Finally, the Sun!

And it's about time! In the 13 years that I've lived in Indiana, this is the latest spring that I've ever experienced.

Clearly, then, in the 13 years that I've lived in Indiana, this is the spring that I've been cherishing the most. On the first really nice day of spring, just a handful of days ago, we meandered over to the park, as we often do, sleepwalking almost in our routine (as we perhaps often do), and it wasn't until we were there, under an actual SUN and an actual BLUE SKY, that we all three sort of stopped, came to ourselves, and started exclaiming "It's a really nice day today!"

You'd think that these children had never seen chalk before, as the job of making a sidewalk chalk fashion show runway quickly turned to making everything else in their imaginations:

It's so early in the season that I don't even have sidewalk chalk yet!

After that, there was a lot more running around like maniacs--

--plenty of rubbernecking of a random family (mom, dad, four-ish small kids) who were playing the most aggressive game of soccer that I have ever seen adults and children play together (Calling a four-year-old a cheater because he touched the ball with his hand? Nice job, Dad!), and, yes, plenty of just plain basking:

Now that it's actually sunny out, I've got to stop putting them facing the sun in order to take their pictures, poor kid!

2013 Science Fair

While one girl and her Momma have been invested in the fashion show of late, the other girl and her Dadda have been just as busy.

I was sad to see that this year's homeschool Science Fair overlapped with one of our Trashion/Refashion Show rehearsals, but such is life--one must choose one's commitments, and then commit to one's choices. However, having only one kid in the Science Fair this year made this year's Science Fair a fine project for just that kid and her Dadda to do together. I left it all to them--I incorporated some time for Willow to work on her project during our school days, and I helped her write a reference guide, and she dictated her report to me, and I helped her rehearse her presentation, but she and Matt did all the hands-on dirty work, which included making several paper airplanes, flying each of them 20 times and measuring each flight, averaging and line graphing all the flights, and making some pretty kick-ass graphics to represent the data. It's good to have a graphic designer for a father!

Here's Will rehearsing her presentation, the day of the Science Fair:


She was really proud of her project (as she should be!), and pretty excited to share it--

--and, okay, maybe a little nervous, too--

--at least until she's distracted by Matt:

We call this the Willow Death Glare. We are often its victims.

 I wish I could show you Willow's actual presentation, which she did an amazing job at, so comfortable and confident and focused in front of all those eyes, but there are a bunch of other kids in it. It's super-cute watching her coach all the kids through the making of the Dynamic Dart--I wasn't sure how this part would go, since I know from experience that students will get everything wrong that it's possible to get wrong when following instruction, with seemingly every student doing something uniquely incorrect all at the same time. And yep, that's how it went here, but Willow went around and helped kids who got stuck, and a couple of parents helped out, and in the end, everyone had their very own Dynamic Dart.

Fortunately, the other side of the conference room was free--a perfect place, really, for the flying of paper airplanes:

Across town, Syd and I finished our rehearsal, ran to the car, sped over to the library, screeched into a parking spot, and galloped inside, just missing the last presentation, but just in time for the socialization. Homeschoolers are a diverse bunch, and although we see friends from this group a few times a week, there are other friends that we only see at these types of events, so there's a lot of playing to get done in a short amount of time.

And, of course, a lot of smiles to let out:

What can I say? Science makes us happy!

Barbie Fashion Show

We are deep into fashion show season here! Syd is practicing her runway walk daily, and spending much of the rest of her days thinking, dreaming about, talking about, and playing fashion show.

On our free day from school last week, I was spending the afternoon completing some orders from my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, and trying really hard to ignore all screams, thumps, and crashes from the other room, but I could not ignore my kiddo when she came in to theatrically announce that it was time for the Barbie fashion show in the next room.

A Barbie fashion show?!? Count me IN!

So I turned off the heat gun, laid a cloth over the beeswax (I've learned through experience that a cat will lie on top of rolled beeswax, and that rolled beeswax that a cat has lain on top of will never again be suitable for sale), and followed Syd out to the living room, where my clever girl had spent HER afternoon creating garments for each of her hand-me-down Barbies, and using our colored masking tape to tape a fashion show runway onto the floor.

Syd asked me to find "thumpy music" for the show, so I turned on the Club/House radio station on Spotify, and off we went!


Before I go on, I just have to ask you: you're not sitting there snarking on my house, are you? It's fine if you are, because I am not the person who stages my shots, or even runs around cleaning like crazy when someone's about to come over. Okay, I WILL clean the bathroom sink and put out a fresh hand towel, but I probably won't vacuum or clear off the table. So yes, the room that you can see through the doorway is messy, and the games don't fit on those built-in shelves, and the hallway has a kid-painted rainbow right in the middle of it, and I didn't vacuum the carpet, and I never learned that trick of how to hide a cord so that it doesn't hang in the middle of everything, and man, do our hardwood floors look run-down!

Anyway, back to the story: I love Sydney's Barbie fashion show, because you can really see how much of the process she's learned from her years of experience as a Trashion/Refashion Show designer/model. She taped her models' marks, and she walks them and poses them and walks them again, and they take care to show the entire outfit to both sides of the audience, and they certainly look like they're having fun, don't they?

But of course, the most important aspect of the model's performance is the garment, and I really, REALLY love how Sydney created each model's outfit, some from our stash of vintage Barbie clothes, but most assembled from my scrap fabric bin:

And speaking of Ken, Sydney has a further video starring him. She produced, directed, and served as costume designer. I filmed exactly as she dictated:


Hopefully we won't have anything like THAT at the fashion show!

Easter 2013

the haul

the hunt

and afterwards, the happy girls full of chocolate, playing Professor Noggin with their parents

the perfect holiday, yes?

Stamp Collectors

Warning: If you're an avid stamp collector, and you enjoy the sight of a well-maintained postage stamp collection, then run. Run away, and don't look back!

As a teenager, I enjoyed making myself a little stamp collection. It turns out that my Mamma had kept every greeting card and letter that she'd ever been mailed, and in return for sorting out all those sent by now-divorced former relatives, I clipped decades' worth of postage stamps, carefully soaked them away from their envelope paper, moistened hinges, and mounted them in a stamp album.

Fast-forward a few decades of my own time. I still have my stamp album, I still like postage stamps a lot, and yes, now that I rarely get real mail anymore, I have been buying the odd set of postage stamps, generally themed collections from Western Mountain Stamp and Coin (now defunct, so lmk if you know of anything similar, because I LOVED those themed sets!). I thought that the kids might like stamp collecting, too, on account of it's awesome, so to start them off I gave them some stamp sets (I've bought WMSC's dinosaur set, horse set, and cat set, and I'm pretty sure that I will soon own a Disney set and a U.S. set or two), a little journal each, and a glue stick.

My theory was that the children would neatly mount each stamp, nice and orderly and organized, into their stamp books using the glue stick (which can be soaked away later when they're ready for big kid stamp albums). Perhaps they'd want to tidily label each stamp! Perhaps they'd want to research the country of origin of each stamp! Perhaps they'd beg me to take them to stamp collectors' meetings and expos where they could spend their allowances on rare stamps!

As a good parent, I'd attend stamp collectors' meetings and expos with my children. That's just what a good parent DOES, don't you know?

Well...my fantasy isn't *exactly how the kids use their stamps and beginner stamp albums:

They do love sorting through their stamp collection, just as I do.

 

So yes, the albums are messy enough to make a "real" stamp collector gasp, but my kids LOVE them. And if they're going to sit with their stamps, happy as clams, and make the messiest stamp albums ever known, then I'm going to be happy, too.

Because I look at them that happy, sorting through stamps and gluing them untidily in their little books, and I see stamp collectors, just like I'd hoped they would be.

My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Embroidery Spools and Satire

an April Fool's Day spoof about gardening Monsanto-style

and a tutorial to make upcycled cardboard embroidery floss spools

This was one of my favorite weeks writing for CAGW. The DIY embroidery floss spools tutorial was quick to make and easy to write up, and I really, really like how the project turned out, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed writing satire half my life ago, when I wrote for my university's student newspaper (and ooh, did I burn it up! I used to get SO many letters from people offended by what I had to say! My editor was THRILLED with me).

I had no idea what I was going to do with myself back then. I was an English major because I liked to read. I held down two different writing jobs (one at the student newspaper, and one at the alumni magazine--wasn't I cute?), but I didn't do much great writing at either of them because I was too busy with the too many credit hours that I took each semester, because I also liked to study.

I graduated and I panicked. Just as I predicted in that TCU Magazine article that I linked to just now, I internalized my parents' work ethic to such a degree that I completely freaked out and began desperately, painfully searching for a job, any job. And oh, the jobs that English majors are qualified for are so, so lame! Because I was a terrible interviewer, I thankfully missed out on several miserable-sounding technical writing jobs. Unfortunately, I then read a book on interviewing, nailed my next interview, and accepted what was probably the stupidest glorified secretary/technical writer job for an organization that was basically an auto workers' lobby, working for the meanest, craziest, most bigoted boss who had ever started as a secretary herself and then married the company president. She spent her days talking to her friends on the phone, wandering off to the house that she was having built in one of those fancy gated communities with her new husband's big money, coming back to interrupt my work by telling me all about the "queers" who lived in her neighborhood (ooh, I hated her!), and blaming me for mistakes she'd made in her work by insisting that the work was really MY work that she'd given me clear instructions on how to complete.

One day, eleven months in, after I was way beyond my breaking point, I overheard her on the phone consoling her best friend, who had just lost her job. Right that second I wrote my just-in-case letter of resignation, and two days later I was able to hand it to her before she could finish firing me for the list of totally made-up wrongs that she had probably spent the last two days inventing. Her best friend was settled in my vacated job before the month was out.

I was so much happier after that, poor and adrift as I was. I started substitute teaching in the Ft. Worth school system, which was way challenging enough to keep me interested (and was WAY eye-opening, and highly influenced how I educate my children). Out of the blue, a former professor offered me a scholarship to take a few graduate-level classes at my old university, and these had me studying again, happy as a clam. Another professor suggested that, if I liked studying so much, I should apply to grad school. More studying?!? Sign me up!

Of course, an aimless college graduate who spent a couple of years outside of academics working random jobs does not make for the strongest grad school candidate. Only one graduate school accepted me, and so that was where I went. As soon as Matt graduated from our university one semester later, he joined me here, and began his own desperate job search. After a while, we decided that since we were living together, we might as well be married. After a longer while, we decided that since we were married, we might as well have a baby. We liked that first baby so much, we decided to have another. I liked them both so much that I didn't study as much as I should for my PhD exam, and so I failed it (it helped that my exam committee had written me off, too, apparently, and were the picture of unsupportive. I'm not famous as one who struggles through the odds and triumphs, it would seem). Matt and I figured that if I didn't have a PhD to study for, I could do my best work being a stay-at-home mom. My kids thrived so much with me as a stay-at-home mom, that we decided we'd better homeschool them. They thrived so much homeschooling, that we decided that we'd better keep it up.

And that's the story so far!

Easter Egg Science: Homemade Natural Dyes

I wanted to play with homemade natural egg dyes this Easter, but I didn't want to have to buy the things that I don't happen to have in my pantry right now--red onions, tumeric, blueberries, carrot tops, goldenrod... basically anything else that natural egg dye recipes typically call for.

Instead, the kiddos and I pulled pretty much all of the random spices and such out of the pantry and used what we had on hand to craft up an experimental natural egg dyes station.

Each kid wrote the name of a spice that she wanted to try on a cup--

--then added to that cup two tablespoons of that spice, one teaspoon of vinegar, and one hard-boiled egg:

Later, I came by and added two cups of boiling water--

--and then I copied the label of each cup into one of our school notebooks and had each kid make predictions about the end color of the egg.

The kiddos had a LOT of fun setting up each cup:

Although it didn't take long for my younger kid, who loves this sort of play, to decide that she'd rather mix up her own egg dye concoctions:

green tea, paprika, coriander, and who knows what else?

About an hour was all I felt comfortable leaving the cups out at room temperature (we ALWAYS eat our Easter eggs!)--

--but it was actually pretty cool during that time to watch how many of the spices, and not just the teas, weirdly expanded due to being saturated. 

I put all the cups in the refrigerator on a low shelf so that the kids could check out the progress of their experiment whenever they wanted, and left them to steep for 24 hours. 

The next day, I brought the cups back out and lined them up again on the table, with towels in front of them, and had the kiddos decant their eggs.

I love these two photos, because my younger kid, who for some reason stated that she did NOT want to participate and did NOT want to see what the eggs looked like and did NOT care...clearly is completely engaged in watching my older kiddo do it:

The color was very faint on nearly all of the eggs, which I'd expected, frankly, from just pulling random ingredients out of the cupboard, but anything at all noticeable was looked upon as a raging success by the kids, and in a couple of cases--

--and--

--the results were actually fairly vibrant.

Next year, I think that I definitely WILL make sure to stock the pantry with red onions and blueberries and turmeric and goldenrod beforehand, so that we're ensured many more satisfying results.

There's a lot to be said, though, for my younger kid finishing off the rest of the expired curry in making her concoctions. That's like multi-tasking in this house!

P.S. Want to follow along with even more of our handmade, homeschooling fun? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page!