In Which Each of the Groups Contains a Bedraggled Monkey

We left off last time in the weird story I wrote as a kid with me, a small child even in my story, having taken it upon myself to turn my bedroom into a home for abused animals (Matt ridicules to this day the poster that I still have from my childhood bedroom. I think my Aunt Pam gave it to me--she's known for her really thoughtful gifts--and she knew I would love it: a huge photo of a cat trussed up like the lead singer in a hair band, playing a guitar. Did she know that I would still love it 25 years later? Cause I do). As if that wasn't enough adventure, we happen upon an infinite, previously uncharted cave system that opens up one day from the backyard (It's the Ozark mountains--it could happen!): ...ball came back in the tunnel and pulled on my jeans leg. I got back on Choc and followed her. The gigantic cavern was luminous, too. There were three more branches leading into the cavern. As we watched, three more groups came out of the branches. I wondered what happened to the other fifteen. Each of the other groups had a bedragled monkey along to draw a map of the place. Our groups got together in one large group. Every bird flew up to the second level of the cavern with a rope and secured it. The three monkeys and I climbed the ropes while the four dogs held the ropes from below. All the mice explored the smallest holes leading from the cavern to see if they were safe. I had tied a string to all of them and each of them could explore to the length of a ball of twine. The birds explored aroudn the roof and the cats we took with us. The second level was just rock protruding out from the edge of the cave all the way around. It wasn't very wide. There were exactly four tunnels to explore. We each went into one. I had walked a long ways when I discovered something about the walls. Upon examining them, I discovered they were copper! Snowball dug at them with her claws and I discovered the copper was only an inch thick. But the copper extended a long ways. I could cut it all out and not make any damage to the caves. Just then Star, not more than a kitten, Popeye, a tough old tomcat, and Lelu, a mangy manx cat came in. Star had a piece of diamond, ...

...Popeye a hunk of gold, and Lelu a sliver of silver. I knew they would be the same as my copper. Then I heard barking from below that I would recognize anywhere. Bandit had found something! We all rushed out of the cavern and climbed down the ropes with the monkeys. What I saw next astounded me. One of my white mice was black and oil was tricling out of the hole he had been exploring. I took a bucket Bandit usually carried and put it under the hole becasue the mouse had been exploring a hole above the floor. Then I took Chalk, the mouse who had discovered the oil and put him on Barker's (a little daschund) back; I told him to find water and splash it on Chalk. I started wondering where the other fifteen groups were. I told R, G, and A (the monkeys) to go and get more natural wonders and put it in their knapsacks while I went back with Bandit to look for them. I was really worried. I could tell Bandit was, too. When we got back where we started, I checked on McKinley and Mickey. They were both dozing lightly. I softly whispered "Attention!" and they both snapped to their feet, staring straight ahead, and at the same time gave a squeak and a meow. Perfect! I lavished praise on them. Then I picked a tunnel at random but saw that it was the one we had just left so I let Bandit pick, instead. He walked into one and I followed. But by then I was exhausted so I called Bandit to me. I hooked him to his dog harness, then connected it to my miniature wagon I had stopped to get. I had painted it...

And friends, we've still got something like 26 more pages of this to go!

And, um... isn't copper strip-mined?

In Her Father's Footsteps

You may not believe that I was able to hold off this long, but y'all, I have signed my baby up for her first craft swap.

Well, really it's an art swap. House on Hill Road and Blair Peter are moderating what is possibly the FIRST Artist Trading Card children's swap. I am a super-big fan of Artist Trading Cards, but I've never joined in on any ATC swaps on my own behalf because, well... I'm not an artist. But mediating my baby's first forays into official artdom is actually making the concept seem a lot less intimidating and a lot more accessible, so I likely might jump in sometime soon.

And you know how I love arts and crafts materials, so one of the coolest benefits of Will doing this swap is that I'm being introduced to all those official kinds of artist's paper--watercolor paper, sketch paper, Bristol board, vellum, canvas, etc. You absolutely have to use a professional-quality artist's paper for an ATC; you can cut them down from larger pieces, but for this first time I just bought a few packs of each in the exactly correct size for an ATC (2.5"x3.5", if you're curious, or the size of a baseball card).

So this morning I explained the concept to the kiddos and off we went with our watercolors and our Strathmore watercolor paper:

And you know, it IS more fun to paint with watercolors on professional-quality watercolor paper--the way the colors flow, and they look so pretty, and the paper dries all nicely. The girls enjoyed painting with watercolors more this morning than they probably ever have previously, and I, too, was quite pleased with my efforts. I'd noticed that the Strathmore papers are on sale at Michael's this week, so this afternoon after school we went by and bought a pack of watercolor paper in every size--big, bigger, and poster-huge! I'm looking forward to a family-wide collaboration on that huge paper.

We're going to study art for a while around here, I think. I requested a ton of art books--kids' and adult, from the library, as well as
(which I'm pretty excited about), and I'm looking forward to exploring more hands-on art with the girls.

We can also incorporate some field trips--the IU Art Museum is terrific, and, so, of course, is the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Of course, Willow's last visit to an art museum went less than well. But she's what, six months older now? Whereas four-year-olds may shriek and act possessed the second they so much as enter the foyer of a world-class art museum, four-and-a-half-year-olds tend to appreciate their educational opportunities so much more, don't you find?

Don't you?

Doilies, The Day After

We've been happily integrating our newest purchases from the Goodwill Outlet Store into our daily lives. Two vintage puzzles, one of the entire world and one of the United States----have not left the living room carpet since they arrived, they're so fun. They're both crazy-intricate, with each tiny state its own tiny puzzle piece in the US puzzle and each tiny ocean its own piece in the world puzzle, although each big ocean is an awesomely big piece and each continent is its own piece, and? There's a compass built in!

I originally bought them for crafting because the world puzzle is missing a couple of its fiddly little oceans and the US puzzle is missing Kansas and Rhode Island, but the girls adore them (and actually I do, too), and Willow learned where California and Nevada live, so there you go.

I am a huge fan of divided plates (I would KILL for a set of elementary school cafeteria trays), so I'm all about these three orange divided plates that I found:
And do not worry, friends and family--Matt and I own these swab thingies that test for lead, and they're all-clear. Can you imagine, though? Instead of the CPSC bullying through that ridiculously overwrought CPSIA which will leave me without a job and without anyplace to buy stuff, they could just make lead swab test kits cheap and readily available, and we citizens could just handle our own shit, thank you very much.

The biggest hit of the day, however?

Paper doilies.

I almost didn't buy them because it was the day after Valentine's Day and doilies are kinda Valentine-y, don't you think, but then I was all, "Oh, they're going to cost like five cents and the girls will like them."

The girls do like them--negative space is fun space--but I think I may like them more. On account of look at the awesome stuff I made:

Goth doily pinbacks! I heart them crazy much. I like how they're partly fussy, but also all cool in their black-and-white at the party way, and I'm an especial fan of how the intricate and fancy doily pattern makes no sense in such a small scale.

And in yet another example (as if you needed another example) of how the girls inspire me and how all my work is collaborative work with them, blah blah, their interest in rainbows--drawing rainbows, reading about rainbows, having me pull up Google Image photos of rainbows, etc.--has led me to create, off and on in my sketchbook, an entire list of rainbow-themed crafts that I'm excited about doing. And when faced with doilies, a hole punch, and pretty paper, I made this:

I made a bunch for myself and my girlies, but I'll be putting these two sets up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop tomorrow. My pinbacks have been hitting the spot lately for some people, and I'm interested in seeing how these versions, which I like kind of crazy much, go over.

You can expect to see lots of frantic paper crafting out of me in the next few days, because Matt took my sewing machine to the repair shop (either it needs a new face plate, or the little girls need to stop touching it when I'm not looking), and the repair shop man said that we could expect it back in about 10 days.

He was just kidding, right?

Right?

The Fourth Photo

Here is the fourth photo in the fourth folder in the Photos folder on my computer:It's a photo of Willow's tricycle on one of those playground mornings that you might only have if you live really close to a playground and go there every day, even if the weather's cold or lousy out--one of those mornings when you're the only ones there, and your kid turns to you and says, "Nobody's visiting my playground today."

This is the tricycle that was Willow's special present after she toilet-trained herself at around two-and-a-half, the tricycle that was stolen out of our yard one morning while we were at the library for storytime, along with a green ride-in car and a brand-new-to-us toy wheelbarrow.

I still miss that tricycle.

Thanks, cake!

Here are some examples of how other bloggers have responded to the Fourth Photo, Fourth Folder project:

• Just a Plane Ride Away
• Terri Terri Quite Contrary
• Giggles-n-Gulps
• KatieAlender
• These Go to Eleven

P.S. I have a new obsession. Check out my post about crafty podcasts over at Crafting a Green World.

We Heart Caribbean Cove

It was another awesome Valentine's/anniversary weekend, thanks to Caribbean Cove water park--it's my super power that no matter where I am outside of the Southern United States, I can still find somewhere to go to be redneck. And indoor water parks, they are the awesomest things ever established in the Northern United States (especially in winter), but soooey!, they are redneck.

Nevertheless, we frolicked in the water----and watched HBO, and played miniature golf in the lobby----and ate heart-shaped bagels at Einstein Bros., and frolicked in the water some more----and made Matt Margaritas (a randomly-measured mixture of tequila, margarita mix, and ice in a little plastic hotel cup) after the girls went to bed, and made crafts (of course!) in the Kid's Club----and shopped at Half-Price Books and the Goodwill Outlet Store (speaking of redneck...), and tricked Matt into standing under things that would dump water on him----and let the girls spend two whole dollars in the arcade (a huge deal, actually, because my thrifty self loathes myself some arcades), and frolicked in the water just a little bit more----and graded all the rest of my papers while watching a Sci-Fi channel original movie (Wyvern!) after Sydney crashed at 6 pm, and there was also some relaxing that took place in the water, too:
See you next Valentine's weekend, Carribean Cove!

Valentine's Day with the Class

I have told you that I used to not be festive at all, right?

Well, I really, really, really love celebrating the holidays with the kids. Even the boring ones--the girls and I are planning to make a memory game next week with images of the U.S. presidents on them (probably just the iconic ones, because who really needs to know what William Henry Harrison looked like?) for Presidents' Day. So yeah, I really love the holidays now.

Today was Willow's class party for Valentine's Day. There was much excitement this morning (if only excitement made little girls act sweet and peaceful and so very well-behaved, and not crabby and hysterical and overwrought and prone to the biting and kicking of sisters). There was the creation of the Special Holiday Outfit: They're really quick and easy--small piece of acrylic felt (I choose the felt made from recycled plastic bottles over wool felt as part of my crafting ethic) cut into a heart shape, with a little slit cut into the center, and buttoned onto your button--but the other Montessori moms gratified my vanity by acting like I had invented something AWESOME! I've actually seen these little hearts on several blogs, including Going Starfishing, and I've heard tell that it was actually invented by Martha Stewart years ago (OMG--It's true! You have to flip through her Valentine's Day Projects for Kids gallery to get to the Felt Heart Button Covers), although frankly I seriously think that she steals the original ideas of small indie crafters and plays them off as her own.

Anyway, then comes the creation of Extra Valentines:Montessori classrooms are very large (30 kids ages 3-6 in Will's class), and the children are encouraged to make Valentines, then, not for everyone in the class, but only for as many or as few people as they choose. I always worry that some kid will just sort of get overlooked by all the other kids and not get any Valentines, and this, combined with my other worry that some kid will forget their Valentines at home, causes me to every year make an extra blank ten or so Valentines in case of Valentine-related emergencies. These are made from hearts cut out of red file folders with more little felt hearts hot-glued onto the centers.

And finally, we have the Viewing of the Handmade Valentines:

If you look closely through her work, you can see all the ones she made during our various collaborations--there are hearts from scrappy heart pinbacks, hearts from comic book Valentines, paint chip tags from paint chip matching games, and even a rogue denim heart from a denim heart quilt.

Will's Final Report: The Valentine's Day Party was the bestest! They got to eat a small cookie, they sang a song, they looked at all their Valentines (Is it wrong to judge a mother because her three-year-old child gave my child a Hanna Montana Valentine?). What more could you ask of heaven?

Lastly, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

I always pick bad news first, too: Craft magazine has announced that their current issue, #10, is their final print issue. They are pretty renowned for their rockin' digital version of the magazine, so in these trying economic times I guess they're just going to concentrate on that.

Y'all, Craft magazine is the magazine to which I sold my matching game tutorial. And that tutorial? Scheduled to be printed in issue #12.

Matt, who is, um, "practical," is all, "Dude, it's not the end of the world. You already got paid, and you'll be in the digital edition." But..... I want to be in print. PRINT. The kind of print that's on paper, and my mother can go to a bookstore and find me there on the shelf. And people all over the country can go to the library and find me there, too. The LIBRARY, y'all. I was going to be in the LIBRARY.

Yes, there will be lots of other articles by me in print. And books. Lots.

But this was going to be my first. And I am so sad.

Good news? Every Valentine's Day weekend, which is also the anniversary of the date that Matt and I started "dating" 12 years ago, our whole family spends the weekend at Carribean Cove. Indoor water park + middle of winter + cable TV + a new romance novel = Happy Valentine's Day!

Tomorrow, look for me out on the Lazy River.

Her Sister was Never This Rotten

After I set the girls up with lunch yesterday morning, I snuck off into the study for a few minutes to see if I could get another paper graded--we're deep in the midst of Project #1 in my Freshman Comp classes, and grading 44 papers containing an uninsightful application of Seger's hero myth formula to Spiderman makes me want to strangle myself every single semester.

So I grade a paper (70%--sigh), come back to see if anyone wants seconds, and find this:

Peanut butter is really hard to scrape off of the wall. Being a mom, this gets to be one of the things that I now know.

P.S. Check me out on whip up! It's one of my super-favorite blogs, and it's featuring my post from Crafting a Green World about making Valentines from comic books.