A Girls-Only Snow Day

As Matt was getting ready for work yesterday morning, I tried to get him to stay home with us. The girls, after all, were celebrating an official Snow Day. And the only thing more fun than an official Snow Day is a family-wide Snow Day.

People who are not me, however, apparently have some elusive inner quality called "work ethic," and that is the reason why Matt will never, ever, NEVER use up a single one of the approximately eight hundred sick days he has thus far accumulated.

The girls and I were sad when Matt left, but it turns out that we didn't really need him that much after all--we ate potato curry quesadillas for breakfast AND lunch, read out loud an ENTIRE chapter book), played with every single small plastic dinosaur and pony that the girls own (and that's a lot of small plastic dinosaurs and ponies), and, most importantly, played in the SNOW:

When Matt got home that night (bearing pizza, the hallmark of the guilty-conscienced), he seemed repentant and apologized for not staying home after all. And by that time I was all, "We had a great day! Your day probably sucked, and we didn't even miss you!"

Which might go further than any other strategy in getting him to stay home for the next Snow Day.

Vintage for Sale (Finally!)

Are you ever at some super-cheap thrifting place, like a Goodwill Outlet Store or a local second-hand shop or a church rummage sale, and you spy some totally awesome vintage thing that is just incredible, but that you have absolutely no use for?

And then, do you look at whatever cool thing it is lovingly, and think about how you should absolutely buy it for the nickel or dime or the other outrageously cheap price?

But then do you come to your senses, remember that you have absolutely no use for this thing, as awesome as it is, and you put it down and wander away?

Yeah, I never do that.

I have a weakness for 1) ridiculously under-priced stuff 2) vintage stuff 3) craft or DIY stuff. Don't believe me? Ask me about my Renaissance Faire dress. Or my lathe.


And that is why one of my goals this year is to seriously de-stash my stash. The Ren Faire dress and the lathe are staying, but lots of other stuff--such as, you know, every single paint-by-number that I've ever acquired at every garage sale I've ever been to, or perhaps 400 of the approximately 500 different ratty old editions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare that I keep finding (my 500 different ratty old editions of The Canterbury Tales are all staying, too)--need to either be used or wended away, big sigh.

The first two of MANY future listings in the brand-new Vintage section in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

Vintage Honeycomb Christmas Angel

I really like any and every tissue paper honeycomb decoration that I've every come across (don't know what a honeycomb decoration is? Think of those fold-out wedding bells, with the accordion paper that makes it all 3D and tacky? Love it!), and I am absolutely keeping the Santa Claus from this set that I found at the Goodwill Outlet Store, but I'm not into angels. Not even angels with blonde bobs and everything from Christmas ornaments to entire holly branches, leaves AND berries, in their hair.

Vintage Greist Presser Feet and Attachments in the Original Tin

I love sewing, and sewing machine stuff, ESPECIALLY presser feet and other gimmicky attachments, but Greist made presser feet and other attachments for Singer sewing machines, and my machines (yes, I have two hand-me-down machines, an heir and a spare) are a Bernette and a Brother.

But oh, to have a ruffler of my very own! And feet to make THREE different kinds of hems! I can hardly imagine the happiness...

Stay tuned, for the purging will continue. The volcano making kit and the Polaroid cameras are staying. Some of the crafts books are going. The stained glass scraps are definitely staying. The shank buttons are definitely going. ALL the World War II-era ladies' hats are staying. All the Farrah Fawcett blue jeans are going. The entire shell collection can stay, but almost all of the cloth diapers have to go...

Making Button Bobby Pins (with the Babies)

This is a project that I never would have made on my own.

My little girls, however, have a seemingly endless thirst for hair pretties. I have bought them any number of plain, serviceable hair bands and barrettes, loudly proclaiming each time that no, I will certainly NOT pay that much for the fancy hair pretties, seeing as how we can make them just as well ourselves.

The girls finally having noticed that, for all my talk, we have not yet actually made ourselves any fancy hair pretties...

Let the crafting of hair pretties begin.

I don't actually have
in front of me, but I remember these button bobby pins (and their simplicity), and if something can be made using hot glue, then that something can be made by me.

And the littles, who of course are permitted to wield the hot glue gun whenever they want, too: Unfortunately, I really didn't set up this activity well, and so although the girls seemed to enjoy themselves, and made button bobby pin after button bobby pin until we have to find the hiding places of more bobby pins in order to make more, I was frustrated by having to help them in the midst of my unwieldy set-up (me standing across the table from them the entire time, with the glue gun plugged in on Sydney's far side so that the cord was always in the way, and the button bins deep and full and hard to sift through), and I was too busy battling hot glue and button bins to actually get to make any of these pins, myself.

Next time, I'll sit between the girls, with the hot glue gun in front of us, and I'll set out some dishes for the more efficient and effective sorting of buttons. I've been planning a project for some time in which I encourage the girls to do the tedious sorting out of shank buttons for me, so ideally this will take place after that sorting, as well.

And yet, we do now have numerous ways for the babies to be all buttoned up now:
Which is success any way you look at it.

Handmade. Barbie Clothes! IN A MUSEUM!!!

I played with Barbies a LOT as a child. I had a Barbie car, a horse that Barbie rode, her pet dog, and even a hot tub that you could make bubble and that came with a slide. Family legend had it that my cousin Amy, a few years older than I, had once had a working Barbie washer and dryer. She apparently used it, much as a real washer and dryer are used, to ruin a bunch of Barbie clothes?

Anyway, so goes the legend.

And although both my Mama and my Nana sewed, and even taught me to sew a little as a pretty young child (I used to use my Nana's polyester scraps to sew clothing for my set of stuffed bananas, an easy prospect since they had no arms or legs), I never DREAMED of handmade clothes! For Barbie!!!

The fact that handmade Barbie clothes are in a museum now does not surprise me in the slightest.

The Indianapolis Children's Museum is currently exhibiting Barbie: The Fashion Experience. I do NOT approve of their dress-up area being tied to a child-sized fashion runway--watching toddlers work it in person is even more chilling than watching it on train-wreck TV--but the child-sized design studios, with fabric scraps that can be pinned on teeny-tiny dressmaker's dummies? Love it. The area for sketching out one's own fashion designs? Love it. The displays of Barbies and their fashions from that black-and-white bikini to the latest Project Runway designs? Love it.

And the special exhibit of Barbie clothes, made by somebody's grandmother a very long time ago?
Love it.

While I was zoning out on my ipod and browsing the exhibits, Matt was supervising the girls playing with Barbies at a Barbie-sized runway just off-stage of the real runway. He had a great view of the disturbingly large deal being made by preschoolers and parents in the hair and make-up stations--people, and adult people, no less, were getting REALLY excited about this--and a great location to eavesdrop on parents just about to send their children out onto the child-sized runway ("Go look sexy for Daddy, honey, so he can take your picture!"). It was enough to nearly send him over the edge:
Of course he didn't actually bite Barbie's head off. He practically doused himself in hand sanitizer just from touching her with his hands--he does not carry mouthwash in case of unsanitary biting conditions.

Baby's First Pointilist Abstract

These dot painters are sort of gimmicky, I totally admit that. I mean, they only do one thing: they paint dots.

Hence the name dot painters, you know?

And even though I originally bought them (at Learning Treasures, during their big summer all-store sale) to use as a travel activity, specifically for our plane trip to California last summer, I noticed as I was packing for that trip that each painter holds over an ounce of LIQUID paint.

The dot painters got packed away in the present closet, instead, and revealed themselves again at Christmas.

For a one-trick pony, however, they are really fun. Willow and I spent an entire evening not long ago covering sheet after sheet of Bristol board (I really should start buying some stock in Strathmore):
My artwork is generally pretty pedestrian:But Will's always pops with energy:
I didn't introduce the concept of pointilism or anything while we were playing, but I'm sure that in the future, the first time anyone exposes her to Seurat, she'll be all, "Oh, that stuff. Dude, I was doing that ever since I was five years old!"

Because What Etsy Needs is Another Pinback

Obviously, you've just been dying for me to tell you something else fun that I can do with my Cricut. Ooh, and if I can photograph it using selective focus, then all the better, right?

Um, right?

Here are some one-inch pinback buttons that I've been playing with, using my Cricut and various images cut at 3/4", backed with 1" circles punched from vintage dictionary pages. I gave some of these out for my five friends giveaway, and some others are up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

Tree without Leaves

Dinosaur
Skull and Crossbones

Butterfly

And those were just the cut-outs that I liked in that size from the Paper Dolls Dress-up Cartridge. Just wait until I try out a cartridge like Animal Kingdom, or 50 States.

In other news, my belly is currently full from homemade quesadilla (it's Sunday, so I had to talk Matt down from his personal little tradition of two cheap frozen pizzas, but it was worth the effort), and later I plan to hit Goodwill in search of vintage T-shirts. An awesome good day, right?

P.S. Check out my tutorial for a matching game made from your own artwork, over at Crafting a Green World.

Homemade Rainbow Rocket Pops

One thing about my mom: she loves to buy people presents. I mean, she LOVES it. The build-up to Christmas starts, I swear, in September, and at some point in each telephone conversation after that point, she tells me what she has bought for whom for Christmas since our previous conversation. She's generally pretty good about adhering to my rules about what makes an acceptable present for the girls, although her enthusiasm causes her to cross the line occasionally (I've given in on My Little Pony, but I will NOT give in on ANY My Little Pony plastic playsets or accessories), and since I have a whole blog to whine about stuff I want, as well as my pumpkinbear wists, she always manages to surprise me with something that I have totally wanted forever, as well.

This year, one of the things that I got from my mother was a set of rocket pop popsicle molds. Do you remember rocket pops? Popsicles shaped like rockets? Don't you think it would be awesome to make your own rocket pops?

Well, I can assure you, it IS awesome. It is AWESOME!!!

You can make a rocket pop with just juice, just like you make a regular homemade popsicle (as if I'll ever be making any of those again!), but one of the cool things about rocket pops, out of the many cool things about rocket pops--Did I mention that they're shaped like rockets?--is that they're striated. Your rocket isn't just a rocket, but a RAINBOW rocket. You can't do that with juice!

You can, however, make a delicious, nutritious, frozen rocket rainbow treat out of yogurt. Here's how:

You will need:

• white yogurt, plain or flavored--I used Trader's Point Creamery low-fat vanilla. Another option is to flavor the yogurt yourself, with honey or spices, perhaps.
• liquid food coloring--my professional-grade food coloring is in paste form, so I used some generic liquid food coloring from the big-box grocery store. Another option is to experiment with natural food colorings--blueberry juice, colorful herbs, etc.
• several small bowls with a spoon for each bowl
• room in the freezer for each mold to sit nicely upside-down

1. Spoon some yogurt into several small bowls.

2. Letting the littles choose colors, add a judicious amount of food coloring to each bowl. For little littles, this is the time to review color identifications or mixing primary colors or just how many infinite ways there are to make brown.

3. The littles get to stir.

4. Letting the littles choose the order of colors, carefully spoon each color of yogurt into the pop mold. Try not to slop the yogurt against the inner sides of the mold as you spoon it in. As long as you put your yogurt in a spoonful at a time, each layer will sit nicely on top of the previous layer:

You could make themed popsicles, in patriotic colors or Halloween colors or spring colors, or you could practice the order of colors in the rainbow or complementary colors, or you could just go crazy, like us.

5. Leave a nice half-inch headspace at the top of the mold to account for the yogurt's expansion as it freezes:

6. The instructions that came with our rocket pop mold advised us to let the pops freeze for at least four hours. In order to avoid having to inform two small children every five seconds for four hours about whether or not the pops are ready, we made our pops as a family activity just before bedtime, and then the girls got to eat their pops for breakfast. Willow, actually, didn't care much for her pop--Trader's Point Creamery yogurt is on the tart side, which is what I think she found unappealing. I'll have to think up some kind of natural pudding or a different kind of yogurt for her future popsicles.

Sydney, however, was a big fan:

She ate two of these in a row, and another one later for her snack. When we make a new batch today (our current supply of rocket pops being dreadfully low), I plan to add in a couple of layers of frozen berries, just so I feel a little better about letting the baby eat nothing but frozen yogurt all day.

Because frozen yogurt + berries? You could totally live off of that.