Hot-Process Soap Success

I let my first batch of hot-process soap cure for a couple of weeks, just to be on the safe side since it was my first batch. We've all had a chance to try it out at the sink and in the shower by now, however, and the decision is unanimous....

We love it!!!

 
It's quite a bit softer than I thought it would be--I don't know if that's because it could stand to be cured for a while longer, or because of my recipe. Even going through the soap at a bar a week, though, each homemade bar is still cheaper than the cheapest soap at the store, and the ingredients are completely natural, AND it smells delightfully of cinnamon and geranium essential oils, with just a touch of lavender.

In other news, Matt has been gone for most of the week as part of the jury for a high-profile local trial, the murder of an IU assistant professor. It was hard, and upsetting, and stressful, both for Matt to be there and for me to be at home and not know when he's coming home, and to hear people on both sides trash-talking what the jury would supposedly do and think. The jury deliberated for twelve hours, they did their job well and returned a fair verdict, and then they went home to their worried families. Thank goodness it's over.

Pin on a Pro-Breastfeeding Pinback

Not that I think that there is anybody who is specifically ANTI-breastfeeding, necessarily (although I do think that there are definitely people whose ideas about breastfeeding, particularly their ideas about when and where and how one should or should not breastfeed, make them, for all intents and purposes, anti-breastfeeding), so I guess these International Breastfeeding Symbol pinbacks, up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, are more of a "Yay, breastfeeding!" stance than a political statement:

 
 
 
I didn't take nearly enough photographs of my own nursing babes, primarily because I'm the one who holds the camera, I suppose, but here's one of little toddler Will having herself some nursies:

Those were some precious times.

Homeschool Science: Put Some Color in a Carnation

Keeping a celery stalk in a glass of colored water was fun enough, but if something is worth doing, then it is absolutely worth over-doing--all in the name of science, of course!

On the way home from a playdate the other day, the girls and I stopped by the grocery store and bought ourselves a small bouquet of white carnations. To home, where I filled more Mason jars up with water and let the girls play another few rounds of color mixing math, and then we trimmed the carnations and popped them in, each carnation in its own jar of colored water:

 Although it takes just hours to begin to see the color change in the leafy celery, we lived with these carnations on the living room table for WEEKS! In a few days, you can see that the xylem have pulled the colored water out to the tips of the carnation's petals:

 
 
 If you can live long enough with your increasingly pitiful-looking cut carnations, however--

--they'll eventually become much more dramatically tinted:

 

The girls loved checking on their carnations several times a day, often plucking a single petal off of one to examine at greater detail with our portable microscope.

I must admit, however, in all honesty, that my absolute favorite part of this experiment was eventually, FINALLY, dumping out the colored carnations onto the compost heap and washing the jars out. When we move houses one day, it's become my dream to have a dedicated schoolroom, a place where ten carnations in jars of colored water can sit happily for six weeks and grow ever more dead and pitiful and not be in anybody's way.

The Roller Derby Highlights Reel

I stayed home from playdates, the library, the gym, AND the park nearly all day Friday in order to wait on the arrival of my new camera, which spent nearly all day Friday riding around and around and around on the FedEx truck.

Finally................................happiness!!!

There's a lot of newness to get used to between my old original Rebel and my new-to-me refurbished Rebel T2i. Fortunately, I know a great place to go to really give my camera a good try-out:

Roller Derby!!!

You'll be happy to know that the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls won both their matches, with some VERY exciting moments to watch:

 
 
 
 
 

Yep, I think that my new camera and I are going to get along just fine.

Fairy Candles

The girls LOVE to make rolled beeswax candles almost as much as they love to light them and gaze at them and blow them out and re-light them and otherwise goof around with fire and warm wax.

Clearly, these activities require adult supervision (although the girls can roll their candles perfectly well, I use an x-acto knife to cut the beeswax sheets to size for them), so I tend to be spending a lot of time these days hanging out at the big wooden table, many gorgeous sheets of brightly-colored beeswax in front of me.

A girl's gotta keep herself entertained, you know?

That creative time has resulted in a few candles for utility, but mostly candles for fun--lots and lots of candles for future birthdays, and lots and lots of candles for the girls' imaginative play. They're especially entranced by their new tiny fairy candles, a few sets of which I've listed in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

  
 
 
I'm assuming that the fairies don't mind sharing their treasures with a couple of enchanting little children, don't you think?

An Ode to Her Two Front Teeth

When Willow lost her second upper central incisor, my mind became obsessed with a single goal:

How could I coerce my child into singing "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" while I videotaped her?

Willow is not performative by nature like her sister. Fortunately, I have a proven go-to tactic for getting children to do things that they do not want to do:

I pay them.

I offered Willow one dollar. She said no. I offered her two dollars. She said no. I reminded her that we're leaving in a couple of weeks for a road trip to Florida (we're going to watch the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor!), and if she wants any crappy souvenirs, she'll have to buy them for herself. She said no. I offered her five dollars. She said no.

I was close to giving up entirely, the null hypothesis of my proven go-to tactic having been proven in this case, when Matt, who was sitting at the table watching this entire exchange with amusement, said to Willow, "We will pay you two candy bars."

Willow replied, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Children live in a candy-based economy, apparently. And as for teaching my child just how many candy bars she could buy with five dollars...well, I'm trying to use our Meaningless Expenses budget to purchase tickets to the roller derby this weekend, and if I can save a few bucks for that purpose, then all the better, I say. I'll homeschool on economic common sense some other day.

It took a couple of days for Willow to memorize the song, and a couple more days for me to videotape it to my satisfaction (videotaping it to my satisfaction being one of the requirements that I'm savvy enough to set forth by this time), but at last, the child belted out her masterwork:

When she was finished we put our shoes on, drove to the store, and bought the star one Three Musketeers and one Starburst in payment for her services.

Superman Colored Pencil Roll

I used to make colored pencil rolls only out of flannel, because I love the feel of it, but lately I've been enjoying make pencil rolls out of vintage sheets, like this super-sweet fangeek Superman colored pencil roll that I have up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

 
 
 
 
I'm not a giant fan of the expression on Syd's face in that last photo, and I would have reshot it immediately, but as soon as I snapped that photograph, my camera died on me.

The camera has died before, most notably at Niagara Falls last year, but it's finally reached the point at which it's so elderly that sending it off to be repaired, especially for the second time in less than a year, would be at least as expensive as purchasing a newer model. Add to that the fact that I've only had the use of about half the focal length for my lens for the past year, so it needs to be repaired, too, and you'll understand why we're now waiting until we get our tax refund before we fix the kitchen floor, because Matt used our kitchen floor budget to surprise me with the Canon T2i Rebel, whose imminent arrival I await with bated breath.

Farewell, Canon Digital Rebel. I will always love you.