Sharks are Made of Delicious Sabotage

Considering my goal to lose at least SOME of the baby-weight that I put on approximately three years ago, you might be surprised to learn that Matt brought home this book from the library the other day:
Of course, if you have a Matt of your own at home, perhaps you won't be surprised.

So the girls and I spent days and days poring over all the sugary confections contained within, until they finally made their choice: sharks.

The shark cupcakes require cupcake mix, chocolate chips, Nilla wafers, frosting, and TWINKIES! Dear god, Twinkies. I have eaten Twinkies this week. And they're not even that good, but they're so, so, so insanely sweet that after you eat one you're all, "I feel kind of sick, and yet somehow I could totally go for another Twinkie."

Fortunately I have some commissioned sewing to do this weekend, so after many strict instructions for Matt to not YELL at the girls while baking with them, I left them to it. Here's the basic shark infrastructure--cupcake, Twinkie, and Nilla wafer:
Here they are staring in a disgruntled fashion at the shark cupcake in the book because they don't know why Matt can't use my fancy food coloring correctly and made them tan instead of grey--so much for this being a homeschooling moment about sharks:And the final product--From what unholy marriage consummated in the uncharted depths of the sea did these abominations creep forth?Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder:

And they do seem to taste just fine, so I suppose it was a successful venture after all:

Matt likely does not have a future career in catering to look forward to, but at least he has an appreciative audience at home:

I'm a Less Bad Mother at the Beach

Sometimes, when I'm feeling on the verge of being a very bad mother who's crabby and rotten and acts like there are a million things more important for her to do today than be with her little girlies, I take those little girlies to Monroe Beach:It's a tiny little thing on the corner of Lake Monroe, and in the summer it's real redneck-y (trust me--I would know), but in the winter it's deserted. The girlies can frolick and just ALMOST get their feet wet in the freezing water----(until they do get their feet wet, and then it's time to go home), and I can have a little walk, and breathe, and remember that there's not much more important in the whole entire universe than those little babies of mine: (The fact that they're more than an arm's length away and not screaming at each other right in my face surrounded by the filth that is our house doesn't hurt, either).

Of course, other times we don't go to Monroe Beach and I AM a crabby rotten mother all day and I DO act like there are a million more important things for me to do today than be with my little girlies, and then late at night, after they're finally sleeping (for a couple of hours, anyway), I feel remorseful and have to lie down next to them and run my fingers through their little-girl hair and whisper apologies to them in their sleep.

I have to try to remember better next time.

We are Officially Artists, and We Have the Cards to Prove It

After many, many mornings of creative labor----Willow's ATC Kids' Swap is wrapped up and ready to mail: Watercolor remained a big hit, as did acrylics----but for all the tiny little detail work of the tiny little trading cards, I think that Willow found herself much more satisfied, in the end, with colored pencils. She's gotten pretty representative in her work lately----and only with pencils, probably, could you create an ATC that deserves a caption like this: I think we all found the ATC experience quite inspiring--Will freely calls herself an artist (She has the proof--they are ARTIST trading cards, aren't they?), Matt rediscovered Bristol board as a canvas for the comics he draws, and I'm thinking about organizing a Kids' ATC Swap on Craftster and about using ATCs as my business cards instead of my Moo cards this coming craft fair season (Moo cards are unbeatable, but can get pricey, and shipping from the UK? I can hardly justify it).

In other news, I actually got one of my kids to wash the other kid's hair today:

If these kids didn't need me to constantly pay them so much flippin' attention, my days would be just about made.

Treasure! Recycled Treasure!

My blog-friend cake and I, needing to exchange goods and services and being those kinds of blog-friends who actually sort of live only a block away from each other, arranged a couple of dead-drops at the local park this week.

I thought it would be super-fun but, I admit, that once I duct-taped (I over-use duct tape. I mean, I really over-use duct tape) a secret stash of one-inch pinbacks to the underside of a ladder leading up to a twisty tunnel slide, glared suspiciously at the lone basketball player forty or so yards away, and then LEFT that package to its fate, it actually became really sucky because I couldn't stop fretting. On the way out to the car to teach later I looked down the block and saw some kids ON that slide, and I had to stop myself from running over to double-check my treasure's safety. I kept saying to myself, "Your students will leave if you are late. If you are two minutes late they'll all leave," over and over to myself.

Of course later, after cake had received her package and she and Cosmo had left me a secret message on my light pole that told me that I had a package of my OWN to retrieve, well that was awesome fun.

I mean, look! A mysterious arrow pointing the way!We actually get to look in the hidden nooks inside a wall. We actually get to look there for treasure!And the treasure? Is encased inside something that I totally WANTED! A couple of issues of Family Fun magazine ago (Yes, I get Family Fun--what of it? It's awesome!) there was this tutorial for making a little orange juice carton wallet, and the coolest thing was that the lid was held on by the screw cap of the carton. What you see below...is that coin wallet:Do you think the kids liked their treasure hunt?
Yep. Awesome fun.

It is Banana Bread, but Does It Count As a Recipe?

If it's smack in the middle of the only two hours you have to yourself all day, the time in which you need to set up lesson plans and grade papers and answer emails and update your pumpkinbear etsy shop and work on your book proposal and maybe, I don't know...MAKE something, but the baby won't nap and hasn't napped all week and it's making you suspect that she's starting to give up her nap (oh, no, please no), what do you do?

You and the baby make banana bread.

Of course, you don't want to use refined sugar because you're so over refined sugar (why will the baby weight not come OFF?), so instead of refined sugar you use up the rest of the agave nectar and the brown rice syrup (which was a mistake, because now you have to find time on a Tuesday to go to Sahara Mart for more brown rice syrup so that you can make more baked nori). Oh, and you don't have cinnamon or nutmeg because you used them up making cinnamon cut-outs so instead you dump in some ginger and cut up some candied ginger, too. And if you're going to do that, you might as well throw in some dried blueberries and the rest of the bag of walnut pieces, right?

Anyway, if you make banana bread with the baby, you should absolutely turn your back so the baby can't see, and then pour some of the banana bread batter into a little heart-shaped tin. If you do that, and bake it, and then frost it with peanut butter, your babies----will be delighted. And when they see that you have cut the heart in two for them----so that they can break it apart like a puzzle--

Well, you know what little girls are like when they're happy and excited, right? They'll do that.

This banana bread that I made is nice and dense and moist and yummy. Again, I'm not really sure if what follows will count as a recipe--it's originally from the Bountiful Blessings Cookbook, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Indiana Midwives Association (I am also a sucker for cookbooks put out by churches and elementary schools and ladies' clubs and such--more on that later), and since out of the entire recipe I only accurately followed the cooking time and temperature and the number of eggs, AND since the recipe is technically for pumpkin bread, not banana bread...well, here it is, anyway. Do with it what you will.

Banana Bread

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mash up three bananas in a bowl.
3. Mix with four eggs and two-ish cups of agave nectar, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or honey.
4. Add in nearly a cup of olive oil or cocunut oil or butter or whatever fat you happen to have handy.
5. Dump in 3 and 1/3 cups white whole wheat flour and a little salt and soda and mix.
6. You forgot the milk--pour in 2/3 cup.
7. Add in a random assortment of spices--ginger, clove, etc.--and a random assortment of mix-ins--dried cocunut, nuts, seeds, etc.--and mix it all together.
8. Pour it into greased little loaf pans.
9. Bake it for about an hour. Seriously. An HOUR.

See? It's good.

Where our Hearts Reside

Quite a while ago I found some Scrabble Anagram tiles and so I made words out of them, then glued magnets onto the back for refrigerator magnets. Yesterday, Willow was playing with them, trying to find words she recognized and arranging them into patterns. She'd call out, "How do you spell 'Matt'?" and I'd shout back and a few seconds later she'd say, "Oh, there it is!" Then I'd hear, "How do you spell 'Julie'?" and I'd shout back and then I'd hear, "Oh, there it is!"

She asked for her own name, too, which is silly because she can spell it, and she asked for Sydney's, and I was working on something of my own and so I was a little distracted and just shouted out the proper spelling and heard her say, "Oh, there it is!"

It wasn't until later that I remembered that I'd never actually found all the letters to make her name and Sydney's name into magnets, and I was glad that she hadn't come to me disappointed, but when I went into the kitchen later this is what I saw on the refrigerator:
Of course. Clever girl, she found just the right word for herself and her sister, and she put it in just the right place, too.

Felt Rocks RAWK!

I think she likes the felted rocks and the little felt beads we've been making:

I used this hand-dyed wool roving that I bought from The Arts at Eagle's Find (which I highly recommend, by the way). You might remember that I bought some Dyeabolical Yarns wool roving at Strange Folk just for felting stuff, but I am an ignorant novice and that roving?

Superwash.

I'm thinking, though, that the superwash roving would make a really cute grassy nest for some really cute felted wool Spring eggs (like pagan Easter, which is really a modification of a pagan spring festival anyway, so...)!

If you're more into the recycled kind of felted wool, check out my tutorial for felting wool sweaters and my list of projects that utilize felted wool over at Crafting a Green World.

So anyway, I loooooove the felted rocks, on account of they feel so good and hefty and comfy and soft, but you know me and my recycled projects. So tonight, I stole a small rubber ducky out of the girls' stash of bath toys, and tomorrow I'm a-gonna felt it!

Wish me luck. And discretion.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!