It's still pretty mild here--I wonder how many other outdoor photo shoots I can sneak in before it starts snowing?
Monday, November 7, 2011
Red and Green Play Silks for Christmas
Personally, I'm feeling more like autumnal colors still, browns and oranges and burgundy, but Christmas IS a'coming, and soon enough this red and green 30"x30" play silk will be the pinnacle of festivity:
It's still pretty mild here--I wonder how many other outdoor photo shoots I can sneak in before it starts snowing?
It's still pretty mild here--I wonder how many other outdoor photo shoots I can sneak in before it starts snowing?
Friday, November 4, 2011
Putting the Garden to Bed
We have a Community Garden plot here in town, it being a place that, unlike ANY place on our own property, actually gets, you know, sun. We had to put it to bed recently, tearing out all the perfectly happy kale and chard and lettuce (wail!), and raking and mulching it, and harboring the suspicion that we'll have even more volunteer husk cherries next year than we did this year--thanks, Cake!--and, of course, uprooting and hauling to the car the most giant, ridiculously heavy, hugely indulgent dried-up sunflower that ever was:
For all its inconveniences, the nice thing about our Community Garden plot is that we HAVE to get it done (or pay a fine). And that's why that plot is all tidy and resting, while here at home the leaves need to be raked over the gardens, and the herbs need to have hay spread on them, and we haven't finished planting the tulip bulbs, and Matt STILL hasn't moved those bushes that he promised to move for me last fall, and I'd really like to move the compost heap and get rid of that big brush pile, and all the ungainly bushes and shrubs on the property need to be hacked back yet again...
And no, I have no idea what we're going to do with that giant sunflower that the girls dragged home, either.
And no, I have no idea what we're going to do with that giant sunflower that the girls dragged home, either.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Big Kid Babywearing
The baby REALLY wanted to spend some time with Dadda on a recent Sunday morning, but the Dadda REALLY wanted to finish putting up the tall wall shelves in the girls' brand-new-to-them bedroom. Fortunately, crunchy granola attachment parenting Momma always has a compromise handy:
I don't think that Matt really wants to repeat the experience of doing manual labor while carrying a 40-pound load on his back anytime soon, but the shelves DID get built, and the baby WAS all smiles in the meantime, so mission accomplished.
You're welcome.
I don't think that Matt really wants to repeat the experience of doing manual labor while carrying a 40-pound load on his back anytime soon, but the shelves DID get built, and the baby WAS all smiles in the meantime, so mission accomplished.
You're welcome.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
A Very Young Fashion Designer
Ever since I learned that Barbie-sized dressmaker's dummies DO exist, I've been coveting one for myself girls. Even our no-sew Barbie dress is limited, in that it's really open to only one sort of style and one fabric, other than embellishments, but with a dressmaker's dummy--what limits, other than imagination?
Back in May, in Arkansas, we all wandered into a Toys R Us so that my mother could buy a birthday present for Sydney, and then we all waited around for me, as I walked through every single aisle of that store, gasping at desperately low clearance prices on much of our favorite plastic crap--big-box niche stores aren't doing too well, are they? Whatever.
Matt and I were just about at an all-time low income-wise around then, otherwise I may well have stocked completely up for the girls' entire Christmas and next-year birthdays right then and there, but as it was my mother got a GREAT deal on a gigantically expensive Playmobil set with unicorns and fairies and all that crap on it for Sydney, Matt and I bought that Playmobil advent calendar that I'd been making cutesie eyes at last year AND the Playmobil Egypt set that Willow had been making cutesie eyes at for OVER a year (only there, at a third of its original price, was it actually affordable), AND we bought a Harumika fashion design kit
on clearance, solely because it happened to include a Barbie-sized dressmaker's dummy.
The Egypt set was basically that kid's best birthday present ever, and the advent calendar will make its appearance next month, but the fashion design toy set went to sit on a spot on the activity shelves, and there it sat. For months. And months.
Stuff like that doesn't really bother me--unschooling philosophy is all about the "strewing" of awesome stuff here and there and everywhere, to be taken up and explored at the child's will, and so I have faith that all awesome stuff will eventually be made full use of eventually. The tangrams lived on a shelf for years before they came off of it, and now they're quite beloved. The obsession with cassette tapes comes and goes and comes again. The dollhouse is back in vogue. We still haven't made the model rocket, but we will. The sandpaper cursive letters have come out only once or twice so far, but they'll come out again. Perhaps next summer will be the summer of the washboard. I'm betting the instant snow powder will have its heyday soon.
And the fashion design kit, with its little Barbie-sized dressmaker's dummy? Syd just picked it up one morning, brought it to me, and asked if we could play with it. Its heyday is here!
A neat little component to the dressmaker's dummy is a slit up the back, with soft silicone edges, so that you can tuck your fabric in there to get the right fit. Of course, hot glue works well, too:
The kit itself came with about three pieces of fabric, which I imagine would make it a REALLY crappy toy in a home where no one sews. In our home, however--
We have a scrap bin, and we're not afraid to use it:
Syd spent hours making fashion designs for this dummy for two solid days, photographing each one for posterity:
It hits all her sweet spots--her creativity, her love of clothes and color, the enjoyment that she takes in dolls and other little toys:
Well worth the wait.
Back in May, in Arkansas, we all wandered into a Toys R Us so that my mother could buy a birthday present for Sydney, and then we all waited around for me, as I walked through every single aisle of that store, gasping at desperately low clearance prices on much of our favorite plastic crap--big-box niche stores aren't doing too well, are they? Whatever.
Matt and I were just about at an all-time low income-wise around then, otherwise I may well have stocked completely up for the girls' entire Christmas and next-year birthdays right then and there, but as it was my mother got a GREAT deal on a gigantically expensive Playmobil set with unicorns and fairies and all that crap on it for Sydney, Matt and I bought that Playmobil advent calendar that I'd been making cutesie eyes at last year AND the Playmobil Egypt set that Willow had been making cutesie eyes at for OVER a year (only there, at a third of its original price, was it actually affordable), AND we bought a Harumika fashion design kit
on clearance, solely because it happened to include a Barbie-sized dressmaker's dummy.The Egypt set was basically that kid's best birthday present ever, and the advent calendar will make its appearance next month, but the fashion design toy set went to sit on a spot on the activity shelves, and there it sat. For months. And months.
Stuff like that doesn't really bother me--unschooling philosophy is all about the "strewing" of awesome stuff here and there and everywhere, to be taken up and explored at the child's will, and so I have faith that all awesome stuff will eventually be made full use of eventually. The tangrams lived on a shelf for years before they came off of it, and now they're quite beloved. The obsession with cassette tapes comes and goes and comes again. The dollhouse is back in vogue. We still haven't made the model rocket, but we will. The sandpaper cursive letters have come out only once or twice so far, but they'll come out again. Perhaps next summer will be the summer of the washboard. I'm betting the instant snow powder will have its heyday soon.
And the fashion design kit, with its little Barbie-sized dressmaker's dummy? Syd just picked it up one morning, brought it to me, and asked if we could play with it. Its heyday is here!
A neat little component to the dressmaker's dummy is a slit up the back, with soft silicone edges, so that you can tuck your fabric in there to get the right fit. Of course, hot glue works well, too:
The kit itself came with about three pieces of fabric, which I imagine would make it a REALLY crappy toy in a home where no one sews. In our home, however--
We have a scrap bin, and we're not afraid to use it:
Syd spent hours making fashion designs for this dummy for two solid days, photographing each one for posterity:
It hits all her sweet spots--her creativity, her love of clothes and color, the enjoyment that she takes in dolls and other little toys:
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Sweet Life
Miss Willow, inspired by all the Bunnicula books that a little girl could ever dream on, is dressed as...
a VAMPIRE!!!
I sewed her voluminous black cape, complete with epic hood, out of a big piece of stash stretchy velvet that I bought at Goodwill sometime or other.
And her fangs, can you tell?
Yep, plastic fork.
Sydney wanted to be a "leaf mermaid," whatever that is. I sewed her a pillowcase skirt, she decorated the skirt with Tee Juice fabric marker
leaves (and a sun and sky and raindrops and clouds, etc.), and then I safety-pinned one of her no-sew tutus to the bottom to flutter out like a mermaid's tail. The rest of her outfit (what little there is, yes, I am aware) is made from our hand-dyed play silks tied around her:
We have a FABULOUS neighborhood for trick-or-treating--lots of families, LOTS of houses with porch lights lit, lots of undergrad rentals in which, if they're girls, they give out enormous amounts of really good candy, and if they're dudes, they come to the door half-dressed, look surprised to see you, then shuffle around in their cabinets before handing over sweet stuff like powerbars and cans of soda and money.
LOVE our neighborhood:
We always head out at sunset, and I always force everyone to arm themselves amply with glowsticks, and Matt always looks about like this about his glowstick necklace--
--but I swear, that article that they run in the newspaper on Halloween every year, advising drivers to be especially cautious because kids will be running around like idiots? They write that article on account of my kids, who ran around and dashed back and forth across the street and fell down porch stairs and walked right into people's houses while I ran after them and shouted a lot:
Yep, I'm the unwary mom who lets my girls accept cups of apple cider from total strangers, the lax mom who does not pay my kids to take their candy or hand it off to the candy fairy or stuff it in the freezer to dish out a piece a day or whatever the cool parents are doing this year, the neglectful mom who, when a kid looked up from her haul later that night, her mouth full of candy, and asked, "Hey, did we have dinner?", replied, "Candy. That's your dinner."
And yet somehow I HAVE managed to get the children to keep their candy wrappers picked up (so far) this year, and they keep coming up to me, unbidden, and offering me pieces of chocolate, which they know is my favorite, and this year my shy girl went up to every single house with her little sister, and said, "Trick-or-treat!" and "Thank you!" AND "Happy Halloween!" at every. Single. House!
See? Sweet life, with Reese's cups and all.
a VAMPIRE!!!
I sewed her voluminous black cape, complete with epic hood, out of a big piece of stash stretchy velvet that I bought at Goodwill sometime or other.
And her fangs, can you tell?
Yep, plastic fork.
Sydney wanted to be a "leaf mermaid," whatever that is. I sewed her a pillowcase skirt, she decorated the skirt with Tee Juice fabric marker
leaves (and a sun and sky and raindrops and clouds, etc.), and then I safety-pinned one of her no-sew tutus to the bottom to flutter out like a mermaid's tail. The rest of her outfit (what little there is, yes, I am aware) is made from our hand-dyed play silks tied around her:
We have a FABULOUS neighborhood for trick-or-treating--lots of families, LOTS of houses with porch lights lit, lots of undergrad rentals in which, if they're girls, they give out enormous amounts of really good candy, and if they're dudes, they come to the door half-dressed, look surprised to see you, then shuffle around in their cabinets before handing over sweet stuff like powerbars and cans of soda and money.
LOVE our neighborhood:
We always head out at sunset, and I always force everyone to arm themselves amply with glowsticks, and Matt always looks about like this about his glowstick necklace--
--but I swear, that article that they run in the newspaper on Halloween every year, advising drivers to be especially cautious because kids will be running around like idiots? They write that article on account of my kids, who ran around and dashed back and forth across the street and fell down porch stairs and walked right into people's houses while I ran after them and shouted a lot:
Yep, I'm the unwary mom who lets my girls accept cups of apple cider from total strangers, the lax mom who does not pay my kids to take their candy or hand it off to the candy fairy or stuff it in the freezer to dish out a piece a day or whatever the cool parents are doing this year, the neglectful mom who, when a kid looked up from her haul later that night, her mouth full of candy, and asked, "Hey, did we have dinner?", replied, "Candy. That's your dinner."
And yet somehow I HAVE managed to get the children to keep their candy wrappers picked up (so far) this year, and they keep coming up to me, unbidden, and offering me pieces of chocolate, which they know is my favorite, and this year my shy girl went up to every single house with her little sister, and said, "Trick-or-treat!" and "Thank you!" AND "Happy Halloween!" at every. Single. House!
See? Sweet life, with Reese's cups and all.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Halloweening
I've been wanting to make a second one of these, by the way, since we love this one so much. For some reason I always have it in my head to make two copies of our favorite handmade home items, like buntings and scrapbooks and holiday decorations, so that my girls don't fight over them when I'm dead.
I have GOT to be the only person in the world who worries about stuff like that.
decorating the leaf mermaid skirt
More on that later, but yes, Sydney is dressing as a leaf mermaid for Halloween.
Whatever that is.
There were a few weeks when I was pregnant with Willow when mealtime for me consisted of two giant pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, washed down with a giant glass of milk. It tickles me to see her baking her own batches of cookies now.
cutting out cardstock autumn leaf decorations
My favorite part of these decorations is that I don't have to take them down until after Thanksgiving.
And, of course, there's the pumpkin patch, and the jack-o'-lantern pumpkins and pie pumpkins that we got there, there are the heirloom Funkins that the girls carved again this year, there's making vampire fangs for Willow out of a plastic fork, and the men's basketball scrimmage with trick-or-treating and a costume parade, there's the colored and cut out Halloween bunting, the party with Kid Kazooey at Max's Place, and the mummy dogs tonight for dinner.
Oh, and TOMORROW's Halloween. The party continues, my friends!
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