Sculpey + Playdough = Looooooooove

I gave the kids a choice for our morning activity because we GOTS to have some sort of plan each day to keep us sane. Their choices were either indoor playpark OR make playdough and go to library storytime. Esme’s choice, of course, was “indoor playdough park.” Should’ve seen that one coming.

So, indoor playdough park it was… As an add-on to this post, and inspired yet again by The Artful Parent, our newest obsession of the hour is sculpey-to-playdough imprints. We began by making some new fresh dough using this recipe (colorless, because I’m still searching for the perfect natural food dye…any suggestions??). Then, used our sculpey prints to imprint the dough. I’m not sure which project I like better, making the sculpey prints or imprinting…kinda like the chicken or the egg question.



In either case, this newfound craft sent us journeying to the farthest reaches of the house (still gloomsville outside) for the newest and most texture-y of items to imprint upon our dough. I have to admit that I was the instigator here, as I am a tactile nut. And the kids don’t fall too far from the nut tree [ahem]. Now I just need to figure out how to use my camera so I can take some decent pics. Perhaps that would be a good activity for tomorrow.



Also, the kids threw a birthday party for themselves today, including dress up and extensive decorating [sigh].



I'm just tickled that they used the bean bag eggs as gifts!



And I can hear Esme over the monitor now, waaaaaay past her bedtime, singing happy birthday to everyone in our family. Including the cat [big, BIG sigh]...

Pants Gone Awry…and a Family Wedding

I got zero accomplished this weekend craftwise. No, that’s not true… I got negative accomplished if you consider my attempt to make Esme some pants out of a recycled T shirt that are now buried deep in the recycling bin to hide my shame. The instructions are in my new favorite book and there’s nothing wrong with them - well written and clear. It's all user error. I just can’t sew pants. The end.

Portland surprised us with an amazing sun-filled, 70+ degree Saturday in which we played and picnic’d amongst the backyard pines. Holden built fairy houses while Esme screamed at every bug, slug and spiderweb that crossed her path and I lazed on a backyard quilt reading said new favorite book. Even Brian relaxed, a true rarity.

And how’s the weather today, you ask? Yes, well today is 45 degrees and hailing. So Esme and I were treated to a performance of “Holden the Amazing Mosquito” in his homemade “thee-AY-ter” and the kids planned their wedding and got married. That’s normal, right?



Their vows were to:
1) dance
2) be nice
3) love each other
4) tickle their toes



All the normal stuff… The ceremony was a formal affair and activities included trampoline jumping, dinosaur playing, picking out which living room chair would be theirs, duck duck goose and making foccacia. There was some grumbling over who got to wear the pink cowboy boots (Holden won) but it was a successful event overall. Oh and they renamed themselves: Esme is now “Dinosaur Dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex Sabine” (I got to choose her fourth middle name) and Holden is Sarah Three Horns. Remember, he’s quite happy in pink cowboy boots so the name shouldn’t surprise you.



As far as my children marrying each other, I’m totally fine with it. I’m just grateful they’re not beating each other over the head with the cowboy boots.

Craftz

I’ve been saving up some kid craft project pics so prepare yourself for a picture-laden post (Did you hear that squeal emanating from California? That was my mom…). And my husband just handed me a grapefruit martini, so I’ll refrain from using big words…



Sculpey relief prints via The Artful Parent is our current favorite. You impress found nature objects into sculpey clay and then bake. They're fun to make and both kids can get lost in creative play with these for long periods of time. The imprints have amazing detail - see the Artful Parent post as my pics were all washed out (sad face). Toddler and preschooler friendly and no cleanup!!




Puff Paint also via The Artful Parent
A mixture of flour, salt, water & food coloring painted on cardboard then microwaved to “puff up.” This was perfect for the 2-year-old need to slather paint on thick, as the thicker the paint, the puffier the outcome. They both liked it but didn’t really get what we were doing until the end, so it was kindof like a “you’ll see, it’ll be really really fun” kind of project. Super easy though and minimal cleanup.





Baking
Inspired by this fabulous book where Holden can “read” the recipe, here they're making Fruity Granola (and yes, they eat it!!) I love the Moosewood cookbooks and the kiddums adore Mollie Katzen’s delightful illustrations. The kid quotes inside are hilarious, too! Heavy on the cleanup, but worth it if they're eating wheat germ (we tweaked the recipe).



Embroidery (love that concentrated foot action in the pic!)
Holden has graduated to a true embroidery needle and linen (as opposed to plastic/blunt needle on burlap) and is doing really well. What’s more impressive is when he starts getting tired or frustrated with it, he ends his sewing session and moves onto something else. I could use some lessons on that…



Quilting
Because I had to throw in a plug for my WIP Doll Quilt for the swap… It’s a disappearing 9 patch and that’s all I’m gonna say, but the kids love arranging and rearranging the blocks into different designs (hmmm, wonder where they got that from?). I like Holden’s use of negative space on this one…





Tried and true:
Garbanzo beans – give the kids open access to the bulk bins and they will come away with a favorite pastime!
Tree art – nature’s canvas
and Peanut Butter + Birdseed Pinecones



And finally, a Montessori “Plan of the House” project from this book where you draw a house and the child is supposed to fill in the details of the home: cozy living room, colorful kitchen, warm inviting yard... Um, my child drew the house on fire. He did draw a little kitty house beside it, so there is hope (for the cat at least)!

"Take it ON!"

That’s what Esme said when I put this dress on her today (she’s still figuring out opposites lately – on is off, up is down…) I had to bribe her with a chocolate chip to get this pic.



Made from a repurposed vintage pillowcase found in a thrift shop. Should’ve been an easy sew, but required quite a bit of tweaking after I discovered it was about 12 sizes too big for her. As in, I tried it on as a top for myself, but it was a few sizes too small for me [ahem].

There are many great tutorials and patterns out there on the innernets but unfortunately, I didn't follow them. I do need to get over my fear of patterns, and by “fear,” I actually mean snobbery. Since I don’t have time to sew complicated clothing, I naturally navigate toward the easy patterns. And when I’m there, I start thinking, “I don’t need a pattern for THAT. I can make THAT myself!!!”

Well, tell that to this dress.



If the fabric holds up, she may be able to wear it to high school (and it may be back in fashion by then, too!)



What would the world be today without pom-pom fringe, I ask you? I don’t even want to imagine such a travesty.

Beware the Teacup

I walked into Anthropologie today and instantly threw up. No, not really. But I felt ill looking at all the cute stuff that I couldn’t buy.

There is not one single thing that I wouldn’t want in that place. Even the dust bunnies under the clothes racks are cute. It should be outlawed.

I was thinking I could maybe buy one, tiny tea cup. But the thing with those tea cups…they need saucers. And then the creamer and sugar cup set. And then napkins, dishtowels, aprons, placemats, tablecloths, curtains, hardware, rugs, sofas, new wardrobe…you get the picture. And pretty soon, you’re walking out of there with the entire store in your red-handled shopping bag and nary a penny left to your name.

The good news is, with all that embroidery and patchwork staring me in the face, I walked out of there feeling inspired rather than poor. So I happily packed my mind full of inspiration and brought it all home (And cursed that cute little red-handled bag under my breath).

I also attended this event at Powell’s this evening, although see that big stack of books there on the shelf? Yeah, they were gone. But it was cool seeing the author and it just means I’ll have to plan another shopping trip downtown. Oh wellllllllllllll...

Tote Review

The farmer’s market totes were a hit with the kids (whew!) There was nary a fiddlehead to be found. But no worries, Holden opted for carrots instead. He wore them proudly in his tote…and I say “wore” because the carrot tops literally towered over his head making him look like a walking carrot himself. For her tote, our sweet-toothed Esme chose a Pearl Bakery chocolate panini (with a little help from her father). And as hoped, and with a bounty of Spring harvest before us, lots of food-related questions were asked. And most were answered, ahem. I would show you pictures, but we forgot the camera…and the single stroller…and the umbrellas on that rainy, soggy morning…oops.

So here’s some of our first farmer’s market finds of the season instead...



I’m a sucker for a pretty dinner. Can you hear the pinks, reds and oranges beckoning me to make a rainbow chard-inspired quilt? quilt me!!

Seeing Green: Junior Farmer's Market Totes!

I ran into some fortune to kick off my weekly "Seeing Green" posts as the first Farmer’s market of the season here in Portland opens tomorrow (yippee!). To commemorate this welcome event, and also to participate in the fun sparkle power sew-along, I made little drawstring backpacks for the kids to hold their finds (sorry about the crap mugshot-esque photo!)



Holden and I read through a fiddlehead recipe yesterday, so he’ll be on the hunt for those and the sky's the limit in what Esme will find to put in her pouch. In any case, we hope to spark conversations and questions about eating fresh, local, organic produce, and what kid doesn't love a good scavenger hunt?

These took all of 15 minutes to make (not including the time spent unraveling my little “helper” from my ribbon stash) using this great tutorial - tweaked a bit, because I’m incapable of following a recipe or pattern without tweaking it to my liking. They are small, only about 10 x 9 inches and can only hold an apple (or fiddlehead) or two, but fine for the principle that we hope to encourage. And I can think of a kabillion ways to fancy these up, but since I have a deadline (not goal), I kept them simple and functional.

Happy weekend everyone! Aside from farmer's marketing, mine will be spent absorbing this book written by one of my favorite bloggy mamas!

Quilt Lite

I’ve never made a doll quilt before, and since I’ve enlisted myself in a doll quilt swap, I figured I should practice before I leap.



So with the help of my trusty quilt elves, I made this:



Remember these fabrics? They’re from the “quilt throw-up” thrift store find in Redmond. For the piecing, I sewed 1 ½ by 2 ½ inch pieces 5 across then alternated them with white strips. It seemed fine and dandy in my head, but when I laid it all out it had a severe case of the blahs. That’s when my ever insightful two-year-old stepped in and saved the doll quilt day. I asked for her opinion as she listened patiently to my complaints and then came up with the genius suggestion of “put dat” (gestering to some leftover yarn from their scrap basket). Of course - embellishments! I swapped ric rac for yarn, but just the same…I credit her creative insight 100%.



For a brief moment in time, this quilt underwent an identity crisis as I thought about making 3 more and turning them into placemats (what was I thinking? ric rac on placemats to be used by 2- and 4-year-olds? Can you say, "permanently embedded food particles?"). Tip for sewing on tiny ric rac: watch the presser foot, NOT the needle. I got embarassingly dizzy doing the latter.

So it’s a go on doll quilts for me. Fun, fast, easy...I’m sold. Although I’m a little jealous of Miss Violet and her bebes, as they're the only ones small enough to reap the benefits of a 18 by 21 inch quilt.



Well, not quite the only ones…



BTW –check out this beautiful creation over on Rusted Buttons. Hand quilted and her very first quilt! Amazing!

For the Love of Fava II

There was a write-up in this week's Food Day on spring’s most welcome legume in our household. I’m always happy to see this local, weekly, free publication show up on our front lawn, and was excited to see our fuzzy green friend acknowledged this week, but I was a bit dismayed to find that contrary to the beautiful, half-page spread of a fresh fava in all its fuzzy glory, the article was actually toting frozen as a better alternative to eating fresh.

Now I totally agree that “faced with post-work fatigue and pre-dinner chores” it’s not the easiest thing to sit down to a bowl of yet-another-thing-to-do. But aside from the obvious nutritional and environmental impact that eating fresh, local produce has, I also think it's important on a personal level for our kids to see us buying local, to see us preparing and eating fresh food and most importantly, to see us connecting actions with our words.

So in honor of that sentiment, and to put my actions where my mouth is, I am going to try to dedicate one blog post a week to our attempts at becoming, and teaching, green. I hope I don’t come off sounding preachy, because that’s not my intent. This is my (and my husband's) personal commitment to finding ways to teach our children about sustainability, and I’ve found that making goals (not deadlines), especially in blog format for the world to see, really works for me. And I’m glad I came across the article because even though I disagree with it in many respects (implying that buying frozen produce could reduce your carbon footprint??? I didn't quite get the connection there), it’s inspired me to do something I’ve had in mind for awhile.

I’m not sure where this will take us, but hopefully down a greener, happier path that includes lots of shucky fun on the kitchen floor!

Crafty goodness tomorrow, I promise!

Hippy Granola Bar Haiku

They will make them
but they will not eat them
we keep trying

Me Again

Hey! Look at me! I’m a very small quilt swap participant! I’ve never done this before [ahem] but am so excited to swap stuffs with someone out there in the world that I’ve never met but who likes to quilt and I like to quilt so hey, why don’t we swap? Can you think of a greater use of the internet (well, aside from Cute Overload)?

If you're interested, there are still some open spots. It's open to international folks, too (hint hint)! Whaddayousay??!!

Earth Hour

Brian and I spent an hour in the dark last night in honor of Earth Hour via a tip-off from sew green. Truth be know, we didn’t quite make the 8pm start time, but our “hour” went all the way into this morning so we kinda made up for our tardiness. I don’t think the Earth minded. I mean, if you’re as old as the Earth, a scant fifteen minutes is no big deal, right? We were a little spastic in the beginning, tripping through the toy obstacle course that is our living room and asking eco-novice questions…do night lights count? Can we use the gas fireplace? Do we turn our cell phones off? In the end, we eventually settled into a nice, fire-side evening…and fell asleep. And those few hours free of all the energy sucking activities that we normally engage in were well spent. We decided that we will fit in a few evenings every month in honor of our big blue home…just need to add a reminder into our Outlook calendars!

Kitty's Revenge

Hi friends, I lied. I know, it’s so unbecoming. But I hand-sewed one piece, not even a block mind you – a piece of a block of a quilt, and gave up. I already had immense admiration for hand quilters but now my admiration is so much more immenser!!

And speaking of hand-sewing feats, we stopped by to see our friend Jeanene in The Dalles on our way home and my crafty instincts perked up as soon as we walked in her door. I smelled quilt. Big, beautiful, handsewn quilt. She’s been working on it for thirteen years, says she so modestly. Yes, I get it. Not the kind of thing you do on a 3-hour drive home with 2-year and 4-year old people needing entertaining in the backseat. Nope. I will revisit the hand-sewn quilt ambition as soon as said small people grow up and drive off in their VW vans to college. Until then, I will kiss my little sewing machine work horse on the head and thank her every chance I get. Hand-sewn quilt is still on my to-do list, but just got promoted to the bigger list. Like one of those things I’d like to do before I die, NOT before summer. Make goals, not deadlines…got it!!

So we’re back home to the non-deserty part of Oregon. Hum drum, greater than 20 degree, deer-poop-less city life is more our style, but we do miss the g-parents. Both of my kids asked to go to bed tonight, so that tells you what a whirlwind of a vacation it was! We arrived home to 2 small piles of kitty surprise in a 52 degree house. The battery in our thermostat died so the house was coooooold. We made it up to kitty by engaging in a half hour of the meow-and-sit-at-door-while-they-beg-me-to-go-out/come-in dance. Her favorite spectator sport.



Here’s my alternative-to-hand-sewn-quilt-in-3-hour-car-ride project. I will name it the "trying not to be nervous passenger seat driver but that looks like packed ice and you're going over 25 mph" embroidery. That swirly part happened during a particularly stressful portion of the trip and is sensing seam ripper in its near future.

Now off to reunite with my loyal little sewing machine!

More Scores

We received more gifts from the desert today of the non-poop variety (and yes mom, esme underwent the most thorough cleansing of her life after yesterday's episode): some pre-cut vintage fabric squares found at the local thrift store, perfect ingredients for a doll quilt recipe I've had stewing in my head. I'm itching to do some more hand-binding, too so might make a go of hand-sewing this puppy. That's a very big might.

My husband described this picture as "quilt throw-up"


And if that wasn't enough, we awoke to yet ANOTHER desert gift: snow in late March for peep's sake! Will this spoiling ever end?

Gifts of the Desert

Esme found some fun, small, perfectly circular-shaped pebbles to play with in Koka & Tutu's backyard today. As she played contently, happily passing them back and forth between her easter eggs, I wondered what our life would be like living in central Oregon where the locals all seem to share a quiet respect for nature and natural processes. As I pictured an idyllic setting with the kids playing alongside the sagebrush and little families of quailie birds running by, my intuitions suddenly perked back into reality...

Yes, you guessed it. Those pebbles turned out to be deer poop.

And so ended my brief romance with the idea of desert living. You can take the kids out of the city, but um...you really can't teach them the difference between rocks and deer poop.

A Cable Appeareth

My nice hubby flanaggled a computer cable, so download pics I did. Easter pics up first for grandma's grandbaby fix...


Isn't it nice when craft projects work out according to plan and your kids actually play with them as intended (or play with them at all)? They happily tossed the fabric eggs into their baskets for all of um, 4 minutes, which I guess is a play eternity to a 2-year-old. But I'll take what I can get and what a fun 4 minutes they were. Of course it ended when they started egging the cat.


And here's some of that vintage fabric I mentioned. Sweet Grandma B could not understand why in the world I'd want to take pictures of her era-spanning fabric stash. So much amazing stuff!






I finally decided on these pretty flowers with the softest, yummiest terry velour for a portable changing pad. I've been making these as baby shower gifts for awhile (and of course have a few of my own) and plan on selling them on etsy in gift sets with other baby-related paraphernalia once I get the time to set up a shop. But for now, this one went to baby #5 that just joined the family of some sweet friends of ours.




And I'm right on schedule as this project fulfills my weekly project quota. Woo!

Over the hills and through the high desert....

I've managed to sneak in some crafting time here in Redmond, OR to make a little something for a tiny, sweet-smelling, chubby-toed little one-month-old today. Grandma B was generous enough to let me raid her amazing vintage fabric stash and Tutu kindly lent me her trusty kenmore sewing machine. I learned to sew on a kenmore that's older than I am so know they can be a little persnickety. When I first sat down there was quite a bit of tension between us, but we managed to iron out our differences (sorry - couldn't help the puns. I blame my father-in-law's influence rubbing off on me).

Anyway, I will post pics once we're back home and reunited with our camera-to-computer-cable-thingy which we forgot to bring (along with about 27 other semi-necessary but forgotten things). And since this post is without pics, I'll leave you with the image of my sweet children frolicking in the clean, crisp air aside their little farm buddies...and wait...what's that?...4-year-old Max and Holden urinating side by side in the flowerbeds. Gotta love the farm!

Recipe for a Good Day

Start with a tree-lined drive to an egg-hunt on the farm



Take walks in the sun with good friends



And make new friends along the way



Then find your way back home to create



When you run out of eggs, look to nature for inspiration



become one with your work



And remember to give thanks for all the gifts of the day