Love for Nie

I'm not so much into Jesus-lovin', myself, but I do love this blog by a Jesus-lovin', homebirth-having mama with four kids and, obviously, lots of kid-related adventures. For some reason I am always, for instance, thinking of this post and cracking up, because for some reason I, too, am always being subjected to the weirdest freak-outs by people of authority about my children. One of my mom friends who's a relatively recent transplant here and so far is just not feeling the small town love claims that Bloomington is the nation's home for displaced busy-bodies, but I, personally, get people all judgmental about my neglectful parenting everywhere.

Matt's theory about "neighborliness" in smaller cities and towns is that in a big city, nobody cares how you act because they'll never see you again, and anyway, they've got business of their own to take care of and they don't need to take time away from it to tell you your kid should be wearing a helmet while tricycling. In a smaller city or small town, however, people have a bigger stake in how you behave because they're likely going to see you around A LOT. I can't even tell you how many Bloomington people I've never met but who I know by sight because I see them every week at the library, the farmer's market, Bryan Park, and Joann's. When people see you around a lot, they'd probably prefer if your kid didn't always do annoying shit right in front of them or endanger her life so that they can't enjoy their latte for fear that the kid will fall off the top step and crack her head open and then they'll have to step in and call 911 and worry about minute rollover or whatever. Of course, in a small town those same busy-bodies will also sneak up to your house in the dead of night and leave a big grocery bag of cucumbers and tomatoes on your porch, so there you go.

Anyway...the blogger and her husband, and anyone knows that if you read someone's blog you feel as if you know them so well, were in a terrible plane crash last month and are very seriously injured. Here's the family-run blog about their recovery and the fundraising being done to help them--I'm not so much about the fasting in their honor, or the race, but I was all about the two-day benefit sale on etsy. New items will be added today around 1:00 pm-ish for those kicking it here in the Eastern time zone, but you should also check out the awesome stuff that sold yesterday.

Little Ladies with Style

Even though I work a lot with clothes--sewing them, thrifting them, refashioning them, etc.--we are not a family who puts much emphasis on what we wear. I buy/sew clothes for the girls that are roomy, comfy, NOT trendy (if you don't have little girls, you probably don't know that you can buy low-rise jeans, shirts that proclaim one to be a heartbreaker who's looking for a boyfriend, and bikini-cut panties for your four-year-old), not girly (since the girls were babies, I've often made it a point to dress them in clothes gendered male because I know that people react differently to small children based on how they're outwardly gendered and I'd rather people think my babies are boys and call them sport and tell them how strong they look than think they're girls and call them princess and tell them how pretty they look--you know?), and I'm a sucker for costume stuff and vintage stuff and stuff containing pop culture media references from my own youth.

It's interesting to me, then, to witness my daughters' relationship to clothes. Willow has dressed herself since she was about two and a half, choosing her entire outfit each day--the only conditions I put upon her are that she has to cover her genitalia if she wants to leave the yard and she has to follow the school dress code when dressing for school (Montessori dress code isn't too big of a deal, since it's pretty common sense--play clothes instead of dresses; sneakers instead of cowboy boots or sandals; no pop culture media references; no jewelry; no costumes. Will's teacher only starts to get REALLY crazy when winter comes and she's telling you what kind of zipper she wants on your kid's snowsuit and hanging up an example of the kind of gloves you're NOT supposed to buy--after 40+ years in the game, the lady has her opinions).

I usually choose Sydney's outfit and dress her, because she has yet to have any interest in those activities for herself. Oh, and I'll occasionally make/sew matching articles of clothing for the girls and ask them to, in Willow's words, "be matches" now and then for my own amusement.

So for the past several days, when I've thought of it, I've been taking photos of the girls after they've finally gotten dressed for the day. I get a kick out of seeing what they're wearing and where it came from: This was yesterday, just before school. Sydney is wearing a striped onesie that her Grandma Janie bought her on clearance at Target two summers ago; white leggings with green butterflies that Grandma Janie bought at Old Navy and sent her last month (Willow has a matching one with pink butterflies, but the seams ripped in it the first time she wore it--I have my suspicions about Old Navy's workmanship); a wool vest that I bought at Goodwill; and red and pink shoes that I scored when I ended up transporting garage sale leftovers after a fundraiser (that I would be "going through" said garage sale leftovers before dropping them off at Goodwill was understood. Probably. (ahem)).
Willow is wearing a ratty old pajama top with planets and astronauts on it that I had intended to be a painting shirt when I dumpster-dived it; a pair of embroidered jeans from Goodwill; and a pair of pink and white shoes handed down from one of her little girlfriends--the growing-like-a-weed little girl blew through them in about a week, but they're still about two sizes too big for Willow, not that she cares.


This was not a school day, obviously--I don't know if you can tell, but the girls have removed the frame from my laundry bag in the closet and are using it as their "ballet barre" while they try to imitate the positions in the ballet book there in front of me. Willow is wearing a tutu I made for her while Sydney is wearing a dance skirt that was one of her birthday presents from a little neighbor girl; they're both wearing handmade necklaces, also gifts from the same party.

Oops, I shouldn't have let Willow wear those Powerpuff Girls pajama pants to school! With it she's wearing a grey velvet shirt from Goodwill, and Sydney is wearing conductor overalls sent years ago from Grandma Shoemaker to baby Willow in honor of Grandpa Shoemaker's career on the rails, and a dumptruck sweatshirt from the sidewalk exchange at our Recycling Center.

Here Sydney is wearing a flowered shirt and flower-cuffed capris (long pants last winter) that match but that I got from the Recycling Center on DIFFERENT days (wahoo!), and Willow is wearing a housefly shirt and comfy sweats from Goodwill. They're both wearing their matching candy-pink Converse Chuck Taylors from the mall.

This is Willow's school picture day, God help us. I've obviously just finished scrubbing her face to remove most of the black marker, but she chose a red shirt from Goodwill, a dumpster-dived kitty cat swing shirt (formerly a dress), plaid shorts from Goodwill, and mismatched socks. Sydney is wearing a vintage polyester dress from the Salvation Army thrift store and a blue Fuzzi Bunz.

And here Willow is wearing a ratty and poorly handmade dinosaur T-shirt that I picked up at the Recycling Center solely for the fabric but that is now, of course, Willow's most very favorite shirt that she wears everywhere so people can think I awkwardly and unevenly stitched it together for her and DIDN'T FINISH THE SEAMS! Anyway...Sydney has on a red dress with faux fur trim, also from the Recycling Center, and hiking boots that a friend gave me, assuring me her kid hardly wore them.

So I have no idea what patterns are revealed here, or what it's supposed to say about my children and their relationship to clothes. Does Willow wear whatever comes to hand first, or does she have some obscure reasoning as to color combination, material, or pattern? Does Sydney actually match in regards to what I dress her in, or sort of not? Do they look like all their clothes were originally worn by some other kids?

Or do they look totally awesome?

Branded

It was a day busy with Pumpkinbear branding, but I did get most of it done--along with a little laundry, a little Numb3rs Season 2 DVD set (my newest obsession from the public library, now that I'm apparently stalled in the hold line for Season 2 of The O.C.), several hands of dinosaur flash cards with Willow, who can now pick out the ending "saurus" AND tell you that it's Greek for lizard (happy homeschooling moment!), and a trip to Sam's for that freakin' EZ-Up and some frozen foods that Matt can feed the girls while I'm teaching in the evenings (neither of us are geniuses in the kitchen, it turns out).

The idea is that our whole family will wear Pumpkinbear shirts all weekend, although since I only made one shirt for each person and the craft fair is two days long...well, one can hope, right? Mine isn't quite finished: The logo is freezer paper stencilled on a green raglan tee, originally from the Gap, but new to me when I bought it at Goodwill some time ago. All the fabric paint on all the T-shirts will need to be heat-set with the iron tomorrow night or, since I teach, Tuesday morning. After that, I can iron some tear-away stabilizer to the back of the shirt and sew on the pumpkinbear applique--I freehand stitched it on my sewing machine with green thread on black flannel, and I am quite proud of how it turned out. I've never tried freehand stitching words before, but now I'm going to do it every day pretty much.

Matt's shirt is totally the awesomest, though. I didn't feel like cutting out two insanely complicated Pumpkinbear stencils, so I decided to reverse-stencil his shirt: It looks really cool and butch and I can't wait for him to try it on.

Then the girls came upstairs from where they'd been "helping" Daddy in the basement, and I had to set up some fabric painting for them. I had them painting onto black flannel because I thought I might then be able to do something with it for Halloween decorations, but now I don't know--nothing jumps out at me. I was able to hover a little less this time over my expensive fabric paints by allowing each girl to choose a color, which I then poured a little of into an individual cup. Halfway through, they switched colors, and then when they got bored I used up the rest of the paint in their cup by painting some simple little designs that I can later cut out and applique as patches onto their clothes or to cover stains: I'm not as totally in love with the girls' shirts as I am with mine and Matt's, but since they'll probably get them filthy and ruined a few minutes after they put them on, anyway, that's probably for the best.

I freehand stitched with orange thread another "pumpkinbear" onto a piece of white linen from a pillowcase dress I was making today, and I'm going to applique that over the Old Navy branding on the back of Willow's orange shirt, and Sydney's shirt will have a "pumpkinbear" applique in white thread on grey flannel below her stencil to cover a couple of stains.

I still need to make either a bunting or a banner and to finish up my second table cover, but I'm so sick right now of my own brand name that I'm instead going to sew up a half-dozen or so pillowcase dresses as a little treat--I had planned to be all cool and relaxed this week, but instead I think I'm probably going to push myself frantically to make a bunch more stuff because I so desperately want to earn enough money for that new serger that I want so badly I can taste it.

Mmmmm, serging.

Goodwill Gives Us Reason to Dance

Yay, Goodwill 50%-off Storewide Sale!!! Both Goodwill locations!!! I've mentioned before how much I heart Goodwill, and I heart Goodwill 50%-off storewide sales just that much more. I hit the west-side Goodwill at the crack of 9:00 am and the College Mall Goodwill right after I was done with that one--fanatic, I know, but I buy almost all of my recycled crafting materials at Goodwill, and almost all our family's clothes and household goods, etc., so the storewide sales are serious stock-up occasions for me.

The kids, of course, always make out like bandits, but it's interesting, always, to see what comes up and who gets what. At the last storewide sale back in June, for instance, I only bought the girls a couple of shirts, but today they totally scored:So Will got a velvet dress, formerly of the Children's Place, a stripey long-sleeved shirt, a dinosaur shirt (cause she needs more of those!), a black turtleneck, a batik shirt done by a local artist that I can't BELIEVE I found at Goodwill (If I ever found one of my quilts I'd sold back at Goodwill, I think I'd be really upset) but was a total score because I can't really afford the shirts new, an old-school Mr. Happy shirt that was probably around when I was Willow's age, a Darth Vader shirt, a dance outfit, and a cutie little green dress with big green buttons.


Sydney never needs as much as Willow, because she has the "benefit" of hand-me-downs, so I generally just buy her something if it's particularly awesome, such as a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer long-sleeved shirt, or embroidered Mary Janes, or an awesome embroidered jacket, or black cowboy boots (that will fit next summer, perhaps?), or a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt.

Is there anything cuter than a bad-ass baby?

In the past I've gotten most of our family's adult, "professional" clothing at Goodwill, but this time we only made off with one pair of nice work pants for Matt and a vintage top for me:

The category of crafting/interior design was a big hit, though, with another bunch of T-shirts for quilts (probably none for Strange Folk), a bunch of wool sweaters that are already cut up and in the basement next to the washing machine waiting to be felted (it would be nice if I had time to work some of these up for Strange Folk--Matt really wants me to sell some of my felted wool stegosauruses, but I don't have any already made up), and a big mirror that I plan to put on the wall in the girls' room as part of a dress-up area for them: We didn't really get a lot of toys for the girls--Willow picked out a toy pony (of course), Syd picked out a wand, and I bought them a set of dinosaur flash cards (of course) and an addition to their Lincoln logs collection:

Our goal is to eventually be able to build an entire Lincoln logs civilization, don'cha know?

The biggest score, however, occured at about two minutes past 9:00 am, when I practically shoved two tween boys into a clothing rack so that I could get my hands on something that I have been waiting YEARS to find: A DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION MAT!!!

While I later hit the College Mall Goodwill, Matt and the girls hit the mall to buy a used copy of Dance Dance Revolution (which we'll return later this week for, ideally, a better copy and/or a better price?), and all evening we took turns busting the kind of moves that only our family can bust:

Hopefully, this Sunday will be unlike last Sunday in that our power will stay ON, and hopefully we'll take enough breaks from Dance Dance Revolution to buy an EZ-Up and freezer paper stencil our Pumpkinbear T-shirts. And find a King Kong DVD for my class this week. And get the car fixed, on account of our turn signals don't work. And get my bike fixed. And...mmm, take a nap, perhaps?

We are Pumpkin+Bear

Look what my awesome little kiddo learned in school this week:

The teachers incorporated 15 minutes of singing into the daily curriculum this semester, and so the kid's absorbent little mind is chock-full of folk songs now: This Land is Your Land, Where is Thumbkin, Looby-Lu, The Paw-Paw Patch, The Name Game--if Pete Seger sang it, my kid knows it. Thursdays are request days, and although I keep secretly wishing that the kid would request something that rocks, like Rufus Wainwright or Kimya Dawson, she's pretty into her teacher's lap dulcimer-thingy.

In other news, the family here is deep into prep for Strange Folk, festival of awesomeness, which is NEXT WEEKEND! For those of you who will be there with bells on, my booth is #243, by the tennis courts. There are still some things that I'd like to make, but this coming week is all about display and branding. We're going to buy a cheapo EZ-Up from Sam's this weekend and set it up in the basement playroom for a mock booth, and then after Strange Folk we're going to return that EZ-Up, because the EZ-Ups from Sam's suck. Matt is in process designing me a logo that I can freezer paper stencil onto some shirts for us and perhaps potato stamp onto bags or print onto fabric that I've soaked in Bubble Jet set. Here's the one he made that I like the best--

--but Matt has to make me a simpler design for the stencils, so I don't have to deal with all those islands on the bear or the thin little lines on the pumpkin.

And in between cleaning house, and sewing one more miniature T-shirt quilt (I can't stop!), and finding a big bag of wet laundry that I put out on the back porch YESTERDAY and never got around to hanging up, and having a friend over to cut out felt shapes for our felt boards, and zipping by the grocery store with the little kid (Bob's Red Mill pancake mix and baked dessert mixes were on SALE!!!), the kids and I worked on a table cover for one of the two tables that I'll have in my booth.

In my artist's statement, I think I made it clear that I consider all my work collaborative with my kids, and so I wanted that to be reflected in the booth display. While I hope that my other display items will be a little more sedate, most of the table covers will be, well, covered, anyway, so we went all out. We painted and colored--

--and cut and collaged (the books are usually outdated textbooks or children's books that we get for free from various places and they live in one special bin in the art room--not even the toddler is confused by what books we cut and color in and what books we don't, and the toddler cuts the couch and colors on the walls)----and the end result might be a little wacky--

--but you can surely tell that some joyful children participated in its creation.

Next up, a bunting and the logo T-shirts for the family. Also, the preschooler wants to make and sell something, too, and I'm all for the idea...but I can't think of what! I tried sewing her some books out of old book pages for her to dictate stories in and illustrate them, but they're so precious that I can't sell them! Could she attractively color on old picture book pages or other vintage papers and I could turn them into greeting cards? Model stuff out of dryer lint dough? Paint rocks?

Any ideas?

I'm Picky

It's not so much that I'm a brand-slave, because I'm not, but... If I'm going to spend my money on something new, I like it to be perfect, exactly what I want, and in pursuit of this goal I tend to do a ton of research. A TON. And I have a degree in library science, so my mad research skills don't come cheap! Therefore, when I finally, FINALLY find something that is absolutely perfect in my eyes, I prefer to take advantage of all the research I've done and, instead of re-comparision-shopping and review-reading and brand-researching all over again, I like to buy the exact same thing again. And again. And again. For instance:

• Crest Whitening Expressions Extreme Herbal Mint: Mmm, it's delicious! It tastes so very awesome that sometimes, if I'm bored, I'll brush my teeth--feel free to add that to your Too Much Information file under my name. In the best of worlds, I'd prefer a natural-brand toothpaste, but I haven't found one so yummy yet, nor have I found a toothpaste I'm in love with for the girls--perhaps one day I'll make my own!


• Regis Hair Salons DesignLine Tea Tree Oil Shampoo and Conditioner: I probably haven't been to an actual hair salon in a decade, and I've never been to a high-end one--I like shaving my own head into a buzzcut once every few months just fine, thank you very much. But my mother, of all people (I'll explain over a pitcher of margaritas sometime if you'd like THAT whole story), turned me on to this stuff when I was visiting her house one time--it smells, oh my god, so freakin' good that I could seriously just sit on the couch and huff it from the bottle while watching TV. Again, though, not a natural-product choice.


• Bob's Red Mill mixes, especially the gluten-free ones: I've mentioned before that I'm a disaster in the kitchen, right? Just an hour ago, Matt got home from work to find me in the kitchen cooking, with Sydney at my feet digging her fingers through a mound of sugar she'd poured onto a plate on the floor, and Willow sitting naked in the sink washing dishes, and he blinks and is all, "What are you doing?" "Cooking," I say. "Is something in the oven?" he asks. "Pizza dough," I say. "Can I check?" he says, and pulls open the oven door and looks in. He needed to make sure that I hadn't stuck a plastic ice cube tray or rubber lid or glass bowl in there, and that I wasn't also incinerating some other thing I might have stuck in the oven a week ago and forgot about! I've done all those things before, yeah. Anyway, one of the reasons I'm always messing stuff up when I cook, aside from treating all times and amounts as estimates, is that I'm always trying to make something "healthier," substituting whole wheat flour for unbleached bread flour or agave nectar for sugar, stuff like that, and it always just makes stuff gross. But Bob's Red Mill mixes are easy, and delicious, and HEALTHY. They're too expensive for me to buy often, however, but you know, I don't cook often, so there you go.

I'm also really, really picky about shoes. I don't buy them often, and I wear them for a long time, and for myself I need them to be vegan, although I don't necessarily have that same requirement for the girls (sturdiness, quality of materials, and supportiveness for growing footsies are my biggest priorities for them, and kids' vegan footwear often just isn't good enough). Generally, my goal is to have one pair of light shoes for summer, one pair of heavy boots for winter, and a pair of tennis shoes for high-impact activity (although I avoid high-impact activity when at all possible, so I do not own tennis shoes). For summer, the girls and I buy Converse, which is light and stretchy and made mostly of cotton canvas, and comes in an awesome spectrum of colors, because you also get bonus points for originality, don'cha know?

This summer I bought Willow and Sydney matching candy-pink (Willow's choice) Converse Chucks. I doubt they'll still fit in the spring, but I'll put Will's aside for Sydney and Sydney's will go in her keepsake box, because I cannot give away my baby's Chucks! Seriously, how cute are they?

Unfortunately, my own Chucks are pretty much just bad news at this point--they are two years old, after all. I should have let the little punk at Journeys talk me into the grown-up candy-pink Chucks that matched the girlies back when I bought theirs, but at the time I didn't see it as the totally awesome idea that it obviously is. Next summer perhaps?
My steel toe heavy winter winter boots are over a decade old--when Matt and I were dating back on our beautiful, oak tree-lined campus in Texas as undergrads, he used to call them my "acorn stompers." Since, alas, they no longer keep my feet either dry or warm in winter, I just bought these vegan steel toe boots online. I almost wish now that I'd bought them in green, but blue is pretty cool, too, right? I was trying to get as close to Dr. Martens as I could, because obviously Dr. Martens is my gold-standard for boots, but they're not vegan.

The girls, however, have no such ethical qualms, and so, although Sydney's old brown hand-me-down boots (I'm normally opposed to hand-me-down shoes, but these clearly hadn't been worn much) should fit through the winter, here's what I'm going to buy Willow:

They're kind of awesome, right?

Do you have awesome shoes?

An Army of T-Shirt Quilts Attack!

Finally, a nice morning with no hurricane-level wind gusts, no rain, no just-after-the-rain dampness, no biiiiig chill--I know it was a morning like this, on account of I woke up at 5:00 am. Normally, Matt is the night-time parent for the kiddos (after I night-wean them at around fifteen months, that is, which is an arbitrary age, I admit, but is also the exact amount of time I can stand night-nursing without losing my mind), bouncing Sydney back to sleep on the yoga ball when she wakes up, nudging me to get up and stumble into the nursery to lie down next to Will if she cries in the night. I've actually sort of trained myself to ignore the girls' cries and stay sleeping, since Matt always wakes for them, and the reason for this system is thus: when I wake at night, I bolt awake, with a huge shot of adrenaline. I don't waken like "Yawn, I'm coming, Sweetie..." but like "OHMYGODWHATISITWILLOWMOMMA'SCOMING!!!!!!" Therefore, when something in Willow's cry did awaken me at 5:00 this morning--perhaps she'd had a nightmare and sounded frightened?--I went to lie down with her, she fell immediately back to sleep, and I... didn't. I lay in bed and wondered what I'd do if a burglar broke into the house while I was alone with the girls. I wondered what I'd do if a zombie or rage virus suddenly occured and I had to attempt to get the girls and myself into the attic crawlspace. I wondered how I'd manage to obtain food and water for us if we were trapped in the attic crawlspace. I wondered what I'd do if the zombies attacked as I was bicycling home--should I sequester myself in the garage or risk drawing the zombies into the house? I became panicked by these scenarios--clearly, in a zombie attack, our chances to survive as a family are slim. I got up.

So, yeah, you all know the downsides of waking up at 5:00 in the morning; the plus side, however, is this: I tried not to fall too in love with these, because they're destined for etsy and Strange Folk: I loooove the quilting I did on them, however, and even though I'm not really a Christmas-y kind of person, I'm really feeling the "Ho Ho Ho" one for some reason.

The girls helped with my photo shoot at the park this morning, Willow still in jammy pants----and Sydney really just adding more background interest to the photos than actually promoting the products:

Of course, then Willow fell backward off of a swing and completely lost her flipping mind and I had to walk back home with not just one hysterical child but two, because my toddler, duh, can't handle abrupt transitions, and I thought to myself, "God, Bryan Park is across the street! I can't even cross the street without utter chaos being the result!"

Eh, at least it wasn't a zombie invasion.

This time.