I thought this was going to be a cool birthday gift for Lucas (which I won’t yet name because I still hope to make one), but before I knew it, this needle-felting project rapidly became another Easter egg. I think I really love Easter eggs. This egg is rather like one I made and gave to Grandpa and Mimi a couple of weeks ago. I has flowers all the way around the back.
We are expecting about 30 friends to come tomorrow and celebrate Easter with a day-long brunch. I can’t wait to see their smiling faces! Today has been for Easter projects. Banana bread is baking in the oven right now and making the whole house smell divine.
Ian and I are going to make a bunch of food:
We decorated and hung felt eggs today on our (somewhat neglected) ficus tree. These were made with crummy, 20¢ craft felt and scrap pieces of 100% wool felt. The boys were quite taken with the stars, so they focused on creating eggs with stars. Asher really loved using the scissors!
We’ve been dying Easter eggs too. We had to compromise. The boys wanted to use the pearlescent commercial dye kit that Grandma gave them. The eggs were both easy to color and are also quite beautiful, in lovely pastel shades.
I, on the other hand, was hankering to do some natural dying again, like we did in 2008. I’ve seen some gorgeous eggs online and in one of our craft books that use leaves and flowers to make a negative image on the egg. We did the yellow and red onion skin dyes today, and this is what we came up with. Not quite a perfect result, but two of them look really great. We’re supposed to shine them up with oil.
The dark brown eggs were dyed with the red onion skins. Three of them didn’t get the leaf technique. The lightest egg was dyed just by wrapping the boiled yellow onion skins around the egg and leaving it overnight. If we have time tonight, we’ll do some with red cabbage and hopefully make some pretty blue eggs, too.
OK. Gotta run to the grocery store! Happy Easter!
The leprechauns visited last night! Thankfully we left out some goodies for them, so they didn’t feel the need to play tricks on us.
We gave them honey, cream, and brownies and Lucas chose to decorate the plate with lots of his own sparkly treasures.
And of course there were some brownies for us.
This morning we discovered all the cream, honey, and brownies were gone! Gold nuggets, gold dust, and gold beads were found in our home and on the offering plate we left outside. Some lucky four-leafed shamrocks were left for Asher and Lucas. Lucas asked me how big the leprechauns are. I said, “I don’t know because I’ve never seen one, but I have always imagined them to be about knee-high.”
At Lucas’s school, the leprechauns made mischief. When we arrived in the morning we found that classroom chairs had been stacked to the ceiling! Students’ possessions were mixed up and in disarray. The chalk board said Friday, not Wednesday! All sorts of things were out of whack. Such shenanigans! Lucas and his buddy described the day as “pretty much a whole day of recess,” and given that his face was green with chalk dust at the end of the day, I think that means they had great fun.
We had a supper of corned beef and cabbage, carrots, onions, and celery with roasted red potatoes and garlic. Lucas’s buddy and the boy’s mom and brother ate with us. Ian brought home some Guinness and we rocked out to the Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, and Black 47.
All in all, just about perfect. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
I’ve been working on a project that I learned about through Amanda Soule’s SouleMama blog and her book The Creative Family. It was the perfect project to allow me to practice with all the awesome new tools I got for Christmas.
What is it, you ask?
It’s a bunting for decorating. Some might call it a banner. It’s reusable, unlike crepe paper. I thought it would be nice to use this to decorate for Asher’s upcoming birthday party. I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m pretty stoked about how it turned out!
First, I bought fat quarters and spent entirely too much money. (If I were already a sewer with lots of useful fabric scraps lying about, this wouldn’t have been necessary.) To cut out the triangles I used the Fiskars rotary cutter and self-healing cutting mat my mother gave to me for Christmas. I also used the little Gingher embroidery shears that Lucas and Asher gave me and the Singer “Prélude” sewing machine from Mom and Dad.
That rotary cutter is an amazing and beautiful tool. Cutting took only a fraction of the time I thought it would take.
Isn’t my Singer pretty?
Over several short sessions, I sewed the triangles closed. Today I sewed the bunting all together using wide bias tape. It went very smoothly. I am still debating about whether to pink all the triangle edges.
I think it’s very festive! The bunting is six yards long and I have enough triangles to make another of probably the same size. I think I will, since I’m not sure what I’d do with all these leftover triangles. I suppose I could try to make a quilt, but I think I’m not really ready for that yet.
Yesterday morning we woke to find S N O W !
It hardly ever snows here in the Sacramento Valley. I think the last time was many years ago—probably more than 10—I cannot remember snow falling in all the time we’ve lived in this home.
It was gorgeous and light, just a dusting, and so, so fleeting! It was gone before 9:00 a.m.
The snow was a lovely accompaniment to St. Nicholas Day, which came on the 7th for us. The boys woke to find goodies in their shoes—oranges, chocolates, peppermints, and little Star Babies to cuddle and keep in their pockets. (Alas, Asher could not have cared less about the Star Baby, even though it looks just like him.)
I wish I’d managed to write this days ago, but my work has got me hopping like crazy!
Halloween was perfect this year. It felt like such a treat to have it on a Saturday night because we could really enjoy ourselves.
Friday night before Halloween we enjoyed a great meal of pork chops, sweet potatoes, and greens and then carved our jack-o’-lantern. Parnasus and her son X joined us for the carving fun, and I finally hung up the groovy felt decorations we made the day before. This year Lucas managed to carve his own pumpkin, and made a graveyard scene showing headstones and a creepy hand coming up from a grave (What?). Asher’s jack-o’-lantern was perfectly smiley, just as he requested.
We spent about five hours on Saturday figuring out our costumes. Lucas knew he wanted to be Christopher Robin from the A. A. Milne books. How impossibly cute is that? It was an easy costume to create. We added long socks and some suspenders made of ribbon and dug out my old Winnie the Pooh doll my childhood. I knew there was a good reason to save it all these years!
Thanks to Eden’s suggestion, Ian and decided on Peter Pan and Wendy costumes. I used to have the perfect white nightie, but I turned my wardrobe upside-down and didn’t find it. Fortunately, I had a white summer dress that I combined with a white blouse to make a nightgown. A pretty blue bow in my hair was about all I needed to complete the look. Ian easily transformed some cheap, green shorts and a green shirt from Target into a Peter Pan outfit with some judicious dagging. You might say we were a pretty literary bunch this year.
Grandma and Tolly Dog, who had been away for a month in Tahoe, came home to come out trick-or-treating with us. Ian’s sister Kellie and her boyfriend Matt came along, too. Kellie took this terrific photo of all four of us.
Unfortunately, despite many attempts at finding a costume that Asher would tolerate, we failed. We offered him all kinds of options, which he would agree with at first, but then refused to actually put on. He had talked about being Thomas the Tank Engine and a “big dragon with big teeth,” but in the end, all we could get him to wear was a “super-guy” cape.
Most of the evening, Asher wouldn’t go up to the houses, but stayed back with his family. Those who answered Lucas’s doorbell ring usually sent a piece of candy out to Asher with Lucas or me. Asher finally got up the courage to approach this house and did it properly. He seemed pretty proud of himself after that.
The trick-or-treating was a great success and my kids brought home way too much candy. We went out pretty early in the evening so we could get to the Pumpkin Path at Sacramento Waldorf School at 7 p.m.
The Pumpkin Path was wonderful as always! The children (and their parents) were guided by their Angel Guide along a windy path through the school that was lighted by jacks and luminairies. They saw skits of toymakers, magic scarecrows, a fable about the lion and the mouse, the race of the hare and the tortoise, singing fairies in the glen, a contest of strength between the sun and the wind, and more. At each station the kids were given a trinket, toy, or edible treat. The best part about the Pumpkin Path this year was the way Lucas guided his little brother, helping him over tree roots in the ground or up and down steps, staying by Asher’s side so he wouldn’t be scared in the night. It was so heartwarming to see Lucas take care of Asher in this way. And Asher gleefully trooped along after Lucas. Last year, we carried Asher through it. This year, he went on his own.
We rounded out the evening with a party at our friends’ house. It was a perfect Halloween!
2008, Photo by Kellie
2007
2007
2005, Photo by Elisa
2004 (Lucas was Thomas again in 2005)
2003
My 7-year-old really wanted to decorate for the holiday. So, although I’ve never been one for fake spiderwebs and seasonal flags and Mylar balloons, I made some concessions this year.
First, we put those fake spiderwebs all over our home’s entry.
Then we got to crafting. I bought about 15 small pieces of felt (25¢ each) at the craft store yesterday, white and black puffy fabric paint, some tacky glue, and a bag of googly eyes. The boys and I sat at the kitchen table today for about an hour and a half cutting shapes out of felt and gluing them together. It was really fun! Asher had a hard time working the scissors, but liked the part with the glue!
Lucas made a ghost, skull, vampire bat, orange goblin, and Dracula. I made a bat, three jack-o’-lanterns, haunted house and a witch. Ian came home from work in time to join us, and he made the light orange ghoulie in the middle. I wish I had a good picture of the piece of yellow felt that Asher completely covered with googly eyes! But such things are fleeting with a 2-year-old around. All the googly eyes ended up on the kitchen floor.
When they are dry, I’ll thread them and hang them.
Much better than any preprinted cardboard decorations from the dollar store, I think!
Words. Words. Words. I’m up to my eyeballs in words: editing, writing, note-taking, developing. New projects are on the horizon. Current projects are clamoring for attention, competing with each other to get a piece of me.
It’s late and I’m so very tired. It was a wordy day, so I’ll share only a photograph.
Welcome to Asher’s Store. He has lots of merchandise, but also something of an inventory problem.
He uses his “computer” to work all the time. “Don’t touch my stuff!” he tells us one minute. The next, he says “Come buy something in my store and pay me money.” Because of the computer he is able to take credit cards.
He carries a wide selection of tools and books, and random gizmos of all sorts. Some items cost 36 cents. Others cost “40-85-shs dollars.”
“Sit down and pay me money.”
It’s good that he has the latest in price scanners. It makes his service so excellent. You can bet I’m a repeat customer.
