Zhinka dinka doo

The skirt-wearing egg incident

[Scene: darkened bedroom, middle of the afternoon. A frazzled mother is asleep on top of the bed. A 6 year-old boy bounds into the room, onto the bed, and next to his mother. Mother reluctantly begins to awaken.]

Boy: Mama, I need you to help me find my egg.

Mother: Hbmblmh? What egg?

Boy: My pink egg, with the skirt. I put it on the paper and it's not there.

Mother: Huh? Pink? Egg? What pink egg? What skirt? What paper?

Boy: My pink egg with the eyes and mouth and skirt. I put it on the paper on the big table, and then when I came back from looking at the cat food, it was gone.

[Twilight Zone music plays]

Mother: Cat food? You were looking at cat food? Why?

Boy: Because it's not a triangle like it was. And then my egg was gone. Come on and get up, mama, I'll show you the paper.

* * * * * *

You know how when you wake up from a nap at the wrong time, nothing seems to make sense? Like your brain is still off somewhere, even though your body is technically awake and functioning? Well, yesterday's (unintentional) nap was interrupted by a boy with a story that I think would seem irrational even under the best of circumstances.

For the record, his pink egg with the skirt is this one. He had put it on the dining table on top of a newspaper that was there. And then (here's the crux) had moved it to the playroom train table (or else the cats did). So when he returned from noticing that the cats' dry food was new and therefore differently shaped, his egg was not where he thought it should be. It all makes sense now, right?

In totally unrelated news, I'm having trouble with my mother. I don't want to go into details here, but it's obviously grief-related. Holidays are difficult, always were, even before my father died. I can't tell her this, but it makes me feel a little bit better to say it here: I'M GRIEVING TOO. I feel like I've lost both of my parents, because my mom doesn't want to talk with me. I know it's still really recent, but I do hope she's able to let us back in one day. OK, maybe that didn't make me feel much better. Writing it made it feel more real.

We're off to violin, Max will be playing in his group recital this afternoon.

Walnut help needed!

I hope someone can help me! I need to open about 15 walnuts and keep the shells intact so they can be used for craft projects. So far, S and I have tried about 15, with only 1 being possibly salvagable if I glue the pieces back together.

We've tried the squeezy thing, going up and down the side seams. He's tried scoring the side seams with a knife; tapping with a hammer, prying apart from the top. I'm beginning to think that we have particularly fragile walnuts, or else we just don't know the secret!

I need to open these then spray paint them, stick a bell on a string inside, and hot glue them back together. By Monday. At this rate, we're going to be knee-deep in failed walnut residue for a long time!

Can anyone give suggestions for what to try? Thanks a bunch!!!

A front page for Max

Max was on the front page of etsy today! Wow! How fun! (Max is 2nd row from the bottom, all the way to the right.) I'm glad I took the screen shot above, because it seems the front page has already changed, I guess they're changing them much more frequently now.

I noticed because I happened to refresh my etsy page, and my listing views for the brown hat shot up from 222 to 628. I thought it was a mistake, but the others were up as well. It's amazing what a front page does for an item. This was my first!

FYI, the hat is up in my new etsy shop Little Elf. I split this off from my other shop to better highlight children's items that I made.

Tell me a story

"Tell me a story..." That was the theme of the CMP ATC exchange for October. Yes, October, I just now got my ATC in the mail. Note to self: DO NOT sign up for anything in October or November. Between Max's birthday, Halloween, and Winter Faire, there's just no extra time.

Since all those activities are now past, I finally got around to finishing my ATC, and here it is:

and since I know from quizzing my sewing group that the image is ambiguous, here's a little hint:

I learned something useful from this process: next time, make the background felt much larger than the image area, then fold back the edges and glue onto the card. Even though I tried really hard to make the felt and the cardstock the same size, they're not.

And now, look at the wonderful booklet of ATCs that I received from Kathy! Aren't they great? And each image is a hand-carved stamp. Amazing. (Kathy, if you have a blog, let me know and I'll link here.)

Magical cookie forest

Two days from today, Max's school will have their yearly Winter Faire. We're so excited! I'm the chair of the Magical Cookie Forest, where trees magically sprout cookies for children to gather and bring home. We've got the trees ready to be delivered tomorrow, about 500 cookies (made by dedicated parents who I managed to cajole) scheduled to be delivered, and many eager children ready to descend on the school grounds.

We will transform a small room into the cookie forest, complete with real trees and delicious cookies. The room doesn't have a door, so I thought it would be nice to create a curtain to hang in the doorway, to maintain the magic of the event. Rather than hang a plain curtain, I made these little felt cookie trees. They'll be tied to the curtain, and after Winter Faire will make an appearance on our tree too!

These are so quick and easy to make, I thought I'd give an overview, as there's plenty of time before the holidays to make up some wonderful-smelling cookies trees of your own!

Supplies:
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Cinnamon ornaments (cinnamon, applesauce, nutmeg, cloves, small cookie cutters)

Fabric paint (the kind in the squirt bottle)

Green wool felt

White wool felt or cotton batting

Thread

* * * * * * * * *

Step 1: Make the cinnamon ornaments. I used the recipe here, recipe #3 with cloves and nutmeg. Mmmm, the smell is wonderful! I baked them in a 200F oven for about 2 hours to dry them quickly. This led to some of them curling up a bit, but that's ok. Then I sanded the rough edges with a nail file.

Step 2: Decorate ornaments, if desired. I used white puffy fabric paint in a little squeeze bottle. Very simple. Max got into it too.

Step 3: Cut out felt, 2 green trees and 1 white. The white can be a partial tree, as it's supposed to be the snow on the tree. For the templates, I simplified one from the Dec. 2007 MS Living, here's the link to the template, I used the largest tree. I used two green layers to give the tree enough stiffness, you don't want floppy trees! I tried both white felt and cotton batting. I like the feel of the cotton batting better, but it does hold its cinnamon crumbs a bit too well!

Step 4: Stack trees together and sew! If you used pen to outline your templates for the cutting line, then flip that piece of felt over so the pen lines don't show. You can put your "snow" in front, or in the middle of the two green pieces, or leave it out entirely. Do a blanket stitch or running stitch around the edges.

Step 5: Sew on ornaments once they've completely dried. Thread a needle with thick floss and sew through the tops to make a hanger. You're done!

Lantern Walk

We're just back from Lantern Walk at Max's school. It's actually a celebration of St. Martin's day, but to the best of my knowledge they didn't get into any of that with the kindergarteners and just went with lanterns. (There's a description of a very similar Lantern Walk here.)

The children made their lanterns over this week at school, and they turned out beautifully, don't you think? Just a bit after sunset, we gathered up children with lanterns lit and walked around the duck pond, singing lantern songs. I was the violinist, which meant that I didn't have to inflict my singing on anyone :)

I'm sorry we don't have any pictures after it started to get dark, during the actual walk. The luminarias were beautiful, and it was really magical to see (barely) all the kids with their lanterns. My dh was in charge of the camera, and for some reason, he felt he didn't have time to take pictures while holding Max's hand and our supplies bag, making sure that no small fires were started, and attempting to hold music for me in case I forgot the notes. I just don't understand!