Bead It for Love

Matt's parents were here this weekend, playing with the girls, taking us out to eat, and assigning themselves to random and very burdensome tasks around the house, so I had plenty of time to finish my denim quilt with heart appliques for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, to give up utterly on figuring out what material those vintage amber heart beads are made of and just post them, already, and to do a lot of work on my handmade Valentines. I wire-wrapped heart beads to the cards I'd punched holes in, and I think they look really fine:
My mother gave me those multi-colored heart beads for Christmas, and what is that vintage amber heart bead made of?

While I was searching etsy for beads similar to my amber ones (didn't find any), I did manage to fall in love with several other sets of vintage beads and baubles and buttons:

vintage aged brass heart charms by ellielantern

bag 0' red buttons by ric rac and buttons

I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy those brass charms, so don't you get there first.

In other news, even though Willow voted for McCain, we have been getting way amped up around here for the inauguration tomorrow. All weekend I've been blasting this four-CD set of modern reinterpretations of historical Americana songs--pre-Revolution on up--and so now Will's on board. Of course, she hates England now, but what can you do?

My favorite of Syd's photos from yesterday is entitled simply "Uncle Wiggley":

P.S. Check out my post about fun inauguration activities to do with kids over at Eco Child's Play. Except the comments? First this guy posts and chews me out for suggesting an activity that involves a paper plate and another that involves typing paper, so I had to post a pissy reply about how I clearly stated that you're supposed to use recycled cardboard instead of a paper plate and the backsides of used typing paper instead of new typing paper. Then? Some other person comments with a link to another web site that has educational quizzes for children on it, but I had to post another pissy reply that the site also has ads you have to watch before taking the quizzes and it lets you gamble for money.

WTF?

A Half-Birthday Half-Cake

Yesterday was Willow's half-birthday--she is now 4.5 years old. Thank god she's not five yet--five seems so old, like she ought to be smoking cigarettes and stopping by the gas station for lottery tickets.

The best thing about half-birthdays, though? On your half-birthday, Momma bakes you a half-cake.
A half-cake, y'all! Half a cake! Here's how:

1. Buy yourself a nice box of cake mix. Will wanted a blueberry cake (when it's your birthday, you get any cake you want--same holds for half-birthday half-cakes), so I bought a nice box of store-brand natural vanilla cake--plenty of sugar, but no preservatives. Also? Damn delicious.
2. Bake your cake in one round cake pan. If your mix makes enough for two cake pans, bake yourself up a bunch of cupcakes, too, and then throw them in the freezer before the kids see them. I threw some extra vanilla extract in and some almond extract, on account of I think almond extract is delicious and should go in everything, and I had Will sprinkle plenty of frozen blueberries over the top of the cake before we stuck it in the oven. And after it was in the oven, I noticed that the directions on the box had all these picky instructions--"Mix with an electric mixer at blah-blah speed for blah-blah minutes, then put it on blah-blah speed for blah-blah minutes." Yeah, Will and I just hand-mixed it until she was bored, and it turned out great.
3. While your cake is cooling, mix yourself up some nice cream cheese frosting. I just beat a bunch of cream cheese (with a mixer!) until it's fluffy, and beat in some almond extract (on account of it's delicious and should go in everything) and just enough powdered sugar to make it a little sweet, but really, I'd be chill with just straight-up cream cheese frosted all over my cake.
4. Okay, here's the trick: Cut your one layer of cake in HALF! Frost one half with your cream cheese frosting (the girls and I also spread out some blueberry pie filling on top of the frosting, which I had mixed feelings about--it came from a can, and I'm sure has lots of preservatives. Next time I'd go for a nice natural blueberry jam, I think). Then, put the other half of the cake ON TOP OF THE FIRST HALF! Frost that baby up, too, and you got yourself a half-birthday half-cake.
5. Eat that puppy up!

After the half-birthday half-cake, during the obligatory dressing up in fancy dresses and running around like maniacs, Will took this photo: My half-birthday is next month--I wonder how much chocolate one can pile on top of half a cake, anyway?

Clothing for Dancing In

Y'all, you will never believe what I found at the Salvation Army today while hunting for red and pink buttons (the Valentine quilts, they are tooling along):
Five dollars each, handmade white satiny poofy lacy elaborate dresses exactly the size of a four-year-old (a tad long-ish on the two-year-old, but she cares not). One dress even has a little tag in the back that reads "Made for you with love by Grandma."

Were they flower girls dresses? Baptism dresses? Easter dresses? I surely hope that Grandma, who made them with love for some little girl just Willow's size, never knew that they got donated to the Salvation Army along with some other junk.

Grandma would be pleased, though, don't you think, to see the reception they're getting in our house:
Before I show you my favorite of Willow's photos from yesterday, I should ask you: You do know the whole purpose of photography, don't you? It isn't just to look, or to capture--it is to see. Seeing is something much different than merely looking, and it is why unobservant people generally take very poor photographs. To see something so truly that you can take a true and beautiful photograph of it--to do that you have to know what you're looking at, to understand it, to accept it, to love it. When you do that, then, with luck and skill, you can take a photograph that will help other people see this something, too.

I am, and this shouldn't surprise you, my friends, much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. I like to quietly see and capture, but I very rarely trust another person to see me, to know me well enough to capture a true photograph (if you want to hear a funny story about that particular little neurosis of mine, ask Matt to tell you about our wedding photographer--sheesh!).

It's stunned me, then, this week that I've daily put my fragile and expensive camera into the hands of my little girls (the lens still works with a few little scratches, right?). Because my girls, every day with my camera, they've shown me that they see. They've taken photos of their toys, their room, each other, and really captured their subjects, shown them true and beautiful through their young eyes. But most of all, my girls have shocked me by the many photos they've taken of me. Here, for instance, is my favorite of the photos Will took yesterday:

Those girls, they see me.

P.S. Check out my denim quilt tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Golden-Haired Girls Finally Earn their Keep

Y'all, my girls are finally gonna make me some money!

My sanity nearly cracked during the making of the very large amount of scrappy heart pinback buttons the other day--the girls, with painstaking care, chose combinations of hearts and backgrounds enough to make ample buttons for themselves, for whatever friends they choose to give Valentines to, for birthday parties yet to come...and still we have many buttons.

And that's when I had my inspiration--rather, the next time I had a shower, which is the only time I actually spend alone (usually), is when I had my inspiration, but stories that start "And so I was in the shower..." really only tell well to good friends, which you are, so, the truth for you.

Ahem. Yes, so what do I do when I make too much of something cool, which I do often, because I can't stop pattern-tweaking and such? Why, I sell the extra somethings on my etsy shop!

My girls could sell their extra buttons on my etsy shop!

And thus is born the Made by Golden Haired Girls section of my shop, so far populated by the girls' very own set of six scrappy heart pinback buttons. Here they lie all in a row:
And here's an example of one of my favorite things about the girls' work:
Pink and green! My color combos are much more staid--my girls', much more bold and creative.

Willow, at least, is pretty stoked about her intro to entrepreneurship, and has already suggested that she make some more things for the shop. And so now the search begins for projects a four-year-old can do and have the result not look like a four-year-old did it. Ya know?

Also for your consideration, my favorite of Sydney's photographs from yesterday:

my jeans as I'm wearing them

her sister, upside-down

P.S. Inspired by cake, check out my post about local businesses that teach kids practical skills on Eco Child's Play.

What They See

Snow on little girls' faces:
Snow in little girls' hair:
So much snow, in fact, and wind, and chilliness, that instead of cleaning out the car in between picking up Willow from Montessori and heading off to my own classes tonight, we hung out inside and, for kicks, I taught the girls how to use my camera.

I never knew it would, but it was a blast to watch my girls joyfully wielding my camera, which is always such a joy to me. Watching Sydney fit my big, big camera to her little, little face and hands, carefully focus through the viewfinder, and snap photos of her Willow over and over, I wished that I had...well, a camera.

And let me tell you, the kids are naturals. We got lots of shots of toys, the filthy carpet, me looming overhead, the plant that needs watering, etc., but my favorites of these are the shots that each sister took of her sister. I was lonely as a child, and I envy their connection, I think. The camera is heavy, of course, so most of Sydney's photos point downward at her sister, showing sleeves too long and pants too short-- --but Willow, I think, captures in her photo what it means to be a small girl happy to be photographed by someone she loves very, very much:

We should all smile such smiles.

Heart Handmade: Some WIPs

Are you as stoked to ride the bus as my babies are? No? Well, then it probably wasn't as hell of a morning for you as it was for my babies, cause it was a hell of a morning for the babies this morning. Of course, we ride the bus something like every other day, so it's often a hell of a morning for them. Kids, you know?

And last night, my first night teaching for the semester, Matt made this for dinner:

It's going to be a hell of a semester, I can tell.

When I haven't been pre-screening Gone with the Wind or answering stupid questions ("Do we really need to buy ALL of the required textbooks for this class?"), I've been happily crafting away to a Valentine theme. After having monopolized our big living room table for nearly a week (carpet picnic, anyone?), I've finally finished the papercrafting portion of my Valentine's Classroom Card Exhange swap over at Craftster. Here are a couple of little peekies:

Next comes the beadwork and the adding of Christmas clearance tinsel, and after that comes the making of envelopes from old magazine pages. And then I send them. And then, in return, I get 23 lovingly crafted handmade Valentines from all my swap buddies--squeal!

One of the fun things I've been anticipating about this project is trying out some beadwork with some of the absolutely terrific vintage beads I scored at a garage sale last summer. I bought most of them intending to sell them on etsy, but really they need a more positive identification of provenance and material, so while I'm waiting for the library to buy me , I'm setting aside a few that I'd like to try crafting with myself, primarily ones with less traditional bead shapes that I can dangle as pendants from my soldering work, like these hearts:Resin? Lucite? Beats me. They rock, though, right?

This afternoon while the girls carefully picked out every single dried blueberry from the peanut butter and dried blueberry sandwiches I'd made them (you see why I need a creative outlet?) I finished cutting out the pieces for the two denim quilts with heart appliques that I'm planning--I was doing this a couple of weeks ago, but had to set it aside when I ran out of denim, and last week at the Recycling Center I actually had a pair of denim overalls in my hands, when some guy, I swear to god, walked up to me, took them out of my hands, walked back to his truck, threw them in the back, then got in himself and drove away. I called Matt right there on the sidewalk, totally incoherent with fury, and like a man he's all, "What are you talking about? Why do you want overalls?" Barf.

Anyway, here are some of the heart appliques we're decorating for our lap quilt for the living room:

And seriously, that's not even all of the heart-y goodness! The scrappy heart pinbacks that I put up in my etsy shop made some people happy (and therefore me, as well), so I've been making more. These use some old songbook pages, and I take unmitigated pleasure in putting a definitive sequence of notes on each pin:

I've been so addicted that I inadvertently passed on my addiction to my girls, and they have spent so long painstakingly choosing the exact one-inch circle punched from scrapbook paper and the exact tiny heart punched from a different scrapbook paper for each of a thousand pins each and then "helping" me make their buttons--

--that I've been spending much of that time patiently assisting them and also kind of screaming inside my head.

But it is through these kinds of sacrifices that a future generation of crafty divas is trained.

P.S. Check out my post about how much I heart Craftster over at Crafting a Green World.

But I Have a Disability

If I can't be bothered to learn my students' names this semester, would it be wrong to tell them that I have a disability that manifests as an inability to connect a person's name to their face?

That would be really wrong, wouldn't it?

I might do it anyway.