The Sturdiest Comforter on the Block

Do you know how long it takes to sew decorative/reinforced stitching around the perimeter of a king-sized down comforter?

It takes a loooooong time. But man, that comforter has been with us for a long time, too, and man, it had lots of holes around the seams.

And hauling it triumphantly back to the bedroom when I was finished, finding Matt laid out on the bed playing video games, and flopping the comforter on top of him, watching him first flinch back and hold his breath in anticipation of the expected cloud of downy little feathers, then smile happily and say, "Hey, you fixed the comforter!"--totally worth the trouble.

Secondhand Sand

This weekend was all about the thrifting. Of course, we did also go to the zoo this weekend and have Father's Day and watch Toy Story 3 at the drive-in, and last weekend we had the Monroe County History Center garage sale, so that was thrifting, too...

Just go with me, here. This weekend was all about the thrifting.

First, of course, are the Friday morning garage sales. We don't often hit these, but we were on our way over to the Community Garden, anyway, and I did just happen to have a little cash money in my pocket, and that's how we ended up with a Belgian waffle maker, a Ziplock baggie full of little plastic cowboys 'n Indians, and Sydney's new best friend:

For four dollars.

But of course, we all know that there is no thrifting like the thrifting that is the Goodwill 50%-off Storewide Sale. I bought T-shirts to remake into baby bags, a sorely-needed new pair of blue jeans, subtraction flash cards for Willow + road trip, several pounds of that colored sand that you layer into jars to make shelf pretties, two dinosaur books, etc.

Sydney's mania for all things pretty has nearly driven me out of my gourd. I am SO tired of the child's refusal to wear anything but dresses and skirts and tights and leggings and hairbows and barrettes. I have to braid her hair into two pigtails and put a bow barrette at the bottom of each pigtail every morning. Every morning! All the people who are reading this and who knew me as a child--I'm talking to you, Aunt Pam!--are laughing their asses off right now. I didn't even wear make-up to my own wedding, and here I am with a house full of pigtail braids and bow barrettes.

Anyway...this was the last storewide sale until September, which means that it's time to look into the fall wardrobe. I thought about buying Sydney some practical long pants and long-sleeved shirts, and then I thought, "Aw, screw it," and ended up buying her a big stack of party dresses:

Yep, party dresses. Lace and tulle and smocking and petticoats and  puffs and velvet and ribbons:

The child now has party dresses for play clothes. Whatever, she can wear leggings and tights with them when it gets cold.

Willow has her own methods for driving me nuts, but thankfully clothing is not one of them. A while ago now she tried for a couple of months to insist on "pretty" clothes, as well, but she couldn't stick it. She basically pulls her clothing from the top of her clothing drawers, and as long as she can climb trees in it and get it muddy, she's good to go.

I actually do take pleasure in choosing the children's clothes--even digging through acres of party dresses was fun when I anticipated Sydney's joy in being presented with them, and even though Will doesn't much care about what she wears, I take a lot of pleasure in choosing clothing that is centered on what she does like--dinosaurs, horses, farms, outer space--and clothing that is centered on what I like. That's why my kid is occasionally seen wearing an AC/DC T-shirt.

Usually, however, my clothing choices look more like this:

Or perhaps this:

Five years isn't too early for a kid to dress a little skater punk, is it?

Here's Our Homeschool This Week

This week-ish, we:

painted our canvas shoes (more on that later)--

--layered colored sand into glass jars; drew a few Father's Day banners and cards; did a little watercolor al fresco--

--took some photographs, and drew tons and tons and tons of pictures

read out loud; Willow read to herself almost constantly; listened to CD readers (Manny's Cows: The Niagara Falls Tale has been a big favorite) and books on CD; spent a goodly amount of time at various bookstores; examined all the diagrams in the Gnomes book and spent a lot of time asking Momma if gnomes are real; and looked at books and fought over books and just plain loved books a lot

took swim class and went swimming; played in a couple of IU fountains (Is this legal? No idea)--

--walked and biked and rollerbladed; played at the playground and played at the yard; hiked and hiked and hiked at Squire Boone Caverns; and helped the Momma with innumerable errands and chores, including one big craft fair

worked the lever on the button machine and lots of other tasty mechanical tools; Sydney upgraded to the next level of her connect-the-dots books; played some inane Dragon Tales computer game; put together puzzles and Legos and Lincoln Logs and blocks off all sorts and sizes; and helped with cooking and baking and breakfast-making

explored an atlas on CD-Rom and marveled at geographic marvels and found shipwreck sites

played The Magic School Bus Discovers Flight and watched Dinosaur Train and Nova and Billy Nye the Science Guy and other dinosaur documentaries; performed the oil versus water science experiment; read books about shells and books about dinosaurs and books abour rainbows and books about tornadoes; had a few tornado warnings of our own; helped the Momma (sort of) with the gardens--

--had lots of hands-on fun with candle-making and gem mining and caves and a grist mill; and visited the zoo to spend time with the elephants, cheetahs, dolphins, and bears, and to pet the sharks:

And that's how we homeschooled this week. Next week, I hope for blueberry picking, an on-the-wall timeline, making butter in a Mason jar, and the beginning of the dinosaur atlas.

Pinback Prints on Pumpkin+Bear

I spent SIX HOURS thrifting today (more on that later), but look what else I did!

Clowns are Freakin' Scary

It's Okay to Destroy Stuff

Feedback is Welcome

Save the Planet

The photos are all 4"x6", which is perfect for greeting cards, postcards, wall frames, etc., and they're available in tiff, if you know what you're doing, or jpeg or pdf if you don't.

I spent WAAAAAY too long scanning pinbacks and making prints this week, so there are def more photos to come.

Homeschool Science Experiment: Oil and Water Do Not Mix

Isn't that right, BP, you bunch of frakkers, you?

Ahem.

In a kismetic confluence of events, Willow, who actually LISTENS to NPR (which I'm not super-happy about because All Things Considered? Kind of dark sometimes. Ask me later about my idea for a kid-friendly news program), has been asking tons of sad questions about the BP oil spill, and Sydney, who doesn't listen to NPR but who DOES like to do fun stuff, found a sweet book of children's science experiments at the Monroe County History Center garage sale free day on Monday.

So sweet, because on my own I likely never would have thought of this simple, sweet, fun experiment that meets both of their educational needs.

You will need:

• clear glass container (we used a Mason jar)
• CHEAP cooking oil. The cheapest that I had on hand is canola, but if the girls seem interested in repeating this experiment I'll likely by some cheap store-brand oil just for this and play dough.
• cup of plain tap water
• food coloring and stirrer
• eye dropper. This one was a toughie, and almost instigated a spontaneous trip to CVS, but finally I remembered my stash of essential oils and commandeered the dropper for my grapeseed oil. Eyedroppers, however, are definitely now on my list of must-obtain homeschool equipment.

1. Color the water any color that you want with the food coloring, providing that you don't color it the same color as your cooking oil:

2. Use the eyedropper to slowly drop the colored water into the cooking oil:

You will see the water form into spheres and fall slowly through the oil before landing at the bottom of the container:

Sydney prefers the structured part of the experiment, but Willow does not. So after Sydney and I have done an experiment over and over until she's content, I generally leave out all the materials and let Willow play for as long as she wants. And that's how Willow discovered a corollary to this oil and water experiment: pour the colored water straight into the container of cooking oil, and guess what happens?

Beautiful, and they also oiled the wood table for me. Yay, science!

Next time I may add a lid so that they can shake the container, or perhaps dishwashing detergent.

It Would Be Magical

In between the nightly tornado warnings that find us hanging out in the basement on an air mattress, watching movies on the portable DVD player, there's been a lot of swimming, rollerblading, lounging, reading, eating, experimenting, painting, etc.

Still inspired from Saturday's craft fair, and in the process of explaining to the girls about levers, I've been big into the button machine again lately. I made a ton more comic book pinbacks as an exuse to sit for a while and watch Bones on Netflix:

Pinbacks are notoriously hard to photograph. Since it's text, the camera's focus has to be perfectly sharp, and the plastic cover gives off a wicked glare. I have long wanted to sell prints of my pinbacks, however, since they're so awesome and all, so after tons of experimentation I've come up with a method that works well: (1) Scan, don't photograph. (2) Up the contrast and the clarity and the black level, but go easy on the sharpening. (3) Stick to a 4"x6", and even then don't try to fill up the frame with a single button.

The result:

I'm super-happy with the result. A 4"x6" is too small for Imagekind, where I usually sell my photographs, so I'll be putting some of these up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop as pdfs this week. Mostly, though, I have visions of notecards dancing in my head...

A Fair of the Arts in June

An early thunderstorm made sure that Saturday's craft fair won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest craft fairs EVAH, but it still beat the hell out of the May fair, when it was inexplicably FREEZING.

And thus, a good-ish time was had by all:

Earlier in the day, this disaffected teen homeschool kid that I've chatted with at craft fairs for years slouched over with her disaffected teen homeschool buddies and bought up all my 1" comic book pinbacks that speak to the disaffected teen--"NO!" and "I hate you," and "You are nothing in my eyes," etc. So LATER in the day, this other bookish little teen homeschool kid that I have occasional bookish conversations with at the craft fair comes by and asks me if I can help her find any comic book pinbacks that have comebacks on them.

"Well," I say, "your buddies were by earlier and bought up just about anything that might help reflect their negative worldview."

"I know!" she said. "They were buying them about me!"

So I said, "Don't worry, kiddo. I always have a plan." The kiddo paid for five buttons, and then I gave her some Strathmore paper, a pen, and the one-inch hole punch, and instructed her to write her own comebacks and we'd make them into buttons for her.

While we were working, this other woman came up to get the 411 about being in the craft fair, on account of her group sells calendars. I told her that it's a juried fair, and apps for the season go out the previous winter, and the emphasis is on handicraft, prob not Kinko's calendars. So then, and this is a TOTAL pet peeve  since it happens all the time, most recently with a woman who wanted to rent half my booth from me to sell bellydancing swag, she goes ahead and gives me her entire spiel about why her group should totally be able to sell its calendars in the fair, like next month, and it's totally a handicraft. Fine by me, only I'm not, you know, actually in charge of anything, and when people get that frenzied look in their eyes while they're trying to make their case, it really creeps me out. Thank gawd Matt was there and smoothly segued a convo hand-off to himself, so I could devote all my attention to my VIP client there.

My kiddo made herself some AWESOME comeback buttons. Among the comebacks were "You went to LIE school," "I don't care," and "The feeling is mutual." She told me that she was especially proud of that latter button because when you say it, people don't know what it means and so they don't know if you're complimenting them or insulting them. So true, right?

So, low sales but high drama:

Good day, overall.