Ahead of the Game

Normally I am not nearly this organized, but instead of working on my big project, the kids and I made Valentines today.  I figured it would be fun and they will likely need them for their classrooms at school come February.  I must admit, recently I have thought about Valentines a bit more than is probably normal.  I have wanted to use up some of my very small scraps of fabric that are too small to do anything with, so the idea of cutting hearts and glueing them to notecards seemed like a perfect solution.

I put some liquid watercolor paint in with the glue, just to make it a bit more like painting for the kids, and the three of us spent a nice evening working on our project.  The cards were fairly glue heavy, but that was alright since we had a place to dry them.

Henry started out adding the hearts but ended up enjoying just painting the notecards with painty glue.   I think they turned out pretty well, I plan to carve a “happy valentines day” stamp and have the kids (or at least Eleanor) sign their names on the back.  Good thing I have a whole month to get that part done!

School Work

This is one of my favorite paintings Eleanor has brought home from school so far this year.  The person in blue is apparently me.  Just amazing to see how they go from scribbles to actual shapes based on reality.

A Birthday Party

My girl had a birthday and to celebrate we went to a local nature center with a bunch of her friends.  It was a wonderful time and in the interest of keeping with the nature/eco-friendly theme, we made all of the party favors and decorations.

For the favors, I had a swatch book from Paper Source and decided to use it to make little tiny sketch books for our nature walk.  To do this,  I used a paper-cutter to take off the top inch (approximately), which left me with a rectangle of the nice card stock.  I cut regular printer paper slightly smaller than the card stock and put three pieces with each “cover”.  I folded the layers of paper in half and stitched with an old needle down the center.  To make the little books a bit more exciting, I carved a stamp and we used a shiny silver ink.  (We used the stamp on thank you notes as well.)

For the garland, I had hoped to sew the scraps together from the swatch book, but for some reason my sewing machine didn’t think that was a good idea.  Everything kept getting tangled up so we laid all of the scraps out on the table and glued them to a piece of yarn instead.  This actually worked out better — Eleanor was able to help me put dots of glue on the paper, which she thoroughly enjoyed.  The result was sort of whimsical and lovely, definitely very colorful.

I should have taken some pictures of the garland hanging at the party, but you will just have to imagine it.  Instead I will leave you with a picture of the cupcakes — I used a chocolate whipped cream (2/3 cup chocolate chips + 1 quart heavy cream, melted together in a saucepan, then refrigerated, then whipped like regular whipping cream) for the frosting, delicious.  And, yes, those are Skittles in the shape of smiley faces, as per the request of the birthday girl.

A few old things

I have a few pictures from ages ago that I had intended to post about but never got around to writing about so here is the quick and dirty on them:

Red, white and blue potato salad from our July 4th celebration with blue potatoes from our garden and beets from the farmers market. (Really? The 4th of July! I am way behind.)

Several pictures of liquid watercolors on coffee filters that we put up in the window as sun catchers. The kids started with Q-tips and ended up folding and dipping the filters to expedite the process. (And these pictures are from June! Gasp!)

A shot of one of my bumbleberry pies before the crumbly topping went on.

And with that, I am hoping to get to some new and more interesting stuff.

Christmas Cookies with Grandma

We (miraculously) made it to Michigan and are enjoying decorating Christmas cookies with grandma. (I am also trying out a new way of updating the blog – maybe it will get me back on track!)

I’ve been sleeping

Lots of time has passed.  My last post was about a big project that I am working on (yes, still working on it) but there is an even bigger project that has put much of my crafting on hold.  Baby #3.  So, there will be some updates at some point about Halloween craftiness and the “big project” but for the time being, I still need my early bedtime.

Working on Something BIG

I haven’t been writing much because I’ve been working on a big gift for my brother and his new wife. I do have a few smaller projects on the camera to download and now that we have a working computer again, I’ll get busy.

Homemade Crayons

I made some crayons the other day for a birthday party. I used this silicon baking tray, which we won in a raffle and heated them at a low temperature (200ish) in the oven until they melted. The crayons turned out really well, especially the ones with bits of similarly colored crayon. I wish I had taken a picture of the finished gift but I was frantically running around trying to get out the door to the birthday party and it completely slipped my mind. We gave a little sketchbook and a rainbow selection (six crayons) tied up with a little piece of pretty paper and ribbon. I think it looked nice, but I should have included a more descriptive message in the card because the recipient’s mom was entirely sure what to do with them! Note taken.

More Rhubarb.

Shortly after posting about my love affair with rhubarb, I came across this recipe for rhubarb soda. Of course, I had to try it. It is fantastic for several reasons:
1) the blog intercultura y cocina (which is quite lovely) is written in Spanish — so I learned a few new words while trying out the recipe. For example, ruibarbo = rhubarb, a cognate for sure but probably not exactly what I would have guessed if I had tried to imagine the word on my own.

2) the finished rhubarb syrup that the recipe creates, can be used for many different types of beverages (and probably other things too). I tried out the soda using 1 part syrup to 4 parts Perrier sparkling water. It was pretty good. I also tried rhubarb lemonade using approximately 5 parts lemonade (we have the frozen Minute Maid kind that you mix with water) to 1 part syrup. This was REALLY good. I added a few frozen strawberries and it made a wonderful pink lemonade.

3) it is another way to use rhubarb before we get out of season!

Anyway, I’ll post some non-rhubarb things soon — either that or I’ll just change this blog to rhubarb only blog.

Rhubarb.

I love rhubarb.  Some people put on weight during the holiday season, I put on weight during rhubarb season.  I just can help myself from buying bunches of it at the farmer’s market.  Once I have it, I can’t help but make pies.  The problem is, I am the only one in the house who really enjoys rhubarb + anything pies, and I always end up eating the entire thing in just a couple of sittings.  So, in an attempt to maintain control, I froze a bunch of chopped rhubarb so that I can space out the pies a bit.  However, I did make the mistake of trying some strawberry rhubarb preserves using this recipe with slightly less sugar.

Paired with butter and homemade bread (with this recipe, substituting honey for sugar) — I’m in trouble again.  And, I haven’t even attempted my mother-in-law’s amazing rhubarb custard dessert, because I know that would be too much for me to resist.