Pumpkinbear on Pinterest

Do you pin?

Oh, my goodness, do I pin!

I have my own little Pumpkinbear Pinterest land right here:


On it you can see my seemingly millions of boards, all neurotically categorized.

I have board for projects organized by theme:

  

I have holiday boards, with projects and recipes and crafts and homeschool unit studies:

   

I have recipe boards, some for recipes that I want to make--

--and some for recipes that I make all the time:

I have boards for projects that are imminent to-dos:

 

 I have homeschool boards:

    

I have idea boards:

  

 I have boards for projects organized by material:

 

And those aren't even ALL my boards.

Also, because I'm a big nerd with a library science degree, I curate my boards, which means that I go through them, perfect the links, cross-reference them to relevant boards, and edit the commentary to be descriptive, accurate, and informative.

I can't believe how useful Pinterest has been for me. I use it to brainstorm for homeschool activities within the girls' areas of interest, and for holiday projects and kid crafts. I try new recipes from Pinterest (I've got these cranberry sauce meatballs in the crock pot right now!), and if I like them, then I move them to my Favorite Family Foods pinboard so that I can find them again easily.

Didn't people used to use file cabinets for stuff like that? Geez, wasn't that a fire hazard?

Triple War!!!

Of course I HAD to take a photo!

Tutorial: Fat Quarter Cloth Napkins

If I could dress the girls in raincoats at dinnertime, with drop cloths under their chairs, and a Roomba and a medium-sized dog to clean up after them, I would.

If I could get them to stop wiping their fingers on their shirts, or their bare chests, or the underside of the table, I would think fewer evil thoughts quietly inside my head, I have no doubt.

I'm currently, slowly, building up our collection of nicely-sewn cloth napkins to use at mealtimes. I'm not really into white linen, though--my favorite napkins are ample, double-sided, and made from mismatched quilting cotton. I like each napkin to be different, and I like to use fat quarters to make them, so that they sew up quickly and end up identical without me having to measure. I like to have a lot, though, because I like to wash them often, and so every time I make a new set of four and put them into the dinner rotation, it's not long before I think to myself, "We could really use at least one more set of napkins!"

If I happen to be at the store when the fat quarters are on sale, I'll have the girls help me pick out a selection to make a few more napkins, and Willow is happy to help sew them.

First, you have to wash and dry and iron your fat quarters, then match them up. I like to use two different, but complementary, prints for each napkin, but the girls are the most fond of novelty prints and combinations that in no way match or look good together, but hey, if it gets them to use their napkin...

Match up two fat quarters, then lay them out, right sides together, on a cutting mat, as lined up as you can get them. With a clear plastic ruler and a rotary cutter, square up the fabric by trimming all four edges, using the gridded cutting mat to make sure that you've got right angles at all four corners:

Pin the napkin all the way around--

--leaving about six inches that will be open in the middle of one side. I use chalk to mark the ends of that unsewn part:

Starting at one chalk mark, sew all the way around the perimeter, making good turns at corner, and stop when you get all the way around to the other chalk mark:

Clip your corners!

Use the opening to turn the napkin right side out, and use a chopstick or an unsharpened colored pencil to poke out the corners. Iron the napkin flat, turning the raw edges of that unsewn opening to the inside and creasing them so that they're even with the hemmed-and-turned rest of the napkin.

Edge stitch around the entire perimeter of the napkin, catching the folded-under raw edges of that unsewn part and sewing it shut as you go:

These fat quarter napkins are so big that I like to quilt them a little, so that they stay flat and properly shaped in the wash:

We currently have enough napkins to last us about half the week, which is technically plenty since I do laundry at LEAST twice a week, but...it's not enough. I really need at least one more full set!

For breakfast and lunches, I sew my lunchbox cloth napkins, which are about a quarter of the size, and I definitely need more of those, because the girls are ALWAYS eating, and it's always something messy. Since they generally help themselves to their own meals during the day, my dream is to sew a couple of rainbow sets of lunchbox napkins for each of them, so that each girl has a fresh napkin for each meal, color-coordinated by day, that she can put into her own laundry, which she does herself.

While I kick back on the couch, eating chocolate and watching "Days of Our Lives," of course...

Crayon on Candle, Melted

The morning began (as many mornings around here do) with encaustic art:

It soon became apparent to me, however, that on this day, Willow was more interested in the reactions of the candle and crayon to each other than she was in their effect on the canvas surface, so I showed her how to drip some wax onto the canvas and use it like glue to mount her candle, at which point she could experiment more closely with her specific interest:

The rolled beeswax candle IS really fascinating to play with in this way--sometimes the melted crayon pours down between the rolls, so that you can vaguely see it through the translucent layers of the candle, and sometimes it pours down the outside, and layers add to layers, etc.:

Will burned that candle down to the ground, let me tell you, and many unwrapped crayons lost their lives, but the intuitive knowledge that she's gaining of the math of how fluid flows and the rate at which fire burns, and of the chemistry of heat reactions and changes in states of matter, and the practice that she's getting in problem-solving and meeting inquiry, not to mention how her mind and body are experiencing the ego-less pleasure of immersive free play, and the contemplative state of being of watching soothing, smooth, unpredictable reactions--well, that's a morning quite well spent!

P.S. I have a round-up of crayon crafts that DON'T involve coloring over at Crafting a Green World today, if you're interested.

Practical Life: Using a Washboard

Okay, these days using a washboard probably isn't considered so much practical life as it is hands-on history, but if you've got anything in your wardrobe that prefers to be hand-washed, or washed on the delicates setting in the washing machine, then I assure you that a washboard is the way to get those clothes the cleanest while keeping them the soundest with the least expenditure of effort.

And so, when the baby's ballet togs begin to look dingy, I send her into the bath with leotards and tights, a bar of my hot-process soap, and the washboard:

I generally do a quick pre-wash and rinse of the dirtiest parts of the uniform myself--the feet and knees of the tights, the belly and butt of the leotards--using a bar of Fels Naptha and the washboard in the sink, before passing it all over to the kid, and in the past I would give each item a second rinse, as well, as she passed it to me, before wringing it out and hanging it over the shower curtain rod, but this last time Syd had rinsed everything so well that I didn't find any extra suds, so next time that's just one less job that I'll have to do for her!

I think that I could hand-wash each of Syd's ballet uniform pieces in a couple of minutes, flat, and the fact that Sydney takes an hour in the tub hand-washing them just means that she enjoys the job so much. In fact, I'm imagining that in the summer, when she can take the washboard outside with a bucket, a bar of soap, the garden hose, and the clothesline, I could probably trick permit her to wash all our white T-shirts and handkerchiefs and what-have-you's independently out there and hang them right up to dry.

Don't you love it when the play that is a child's work is actual, you know, WORK? I sure do!

Tutorial: Melted Crayon Canvas Art

At any given moment, I have on the back burner easily two dozen projects that are kid-centric, just waiting for a willing kid or two to come and do them--models of the Nile seeded with chia so that they really grow, a working model rocket just waiting to be put together, a bag full of wood scraps to paint and glue into sculptures, a DIY sailor's valentine kit, instant snow powder, UV-sensitive beads, embroidery, BINGO, you name it. Normally, a kid or two chooses something, and I come along for the ride, making my own acid-base eruption or dipping a few leaves in beeswax, myself, before I back off and let the kids explore.

Sometimes, however, we do a project because I want to do it. That is, I see a project online or wherever that looks so awesome that I want to do it myself, so I set it up and start working, and then a kid or two comes by and sees me and says, "I want to try!" and I set it up for them, too.

Such was the case with the melted crayon canvas art that I've been seeing around, a simple encaustic art activity (and you know how we love encaustic art!) that just looks so cool that as soon as I saw it, I wanted to try it myself.

You will need:

• stretched canvas (I pick these up every now and then when I can find a good price, and keep them in the closet until needed)
• crayons (need I even admit that I over-buy these when they go on back-to-school sale? I'm betting you could have figured that out about me already)
• glue (I use E6000 for my own art, but my impatient kids both used hot glue, and the heat gun didn't melt it later)
• embossing heat gun (you probably don't think that you need one of these, but they're surprisingly useful. I've used mine dozens of times, and never yet for embossing!)

Choose crayons that still have their wrappers, although, as the little kid discovered, you can break them or cut them to size. Keeping the glue on the wrapper, NOT the crayon, glue the crayons to the canvas wherever you want them. Both the big kid and I chose straight lines at one edge of the canvas, the better to show off the melting wax--

mine

and the big kid's

 

--but the little kid awesomely glued her crayons just every which way, and it worked pretty well!

Set the canvas propped up on a table, with newspaper underneath it to catch the drips. You want the canvas tilted somewhat, so that the wax can leave a trail and not just fall plop onto the newspaper, but you don't want to tilt the canvas too much (or do you? It's your art!), or the wax won't go far before it re-solidifies.

The embossing heat gun blows its hot air, so you don't want to hold it too close to the crayons, unless you LIKE splashing molten wax on yourself (although that's a thing, isn't it? Well, now you know what TO do, I guess). It won't take you long to discover the sweet spot in which the heat gun melts the crayons just right, and to figure out how to hold the heat gun to manipulate the wax:

Sure, it looks cool and all, but it's hard to get a reading of exactly HOW cool all that brightly-pigmented, different colored wax looks as it's melting, so I made you a video!

I know, right? You're totally sold now, but I'm still going to show you how great our finished canvas pieces look:

This, though, is my favorite part:

The texture of the finished piece IS fascinating, and I love watching my child explore the tactile dimension of her finished art. 

So that's our new artwork! And now on to that chia seed Nile...

P.S. Interested in more super-fun kid projects? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Felted Wool Sweater Christmas Trees

New in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, one of our favorite handmade holiday decorations: felted wool sweater Christmas trees--

I use wool sweaters that I felt, and then I overdye them green--the color doesn't catch on all of the sweaters, but it catches enough that the trees all match, while retaining the obvious juxtaposition of different colors and patterns:

The day after Thanksgiving: that's the day that our own felted wool forest will come to life here at home!