Building Things and Selling Flowers

Ben keeps building boats.  He sometimes goes directly from his morning bed to the yard, where I'm sure the neighbors hear the hammering and think a contractor has begun work at the usual hour of 7am.

First the boats were flat, and they did not float well in our friends' pond.  Now they "have sides."  I tried to tell him about how Noah coated the Ark with pitch, but I'm not sure he heard me; what's the modern-day, average- family equivalent of pitch, anyway?

The children also work on their Calico Critter houses. I save lids (which can't be reycled) for the creative reuse store, but more often than not, Ben raids the stash to make things for his Critters.  I also flatten cardboard and chipboard to be recycled, and that stash is constantly raided and the scissors constantly dulled for the Critter houses.

These houses are ugly by Pinterest standards, but I know the ingenuity and care that went into them, so I enjoy looking at them.  I get tired, sometimes, of the prettified images of life on Pinterest (and some blogs).  It's so easy to think my life is ugly when, in fact, I am living my life with all its attendant dirt, disorder, and unsightliness that doesn't photograph well.  Maybe I need a break from my Pinterest feed. . . 

Genevieve loves to set up shop, whether it's selling things she's gathered or made.  We are frequently invited to a store and commanded to buy something with real money.  Oh, that girl!  

I bought this sweet bouquet for a dollar.  (A real dollar that she lost in a broken vending machine at the pool with a shrug, until her daddy marched her up to the counter and made her ask for it back because "this is not a game!  This is money!")

I've been feeding these interests with targeted library books and some tools.  I've bought them nails and a hand drill.  I wonder what they will get into next. . . 

(linking up with Leila and Rosie's pretty/happy/funny/real)

Hearts on Her Knees

I love patching things.  Lately, I've been patching more than I've been photographing.  I have hopes to do a giant round-up post of all the patching.

In the meantime, here's Genevieve with her patched jeans.  I have sequestered old jeans legs and other denim scraps in a bag in my workroom so that I can patch denim with denim.  Here I used scraps of railroad-striped denim to make heart patches on the knees.  On the inside are flannel rectangles - you can see them outlined with the topstitching.

And Genevieve is holding a Calico Critter.  She and Ben pored over a Toys R 'Us Christmas circular and begged and begged to buy these things.  I think children thrive best on homemade, open-ended toys, so I said no.  They continued to beg, which I took as a sign that Calico Critters were not a passing interest.

So I told them that they could save their money from grandparents and extra chores and only buy the little figures, not their houses or furniture.  So they did.

And now they are constantly devising houses out of wood and cardboard.  And pestering their father to help them.

Ben's friend, tonight, while eating popcorn:  "What's a Calico Critter?"
Ben:  "a piece of crap."

That is a true story.  I'm afraid Ben was quoting his mother.

I need to marshal my thoughts for a post about the children and money because it's starting to get rather complicated in that area.

Homemade Play Dough

Since the summer cooking lessons, Genevieve and I have not done much deliberate work together in the kitchen. School took over our lives.  Occasionally, she would fry the breakfast eggs or help with a baking project, but mostly, she didn't ask and I didn't insist.

 

Now, we are having a very snowy winter on top of Christmas vacation on top of my joblessness, so we've had lots of time at home.  Cooking together is back!  Genevieve has mastered macaroni and cheese (more on that later) and homemade play dough.

I confess that this is the first time I have ever made play dough, which seems strange for a thrifty mom.  But the commercial stuff seemed to always appear in our house through party favors, grandparents, and teachers, so I never needed to make it.

I must say, play dough is a great way to get kids in the kitchen.  There's very little cooking involved, but there's fun measuring and mixing and then, the payoff, lots of cookie cutter and rolling pin play with the final product. 

Also, Genevieve got to use the food coloring which is banished from our everyday food (and water - my kids would dearly love to drink colored water) and hides timidly in the cupboard for birthday icing.

We laughed ourselves silly over the crime scene face.

I can't find the precise recipe we used, but it seemed fairly standard after I had looked several up (and note: alum and cream of tartar can be used interchangeably as the preservative that keeps the dough soft).  I even came across edible play dough recipes.  Maybe that will be the next snow day project.

Appolonia and Hope

Genevieve was asking for a baby doll for Christmas - not big like Bella, not a girl like Helen Jane, but a little cuddly baby. 

Then, one Saturday in November, she asked me urgently for some socks to make a craft.  And with no help from me, she made her brother a sock baby.  She stuffed it with wool scraps and drew its face on with a Sharpie.  She cut some fabric into a robe and sash.  Then she made a sock baby for herself. 

Boy, was she happy!  She told me triumphantly that she has a baby now and doesn't need one for Christmas.  We had a convivial little talk about the satisfaction of creating things with our hands from scraps.  I was so encouraged that she is picking up our values and skills!

Because this is an unusual moment in the last few months.

I've noticed that Genevieve is really interested in money and buying things for herself.  We are trying to guide her to save money for worthwhile things or to be generous to other people with her money, but I'm not sure we are making any headway in a world where there is so much pressure to consume and be selfish.  She has some very nice toys that she never plays with at all, but she still begs for more.

I try to walk the line between acknowledging her natural childish state (and mine!) and guiding her to be content (as I want to be also!).

Ben named his sock baby Appolonia, by the way, which he learned from a children's book we have called The Egg Tree.  Genevieve named hers Hope.  And now their family is complete - they have babies.

Pretty Happy Funny Real

Here's a slice of our life, organized in Leila and Rosie's categories for their Thursday roundup (pretty happy funny real).

 

These burpcloths are pretty.  I made them for a new baby sweetie girl and delivered them along with a meal.  To the right is some plaid (left from this shirt) that I used to make Ben a bowtie for my grandma's funeral.  I do love those bowties: so easy to whip up and instant cuteness for Ben.

 

 

My mending pile is happy to me.  Usually the fixes are fast and it's so satisfying to get the items back in circulation.  Here I have a flowered shoe bag whose seam I made too shallow so it frayed loose.  A pair of oxblood tights that I wore so much they lost their tightness at the top, so I put some elastic in there to help.  A blue sweater with a small hole on a seam that I handstitched closed.  Poof!  Back on the job!

Last Thursday was a funny day.  Ben was requested to dress as a favorite book character for school, and Genevieve was requested to dress crazy in support of anti-bullying school spirit.  Yes, on the same day.  Trying to coordinate this, plus get me out the door for my job was not funny.

Ben was Bananas Gorilla from Richard Scarry.  His daddy helped him make four watches in addition to the two he already had, so he could wear three on each arm like Bananas Gorilla.  Ben dressed in similar clothes to Bananas Gorilla and carried a bunch of bananas.

 

We had to explain the concept of "clash day" to Genevieve, which is kind of hilarious because she already wears the top-of-the-pile shirt with her red plaid skirt to madcap effect.  Sometimes I make her change before I take her out in public.  She totally owned this school spirit day!

 

 

 

Here is a real Lego creation from the Genevieve.  Those people are standing in line at an ATM.  Which niggles at me, because my husband and I rarely use ATMs and I can't imagine where she sees people standing in line for one.  But there you have it:  a 7-year-old's social observation.

 

 

Happy Thursday to you!

 

Up in the Air So Blue

Our Christmas gift to the children this year was an airplane ride, the four of us together, with our friend a pilot. 
It was perfect. 
It was breathtaking. 
I thought we might die, but fortunately I kept the drama in the closet and see! we came back fine. 

 

The plane was so tiny - like riding in a Chevette that sounded like a lawn mower - and we skimmed under the clouds, looking at all the little Matchbox cars and dinky buildings beneath us.

 

I did fill up stockings with little treats for Christmas morning, but the real gift was the airplane ride. Ben had never been in an airplane before and had begged for a ride, and then one of our friends wanted to keep his license in practice, and thus, the gift materialized! Our friend could not accept payment for the ride because of the kind of license he has, so we are planning to thank him and his wife with a meal. 

I would really like to move in this direction for gifts, instead of accumulating more things.  The children were so excited, and being the only grandchildren on both sides of the family, they received plenty of loot, too, which is still laying around waiting for me to figure out where to put it.

 

 



preventing the birds from nesting in the engines

I took the post title from this charming poem which my children love by Robert Louis Stevenson. Genevieve especially loves to swing.  I find the words apt for our Christmas plane ride, too!

 

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

 

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside - -

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown - -

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!

A Bunny and a (very casual) Bunting

We have a new 7-year-old in the house!  And she is the proud owner of a little brown bunny, picked up from the Amish farm as a surprise right after school.  This is a big deal.

Genevieve has pined and begged and schemed for a pet as soon as she was old enough to talk, which was pretty young. 

Finally, her father and I judged that a little outside bunny could suit everybody.  Rabbit hutches are not easy to come by for less than $200 around here, so my husband is doing some more stash-busting; I can hear the hammer banging as I type this.

Genevieve was so excited by her bunny that she ate approximately two bites of her requested chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. 

She told us the bunny is the best gift in the world, that she won't have to catch salamanders in the yard anymore - she'll save her attention only for her bunny.  I figure the salamanders owe me one.

On the birthday morning, I was suddenly seized with a bunting madness, and tore into my fabric in a kind of frenzy.  I don't know how these creative fits come on (too much Pinterest?), but I like to burn through when it's here.

I call this bunting "casual" because I finished no edges and cut out the triangles pretty fast; other people would call this sloppy in the extreme.  I was focused on a fun party vibe, so I chose chaotic colors and random bits of trim out of my stash.

(A useful side lesson:  sewing with fringe trim is tricky.) I wanted the bunting to look good from both sides, so I sewed together two triangles of the fabric that had a wrong side. 

 I strung the bunting around the dining room for the party, but had to take it out on the balcony this morning to try to get a better photo. I'll get it out for Ben's birthday in the spring; he is pleased that it makes the dining room look like a used car lot.

Children Don't Need Toys

I've long been tempted to get Ben one of those cute rugs with roads on it because I know he would love it.  The other day, however, in a bid to use up some of the big architectural paper hanging around, I taped paper to the floor for him and he spent hours creating his own roads.

It dawned on me that the cute toys in the toy store are for the kid inside me, the parent!  My ideas of play are different from my children's ideas.  I would set up the Fisher Price house all cute with its furniture and baby in the crib, but they want to haul it around as a cash register or parking garage.  They appreciate raw materials like cardboard, stones, tape, and paper.  

Their creations are creative, sure, but they read as visual clutter to me (that sounds so harsh - I know that one day I will miss the paperclips taped to the walls, ok?).  Today I carried some ancient mutilated cardboard boxes out to the trash because I couldn't stand the decor anymore. There's no shortage of creativity fomenting in their brains, so we're sure to be surrounded by projects again soon.

 

See, I've been thinking of toys recently as Genevieve's birthday approaches. 

 

For sure we are not buying her toys.

Stash-Busting for Men*

My husband is trying to clean out the basement.  To that end, he and the children started making a clubhouse in the back yard in June.  It's 80% done.

The only thing he bought so far are the cement things used as the foundation, a few 2x3 boards, and the plexiglass sheet that replaced the window glass.
 

 

The paint, other boards, roofing, window, and door all came from the basement.  Ben has explained to me that he is allowed to open the window and prop up the roof any time he wants; he says it will be especially handy when it gets hot in the summer.

I'll take a photo when the doorknob is finally on so you can see it in all its cuteness  (right now, I am begged to come outside at all hours to tug the door open for the children).  I'm thinking the clubhouse needs a window box, scalloped trim, and curtains.

The children are thrilled.  My husband and I have weakly said no to all pets so far:  we were so pleased to say yes to a clubhouse!

*Title suggested by my husband.