penny carnival

Rocks and thoughts

This is going to be random. Bear with me.

1. Your adorable sewing projects in the back-to-school Flickr pool have warmed my heart today. Thank you, thank you to everyone who participated.

It's going to take me a few days to create a post with all the photos (or at least one photo of each project), so feel free to keep adding more images. To be fair, I'll draw the winner of the sewing calendar from everyone who has entered by today, but it's not like I'm going to close down the pool or anything, so please inspire us throughout the year with your sewing loveliness. 

2. Rocks rock.

The girls and I went on a little hike the other day and collected some rocks. Once we got home, they carefully washed and dried them and then painted them to resemble ladybugs, cars, turtles and other creatures and objects.

I don't have any shots of the finished products. Let me assure you, they look nothing like Martha's rock crafts, but the girls were extremely proud of their work. When I accidentally referred to an alligator as a turtle, I was told I was being "ra-dink-ulous."

3. I have written and erased this a few times now, and usually that means I should just stick with erase. I don't think anyone comes here to read about politics or religion, do they? But let me just say this: I read the news about the discord at the Sept. 11 remembrances with sadness this weekend. 

I was in New York on the third anniversary of the attacks. I happened to be there for a conference and was working for the newspaper at the time, so they asked if I wouldn't mind covering the memorial service.

At first I was nervous about approaching families. I don't know why. As a reporter, I'd knocked on doors of white supremacists before and didn't break a sweat. 

I quickly learned, though, that the families wanted to talk. I think they wanted the memories of their loved ones to live on. Some of them beamed as they remembered their brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, partners, friends. 

There was one dad, though, that I'll never forget. He was carrying flowers, so I approached him and asked if I could talk to him about the person he lost in the attacks. Every time he tried to open his mouth, the words wouldn't come. Just silence. He finally pulled out a piece of paper from inside his coat, unfolded it and handed it to me. It was the "missing" flier that he must have made and distributed in the days after 9/11. I managed to learn that this was his son and that they were from Colorado, as well as a few other details about the young man's life.

The father then leaned his head on the building next to us and sobbed. I think he would have crumpled over if the building hadn't been there for support. We squeezed each other's arms for a few minutes, and eventually nodded a goodbye and he continued on to the ceremony.

Of course I support people's right to speak out and I take great pride in being able to see and respect two (or more) sides of an argument. But I'm not sure I'll ever understand why people choose anger and fear over peace and unity.

If that father was there again grieving for the loss of his son, I don't know, maybe he would have been part of the protests against the mosque. Maybe not. I just hope he was surrounded by love, not hate. That--besides having his son back--seemed to be what he needed most.

 

 

Penpals

I often wonder about whether or not my girls will be close friends when they're all grown up. I can't imagine them not, but you never know. I know siblings who have pleasant relationships, but they don't have enough in common to have a tight-knit relationship. And then there are siblings I know that fought like cats and dogs as kids, but are total besties now.

We deal with our fair share of bickering over toys and clothes and who gets to retrieve the newspaper off the front porch in the morning (seriously). But, still, it's easy to see that Bo and Magpie love each other very much. I took them for a little hike this morning and at one point Magpie tripped and fell. Bo helped her little sister up, dusted off her clothes and took her hand as they continued down the trail, neither of them knowing that I saw the whole thing. Oh, those moments. Part of the reason I write a blog is so I don't forget them.

One thing the girls like to do is "write" each other "letters," so while I was at the thrift shop a couple weeks ago, I picked up an old mailbox for them. It cost $3.99 and looked like this: 

With a little pink spray paint ...

It now looks like this and is mounted on their playroom wall:

They're enjoying leaving treasures in there for each other--sometimes the treasures resemble mail; sometimes they leave each other little toys or painted rocks.

Cheap. Easy. Simple. Fun. Just the way we like it.

Real Simple fun

Just a quick hello to those of you finding Penny Carnival from the little mention in the Real Simple: Family issue.

I picked up a copy today--it looks like a beautiful issue. But is that any surprise? Real Simple makes bottles of window cleaner look lovely.

Anyhow, I'm humbled to be a teeny-tiny part of it.

So what did Real Simple feature? They mentioned the "story starters" activity I do with my kids and listed a handful of my examples. If you're looking for the whole list (it's a free printable PDF), please check out my original post about it. 

Thanks again for dropping by!

P.S. The Back-to-School Sew Along is plugging along. The deadline is Sept. 12, so if you haven't started stitching yet, hop to it! Remember, you can upload your photos to the Back-to-School Sew Along Flickr group, the Penny Carnival Facebook wall or just e-mail them to me ([email protected]). 

One random entrant will win this Sewing Calendar from Accord Publishing:

 

A is for apple

Goodness. That title is going to put that Barenaked Ladies song in my head. Not that that's a bad thing. I once considered moving to Toronto so I could live closer to them. I can't imagine the kind of free time I used to have (you know, before having kids) that made it possible for me to follow a band. Not literally follow them, but know their names and their favorite colors. That sort of thing.

Anyhow, "A" is for Arthur, he's a lovable drunk. "A" is what Fonzie said 'cause he was very cool.

And "A" is for back-to-school apple prints!

The girls and I did the ol' slice-an-apple-in-half-and-dip-it-in-paint trick last night.

Remember how I said the other day that there are times when a craft project scores big points with these kids and times when it flops? Yeah, well, Bo totally hated this one. She gave it a good 30 seconds and then moved on to painting snakes and suns:

Magpie and I had fun, though. I turned some of the prints into cupcake toppers this morning. We'll be delivering these treats to cousins tonight as a Happy Back-to-School Week surprise.

Here are the basic instructions for apple prints:

1. Cut an apple in half. Do your best to create flat surfaces.

2. I remember always having a hard time holding the roly-poly half apple as a stamp when I was a kid, so I cut a couple of grooves in ours last night to create handles.

See? Much better.

3. Place a paper towel on a plate. Squeeze paint onto the paper towel, using a fairly small amount. You're trying to create more of an ink pad effect than a puddle of paint.

4. Then just start dipping the apple into the paint and pressing it on paper (or on fabric, depending on the type of paint you're using and what your goals are in life).

 

Just in case you like the whole apple print idea but want to skip the mess (or the pouty 5 year old who "just wants to paint snakes!!"), I printed six red apples and six green apples on two separate pieces of paper and scanned them for your back-to-school pleasure.

Download Green apple PDF

Download Red apple PDF

This is what they'll look like (but don't click this image and print--use the PDF links):

 

You can use those PDFs to make cupcake toppers like I did--just cut around the apple shape and tape the back of them to long toothpicks or popsicle sticks:

Or use the apples as notecards for teachers or for love notes placed in your kid's lunchbox.

As always, my tutorials and PDFs are for personal use only. Please don't use this PDF for commercial purposes. Thanks.

On a separate note, do you see my two new advertisers up there on the right? First, please give a warm welcome to The Top Stitch, which is a modern, funky fabric shop here in Spokane that also sells its fabrics, books, patterns and more online.

I remember the first time I walked into The Top Stitch. My heart pounded out of my chest because I'd never seen Amy Butler fabrics in person before. And that was when The Top Stitch was located in a tiny little space off the beaten path.

Owner Carrie Jarvis relocated to a bright, sunny, bigger spot in Spokane's Garland District and now offers an array of classes and, of course, fabrics, oh so many gorgeous fabrics. It's the kind of shop that makes you never want to move away from Spokane (but if you did, you could just buy from her online).

Yum!

Yum!

Also advertising is Twirling Betty, a mom/former lawyer who lives in Melbourne, Australia, writes a wicked-funny blog and sells the most adorable creations in her Etsy shop.

Among her offerings:

Floral hair clips ...

Charming visors ...

 

And those one-of-a-kind headbands you can see in her ad above.

Thank you, thank you.

 

 

 

Park scavenger hunt

I'm taking a break from all the sew along talk to bring you ... a park scavenger hunt.

Also known as a nature scavenger hunt. 

I've said before that sometimes the daily activities I have planned for the girls (when we actually have something planned) go over like carrots without ranch dressing. And other times you would've thought I'd handed them chocolate cake.

Today was a chocolate cake kind of day. They ate this one up, and then came home and asked for seconds.

Nothing groundbreaking here. I gave them each a clipboard, crayons and a chart I made this morning. I'd drawn pictures of items I was pretty sure we'd find at the park, and then told them to look for the items and either color them in, check them off or circle them when they spotted them.

The girls--Bo, especially--completely bypassed the playground when we arrived and started working on their scavenger hunts. In fact, Bo started checking off things as we pulled up in the car. We didn't treat it as a contest, but you could.

It took us about 30 minutes to find everything. OK, it took me about 5. It took them 30.

The butterfly and the squirrel proved most challenging--should've just stayed in our own backyard if we wanted squirrels. But what a thrill for them once everything on the chart was checked off (they had no patience for coloring in the pictures in the heat of the hunt, but I printed off extra copies when we got home and they painted them).

At the risk of revealing my pitiful skills as an illustrator (the girls swore the ball was really a pumpkin, and I'm not sure about the breed of the dog--what sort of dog has a teeny tiny head and a big barrel chest?), here is our park scavenger hunt worksheet, in case you'd like to try this at home:

Download The park scavenger hunt

 

Here's Magpie looking for a squirrel in the trees, yelling, "Squirrel! Squirrel! Come out!"

 
Again, here's the PDF:

Download The park scavenger hunt   

Let me know if you have any trouble with it. Otherwise, happy hunting. 

 

Minor league masks

We're heading to Spokane's minor league baseball game tonight (pardon me if I'm getting the lingo wrong--is it semi-pro? Is there a difference? Will there be warm peanuts and hot dogs? That's all I really care about). 

The girls wanted to look up pictures of the team's mascot online to gauge how nervous they should be--they have a bit of a mascot phobia.

But after seeing pictures of Otto the blue dog (I believe that's what he's supposed to be, but I'm open to your interpretation), they determined they had nothing to fear. Wouldn't you agree?

(Image courtesy of this site.) 

They also decided they wanted to give Otto a run for his money, so they made their own Otto masks to wear to the game.

 

Game on, Otto. Game on.

Now if we could just get the food to grow

Our poor garden is struggling this year. I don't know if it was our crazy spring weather or if we got a bad batch of seeds (or, ahem, my insufficient weeding), but things aren't looking as good as they normally do.

So the girls and I did our part to beautify things with some garden art this weekend.

 

I cut out rectangles of cream-colored fabric (about 20 inches by 8 inches) and then traced garden-related pictures I found on the Internet using a black Sharpie.

Then the girls painted the pictures using "patio paint," which can withstand some moisture. I'm also planning on brushing on a thin layer of varnish, just on top of where the paintings are, to hopefully protect the pictures a bit more.

We wrapped the flags around twine and glued inside the fold, so the resulting banners are actually double sided and about 10 inches tall by 8 inches wide.

I'm not sure what to call it. A garden flag banner. Garden pennants. Garden prayer banner. A what-the-hell-happened-to-the-herbs sign. 

Proud painter:

That rainbow outline came from here.

Butterfly drawing came from Let Me Color:

These are/were bunnies (original drawing here):

The illustration for this raised bed drawing came from Lovely Bud:

 

As did these carrots:

 
 

Aw, sweet, huh? Sisterhood is all fun and games until someone says, "I'm not inviting you to my birthday party."

Quick and easy kid crafts

We're in a routine right now where we wake up, eat breakfast and then spend about an hour doing crafts.

Nothing elaborate. Just some quick and easies. 

There's always a coloring book out on the table, but what's more fun than coloring a picture? Cutting it out when you're done and gluing it to a popsicle stick. Instant puppets.

Bo was begging to make butterfly masks today. More specifically, she wanted angry butterfly masks. I told her she'd just have to make an angry face when she wore it, so here you go:

Magpie's attempt at angry:

 

At some point, the paint usually comes out. We either start with a blank page or I print pictures off the Internet.

Today, Bo also wanted me to draw her a tiger. An angry tiger. (Not sure what's up with all the angry crafts. Any child psychologists in the house?)

She then gave it stripes, meticulously drawing an orange line, putting down the orange crayon, picking up the black crayon, drawing a black line, putting down the black crayon, picking up the orange crayon, etc. One time she accidentally drew two black lines next to each other and thought she had ruined the picture (she's a bit of a perfectionist). I showed her that she could probably squeeze an orange line in between the two black ones. It was cute to see the little lightbulb go off in her head.

 

Anyone else crafting up a storm with kids lately? Any favorite links to kid-craft projects you'd like to share?