My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Wood Painting and Soap Carving

a round-up of non-toxic methods to paint and seal wooden toys

and a tutorial on setting up a soap carving activity for your kiddos

A TARDIS on a T-Shirt

Along with my lovely TARDIS laptop sleeve, I also now have a freezer paper stenciled TARDIS T-shirt, once again putting something geeky onto one of the very few plain items of clothing that I own (even the pants are affected--I have a pair of jeans with a TIE Fighter on them, a pair of cargo pants with a volcano on them, and a pair of shorts with a starry constellation on them):

I asked Matt to take some photos of me wearing my new shirt, but then I immediately got busy forming no-rise baguettes out of very sticky bread dough--

--so I'm afraid that this is all the modeling you get!

I have two more fangeeky projects ready to be done this week:

1. freezer paper stenciling a TARDIS onto a baby gown in preparation for a baby shower next weekend, and 
2. writing the entire Gozer the Traveler monologue onto the back of my thrifted Ghostbusters T-shirt.

And, of course, there's homeschooling and making dinner and doing my writing gigs and prepping for a road trip, etc., but all that pales compared to geeky fan art!

Chess Bag

We do not have a complete set of chess pieces; instead, we have what seems like a dozen incomplete sets of chess pieces. When we play, we organize them like "I've got the darkish pieces, and you've got the light-ish ones," or "I've got the browny ones, and you've got the reds," or "I've got the big ones, and you've got the tiny ones."

Will used to keep all her pieces in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, until I finally got embarrassed enough about watching her cart a dirty plastic bag of mis-matched chess pieces to chess club and tournaments, surrounded by those kids with the competition-style chess sets and the private chess tutors, to sew her up a bag for holding chess pieces that is worthy of my own little chess-playing kid.

The pattern for the bag is as simple as it could get--it's just my drawstring bag tutorial, sized up to match that big old Ziploc bag that I was pretty happy to throw in the trash. The real fun came in finding a stencil of chess pieces online, cutting it out of contact paper and ironing it to the bag, and then having Willow paint it:

We both ended up VERY pleased with our efforts:

And then off it went to chess club!

Propagating the Wandering Jew

It's the plant that keeps giving!

I can't even tell you how many years ago I bought my original Wandering Jew, at a garage sale no less. It's the perfect plant for our house with its dearth of windows, since it doesn't require a ton of natural light--with a diet of more natural light we'd have flowers on our Wandering Jews, but even without it we still have happy plants that need to be repotted every year.

My favorite thing about the Wandering Jew is that it takes exactly one plant to create an entire household of potted plants. They are SO easy to propagate!

When a Wandering Jew gets really long tendrils, and also starts looking a little puny, I pinch off each long tendril and plop it into a Mason jar of water:

The plants will happily grow in their water for months, with you just remembering to refill the jar regularly, but really, as soon as those tendrils have roots, you can do this: 

And that's four new potted plants! After these start to look happy and growing in their new pots, I'll do the other method of propagating the Wandering Jew--with wire cutters, snip a paper clip in half, then use the u-shaped curve of each half to pin a tendril of Wandering Jew to the soil. When that tendril begins to form roots into the soil (and it will!), clip the piece away from the main tendril and remove the paper clip; this will fill out the plant.

THE Summer Pastime

Never mind about the toys.

All my children need to be happy, at least in the summer, is a Wading Pool of Unusual Size:

They pop in and out of this behemoth all day, every day, in swimsuits, play clothes, various states of undress, and occasionally in no clothes at all. They add more water using the hose, scoop water out with buckets, splash each other, swim, play ball and ponies in it--for extra fun, add soap! 

It's reminded me again of how little my little girls still are, and how they thrive, still, in such open-ended, exploratory play. I've made it a point this week, as we've started school back up, to also set out each day a large, messy, process-oriented creative project for the girls to engage in at their leisure.

Yesterday they painted our front door. Today, I think I'm going to get out the woodworking supplies.

My Latest Over at CAGW: Sticky Jar Labels and Recycled T-Shirt Dresses

a tutorial on removing the paper labels and sticky glue from glass jars

and a review of the Lil Blue Boo Recycled T-Shirt Sienna Dress pattern

Of course, sewing new things for two little girls is simply an excuse to go to the park and have a photo shoot!

I think I'll be making a lot more of those T-shirt dresses. 

The Ubiquitous Turtle Sandbox

So, about that de-stashing...

My kids are funny kids, in that they don't play with a lot of their toys. They play with all their toy horses, big and small. They don't play with any of their other toy animals. They play LEGOs sometimes, and blocks sometimes, if I bring them temptingly out. They don't play with any of their three Playmobil sets, all major purchases for special occasions. They play with their bikes and their scooters.  They don't play with their dollhouse or their toy barn. They play with their jump ropes and their pogo stick. They don't play with their Beyblades or Hexbugs. They play with their stuffed animals. They don't play with their wooden swords and shields, or their dress-up clothes. They play with some of their games and puzzles, but not others.

Frankly, it has me baffled. If I could discern a pattern, I'd be happy to buy them only what I knew they'd play with, but I'm so far clueless. And I can't even go by what they want, necessarily: Willow pined for that special Playmobil pyramid for over a year before I finally found it on sale (and still it was expensive!), and she loves it, but has she played with it? Nope!

If y'all have heard me say once that we're on a tight budget, y'all have heard me say it a million times, so I'm not ashamed to tell you that I find it upsetting when I stretch our money to buy my kids a special gift, or even just use our regular spending money to buy them something ordinary at a garage sale, and they don't play with it. At the same time, a good toy is a good toy, and I hate to get rid of, say, the Beyblades and Hexbugs and the wooden swords and shields even though they're not played with, because they're great toys that I could see the kids really getting into, if they ever do.

Nevertheless, of course things have got to go, and every summer I agonize over sorting out the children's things that they've aged out of, that I don't think they'll ever play with, that might as well be re-homed while they're still in good shape, since the kids don't love them. This year, while going through their belongings and deciding that all the toy animals can stay, but that the stuffed animals that they're not actively playing with regularly can go, that all the wooden blocks and the LEGOs and the Geomags can stay, but that all the big cardboard blocks and the plastic ball pit balls can go, that most of the board games and puzzles can stay but the baby-ish ones can go (goodbye, Uncle Wiggly!), that the Playmobil sets and the dollhouse and barn can stay, but that all the dress-up stuff except for their wooden sword and shield sets can go, that only the handmade dolls and doll clothes can stay, and that the kid-sized wooden table and chairs can go, I came upon the girls' old turtle sandbox--who knew I still had THAT?!?

Willow played in that sandbox as a baby. Sydney played in that sandbox as a baby. They played there together as toddlers, and then I must have forgotten about it, because it hasn't been out in years. And, mirabile dictu, sitting right next to it in the garage was a big bag of sandbox sand.

It was an act of faith in setting that sandbox up instead of setting it aside for our garage sale. It's a pain to set up and a pain to tear down, and you have to remember to put the lid back when you're done, and the grass will die underneath it as it's too heavy to move, blah blah blah, and who knows if my kids would even want to play with it, really, even though they said they would? However, as a free-form toy, out in the outdoors, it counts for me as a "good" toy, and that's what ultimately got it its new summer home in the side yard.

So Matt set it up, and immediately one kid wandered over--

--and it wasn't long before she'd lured her sister over and they were deeply immersed in their imaginary play:


I'm attempting to build some parameters--a Collection Development Policy, if you will, for you fellow Library Science degree holders--about what possessions I buy my children, especially since it's so hard for me to let the children's things go if I've already acquired them. Here are a few ideas I've gleaned so far, although nothing complete:

• NO to play sets, wooden or not, high-quality or not
• NO to dress-up clothing and costumes
• YES to more play silks
• NO to more LEGO sets or add-ons to any of their building sets, unless they begin to show more interest in them
• YES to active toys and outdoor toys
• NO to new and different art supplies, unless they begin to show more interest in the variety of art supplies that we already own
• YES to more games and puzzles
• NO to "toy" anything--toy kitchens, toy doctor's kits, toy tools
• YES to real tools
• NO to more toys that have specific methods of play, such as Beyblades and Hexbugs
• NO to more craft or science kits, unless they begin to show more interest in completing the kits that they already own
• YES to fine coloring books, maze books, and other high-quality activity books

It's hard for me to fight my desire to give my children the widest range of experiences possible, including a multitude of high-quality toys, with the facts of our budget and our lack of space. I comfort myself with the plan to use some of the money that we make selling many of the children's things to buy Willow a real pocket knife, and Sydney some more play silks to dye, and the both of them a few more puzzles. 

Oh, and spending money for Disney World...I'm sure NOBODY will be tempted to buy the kids any more crap they don't need at Disney World, of all places. 

...ahem.