

Being as I've told the girls that the point of Christmas is to give a gift to each of our loved ones to represent how much we love them, you can imagine that it's important to me that they make gifts for the people who are meaningful in their lives.

What to give, however--that can be a toughie. It's important to me both 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 be genuinely pleased to receive this gift.

We still have some thinking to do on some ideas, but (SPOILER ALERT!) last night and this morning the girls helped me make their gifts for Willow'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:The girls took turns counting out the ounces of vegetable glycerine, then each girl 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 glycerine, 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 monkeys 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.

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.