A Doll in Your Pocket Makes the World Go Right

I've been wanting to make Waldorf dolls for the kids forEVER, but they're so complicated, and I'd have to get my head around crafting with new wool, and blah blah blah the time just never seemed right.

With the help of however, I've decided to at least start. Start small, perhaps. And the kids, for some reason, have lately been taking it in turns to seriously balk at going to school. We're talking tantrum-at-the-door balk. So the first project detailed in Making Waldorf Dolls, a tiny little pocket doll, SUPER tiny to fit in small hands and to hide in small pockets, seemed just about right.

Instead of the gauze called for to make the doll's head, I used a tan tie-dyed T-shirt. Instead of new wool rolled into a ball to stuff the doll's head, I used a pompom from the children's craft stash. Otherwise, it went like this:

Circles for the head: Stuffed and tied:Little doll bodies:With yarn for hair:I gave the kids one each, for now (there might be more hiding in Easter eggs in little woven baskets next weekend). They ADORE them. They take them everywhere, and pull them out all the time for just a few minutes of play anywhere they happen to be, not unlike the way I pull out my notebook and pen to write for a minute or two wherever I happen to be. I need to make them little necklace pouches or something, in fact, because they are very disturbed when they're not wearing an outfit that has a pocket for the doll, and they've taken to tucking them into their underpants in such circumstances.

Handy, of course, but the fishing around in public is a bit of a problem, as is, of course, sanitation. 

The little kid's doll, especially, tends to accompany her the majority of the time, no matter what she's doing:I didn't tell her, in so many words, that the doll was meant to comfort her in times when she needed me and I wasn't there, but I think she's figured it out for herself.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

The Third Member of the Band

I never really liked that movie August Rush as much as everyone else did, I think. I hate films in which characters don't make all the pertinent information clear to each other. I mean, why didn't Felicity just TELL the social worker that her father had forged her signature on the adoption papers? Instead, the social worker was all, "You're a bad mom!" and Felicity was all, "I know, right?"

Anyway, Sydney's latest composition, her interest intrigued by my and Willow's interest in the guitar, reminds me of that film:

It's wrong, I know, but I'm already imagining them both on the main stage at Lollapalooza.

Pinback Buttons and Happy Faces

The biggest problem with the button machine is encouraging the girls NOT to make buttons all the time. I'm all, "Sweetie, you don't work at TGI Friday's. A girl only needs so much flair." Perhaps their pinbacks will get more use when we start homeschooling in a couple of months--before that, and I can't even imagine the conniption their teacher would have if they brought their pointy little accessories to school with them.

Of course, when they see me sitting at the table making some pinbacks myself (which I was doing for my pumpkinbear etsy shop yesterday)-- --it is GAME ON.

Willow and I have toyed off and on with the idea, for over a year now, of letting her make something on her own to sell at my craft fairs. I should have thought harder, because last year I really wasn't able to come up with anything that she could make that I thought would actually sell--one time at Strange Folk a sweet old lady did pay one dollar for four of the turf clods that Willow had wrapped with duct tape and put on a shelf, but she wouldn't actually take them. So that's not so much success. But as the girls worked, and worked, and worked on their buttons--

--they came up with an idea that turned out really cool:
Smiley faces! I traced a button circle template several times on artist's paper, and gave each kid, with MANY admonishments and advisories, my very nice, fine-tipped Sharpie and Micron pens, and away they went. The simplicity of their creation works well, and it's recognizable to the average person (unlike a lot of children's art), and it ends up looking very unique without looking too childish.
And in case you have doubts that the kids can actually MAKE the pinbacks by themselves, I present Willow:

And Sydney, complete with bonus sister-squabbling action:

It's a rainy day today, so even more pinbacks is not an impossibility.

Dinosaur Lovers Unite!!!

I already have the Craftster Dinosaur Swap to thank for inspiring me to finally get off my butt and create my daughter's dinosaur quilt already, but that's on the giving side of the equation. On the receiving side of the equation (which is a good side of the equation to be on), I have my swap partner to thank for what is likely the most crazy-awesome swap package that I have EVER received.

And the girls? Well, I'll just say that they're beside themselves, and allow you to imagine for yourself the exact strain of hysteria that has swept through our house in the wake of this package.

First, a sweet little note:
"A surprise!" you think. "Why, I LOVE surprises!" And you are so, so correct. Because some of the surprises are this:
And some of the surprises are this:These handmade coloring pages are the coolest thing: The girls have already done several (as you can see). There is one in particular, of brachiosauruses in love, that I'm going to secretly slip to Willow (not Sydney) to color tomorrow, because I dearly want to then frame it and hang it in their room. Not that I don't find Sydney's artwork beautiful, mind you--I'm her mother, I think it's awesome--but...Brachiosauruses in Love seems meant for Willow, I'll just leave it at that.

So that stuff alone is awesome enough, I'm sure you agree, and you can't even count the adorableness of all the other miscellaneous toys and dinosaur paraphernalia also included (excavation kits! volcano eruptions! crayons! sunglasses!), but this blows all that out of the water:

I mean, are you kidding me?!?

This playset is INCREDIBLE!!! It's made up of all these great fabrics, mostly recycled, all with really interesting textures that contrast really well, and there are little dino hiding spots tucked in----and little foam dinos to play with--

--and tons of extra foam so that the girls can make their own little dinos to play with! Sydney is sleeping with this playset right this very minute. She's also, not that you need to know this, insisted on sleeping on the living room hardwood floor, on top of two big pillows, inside her pink flower sleeping bag, with a sock monkey, stuffed whale, and plastic My Little Pony, while listening to on CD. And even then it was after 9:00 pm before she went to sleep, a stark contrast to Willow, who fell asleep in the car at 6:00 pm (on our way to the park, which we then did not get to go to) after shrieking for half an hour about sunscreen that she'd gotten in her eyes while playing with it without permission. Man, kids do NOT like to have their eyes irrigated with water bottles!

But yeah...dinosaurs. The girls are re-inspired, I am re-inspired=another successful swap.

Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups: Good, but Not Reese's Good

First of all:
Suck it, Will Shortz! I OWN you on Mondays! The rest of the week...let's not discuss it right now.

So I've been wanting to try Alicia Silverstone's chocolate peanut butter cups for a while now. They're vegan, and she said that they're better than Reese's. Y'all, seriously. She SAID that. And they're VEGAN!

I already knew there were delicious vegan desserts in the world. There's after all, and my dear friend Mac's tofu peanut butter icebox pie to consider. Thanks to Vegan Lunch Box, I make a mean, and delicious, chocolate brownie that's sweetened entirely with pureed fruit and some maple syrup, and my fantasy life revolves around an entire cookbook filled with nothing but such wonders, but these vegan chocolate peanut butter cups...they're good and all, but they didn't so much wow me.

You start with the cutie little cupcake liners:
I bought these at Daiso back in August. Aren't they cuuuuuute? I have no idea what the Japanese on them says--it's probably something filthy.

Then you make the peanut butter filling, and you put that in:
Mine is so dark because the filling is half graham cracker crumbs, and I have chocolate graham crackers left over from chocolate graham cracker haunted houses. That's packrattitude for you (I totally just made that up!)

Finally, you spread the melted chocolate/soy milk mixture on top:It looks crazy yummy, right? And it is good. I think I'm just mad because Alicia Silverstone SAID that they were better than Reese's, and so I was all, "Mmmm, I'm going to eat these, and they're going to be better than Reese's, but not as bad for me, and also vegan!"

That's not how it happened. But the kids adore them, at least:Because, you know, it's so hard to get kids to eat chocolate and peanut butter mixed with sugar.

I think that I'll make a curry tomorrow.

Someone Else's Hand-Me-Downs

Sydney is VERY picky about her clothes. This has made the process of receiving hand-me-downs from Willow tiresome, likely for all involved. The purging of the winter wardrobe and the unveiling of the summer bins this weekend have resulted in a large stack of hand-me-downs that Sydney will not wear at any price and that thus are destined for either resale or donation, a large stack of hand-me-downs that Sydney claims she will wear when (if) I get around to sewing on decorative buttons or flower appliques or stenciling unicorns, etc., and a small stack of hand-me-downs that were deemed suitable for wear as-is.

The girls are nearly the same waist size, only Willow is taller, so, cropped pants still being stylish (I hope), some of these hand-me-downs have actually gone back to their original owner. Those AWESOME camouflage pants that looked so cool on Willow when she was three years old actually look even cooler as calf-length capris, and some other pants are in the same large stack on my work table waiting to be cut into shorts.

In other words, though, thank GOODNESS for the Goodwill 50%-off Storewide Sale. Along with some more T-shirts for baby bags and quilts (how awesome will a Godfather baby bag be? SO awesome), ANOTHER dinosaur board game, a sheet that will become jammy pants, a brand-new Hello! Kitty Figure-Baking Oven that it's probably wrong to be this excited about, and other sundries, I bought several long-sleeved jersey cotton shirts in Sydney-approved colors and patterns-- --to be sewn into summer-weight skirts and leggings, and Sydney got to get some hand-me-downs that she thoroughly approved of:

You gotta love her sense of style, at least:

I'll try to remember that shirt when I'm up late sewing butterfly appliques onto an otherwise perfectly serviceable pair of pants.

A Parent Library for Your School?

This was the last thing that I had to do:
Because of course the Parent Library that I set up at the girls' school this year must have a crafty sign. My contributions to the sign are the letters, cut from scrapbook paper and cardstock using the Winter Wonderland Cricut cartridge (during which time I also made the girls approximately one thousand dancing reindeer and stylized bunnies, and also several 3D stand-up trees). Willow's contributions include a background of Do-a-Dot marker; button, rhinestone, and googly eye embellishments--

--and her name in pencil, which I TOLD her not to do, but the kid just can't seem to help herself. After three years in school, she writes her name on everything that she does.

I highly recommend the installation of a parent library in your kid's school. The library, which in our case is a very large bookshelf in the school office, consists of parenting books, books about schooling and child development, and books in enrichment areas, but the key is that all of these books are endorsed by the school. Can't figure out which book touting which discipline method you should read? If you trust your kid's teachers, why not check out the one that they like? Without this library, I would have never known that the Montessori teachers at this school, as a group, are ADDICTED to the Positive Discipline series. Between all the head teachers, I think that they own every title. And it's a good series. I like it.

It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be to come up with a pretty large collection of titles for the library. One month, I attended the early morning head teachers meeting, during which time I explained the concept of what I wanted this parent library to be. I told the teachers that I imagined that they likely found themselves talking about the same issues with parents over and over--ADD, perhaps, or sleep discipline, or cliques. With a Parent Library in the building, the teachers could request that books be added on those issues, particularly their favorite books to recommend, and then whenever they speak to a parent, they can send them over to the library to read a particular book. The teachers were pretty excited, and had LOTS of suggestions for books to include.

To squeeze some extra books into my very small library budget, I also asked the teachers for any books they'd be willing to move from their private collections in their own workrooms to the parent library bookshelf. Each of the teachers, based on their own classroom experiences, had collected a large assortment of books, everything from books on bipolar children to the bullying of girls, and depending, of course, on what ages they taught. If they moved a book from their private shelf to the parent library, they would still have access to that book (although not necessarily immediately, because it could be checked out, but could also easily be recalled), and it would free up some space in their work areas. I received stacks upon stacks of books this way, including that entire Positive Discipline series. And then I didn't have to go back to the teachers to double-check that they endorsed any of these particular books, as I did with the independent purchases--if a teacher has a book in her own collection, it's endorsed.

Here's an example of what the Parent Library now contains:

ABOUT MONTESSORI

• · The Absorbent Mind by Maria Montessori.
• · The Essential Montessori by Elizabeth Hainstock. 1986
• · Maria Montessori: Methods, Schools, Materials. 1978
• · Montessori: A Modern Approach by Paula Polk Lillard. 1972 (2 copies)
• · The Montessori Revolution in Education by E.M. Standing. 1969
• · Our Peaceful Classroom by Aline D. Wolf.
• · The Secret of Childhood by Maria Montessori. 1966
• · To Educate the Human Potential by Maria Montessori. 1985

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

• · All About Attention Deficit Disorder: Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment by Thomas W. Phelan. 2000
• · Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals by Tony Attwood. 2003
• · Awakening Your Child’s Natural Genius by Thomas Armstrong. 1991
• · Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock. 1968
• · The Bipolar Child: The Definitive and Reassuring Guide to Childhood’s Most Misunderstood Disorder by Demitri Papolos and Janice Papolos. 2002
• · The Child Under Six by James L. Hymes, Jr. 1963
• · The Difficult Child by Stanley Turecki. 2000
• · The Emotional Life of the Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman. 1993
• · The First Three Years of Life by Burton L. White. 1975
• · How to Parent by Fitzhugh Dodson.
• · How to Parent so Children will Learn by Sylvia B. Rimm. 1990
• · Living with the Active Alert Child by Linda S. Budd. 1993
• · Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls by Rachel Simmons. 2002
• · Odd Girl Speaks Out by Rachel Simmons. 2004
• · Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types by David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates. 1984
• · Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World by H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelson. 2000
• · Sexual Development in Childhood. 2003
• · Tics and Tourette Syndrome: A Handbook for Parents and Professionals by Uttom Chowdhury. 2004
• · Understanding the Human Being by Silvana Quattrocchi Montanaro. 1991
• · The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian. 1997
• · Your Eight-Year-Old: Lively and Outgoing by Ames and Haber. 1990
• · Your Four-Year-Old: Wild and Wonderful by Louise Bates Ames, PhD, and Frances L. Ilg. 1976
• · Your Six-Year-Old: Loving and Defiant by Ames and Ilg. 1976
• · Your Two-Year-Old: Terrible or Tender by Ames and Ilg. 1976

EDUCATION AND SCHOOLING

• · A.D.D. and Creativity by Lynn Weiss. 1997
• · Beyond A.D.D by Thom Hartmann. 1996
• · Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education by Melodie A. McCarthy and John P. Houston. 1980
• · Marching to Different Drummers by Pat Burke Guild and Stephen Garger. 1985
• · Montessori in the Home: The Preschool Years by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. 1968
• · Positive Discipline: A Teacher’s A-Z Guide by Jane Nelsen. 2001
• · Ready to Learn: A Mandate for the Nation by Ernest L. Boyer. 1992
• · Setting Limits in the Classroom: How to Move Beyond the Dance of Discipline in Today’s Classroom by Robert J. MacKenzie. 2003
• · Skill Streaming the Elementary School Child by McGinnis and Goldstein. 1984
• · Teaching Children with Autism: Strategies to Enhance Communication and Socialization by Kathleen Ann Quill. 1995
• · Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching Children to Write Poetry by Kenneth Koch. 1971

MONTESSORI LIFESTYLE

• · Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul. 1998
• · Children: The Challenge by Rudolf Dreikurs. 1964
• · The Discipline Book by William Sears and Martha Sears. 1995
• · Girl Wars: 12 Strategies that Will End Female Bullying by Cheryl Dellasega. 2003
• · Growing Up Again by Jean Illsley Clarke and Connie Dawson. 1998
• · The New York Times Parents’ Guide to the Best Books for Children by Eden Ross Lipson. 1988
• · P.E.T.: Parent Effectiveness Training by Dr. Thomas Gordon. 1975
• · Peaceful Children, Peaceful World by Aline D. Wolf. 1989
• · Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen. 2001
• · Positive Discipline A-Z by Jane Nelsen, Lynn Lott, and H. Stephen Glenn. 2007
• · Positive Discipline: The First Three Years by Jane Nelsen, Cheryl Erwin, and Roslyn Ann Duffy. 2007
• · Positive Discipline for Preschoolers by Jane Nelsen, Cheryl Erwin, and Roslyn Ann Duffy. 2007
• · Positive Time-Out: And Over 50 Ways to Avoid Power Struggles in the Home and Classroom by Jane Nelsen. 1999
• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher. 2001

The library still needs some books about tween boys and the rest of the works of Maria Montessori, but for this year, at least, its budget is tapped out.

The gold standard check-out procedure for a library this small is to write the title/author of each book on its own index card, and alphabetize it in a card file. When parents want to check out a book, they print their first and last name and the date they took the book on the card. When they return the book, they note that date, as well. If the school needs a particular book back for any reason, they have all the parent telephone numbers on file, so they can call the parents, or just grab them at pick-up. And I rubber-stamped the school name and address on the inside cover of each book, just in case somebody forgets where their book came from.

Over the long-term (which I won't be around for), I would have liked to have provided a few take-home Montessori materials for the library, and a collection of Montessori-endorsed children's books (they're real big on peace, you know). But for this project for this year, I'm afraid that I'm just going to have to stick a fork in it, and hope that next year's librarian will have some bigger and better ideas.

And perhaps I'll write my name in pencil somewhere, too.