Good Foot vs. Bad Foot, and the Dinosaurs

My feet are making me very unhappy of late:

See that foot on the left? The one that's bigger than the foot on the right now? The one that's all swollen and hurts to walk on and has that huge, red, gross infection on top?

Yeah, I may have to get rid of that foot. It's been a big disappointment recently.

These are better:

I've been up and about more than I should, but even last night, after that darned disappointing foot forced me into bed with Grey Gardens for company, I could still cut out these felt dinos with my foot up. They're for my craft fair season that starts this Saturday, ideally to be joined by many more things to be sewn and done and otherwise manufactured, ideally to be done on two feet that are well and whole and permit me to stand and walk for as long as I want to.

As far as not meeting that ideal...we won't even discuss that.

P.S. Check out my latest posts over at Crafting a Green World--a round-up of DIY business cards (got to get mine done this week...) and a tutorial for repairing a puzzle by making a handmade puzzle piece.

A Rainy Rainbow Day

Turns out that on a stormy day, an indoor rainbow is just as good as an outdoor rainbow.

Rainbow fruit and veggie kabobs:

Also to eat: rainbow goldfish crackers, leftover rainbow M&Ms, and a rainbow of juices (well, except for the blues--turns out there are no blue juices, so for blue we had Hawaiin Punch, and it was a BIG hit!).

Rainbow reading nook:

Also to do: making rainbow edible bracelets out of Froot Loops and stretchy elastic thread, coloring on a mural wall of butcher paper duct-taped up in the living room, running around in the yard and getting muddy and spraying the hose between rainshowers, and all of the girls' toys. Toys are good.

The masterpiece:

And after:

Thrilling, this cake.

The rainbow party girls:

They were excellent party hosts, polite and generous and grateful and friendly. Well, at the exact end point of the party, when Matt was spraying children's feet mud-free with the garden hose, Willow did throw mud right in his face, but like we always say, if you're not carried screaming hysterically from a party, then you clearly didn't have any fun.

Oh, and she apologized later.

In other news, one of the nice things about throwing a children's party is the plethora of sensible parents who also attend. As I limped barefoot across the front yard, one mom friend asked me why I was limping. I explained to her that I'd managed to puncture the top of my foot with a stick over at the community garden on Wednesday, and it was still red, sore, and swollen. Immediately, I seemed to be surrounded by a swarm of lecturing mothers, under whose close investigation I do come to wonder, myself, at my situation. I mean, I can't put on my shoe! That's probably not good, now that one comes to think about it.

Therefore, as soon as the party finished, I got on the phone with my insurance's nurse help line (she also lectured me), then bullied on the shoes, got in the car, and after only a brief stop at Vintage Phoenix for Free Comic Book Day, I found myself at the walk-in clinic, with a tetanus shot, an antibiotics prescription, and an order to stay in bed with my foot elevated today.

A day in bed?!? It's like Mother's Day came early this year.

Rainbow Party Project #6: Rainbow Cakes Aplenty

Rainbow cake has basically been a week-long project. But yes, I am pleased to tell you that tonight, the night before Rainbow Party Day, the dream has been achieved.

Tonight, on top of the stove, rests a seven-layer cake waiting to be frosted and decorated with M&Ms on the morrow. Its layers, from top to bottom: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

Y'all, the rainbow cake is REAL!

But no, you can't see it yet. That would spoil the birthday party surprise!

A LOT of thought went into Rainbow Cake. I toyed with the idea of a straight-on rainbow cake, and was VERY inspired by the rainbow birthday cake over at ChocolateSuze, and her awesome rainbow Mario mushroon cake. But I really, really wanted a rainbow layer cake, and I just almost made the 20-layer rainbow cake, also at ChocolateSuze (I am still ABSOLUTELY going to make that one, just another time...).

Most of the 20-layer cakes that people post online are done with crepes, or otherwise very thin layers. So then I planned to just slice each layer in half horizontally, saving one half of each for a later date, but a very smart mom-friend of mine suggested that instead, I pour a small amount of batter into a regular 8" round pan and just watch it carefully to see when it was done. Done and DONE!

And that's how the rainbow cake was built: plain box of cake mix (on Manager's Special for 86 cents!), one cup of batter taken out and colored and spread into the bottom of an 8" round cake pan, cooked for 15 minutes. Perfect.

The girls, of course, were pillars of strength and sources of unending aid, and they also talked me into making an entire batch--24 cupcakes!--of rainbow cupcakes earlier this week just for them to eat. I'm still not sure what that was all about, but it certainly has not spoiled their taste for rainbow cake any, so it's all good.

And how nice to be able to rest my arm for a few of the 450 strokes called for in the recipe:

She learned to do silly voices while stirring from me.

The food coloring that we used is CRAP for your body--seriously, it's made entirely from high fructose corn syrup and those D&C dyes that make kids super-wild--but it's amazingly vivid, and we love it. And how many times have I told the children NOT to put it into straight into their mouths?

Many times. I have asked them not to do this many times.

We did do old-school rainbow for the cupcakes--yes, it's crazy, I baked a seven-layer rainbow cake and then two dozen rainbow cupcakes (well, I ate three, so 21 rainbow cupcakes), because I INVITE TOO MANY PEOPLE TO PARTIES. I need to feel loved, or something. Sydney helped with the cupcakes, in the most excrutiating manner imaginable:

Seriously, multiply that by seven colors and 24 cupcakes. My soul died an hour before we were done, but the child was filled with bliss, what can you do?

I love the randomness of the color when the cakes are ready to bake:

If we don't have our fill of rainbow edibles by the time this party is over tomorrow, it will NOT be for lack of trying on my part.

Rainbow Party Project #5: Rainbow Clothes for the Other Kid

To get dressed this morning, Sydney first picked out the perfect pair of tights--orange, with flowers. Then she dug through her drawer until she found the perfect pair of underpants--blue, with a sparkly pink waistband. She dug through her pants drawer for a while, but not finding anything that suited her, she instead dug through the clean laundry until she found the perfect skirt--a striped Momma-made sweater skirt. Then she dug and dug through her shirts drawer, rejecting many possibilities, until she found the perfect shirt--white pajama shirt with a penguin on it.

To get dressed this morning, Willow pulled out the topmost pair of underpants from her drawer--purple camouflage, I think. Then she pulled out the topmost pair of shorts from her pants drawer--blue plaid. Finally, she pulled out the topmost shirt from her shirts drawer--blue long-sleeved button-down. Then she went back to her book while I spent the next half-hour bullying Sydney into the rest of her clothes.

My big girl did not want a cute little party dress to match her sister's. She really didn't so much *want* any cute little party clothes, but she does love it when I make her things, and she does have as much of a weakness for over-the-top-pink-heart-and-rainbow fabric as any other child, and what is the point, I ask you, of knowing how to sew AND having two children if I don't sew them matching outfits and then take lots of photos?

Therefore, I present to you the Rainbow Party Matching Rainbow Shorts:

The pattern is from the Oliver + S Puppet Show Tunic and Shorts pattern. And I have to say, I like the shorts just okay. I'm not used to dressing Willow in shorts that are so...short. You can't tell so much from the angle at which I took these photos, but they just seem a little short, in a baby-ish way, if that makes sense--sort of like a Shirley Temple  "Oh, look at those fat little baby thighs!", but it's not working so much for my almost-six-year-old. I suppose they really were meant to go with the tunic, or even a short jumper, something longer than the regular shirts that she'll wear with them, but Will, she'd never dress herself in all that on purpose, so I told her that after the party, these could be her pajama shorts.

They are super-cute, though. I omitted the gathered patch pockets because I knew that Willow wouldn't use them, so why waste the time (in retrospect, I should have made them and added them to Sydney's dress, instead, because she WOULD use them), but I made the waistband and bias out of the purple flannel that matches Sydney's party dress, and I REALLY like the gathering technique used for the leg openings of the shorts:

I'm DEF going to try that again on some other project. I've heard that's the way with Oliver + S patterns--in the process of sewing, you always learn something new and cool.

And there you have it--another rainbow project bites the dust. I let the girls waste what seemed like half the morning watching Clifford's Puppy Days--

--because little do they know that, like it or not (sometimes they like it, and sometimes not), they are going to be spending the entire afternoon in the community garden with me.

And then we'll have shepherd's pie (with soysage, not lamb, gross) and probably make rainbow cupcakes.

Just for ourselves.

Just because we can.

One of Many Uses for an Overhead Projector

It's old-school, I know. The overhead projector, as a tool of classroom technology, is so old-school that Matt actually scored this one for free from campus, and I heard a nasty rumor that our local public school district, which is going broke and therefore firing librarians and teachers and cutting world languages and music and nature education, etc., dumped off all its overhead projectors during the city's recent day for free electronic waste disposal.

However, we of this house are THRILLED to have an overhead projector. It is crucial to my future plans to write neatly on the walls in Sharpie (stay tuned), and the kids thoroughly enjoy themselves with transparencies, markers, and huge newsprint pages taped to the wall for muralizing. See thusly:

I use my scanner and inkjet transparency film for my part of the enterprise, and the kids use their awesomeness in telling me what they want me to make for them. So far, in addition to the horse skeleton, we have a map of the spread of horses throughout the world, a United States outline, an outline of the 13 original colonies (I love you, Megamaps!!!), and later tonight I promised to make a transparency of the Greek alphabet.

I know, no rainbow project today! But don't worry--the big kid's rainbow party shorts are waiting for me to add a waistband and bias in purple flannel, and in the stove are rainbow cake layers orange and yellow, while the red layer finishes cooling on the counter before being laid in the freezer. And also?

I found the Hawaiian dude's cover of "Somewhere over the Rainbow." This party is going to be AWESOME!

Rainbow Party Project #4: The Rainbow Party Dress

You might think that a party wouldn't necessarily call for a brand-new, handmade, thematically appropriate dress.

You'd be wrong. Seriously, you're talking to the woman who made the children matching outfits for Music Day, and they didn't even perform!

It just so happens that I happened to have in my stash (and I have it because the children begged for it who knows how long ago when we were at Joann's, and it was cheap and also on sale) three yards of sickeningly pink, sickeningly rainbow and hearts flannel fabric. I don't sew with flannel so much anymore, so I have been busy turning all my novelty flannel prints into colored pencil rolls, but pink? And rainbows? It was meant to be.

Here's what it was meant to be:

It was meant to be hers.

The dress is sewn from a vintage children's pattern, the same one that I used to sew Willow's crochet dress--both those dresses are a size 3, incidentally, but you can tell that the crochet material has WAAAAY more stretch. This one is a perfect fit for my almost-four-year-old, in length and width, and it has a terrific fit to it, too, I think, which you don't always find in children's clothing:

The entire dress is trimmed in purple flannel bias--

--and the closures are done in mismatched (but matching) buttons, the buttonholes of which it took TWO sewing machines, and a lot of swears, to sew:

I'd say that the baby looks like an angel in her sweet new dress, but I don't know...

She's the kind of kid who can look awfully naughty just sitting on the couch, you know what I mean?

P.S. Check out my tutorial for back-to-front blanket binding over at Crafting a Green World. Ooh, and in my post about Waldorf dolls, the public is amusingly already up in arms that I so much as mentioned Waldorf's foundation in anthroposophy. It is what it is, people.

Rainbow Project #3: Rainbow Party Playlist

Rainy weekend! Instead of a lot of gardening, I did a lot of sewing:

Notice that the dinosaur quilt has finally reached the binding stage--what has it been...a month now? And after MUCH swearing, I broke out my newer sewing machine (thanks, Grandma Bangle!) to sew some buttonholes, acknowledging that the presser foot plate on my older, and constantly used, sewing machine is too thrashed to do a zigzag stitch without fraying up the thread. I totally got Matt up in there to see if he could rig some sort of repair, but after HE swore a few swores, I have made peace in my head with the fact that I will just use two sewing machines from now on. Nothing wrong with that.

Instead of a lot of goofing around outside and going to the park to goof around and maybe taking the two-wheeler pedal bike out for a spin, Willow did a lot of computer games and painting and puzzles:

I really, really, REALLY love this puzzle, scored from the Montessori Garage Sale, entitled "Industries of Europe." I have a serious weakness for geography puzzles in which the pieces are shaped by geographic boundaries. That, and it cracks me up to watch Willow trying to fit France all sorts of places--Soviet Union, Egypt, Iceland...hmmn.

The biggest weekend project, however, has been to create the most crucial component of Sydney's upcoming rainbow party---The Rainbow Party Playlist. I love a good party playlist, ask anyone. Seriously, anyone.

The playlist's theme is, of course, the rainbow, and all the songs are about rainbows, or at least prominently feature a rainbow metaphor. I have some jiggering to do--there are a LOT of sappy rainbow songs out there, which is bringing down the middle of my playlist, and I still have to score the original Judy Garland "Somewhere over the Rainbow" and an unmixed version of that Hawaiian dude's cover of the same, but here it is in essence:

1. "The Colors of the Rainbow in English" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

2. "Rainbow" by Colbie Caillat, from Breakthrough

3. "Rainbow Colors" by The Wiggles, from Racing to the Rainbow. Have you ever read the Wikipedia entry on the Wiggles? Fascinating.

4. "She's a Rainbow" by The Rolling Stones. I'm gambling that the young partygoers, who will range in age from infancy to six years or so, aren't going to get the metaphor in this one, so it's cool.

5. "Arco Iris" by Sol Y Canto, from El Doble De Amigos

6. "The Colors of the Rainbow in Spanish" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

7. "True Colors," from...ahem...Glee, the Music, Volume 2 (thanks, Kimberly!!!)

8. "The Colors of the Rainbow in Dutch" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

9. "Rainbow" by Paul Lippert, from Rainbow in the Sky

10. "The Colors of the Rainbow in Japanese" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

11. "Look to the Rainbow" from Finian's Rainbow

12. "The Colors of the Rainbow in French" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

13. "Rainbow Connection" covered by Willie Nelson

14. "That Terrific Rainbow" from Pal Joey

15. "The Colors of the Rainbow in Italian" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

16. "Roy G. Biv" by They Might be Giants from Here Come Science

17. "The Colors of the Rainbow in German" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

18. "Eat Like a Rainbow" by Jay Mankita from Putumayo Kids

19. "Rainbow Connection" covered by Jason Mraz from For the Kids Too

20. "The Colors of the Rainbow in Farsi" from Color Wheel Cartwheel

21. "Rainbow Connection" by Kermit the Frog

Later this week, I suppose, I'll deal with the less important details of the upcoming party--plates, silverware, napkins, mowing the lawn--you know, the minor details.

P.S. Check out my review of Making Waldorf Dolls over at Crafting a Green World. As soon as local, happy sheeps get sheared, I'm making myself--I mean, the girls, ahem--a hard-core, true-to-life Waldorf doll.