Halloween Project: Monster Bread

Look what's hiding amongst the vegan hamburger buns:

GRRR! ARGH!

You can sculpt faces out of any low-rising bread dough, and bake it for the same amount of time that you'd bake rolls.

Don't even worry about the monster part--the oven will take care of that for you.

Ballet Girl, Baseball Girl

For the past several Saturdays, we've found ourselves enmeshed in an all-too-common, and fortunately for us, temporary, insanity--we've spent Saturday mornings, the ENTIRE morning, driving our children to and from their various activities, and cooling our heels while they perform them.

One activity is a definite keeper:

Our Sydney is a ballet girl, wouldn't you agree? She demonstrates one of those truths that I know about children and yet sometimes allow myself to forget--children, just like everyone, learn best when they're doing what they love. Sydney pays attention to her teachers, she follows directions, she takes turns, she tries her hardest--just what we want her to be learning. The ballet part is her business.

Willow comes with us to Sydney's ballet class, wearing her orange Sports Shorties team shirt that exactly matches the orange elevator down to the ballet studios:

She's happy to hang out in the hallway during Sydney's class, reading her latest Nancy Drew novel:

Then we head over to her sport:

 

Enjoy those photos, because those pictures of Willow, warming up with her dad, may be the only pictures that you ever see of that child playing baseball, for Willow has reminded us of another truth about children--children, like everyone else, do not learn well when they are not doing what they love. And what Sports Shorties has taught Willow is that she does NOT like team sports. She does NOT pay attention to her coach. She does NOT follow directions. She does NOT try at all. As soon as the coach starts to talk, a sweet, sweet man who is revered by all other children, just so you know, Willow retreats in a sulk to the sidelines, where she stays, facing in the direction opposite team play, until, exasperated, we drag her out.

Willow will not be showing up to the rest of her Sports Shorties classes. I don't have a problem with taking her there each week and letting her either participate or sit out, but watching her do it just makes ME too mad, so I'm calling that tuition done and gone in the name of making me a better parent. And, hey, our Saturday kid-shuttle just has to transport one kid now--yay!

In a few weeks Willow's ice skating classes will resume for the season. Ice skating, now, is a sport that Will LOVES. It's a solo sport, you know, and it moves you fast, and she's very good at it. It also has the virtue of taking place on a weekday afternoon, so it's not during family time, but part of normal homeschool time.

I doubt very much, however, that I'll have a performer in the ice show this year, but there is always Sydney's spring ballet recital to look forward to...

Fresh and New

There, now--don't these photos look so much fresher and happier than my old, blurry pics?

Little Dinosaur on a Vintage Dictionary Page

Skull and Crossbones on a Vintage Dictionary Page



Shout-out to Webster's! Of COURSE that is the exact dictionary that I use when I make my pinbacks.

And then, a for-real brand-new listing:

Original Crayon Rocket Pops



I might reshoot that one after I make my next batch of pops.

Willow Teaches Science: Watch Out, Solids!

In this episode, Willow teaches us about solids:

Remember, friends, that to change a solid's shape by throwing it against the wall? Well, that's just cheating.

To see the rest of Willow's five-part series explaining the states of matter, check out my shethecougar youtube channel.

Etsy Reshoots, or, Welcome to the Light Tent

Instead of doing the etsy work and craft fair work that perhaps I ought to have done this week, I spent it housecleaning, watching movies with the girlies (Ballet Shoes with one, and Ape to Man with the other--want to guess which kid is which?), joining them in all their little projects and fantasies, bicycling around the park, playing on the playground, reading and reading and reading, and planning some plans for the education of October.

However, now I'm beginning to feel the panic that is entitled "I MUST MUST MUST Get My Etsy Holiday Updates Done!".

So of course my Matty took the girlies off for a good long while today to watch football (football must be watched in an empty classroom on campus, on account of we don't have viewable TV here), and the perfect opportunity presented itself to get in a good, long etsy photoshoot.

If only it wasn't rainy and gross and overcast outside.

In other news, did I already tell you about my light tent? I found the plans, years ago, for an excellent DIY light tent to make out of scrap lumber and white ripstop nylon and it just, you know, never got done. Familiar tale. Anyway, at a garage sale this summer what do I see, but the exact same light tent that I was going to make, handmade very well out of scrap lumber and white ripstop nylon! I want to say it cost five dollars, but Matt says that it cost two, and he's the one who holds the money when we go to garage sales, so I guess he would know.

Storing this light tent is an absolute bitch, and yet I love it so.

Back to today--gross day outside, out comes the light tent inside. Want to see what it can make of a shot taken inside my dark living room on a dark day? Here you go:

For shooting pictures inside our house, which has absolutely no natural light to speak of, it's a dream.

The little tree pinback photos are much improved:

I'd tell you that tomorrow I'm going to keep updating my pumpkinbear etsy shop with even more pinback reshoots and list some new pinbacks and the red, white, and blue crayon rocket pops, but...

Tomorrow, we're going to the apple orchard. We're going to play more games and do more projects. We may make pinwheels out of watercolor paintings. We'll go to the park, and Willow might bring her skateboard instead of her bike. We'll make pumpkin bread. Perhaps we'll sponge paint orange pumpkins and black bats on the windows.

In other words, business will happen when it happens.

Willow Teaches Science: We're Lucky Air is Gaseous

Willow's Grandma Janie recently mailed her a copy of Science on a Shoestring, by Herb Strongin. The book contains loads of wonderful experiments that use really cheap and/or really readily available (circa 1970...I mean, mealworms???) materials. Will unwrapped it, flipped through it, picked out an experiment that she wanted to do, and, noticing that she seemed especially intrigued by the teacher's script offered in each lesson, I suggested that she be the teacher and I the student.

Will told me the supplies that she needed, we gathered them, and within ten minutes from the mailman leaving the book at our door, we were ready to roll. Here is Willow's first lesson, which will make you appreciate the wonderment that is a gaseous atmosphere:

I'm a little claustrophobic, so I'm gonna tell you right now that my nightmare tonight is going to be about being trapped in a solid atmosphere in which I cannot move or breathe.

And that's science.

Rikers Island Carrot Cake, to You I Say "Meh"

In our house, you get exactly the kind of cake that you want on your birthday.

This year, Sydney had a rainbow cake. Willow had a candy cake. I had a cookie cake. And our Matt, whose favorite cake is carrot cake, had the Rikers Island carrot cake.

Have you heard this story? It's not really an urban legend, since it was in the New York Times and all, but the story, uncovered by professional journalists, is that Rikers Island has delicious carrot cake.

Now, I don't know if there's something truly special about the Rikers Island carrot cake, or if it's, you know, just really good. I mean, the chocolate chip cookies at my elementary school were REALLY good, but it was nothing to interview the cafeteria ladies on Live at Five about or anything.

Anyway, the other obnoxious thing about this carrot cake is that the recipe, thoughtfully printed by the New York Times, is the exact recipe used in the jail. The EXACT recipe. It calls for 25 pounds of sugar! Unless you've got a contract with SYSCO, you're not making this recipe.

Matt broke the recipe down, dividing it into 1/25 of the original, and he and the babes baked it for his birthday. And then it was lovingly doused in cream cheese frosting by Miss Sous Chef #1--

--and Miss Sous Chef #2:

Unfortunately, we were all sadly disappointed by this cake. I don't know if perhaps it just doesn't divide well, and I am NOT going to make the full recipe to see, but it was eggy, and had a weird flavor, and just generally not nummy-licious like a birthday cake should be.

If I was in jail I bet it'd taste better.