Willow in the Hundreds

Last night, hanging out at the table with me while I worked on some lists (To-Do before Homeschool: figure out local/state laws; decide on a system; make a PLAN!!!), abacus in front of her, pencil with eraser in hand, Willow completed, for fun, the following worksheet:
I'm not sure what the second graders are like over where this book publisher lives, but as a kindergartner Willow can't be THAT far behind the collective humor, and when I finally read her the answer, the culmination of her hour's work, she was all, "Secretary bird? What does that even mean?"

This morning, as I sat again at the table, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, Willow suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, my math!", and ran to get her abacus, pencil, and math workbook again (said math workbook having been scavenged from the Recycling Center who knows when?). She sat down and, after I explained the first two problems as we did them together, completed the following worksheet:
With that, and as much time as possible playing with small dinosaur figures and plastic ponies, I think homeschooling will go just fine.

Children's Art Materials: Reusable Stickers

If you've ever wondered about any kind of art supply to buy for or use with your children...I have it. I've used it. And I have an opinion on it.

Reusable stickers? Eh.

In theory, they're brilliant. They're usually made of a thin plastic that clings, not sticks, to the plastic-coated play surface that's provided. So, unlike the foam stickers that we have a ridiculous amount of, you can pick these up and put them back, put them on top of each other, and then put them away and play again later.

In theory.

In fact, there are usually some things keeping this from being a really satisfying creative experience, or a really successful toy. For one thing, there's rarely a storage system in place for the stickers. So you take all the stickers off of their sticker page (which it's impossible to return them to--too fiddly) and put them all on the playset--

--and when you're done, then what? If you leave them on the playset, then you can never start your play with a clean canvas, and that hinders your creativity. If you take them off, you might as well kiss them goodbye while you're at it, because how are you ever going to find them again?

I'm also not in love with the concept of the playset at all, and the scene that inevitably comes with the stickers. You're supposed to pose the dinosaurs on their Jurassic landscape, I get that, but what if you want to do something else? Have them marching single file over a rainbow (this scenario gets played out often at our house)? Buying groceries at the Supercenter? Forget about it.

I do think that I have solutions for both of these problems, but I'll have to see if it's worth it to actually make them come to life, since reusable stickers are also prone to getting filthy and ripped as well as lost.

The idea that I'm more excited about is a plan that I have to make some reusable creative surfaces to use with regular stickers. And that's in the queu after numbered beanbags (because Sydney is still struggling with number identification) and one Tooth Fairy pillow.

A Tooth Fairy pillow! Willow's loose tooth is both awesome and gross, all at the same time. Of course, that's how I feel about almost everything involving my kids, so do with that what you will.

Baby in a Bag

Among the other things that I've been doing this week--sledding, seriously considering homeschooling the girls next academic year, cooking dinner after dinner after dinner, reading novel after novel after novel, and watching scary movies with Matt (if one can be said to have "watched" Paranormal Activity if one had one's hands in front of one's face the entire time)--I've also been sewing a part of my collection of awesome thrifted shirts into what are, I guess, newborn gowns, but what Matt and I always called "baby bags":
They're to sell at Barefoot Herbs+Barefoot Kids, our local hippie parenting store, and frankly, I can't think of a better thing to do with the Che Guevara T-shirt that just never quite fit right again after Sydney came to be.

The basic pattern is easy enough, although the lap shoulders gave me hell. After I figured out a cobbled-together pattern for them that worked, however, I made up my own construction technique that is definitely NOT the way you're supposed to do them, and that, and an outrageous number of straight pins (and plenty of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix), gets them done:
The reason that Matt and I so adored the baby bag is in the bottom hem:
Elastic! The gown is meant to be long on the baby, and so the elastic keeps it narrow enough that she can kick and kick and kick happily and not kick off her clothes, but it is the easiest imaginable process in the world to pull the gown up to change her big, cloth-diapered butt.

Of course, the baby bags that Matt and I used were lovingly gifted to us from places like BabyGap, and so they were on the cool side of baby-dom (I think I remember that one had a houndstooth pattern--woo-hoo!), but they weren't as cool as this. Just think--tie-dye! Skulls (Stolen from my own private stash of skull shirts that I'm saving up to make a skull T-shirt quilt out of, no less)!

Awesome bands!

I have a Smashing Pumpkins one, too, that I'm hoping to finish up tonight before watching The Puppet Masters with Matt.

And, um, of COURSE the Great Wall of China:

Don't tell Matt, but it kind of makes me want to have another baby, just so I can dress her entirely in clothing that I've sewn from awesome thrifted T-shirts.

Because if I was pregnant again, I'd TOTALLY have all the time in the world on my hands for sewing newborn layettes, right?

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.