Tutorial: Beaded Ribbon Necklace for She of Little Patience

Beading a necklace is actually a bit of a commitment.

I have beads and the kiddos have beads (actually, some of their beads are better than my beads, but who compares Christmas presents?), and they often like to do stuff with their beads. Who wouldn't? They're colorful!

Gluing beads all over something is cool, but beading an entire necklace, especially a necklace long enough that they can slip over their heads in order to dress themselves independently, is along the lines of "death do you part" for the under-7 set.

But you know what they say--tantrums are the mother of invention. That's how I invented this project that will turn any amount whatsoever of beaded strand into a beautiful, wearable necklace.

You will need:

• beading cord. We use plain old fishing line.
• beads and baubles--anything with a hole in the middle
• ribbon
• super glue--we use E6000

1. Give each kid enough fishing line in case she strings enough beads for an entire necklace. Tie a bead firmly to one end of the length of line.

2. Let the kids string beads to their hearts' content. I give each of my girlies one of their compartmentalized plates to work on--it gives them a couple of compartments to sort beads, and the largest compartment generally catches the odd dropped bead, IF they work over it (big if, I know).

3. Once the kid gets bored, have her give you back the line with whatever amount of beads that she's strung. Measure out the length of line that she has unbeaded, minus two inches, and match that, plus two inches, with ribbon. You're adding four total inches to the necklace's measurement, do you get it?

4. Use that extra inch of line and extra inch of ribbon on each side of the lengths to tie the two together. Try to make your knot on each side snug against the beaded line--if you make it perfect, the necklace will actually look like the beads have been strung on the ribbon itself. Kinda cool-ish.

5. Trim the extra ribbon and line sticking out from each knot so that it looks neat and tidy.

6. For extra insurance, coat both knots with super glue, then let dry for a day.

Because she just wasn't enough of a fairy princess already?

Tutorial: A Watercolor Crown Fit for a Princess

Lately, Sydney has gotten into the habit of poring over magazines and the few catalogues that we get, at every page pointing to something and saying, "I want that!"

"I want the shirt that's just like that, only I want it to be a dress, with ruffles at the bottom."

"I want leggings like that, but I want the shoes on that other girl."

"I want those fairy wings for my dress-up, only I want them rainbow. And I want a rainbow wand to go with it."

Of course, I always tell her that we'll either make what she wants or we can save up for it or remember it the next time that she needs shoes, etc., but the other day when she showed me a girl on the cover of a magazine, wearing a jewel-encrusted crown, I thought, "Aha! We can make THAT right now!"

And so we did.

You will need:

• scrap typing paper
• large-format Strathmore watercolor paper. You really do need that big size, because it's long enough to fit all the way around the baby's head.
• cloth measuring tape
• pencil
• ruler
• scissors
• watercolor supplies
• white glue
• beads and shells and glitter
• clear packing tape

1. The typing paper's length is a good length for the front of your crown, where the major decorative elements will be. Turning the typing paper landscape, draw the front of your crown. Sydney and I did some drawings freehand, and some making use of cookie cutters as templates. An attractive crown makes use of cut-outs, and it can get nice and tall.

Cut out the crown front when you're finished--that's your template.

2. Measure around the baby's head--that number is also the length of the crown. It's just made of paper, so don't bother leaving room for growth. You can always make a new one in a few months!

3. Also laying the large-format watercolor paper landscape, measure out the length of the crown. Center the crown front template in the middle of the length, and trace it onto the watercolor paper.

Between the crown front and the ends of each side, draw the crown's band about two inches wide.

4. Cut out your crown.

5. Decorate the crown with watercolor paints, and then let dry.

6. Using ample white glue, glue on all the decorative components that your heart desires--beads, shells, glitter, macaroni, etc.

And when you're done...

You're a princess!

Squeaky

What do you think is the first thing that Willow wanted to do after she got her leg cast cut off?

Isn't that the first thing that you'd want to do, too?

What Can't You Do with a Broken Leg?

You might have thought that a broken leg would slow my girl down:

Nope. Supervising my kids will still earn you a free heart attack, no proof of purchase required.

P.S. By the time I blog tomorrow, a certain little girl that I know of will be absent one twelve-pound holiday-themed fashion accessory. Stay tuned...

Time to Bake the Donuts

Baking makes for excellent homeschooling. Ah, the counting! The fractions! The ratios! The logical ordering! The recipe reading! The motor skills! Chemical reactions! Nutritional science!

Um...and deliciousness.

So far, our homeschooling has consisted of a LOT of baking. The girls love to do it, it's madly educational, gives them radical homemaking skillz, and results in actual food that we can actually eat.

In other words...why not?

Will found the recipe for baked donuts in Knead it, Punch it, Bake it! (store-bought with my swagbucks, woot!) and, praise the lord, we actually had all the ingredients on hand!

The dough was easy--although it used up TWO packets of yeast!--we let it rise, then cut out our adorable nesting doll donuts:

FYI: When you bake your donuts, you can make them any shape that you want. Will had herself quite a blast sculpting many magnificent donut sculptures:

You will also note that one of the benefits of baking vegan is that you can taste while you work.

The donuts already look quite nummy as they rise--

--and then bake, but they're going to get nummier. I have three words for you:

Butter. Cinnamon. Sugar:

You dunk 'em, then you douse 'em.

Repeat until plate is sufficiently overloaded:

Consume:

You think they were good, and you're right. Of course they were good. But they weren't just regular good. They were this kind of good:

When you close your eyes as you eat something, then you know that the something that you are eating? It is GOOD.

Big Tool

Like all good Southern women, I spent Sunday morning out on my front porch with my power tools--

--turning fallen branches from that damned silver maple into toys for the babies:

You can check out my tree blocks tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

C is for Cookie

One of my favorite things about homeschooling so far is the luxury of time that we're presented. We have all day and all evening, from waking up to bedtime, to make whatever choices that we want to make. I don't have to plan fun activities around a block of institutional school in the middle of the day, and now that I'm fully stay-at-home, I don't have to plan fun activities around evenings teaching and days grading. We make plenty of sacrifices for this luxury, mind you, PLENTY of sacrifices, but a luxury it does remain, and I appreciate it.

One of the most pleasant aspects of this luxury is my ability to say, when a child comes up to me and requests, for instance, that we make cookies, "Sure thing!" We have time to brainstorm what kind of cookies the child might want to make, time to dig out all our cookbooks and cooking magazines, time to search the web for good recipes. When it turns out that we have none of the ingredients required to make any of the cookie possibilities, we have time to go to the grocery store, even if it is an unscheduled visit. And since we're going to the grocery store, anyway, why don't we just write down all the ingredients that we need for all FOUR of the cookie recipes that looked the yummiest, and that way we can make all of them?

The girls and I have made three kinds of cookies so far this week.

Our chocolate bake-off cookies were inspired by the Great Cookie Bake-Off held by Journey into Unschooling. We made their cookie base, using Ener-G Egg Replacer and canola oil as substitutions, and then we, too, divided up the dough and we, too, went to town:

I believe that I laid out everything from flaxseed to jelly, cashews to coconut:

My cookies had sesame seeds, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. Willow's cookies had jelly, dried fruit, and cocoa. Sydney's cookies had a little of every single ingredient on the table:

They turned out a little on the dry and crumbly side, likely because of my vegan substitutions, but oh, my, they were delicious. Dried fruit in a chocolate cookie? Yum!

These vegan chocolate chip cookies from the Post Punk Kitchen blog were perfect. Delicious. Some of the best chocolate chip cookies ever consumed. They were so quick to make, and so nommy to eat, that I have no photos! Guess I have to make more...

The biggest hit of the parade so far, however, has been the vegan sugar cookies from John&Kristie. I mean, holy cow. I bought karo syrup on account of y'all, and it was totally worth it!

Even with no place to go and nowhere to be, these cookies were still a two-parter because they had to be refrigerated. I went ahead and left the dough in the refrigerator overnight, which may have been too long, because it was a little fiesty to roll out, and I was afraid that the whole business was just going to be too crumbly.

Never fear, however. With a little extra futzing in the transportation department, the girlies and I managed to make all the cut-outs of our dreams and get them safely transferred to the cookie sheet:

But the best fun? The icing! The recipe also includes a recipe for the hands-down BEST icing that I've ever made. Meant to be dipped--

--but also dabbled--

--it was the perfect consistency for decorating and dried nice and stiff and yummy:

And, once again, these cookies are GONE baby gone. Must be time, then for that vegan oatmeal cookie recipe...