Halloween 2009

Avery as "Teen Vampire". Scary was his top priority this year.

Miles as "Spider". Miles was adamant about his costume choice- every single time he decided!

Ansel as "Gnome". He wasn't very excited about his costume for some reason....

In any case we had a great time, some good friends and family came over for pizza and trick or treating and it was all just good, easy fun. big boys running from house to house, little kids trailing, everyone falling to a deep sugar-coma sleep and waking up WAY to early this morning. Yay for Halloween!

Sneak Peek

Yep. Ansel is going to be a gnome for Halloween. Ridiculous! You just have to wait for the rest of the pictures, though- and not just because I'm madly working at them while trying to pack for an out of state birthday party quick trip and clean the house for out trick-or-treating party scheduled to commence right bout the time we get home....
And it's been raining and the drier is still broken, and we haven't carved our pumpkins yet....
But, oh! my house is full of cute little gnomes, so I'm as happy as can be!

Not New Furniture

The Iowa Grandparents are visiting right now- here with time for punkin chunkin, costume making, fall decorating and Halloween preparations. And in the spirit of preparing the house for their visit we recovered the dining room bench (which was tweed plaid with a giant rip so the boys could easily stick spaghetti fingers in and pull off bits of foam, you know, for fun) and the chairs (which were blue and purple chevron from 1942, probably, and, well, at least 50 years of stains). It was time.
And Joann was having a sale- I got two yards of decorator fabric for $12, instead of the $60 they were marked. And as much as I don't like Joann (for their ads, mostly- there are those emails nearly every day, and then the fliers that come way before the sale starts so I think I'm going to get that thing I want for 40% off until I get all the way to the register, past the aisle of candy, with three crying, fussy, antsy children- it's lame. Costco does the same thing.) it is practically next door, and there are always cute fabrics. And good deals.

The bench.

The top of the bench. Take a good look- by the time you see it in person it will indubitably be covered in spaghetti smears.

The fabric for the chairs.

And one of the chairs, finished!

Not quite the new dining room furniture I really want- 52"diameter round Mission or Shaker style pedestal table with leaves, simple little smooth (no grooves for goo to get stuck in) wooden chairs- but way cheaper and less hassle.

Letterboxing (In Less Than 20 Steps)

We just recently learned about letterboxing, and have been waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Today, with a suddenly empty afternoon ahead of us and nappable time abandoned, we decided to give it a go. Here's how it went:
1) Check this map for locations near us and the clues.
2) Drive to the craft store to find the cutest tiny notebooks, one for each boy.
3) Realize I've forgotten the paper with the clues written carefully down.
4) Drive home, get the clues.
5) Drive to a particular park-like area on the other side of town. In rush hour.
6) Realize I've forgotten the bag with our stamps and ink at home.
7) Decide not to go back for it.
8) Try to talk the kids into a trip to Dairy Queen instead.
9) Get denied. In no uncertain terms. We have a mission, Mom. Jeesh.
10) Follow the clues, one by one, til we come to the spot where the box is hidden. Guarded by an army, navy, and air force of vicious blood thirsty mosquitoes.
11) Fight through like the men that we are. Find the box.
12) Run, screaming, like the children that we are, with the box, halfway across the park-like place trying to get away from the swarms of mosquitoes covering our bodies. Biting us through our clothing.
13) Give up. Stop. Drop to the wet grass and dump everything out. Quickly stamp our books with the hidden stamp and the hidden book (with our thumbs, since we haven't got our stamps, and they are at least a personal reflection of who we are, right?). Dump everything back into the box, swatting mosquitoes all the while.
14) Send the 9 year old soldier back to the front lines, so that he can hide the box back in it's exact same location.
15) RUN! to the car, pile in as quickly as possible.

16)Realize as we're driving home that there are no less than 10 mosquitoes in the car anyway. Biting our ankles as we go. Why do they love ankles so?
17) Drive home.

18) Realize that in the flurry of the stamping and attcking you wrote the wrong date in the hidden book. DO NOT GO BACK TO FIX IT. Sorry, girl scout troop. I was only 4 days off.
19) Count mosquito bites. Give up after 20. On one kid.
Amazingly the baby seems to have only gotten one bite. The rest of us are covered in swollen itchy welts. In the 8 years I've lived here I've never once been bitten by a mosquito in town. Until this spring. They're awful. AWFUL! This isn't Alaska after all. It's supposed to be one of the perks of living in the desert, for crying out loud.

Letterboxing, though, seems to be super fun. We're excited to go again, to find all the hidden little places around here, and to hide our own boxes. It's like a scavenger hunt. Like geo-caching for kids. No GPS required. Though we do want a GPS unit, and to try geo-caching too. If, you know, you have a unit you want to give to a poor deserving family. So we can take it far, far away from where the mosquitoes live.

Project::Quilt 1 (In Progress)

In an effort to remind myself that (1) even basic sewing skills are better than nothing (2) I do get stuff done, almost every day (3) the Garnet Hill catalog is lovely, but I'd feel sad if anything from that store was spit up on, peed in, thrown up all over, or covered in a curious mixture of chocolate and sand, and that yes, in deed, these are things that happen to my bed more often than one might think, if one didn't have a house full of little boys I submit: my very first quilt, a spontaneous quilt, made out of a pile of handed-down mostly teal colored shirts, in cotton and silk, that my mother gave me, and that as much as I WANT to wear them, I just can't. All that teal! But my bedroom walls are teal, and I don't imagine painting will happen any time soon, and besides, even if I can't wear it, I kind of like the color of my bedroom- I just don't want to spend $500 for a new quilt that will inevitably be soiled by my trio of children. And so. A quilt that takes no careful planning, or measuring, that I can just sit down and sew a bit on, randomly picking pieces of cut-up shirts and creating something kind of sweet and certainly handmade looking, sewing, sewing until it's big enough. Did you know king size beds need BIG quilts to cover them? Still, I'm hopeful this quilt will be finished before too long. It's too fun not to work on it, and it's too devoid of my usual excuses for not making quilts to suffer neglect for long.

Project:: 20 years late for 7th Grade Home Ec

I know this is a cool pattern. All the sewing crafty cool Moms are making this shirt for themselves- the ones that aren't currently nursing are making it as a dress, too. Look! See how cute and cool it is?
I stayed up way too late last night making this exact shirt, in a cute (bargain bin!) navy and white mini-check cotton poplin. Everything seemed so easy, so fast and simple. I envisioned a closet full of this shirt, in dozens of cute prints and thrifted fabrics. Oh! And then I finished, and tried it on. Oh. Maybe I should have taken 7th grade home ec instead of Spanish and band....

Project:: (Organic Valley) Bandanna Pants

Another project completed! Instead of spending the morning walking with my friend Jennifer walking (talking) while the kids run and rack up miles for the kids' marathon we stayed home and Avery and I did a little project. We used the Blue Yonder tutorial for bandanna pants, and two super cute bandannas from Organic Valley that were free at the Seattle Green Festival last year. Avery did all the sewing machine work, and I did the pinning. Pants for brother, for free!

Sewing away! I love how careful and neat Avery gets when he's in control of a machine.

I usually am really careful about not using my children as living billboards, and I try to keep logos discreet, or off their clothes entirely, but we really do love Organic Valley. They're farmer owned, pastured dairy, and locally sourced. Now that the boys have decided that they like to drink milk we go through a ridiculous amount of Organic Valley milk- it's by far the biggest weekly grocery expense, but completely worth the money (don't say I told you, but you can coupons on their website, and more sometimes if you sign up for their newsletter). I love knowing my children are growing up on completely organic, hormone and pesticide free milk, that the cows are healthy and happy and outside, that we're supporting farmers right here in our own county and state, and, besides, Organic Valley milk is tastier than the others. So there you go- I don't mind using my children as billboards for the companies that reflect our family values. Hey Organic Valley- want to send us some more bandannas?

I see overalls for the baby, shorts for Avery, a skirt for me... what else can we make?

Oh yeah- this fulfills Avery's 3rd grade sewing/clothing project- yet another project I've been feeling guilty about not getting to. DONE!

Project:: Birds

7 fabric birds made from my scrap bag, one brown velvet branch, most of a bag of pillow stuffing, and 14 little velcro circles painfully sewn in place. One project-COMPLETED! And I still have time to get my 4 hours of sleep!

I was just going to make some little birds to hang on ribbon or fish line for our friends' baby's baptism tomorrow. Then I thought, well, that's cute, but not really much fun for an almost one year old. Then I thought I'd sew a little branch, and sew the birds to it. Then it could sit on a window sill or table and be cute in baby's reach. But again, not quite fun enough. Velcro! I didn't quite think it out in time, though, or I would have machine-stitched the velcro dots before sewing the birds together- I didn't know the sew-on velcro circles were sticky on the back, which made pushing a needle through by hand a major pain in the ... thumb. Why don't I have a thimble? Oh- because I NEVER sew by hand. Actually, if I'd thought it out enough I would have just stuck with a basket of birds and ribbons, to hang or not. Oh well.

This is sort of rustic and kid-friendly, not anything fancy or precious, though I do think the little birds are cute. Hopefully our friends will like it! And I'm going to make a couple more- one for some friends of ours who just had a baby and are big bird-lovers, and one for baby Ansel. With velcro dots machine sewn on before the birds are assembled! And I've actually got about 13 birds already done, including these 7, and a bunch more pieces cut out, so that part should be quick enough. It's just the darn velcro that slows everything down- otherwise this'd be a two hour project!

Playdough

The other day we were over at our new friends' house and Mymy rediscovered the goodness of play dough. And I was inspired to make some- it had been months, since March maybe, since I'd made any, and that's practically a lifetime for a 2 year old. So he and I made play dough this morning and he played happily cutting and smashing and rolling and squeezing all the rest of the morning while ABCD tried to concentrate on schoolwork and NOT get sucked into making play dough snakes and pizzas. Here's my recipe:

1 c. flour

1/2 c. salt

1 T. cream of tartar

mix together, then add:

1 c. water

1 T. oil

and cook over med-high heat stirring constantly until it forms a big ball, then dump it out to cool a little. When it is cool enough to handle add a couple drops of essential oil and a couple drops of food coloring.

This time we made lemon, peppermint, and rosemary, though ABCD thought rosemary and its "invigorating" properties was perhaps not the best choice for Mymy and that it would have made more sense to choose a "calming" oil. Oh well. It kept Mymy busy and even drew Foal in when she arrived for an early-release school day afternoon play date.

Conkers

We've gathered buckeyes in the fall for as long as ABCD could walk. They're so cool- smooth and rich brown and oddly shaped. They come in such dragon's egg looking covers, and inside is this fairly glowing lovely thing. We've always just kept them in a basket and used them as math manipulatives or pocket treasures or just pretties. But this year ABCD and I decided to make conker dragons, by stringing them and looping them. It looked like an easy enough craft in the book. So we tried it. For a really long time. It involved hammering a big needle and pulling it out the other side with pliers. I think we may try cooking a few to soften them, and seeing if they dry out nicely after. We didn't manage even one dragon, though we did end up with two conker chains, 15 units long. And a couple of really sore thumbs.

Solar Air Tube

So today was "Craft Wednesday" but I've been wanting to try this: http://www.solar-balloons.com/ht_tube.html for a long time and thought it would be a fun experiment. So it turned into "Slip-and-Slide-Seed-Spitting-Science Wednesday" instead. Because I'm the director of this here day camp. I get to decide. It was over 100 today, though the sun wasn't very direct this afternoon.
The hardest part of the whole experiment was finding cheap enough trash bags- seems every one's concerned about quality or something, and having trash bags that are strong and durable and its almost impossible to find thin (<.5mm) black plastic bags. We went to three stores and finally bought the last box of thin bags at the dollar store. Really, I can't imagine what you'd use these bags for other than experiments like this- you can barely hold them without tearing them! The kids thought it was lying that the company was called "TUF" but finally decided it wasn't really lying, since they spelled it wrong on purpose, but it still wasn't fair, because some people might not notice or even know how "tough" is supposed to be spelled. Because true and not true isn't about spelling things right or wrong!
Our tube wasn't quite this long- we had six bags instead of eight. We didn't get a lot of height, but there were times this afternoon the tube was on end, floating around. Thank you kind neighbor with a big sunny patch in the front who didn't mind a whole pack of wet swimsuited kids running and hollering and chasing a garbage bag tube around all afternoon! The highlight was when they tackled it and jumped on it and popped the poor thing.
Then asked when we could make another one!

Wagon Train

We made covered wagons today. They came out pretty cute, but it was a lot of work, at least for Strongmom and I, while the kids grew restless and floppy. I made one up ahead of time, I really did, to make sure the glue and all would be easy enough for the kids to do. The sample came out easy and cute, and I was proud for being such a good Mom, all organized and efficient! Unfortunately I think I got the only kit with all of the pieces cut the right size and holes drilled in the right places.
In the end it came out okay, though I do have a renewed frustration with this town and the lack of decent crafting and fabric stores. I hate to say it, because the people at Craft Wharehouse are always really nice (except the quilting corner lady who is rude and awful). But really, you can't even buy silk here by the yard in this town, or dye-na-flow fabric paint, apparently. And because I am always gathering supplies at the last minute I didn't find that out until last night. Darn it!
Anyway, we had fun setting up the wagons in the grass after Strongmom and her two left. Foal chose circus animals to pull her wagon, which is appropriate (and she painted her wagon cover in polka dots). She is giddy knees and elbows and shining to applause. Mymy chose dinosaurs. I guess when you're two 1843 might as well be the time of the dinosaurs. ABCD and Sunny both refused to paint their wagon covers, despite my assurances that real wagons were often painted in bright colors and designs, and both claimed litle play horses to pull their little play wagons (both were disappointed we didn't have a stock of play oxen). They are strict.
Before we made wagons I read Chapter 2 of Little House on the Prairie, where they cross the dangerous stream and nearly drown and Jack is lost. The kids were shocked at my choking back tears while I read. But honestly! What parent can read that chapter and not feel how fragile and scary it all can be? Still, though. Crying?! As if I haven't read that book about 150 times in my life. Really!