An Indoor Water Valentine

Lots of other blogs have really sweet, love-affirming Valentine's Day posts.

We traditionally prefer to spend our Valentine's Day weekend getting our redneck on at Caribbean Cove indoor water park.

In my opinion, indoor water parks are just one of those things that are automatically classified as redneck. Normal people in swimsuits, misbehaving children, questionably safe activities, hot dogs, arcade with prizes, inner tubes--these things, while quite normal in isolation, when put in combination are very redneck, and in a large, public, indoor swimming hole, are very, VERY redneck.

I'm quite at home here, as you might imagine.

As are we all. There is, traditionally, frolicking----and shopping at the nearby Goodwill Outlet Store (ask Sydney sometime about her brand-new-to-her two-foot-tall realistic-looking plastic pony), and miniature golfing, and a family screening of Dinotopia (we have gotten WAY into Dinotopia), and picnic lunches----because we can't afford Caribbean Cove and anything other than peanut butter all at the same time, and, of course, bucket-dumping:Since last year I posted a photo of Matt getting water dumped on him, I told him that I wanted to post a photo of him doing the same thing this year, so he dutifully went and stood under the bucket. But every time the bucket dumped, I'd yell out, "I didn't get it that time, Matty! Can you do it just one more time?" I managed to get him to stand under that bucket and get dumped on FOUR times before he caught on.

Five has been a big year for Willow so far--losing her first tooth, learning to read, learning to ride a bicycle, becoming a kindergartner--and this weekend was no exception to the string of heart-breakingly big firsts, because THIS year, unlike all the other years we've come to Caribbean Cove previously, Willow is over 42" tall, and thus she can ride the water slides:Trust me, she's in that photo, riding in the front of the inner tube that's also holding her father, but the splash is so big that you can't even see her.

It's not necessarily your typical hearts-and-flowers-and-Cupid Valentine weekend, but if you ask Happy Girl #1----and Happy Girl #2--
--they'll assure you that it's the perfect Valentine weekend for us.

Prehistoric Valentine

A parasaurolophus in pink is one little girl's perfect Valentine:It's made from a freezer paper stencil cut with my Cricut from , and painted with Jacquard Neopaque fabric paint in pink. The positive image of the parasaurolophus is painted onto a shirt sent to my Craftster swap partner's little kiddo, along with his name done in stencil--Dinosaur Tracks has a really excellent stencil font.

Willow adores her pink parasaurolophus, and has already put in a request that I stencil her a shirt that has a stegosaurus being attacked by the meat-eater of my choice. This will take place later in my life, as today ALREADY I've finished up and mailed my swap package (just under the deadline), finished up and sent in my A Fair of the Arts application (just under the deadline), and unflooded the kitchen and the basement with the shop vac--we did not spend enough money on our dishwasher. Still to do: bullying the girls into finishing the addressing of their Valentines, shopping for weekend groceries, and packing for Caribbean Cove! This year I will NOT be taking 46 awful papers to grade, which will be a relief. I WILL be taking a romance novel, a bottle of cheap champagne, my Lensbaby, and lots of DVDs.

Much relaxin' will be done.

We Don't Wash Wool on Hot

Dear Matt,

First of all, thanks for doing the laundry. What with Willow barfing and all, laundry definitely needed to be done, and I'm glad that you stepped up. Did you have trouble finding the washing machine? I know it's been a while since you've used it, so I hope it's still in the place that you remembered.

I did want to mention again, however--remember when I showed you all the girls' nice, soft wool leggings that I spent one weekend sewing up for them? I sewed them from sweater sleeves, and sewed matching skirts, and they were super cute? Remember when I held them up and said, "Look at these leggings. They are made of wool. You cannot wash them on hot, and you cannot put them in the dryer. Look, here's another pair of leggings. It is also made of wool. Do not put this in the dryer, and do not wash it on hot," and you said, "Stop talking to me like I'm not smart!" and I said, "Of course you're very smart, but you also felted my nice, soft wool socks, and I do not want you to felt this pair of leggings that you are now looking at," and you said, "Okay, okay! Stop treating me like a child! I hear you about the leggings!"

Do you remember that? I'm just asking because--
--you felted the leggings. They are very small now. They are no longer Willow-sized. They're not even Sydney-sized. In fact, they might now fit Sugar and Nutmeg, the guinea pigs in the girls' classroom, and that's fun, because I was meaning to spend all weekend sewing those guinea pigs something nice anyway.

Anyway, thanks for doing the rest of the laundry, and Sydney didn't even notice that the skirt on her princess dress is a little pink now, what with being washed with red and orange and purple wool leggings. On hot.

Love,
Julie

P.S. You also put the down comforter in the dryer. There are feathers everywhere.

Sick of Snow Days

Books

Magic School Bus and Dinotopia and Biscuit and Boynton and Gilbert, among MANY others

An elaborate lunch

pasta with last night's pizza sauce and shredded Swiss cheese with sliced oranges on the side

Cassette tapes on the stereo

LOTS of snow

LOTS of sledding
one major temper tantrum involving how much it sucks to bike in the snow (I told her so)
Writing
lots done on tablet paper, not so much done on the book proposal

Hallelujah
an early bedtime

The odd snow day is a nice novelty, but there's also something appealing about one's normal schedule, don't you think? I'll be happy when a normal non-snow schedule reappears, just any time it wants to now.

Valentines Made by Artists

The girls are less interested in prepping for Valentine's Day than they are in it just BEING Valentine's Day already, but nevertheless, even children have obligations, and Valentine's Day likely incurs the greatest obligations for the under-12 set than any other holiday.

Y'all, we have GOT to make some Valentines.

The girls' school does permit store-bought Valentines, although not Valentines with media characters, so I'm not sure how you're supposed to work that one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to spend a penny on this Hallmark holiday when we are perfectly capable of constructing our own Valentines with stuff we already own, and stuff that is, thus, free.

Therefore the daily sweatshop. Which is also really not that bad because the children are also not asked to bring a Valentine for everyone in their class, but just their special friends. To keep even that lesser amount from getting monotonous, I set out a different Valentine activity every day, so that there's a little more impetus to keep crafting, and no, they are NOT allowed to make every single Valentine be for their mutual friend Ella.

The day before yesterday, the girls made one tray of melted crayon hearts, which is three hearts for each of them to give out. Yesterday was far more productive, with the creation of Artist Trading Card Valentines being fun enough for the girls to make about a dozen total:Willow did most of hers with colored pencil, but Sydney got really into coloring her ATC, then gluing beads onto it:
I found that fun, too:

I got into the habit last year of giving out Artist Trading Cards instead of business cards at craft fairs (I always prefer performing a labor-intensive task over spending any kind of money whatsoever), so if there are any Valentines left unsent, I will be happy to have them join the Pumpkin+Bear ATC stash.

For today's Valentines, I'm thinking of setting out this huge stash of plastic "stained glass" suncatchers and paint that my mother bought for the girls the last time we visited. The girls can have the fun of painting them, and then they can leave my house and be someone else's chore to hang up and display and surreptitiously get rid of when the kids aren't looking.

The 36 Hours of a Snowman's Life

It took an unreasonable amount of effort to make this snowman:
The children will claim that I didn't help at all, but the fact is that I rolled that entire head all by myself. And then I went inside, because I'm not really a snow person.

Although I do like to sled.

My Aunt Pam makes snow ice cream both times that it snows in Arkansas each winter, but even though I ate bowls-full myself as a child, I no longer find it sanitary. Isn't snow just basically air pollution on ice, or is that too paranoid?

Fun as it was to make the snowman, after school today Willow asked if she could kick the snowman down and stomp it up.

I said that she should.

And apparently that was pretty fun, too.

Tutorial: Sew a Long Skirt for a Little Girl

Because they're sock monkeys.

And because the little girl likes to wear skirts.

I had thought that I was going to save most of this jersey cotton sock monkeys sheet, which probably cost $1.50 max at Goodwill Outlet, for matching pajamas for the littles. But that's a lot of sewing, and I have a lot of other stuff going on, as well, and the littles already have plenty of jammies, and I keep cutting into the sheet to make more baby bags for Barefoot Kids. But it's sock monkeys! I have to make SOMETHING for the girls out of it!

Hell, the little girl likes skirts. Might as well make a skirt:
To make a skirt of your own for a little person that you happen to know, you'll need a goodly bit of jersey cotton. I'm actually pretty stoked that I figured this project out, because several years ago I bought a few jersey cotton sheet sets, just red and grey and blue and whatever, but we don't tend to use the flat sheets in our house, so...yay, future skirts!

Anyway, measure the little person from waistband to anklebone, and add 1.25 inches, and measure her around her waist (make her suck it in, because for some reason my littles always measure wider than they wear), and multiply by 3, then add your seam allowance--1/4", unless you're going to do a french seam or something crazy like that, but you're welcome to.

Take the time to iron your jersey cotton nice and neat, because jersey cotton can stretch and warp something fierce, although a little careful ironing will true it back.

Starting at the bottom hem of the sheet, which will be the bottom hem of the dress--
--measure the length and cut, then measure the width across and cut.

Hem the side of the skirt, so that you're left with a really, REALLY wide tube.

For the waistband of the skirt, I was inspired by the blog post by Lil Blue Boo about HER T-shirt skirt, so that I folded my waistband down 1.25", too, and top-stitched the top edge to make a casing for the elastic, too. Her tute for that is very clear and has more photos--the only big difference is that I don't use interfacing or starch, and so zig-zag or overcast all my stitches when I sew knits. Anyway, her idea makes for a really neat waistband:As always, the outie is optional.

Depending on how snug you want the skirt's waist to be, you can measure your elastic for anywhere from your child's waist measurement (it'll be snug, since you'll be using some of that length to sew the elastic to itself) to your child's waist measurement + 1/2" seam allowance (that sounds like it would be a comfier fit, but remember that your child has no hips--go for snug).

Hook a safety pin to one end of the elastic, thread it through the waist casing, sew it to itself, and sew the casing shut.

Do you have two girls, too? Then go make another one!

Or just go ahead and have that third glass of sangria. The girls are asleep, after all, and there's a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon on TLC.