To Anderson Orchard and Back by Noon

Back and forth to the apple orchard, picking apples and exploring and seeing who can heft the biggest pumpkin (I win!), apples for breakfast and lunch, and still the littles got back to town in time for school (so did I, but that's not really an accomplishment since my class is almost 6 hours later. I did forget about my dentist appointment, however, so perhaps that counts for something).

We picked Golden Delicious (a sweet all-purpose apple), and Scarlet Beauty (also a sweet all-purpose apple, but better for winter storage), and Turley Winesap (a tart apple), and the yummy tart Ida Red:
This was my very first time ever picking an apple, as well, and I do savor those experiences, which happen more often than I would have previously thought, of not merely exposing my children to something new, but actually sharing in that new experience as another first-timer right along with them.

We ate a lot, too:
In fact, we may have eaten a very, very lot: In the perennial compromise between two children, one bigger and one smaller, Sydney got cold and done first and had to stay a little longer than she preferred, and Willow...Willow the Tree Girl (who, yes, I specifically told numerous times NOT to climb the apple trees) had to be basically dragged out of the apple orchard and off to the pumpkin patch.

Over the weekend I felt the call to go through some of my now quite organized clothing craft stash, and I modified a sweater skirt pattern that I'd been sort of happy with last winter to make the girls two new sweater skirts each that we're all VERY happy with:
The final tally:
And now to applesauce, toasted pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin puree!

A Font from My Own Hand

When I was little, I always wanted to be the kind of girl whose handwriting was girly. Other girls could produce these wonderful fat bubble letters with curliques and flourishes--my handwriting was all crabby and awkward, primarily since my fat little hand couldn't seem to move nearly as fast as my fat little mind. It was pretty neat--I mean, I did get a lot of practice and all, what with regularly writing 60-page animal-rescue adventures stories, but no, it was nothing special.

Which doesn't mean that my handwriting doesn't deserve to be memorialized. Because oh, it totally does.

I've seen off and on the odd program that makes fonts from your own handwriting, but it always cost a pittance to use, and you know how I feel about that. But all this weekend I've been playing with a new beta from fontcapture, and although I'm not going to write my next seminar paper in my brand new Julie Handwriting Font or anything, it is fun for playing with:
It's freaky, because the font is created very simply, from a worksheet that you print out, fill out, scan back into your computer, and then upload to the site, but this font looks EXACTLY like my handwriting. Exactly. Dead on.

Matt's font doesn't look as much like his actual handwriting, in my opinion (I'm pretty sure that when he writes, his lowercase letters are just smaller versions of his capital letters--hoo-ah, public school!), but can you believe he was stupid enough to provide me with the means to produce a font that mimics his handwriting even this closely?Mwa-ha-ha! Don't tell him, but I'm likely to use this font to write out little contracts to myself that promise me things, or letters of guilt and apology, etc.

We even got our Willow into the act. It was a challenge, because the grid in which you're supposed to write each letter is a little on the small side for a five-year-old's fine motor skills to easily handle, so some of her letters are cut off at the top or bottom. If I ever wanted to use her handwriting font to do more than just goof around, I'd likely have her fill out several of these worksheets (she loves them), then cut and paste between them in Photoshop to make the most workable choice for each letter. We're just goofing, though, and besides, there's something else big on her mind these days. To wit:

It actually does look pretty much like her handwriting, although I don't know what's going on with the spacing between words.

So I'm thinking that these handwriting fonts would be super-cool for scrapbooking. I also have a plan to go home over the holidays and collect the handwriting fonts for all my relatives, because it just seems like a kind of cool keepsake to have. I

It seems kind of creepy, though, in some ways, to collect my family's handwriting as fonts on my computer. Handwriting is so individual and personal, it's like collecting their hair or something.

Of course, not all of my relatives have hair, but they do all have handwriting.

Vintage Bookmarks, Vintage Kid

I paid one dollar for a vintage Patridge Family dress for the kid. Hoo-boy, you gotta love the Salvation Army!

In other news, ever since the free day of the Red Cross Book Fair, we have been all record albums all the time! You should have seen me and the kids, at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning, the kids with their shopping cart and me with a big cardboard box, digging through every single box of records (and there were many) on the tables (many of those, too), running a full load out to the van in the pouring rain, and then back again to dig some more.

We scored some AMAZING vinyl, both to listen to and to craft with. Check this out: Free to Be You and Me (which is playing right now); Xanadu (sadly scratched, and now in the record bowl queu); Annie soundtrack (Broadway and film!); TOP GUN SOUNDTRACK (!!!!!); TWO recordings of excerpts from The Canterbury Tales, done in Middle English (and with excellent pronunciation, and I would know); a two-disc set of poetry for children; the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack; and all the Burl Ives and John Denver and Nutcracker Suites that you could want. I saw my friend Cake there, and she and I managed to dig through the record section at the same time without fighting over anything, although there was a LOT of gloating.

So while we've been listening to records all day, and I've been trying to whip out some more record bowls for my last craft fair of the year on Saturday, I am stoked to say that I have thoroughly mastered, not the comic book bookmarks yet, but the also-awesome record album cover bookmark:

I've got a tutorial for the record album cover bookmark up on Crafting a Green World, but I have to admit that fully half the tutorial is actually a sub-tutorial for tying an overhand eye knot. It's essentially a glorified overhand knot, so it's really no problem to figure out. I'd tried a lark's head with these bookmarks first, but it's too slippy--the overhand eye will stay nice and snug, even with the thicker ribbons and twine that I suggest.

Yep, add it to the tally: I'm a knot nerd.

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!

Where Little Girls Go to Sleep

When Willow came to me tonight and told me that her teeth were brushed and she was ready to lie down together and watch Mythbusters, I had to tell her that Momma still had five big student papers to grade, and that Dadda wanted to lie down with her tonight.

This was unacceptable, and weeping ensued.

Lying down together of a night and watching a segment of Mythbuster is one of our most super-special times together, and enables me to properly train my daughters up in the way of the fangirl. Other super-special times together each day include letting her have a little bit of my coffee and handing her a section of the newspaper I'm reading each morning, giving her fancy hair before school (upon request), letting her use my camera and then dutifully admiring the 60 photos of the toy shelves that she's taken, etc.

Point is, we do have other super-special times together each day. But giving up even one of these times, even to give it to Daddy instead, is still greatly unwelcome (to both of us, frankly, but seriously, those papers are not going to grade themselves).

So my young daughter, weeping copiously, flung herself over to my fabric shelves, opened herself a bin of stash fabric, crawled inside--

And fell fast asleep.

The closest thing she could get to her momma when her momma didn't have time for her? Or just darn comfy?

I Lost the Babies, But in Other Ways I Am Organized

Willow and Sydney had a playdate this morning because I wanted to get some work done. Specifically, I wanted to grade papers all morning, not read books and play board games about dinosaurs and see if the laminator will laminate leaves and playfight with sticks in the front yard and maybe watch a segment of Mythbusters--these are my favorite things to do of a morning, true, but grading papers? Must be done.

So we invited an adorable little schoolmate over to play with the girls, and there was much running up and down stairs and in and out of the house, etc.--your typical playdate. At one point in the morning, however, Sydney came in and asked for a snack, and so I thought I'd find Willow and the little friend and see if they wanted a toasted cheese quesadilla, too (the little friend claimed, however, that she isn't allowed to eat snacks at other people's houses, but that's a later story). I didn't see the girls upstairs, so I ran down to the basement playroom. No girls. I figured I must have missed them somewhere upstairs, so I ran back up and looked in all the rooms, calling their names. No girls. Now I figured I must have missed them downstairs after all, so I ran back downstairs, and looked in the bathroom off of the playroom and the closet under the stairs, calling their names.

No girls.

So now I think that they must be hiding, so I run back upstairs and look really well in all the nooks and crannies in all the rooms, calling their names sternly and announcing trouble to come if hiding places are not revealed.

No girls.

And now I start to panic. I think of all the places in which a mischievous hiding little girl or two could come to grief--did one girl lock another in a Rubbermaid bin made empty due to our recent organization, and then panic, herself, and hide? Could they have climbed into the broken dryer and then passed out? Emptied the chest freezer of food, hidden that food, climbed inside the freezer, and shut the door on themselves? Drunk a full bottle of hydrogen peroxide and crawled underneath the kitchen sink to die? I run back downstairs, like an IDIOT, and check the dryer, and the freezer, and the nook where the furnace lives, and the space around the chimney.

NO GIRLS.

And now I think, I HAVE WASTED TOO MUCH TIME. Whatever has happened, I have wasted lots of precious minutes running back and forth, while these children are in danger or dead. So I run back upstairs, heading straight to the cell phone so that I can call 1) 911 2) Matt 3) the little schoolmate's mother.

And as I pass the hall closet, which I have looked in at least four times in the past few minutes, I hear "gigglegigglegiggle." And from beneath the winter coats and behind the stroller and sturdy boots crawl Willow and her little friend, just giggling as hard as they can giggle.

And that's how I had my first heart attack.

In other news, the expansive organizational project of the girls' bedroom and our study/studio, the two messiest rooms in the house on account of they are constantly inhabited by three of the four messiest people in our family, is finished. I didn't finish grading papers this weekend, but I did finish putting all my favorite things, and all of the girls' favorite things, into clear plastic bins with sturdy lids. And then I labeled those bins. And, um, color-coded them. Because if you're going to do something, you might as well overdo it.

Here's part of the closet in the study:
You can see the bag in which I keep my teaching materials for my cloth diapering classes; the bin containing acrylic, oil, and tempera paints; the bin containing bulk colored pencils, the big jug of Mod Podge; the smaller box of plaster of Paris; four rolls of contact paper; the bin containing the one-inch pinback button machine and all its parts; the bin with all our hole punches; and the edges of small bins that contain seashells and artist trading cards. Oh, and at the very top, my brand-new and best-beloved Cricut, which I'll rhapsodize about some other time soon.

Here's another view of that same closet, if you can believe it:

You can see the big bin of bulk crayons, with our various pads of artist's papers stacked on top of it; bins of popsicle sticks, wooden cut-outs, and river rocks; the box of activated charcoal that, combined with the river rocks, goes into our terrariums; a bigger bin with all our paintbrushes; a small bin of pom-poms (and perhaps googly eyes); and bins of scrapbook embellishments and blank puzzles.

You probably can't see the labels on these bins, but every bin is labelled. And every bin has, below the label, one of three things on it--YES, NO, or WITH PERMISSION, and is underlined with either a green, red, or yellow marker. One of the main things I wanted to accomplish, as well as actually having a place to put all my crap, is to help the girls understand what materials they have access to. I take their roles as collaborators in our shared art and as artists in their own right very seriously, and I wanted to reassure them of what supplies they're permitted to use unsupervised, what they must be supervised to use, and what is off-limits. Basically, only the vintage beads, the jewelry findings, the soldering supplies, and the scrapbook embellishments are forbidden. The most important distinction in my mind is the WITH PERMISSION from the YES, or, for Sydney, the yellow underline from the green underline.

Bigger shelves elsewhere in the study hold bigger stuff:

Here are bins of blank papers, vintage papers, purchased scrapbook papers, scratched/warped vinyl record albums for crafting, and bulk markers. On top of one of the bins is a huge book of wallpaper samples--this is lots of fun for flipping through.

Even my desk received its fair share of attention, desperately needed, with a couple of nice, big paper bins labelled--

Although I'm not sure why I marked them NO--you'd think I'd welcome the help of anyone who wanted to do my paperwork drudgery for me...

Good News, Bad News, and Pumpkins

The good news is that I only have 19 more hero myth papers to grade. Okay, that's actually the bad news, but I'll think about it tomorrow when the usual insanity of attempting to grade papers with the girls sets in.

The real good news is yay, autumn! Here's the fall spread at the local farmer's market this weekend:

The girls each picked out their own baby pumpkin for 50 cents:
We also always let the girls buy a honeystick at 25 cents each from the Hunter's Honey Farm stand:

We didn't buy any of these yet, but we did buy some butternut squash and ugly peppers:

And apples, which I thought I might use for applesauce but which have since been mostly consumed:

I hope somebody saved one for me to have at breakfast, at least.

For the Living Room Wall

Although it's not much fun trying to organize stuff, sorting through trash and finding an actual liveable place for everything and buying ever more of those freaking clear plastic bins, I do have to say that the girls and I are finding a lot of fun in rediscovering the stuff we've had for ages and just forgot about because it was shoved in the closet on top of something else that was behind some other thing. That's not why I got the stuff in the first place, just to forget about it and never use it, and it probably goes a long way to explain why we have such a ridiculous amount of stuff in the first place.

Because as soon as the girls saw the small stack of stretched canvasses that I bought on big sale a few months ago and then put in the closet meaning to give them to the girls to paint someday soon and then forgot about, they were both all, "I want to paint!"

And seeing, now, a segment of stuff that perhaps wouldn't have to go back into the closet after all, as well as an opportunity to collect all the little bottles of acrylic, oil, and tempera paints that happen to be stuffed here and there in the closet, I said, "You betcha!"
We collect our empty egg cartons primarily to keep paint colors separate when we're working, but I thought the girls would like some experience in blending, so this time I gave them a plate. I have to admit that it resulted in some finished works that are a little on the monochromatic side, primarily of the "mud" tone of colors--
--but who cares, it was fun. And priceless to enjoy the look of deep concentration on my little mud-making girls' faces:

I had sort of planned these canvasses to be hung on our own living room wall (and I had sort of planned that Matt and I would paint a couple ourselves, but the girls were on a roll), but the youthful declaration was that they would be Christmas presents. Chasing Cheerios does these cute handprint canvas paintings that I had been contemplating making as presents, but original artwork, signed by the artist, always makes the nicest gift, don't you think?

So there you go--organizing, entertaining, educating, AND we got a couple of Christmas presents done, to boot.