V-Day, Like it or Not

I know that plenty of people scoff at the "commercialness" of Valentine's Day. My whole view on the "Hallmark Holiday" is, if they're trying to get us to appreciate one another and be nice to eachother--heck, I'm in. This year Bird is in a double classroom with 2 teachers, so she had 30 valentines she needed to provide. Combine that with Sprout's almost-20 and that's a lot of sugar and/or flimy cardboard squares to come up with. So we decided to do something a bit more fun and utilitarian. I had visions of something much more handcrafted and elaborate, but after I got realistic I came up with the following: Take some die cut bookmarks, stickers, and markers. Add children. Leave for approximately 30 minutes, and voila--homemade Valentine bookmarks. No, they're not entirely eco, not really sustainable other than the fact that they might not get trashed like a standard valentine would, but the kids had a blast making them, and they turned out pretty swell, if I do say so myself.

Last week we headed up to the local bookstore I mentioned in my last post only to find it not only closed but entirely gutted. That was a bit of a blow. But the bakery we discovered seems to be doing well, so that's given me some hope. I feel so lucky to have a local place using local organic ingredients. Living in a rural area, we are pretty fortunate to have the local coffee shop, the bakery, and a few organic farms to choose from. The bakery's Saturday cinnamon rolls have become a new family tradition. Today we went in and found that the buttercreme frosting was pink, and the maple frosted rolls had conversation hearts on them. I'd hoped, but was afraid it wouldn't be "natural" enough. These are my kind of people. Even more to that point: they had giant heart shaped chocolate chip cookies. Giant cookies for the win! Nothing says "forever" like a ginormous cookie. Tonight we're dropping the kids off at the Children's Museum for a few hours of fun and pizza while Beo and I run out to have some incredible Himalayan cuisine. An excuse to use a ridiculous amount of stickers, eat gratuitous amounts of sweets, and make some couple time? I'll take it! Happy Valentine's Day!

Spring Craft Time

Bird is getting to the age where she has a bit more interest and patience for "real" crafts. Yesterday, a unique shop on State Street in Madison lured us in again. Anthology, a newer boutique near the Children's Museum end of State Street, combines unique handcrafted art for sale with a few do-it-yourself art projects. The window's bright colors, vintage fabrics, and creativity caught our eye. The shop was filled with bags, cards, magnets, colorful unique quilts, beautiful papers, books, handcrafted toys, jewelry, and other delights. I spotted many items made from salvaged fabrics and papers. I picked up a handmade fabric coffee cozy for when I forget my reusable mugs. A table near the back offered materials and instructions to make your own tissue paper flowers for an insanely reasonable fee. Sprout picked out a "wallet" (change purse) made of an old capri sun juice packet. Bird and I couldn't resist this cute kit from "Artgirlz". We've never been so quick to finish a project! We started on it shortly after getting home yesterday, and finished it up this morning. Bird was more than willing to attempt some sewing as we appliqued a big "E" on the front (yes it's true, "Bird" is not her given name); and happily strung beads despite a frustration here and there. I think the thought of the finished project made it worth it for her. I can't believe we didn't have a single meltdown, as she's been more prone to tantrums lately. There's a little flower garden started on the other side of the bag, but Bird was so overcome with the present success of the bag that she wanted to call it quits for now. I'm totally fine with that. It's nice to have a project that looks so great and was so easy to do. This allowed Bird to be creative and still have an incredible finished piece, so we'll be looking for similar projects. Overall, I think this was a big success, and I hope we'll be doing more crafting like it in the future. Anthology will be a good source. I highly recommend that you check it out if you're in the area!

Bird's Nests

The birds all but disappeared this winter. Despite our food stock for them, our goldfinches, sparrows, and house finches were seldom visitors. This week, as Spring arrives (again), we've finally been graced with sweet songs from some of our favorites. Today there was a cheeky little house finch, singing his heart out from a sapling in our front yard. I watched as he flew down to our garden and tore a few pieces of newspaper from a piece of mulch in our garden. He inspired me to provide some more material for our guests.

The kids and I gathered up some used scrap paper, and yarn ends, and set to snipping them into beak-friendly pieces. Four inches is the reccomended length for thread, yarn, etc. While searching for that handy fact, I saw this great article on building a nesting materials site for birds, in Wonder Time. I actually subscribe to this magazine but rarely find time to read it. They suggest using a mesh onion bag to hold the materials. We packed our yarn and paper into an onion bag, pet the dogs for a little more material to add, then the kids snipped small holes around the bag for the birds to be able to poke around in. We tied it together with a piece of yarn at the top, then hung it in a small tree near our feeder.

This was a nice little Earth Day project for the kids--free and simple, and I plan to have it be an ongoing project as we come up with things like dryer lint that we can add to our nesting collection. The kids were thrilled, and are anxiously waiting at the window to see if we get any takers. I'll keep you updated on whether we have success on the bird's end!

Ostara

Happy Ostara (a bit late) to all. I hope everyone had a nice Spring celebration. Things have been busy here and as they settled down I found myself dealing with a bit of depression again. Ah well, life goes on! We managed to do a few Ostara activities. We made little nest treats for a sweet activity. An outdoor egg hunt turned out to be a disaster (two children in tears, baskets blowing away) but what do we expect with 27 degree weather and flurries in April? Spring made a brief appearance but appears to be feeling a bit shy! Our Ostara treats came from Sweet Earth Chocolates this year. I highly reccomend them! Their customer service was great, shipping was exceptionally fast, and the goods are GOOD! We tried all of the different "eggs" (mint crunch, peanut butter crunch, dark and milk chocolate, and the bunnies. Their chocolate is fair trade and organic, and they have a number of vegan options. Be sure to check them out the next time you're in the market for sweets. (I see they have Mother's Day specials on their website today!) They made a lovely basket, joined by a small amount of precious Surf Sweets Organic Jelly Beans. Bird's Ostara cardigan got finished in a nick of time. Luckily I'd made my own shawl last year, so no worries there. I hope Spring is showing it's face wherever you are this week. Happy Ostara!

Resolution Check-In

It's March 1st-2007 is racing right along. Did you make any resolutions? Have they survived the first couple months of the year? I am reasonably happy with how my focus areas for 2007 are going. My main goals were to be more frugal, especially with food; to buy 50% of the kids clothes used, to be more resourceful, and to eliminate credit card spending. This is all about simplicity and sustainability.

Frugality and Food is going well. Our grocery budget for this year is already $100 less a month than 2006, and we've finished January and February with $100+ left in those budgets. We've done this sticking to local, organic, and low packaging. Make sure to check out my posts on frugality if you haven't already. I'm really amazed at how much further we've been able to cut back, even being 99% organic.

Things with the kids clothes are overall going well. Right now both kids have a solid half of their clothes second-hand. I confess that it has still been a real struggle for me to regulate my buying habits, however I have done much better than in the past. I have also been vindicated in my belief that quality counts. Sprout recently wore clean through a pair of pants and is on his way through another--his last 2 pair of, let's face it, sweatshop eco-disaster pants from a big chain. The ones from quality eco-friendly and socially conscious places are still going strong with barely a sign of wear, even though they've been through just as much.

In keeping with working with what we have-talents and skill included, I'm knitting an Easter cardigan for Bird rather than purchasing one. I don't do dainty, but it will be fun and cozy for one of my favorite celebrations of Spring. She may only be 3, but she already seems very excited about the fact that I'm making something for her to wear. I've been making decent progress, knitting as I watch documentaries (a recent habit), and should have it done on time.

Our credit card spending has improved dramatically. We are down a very decent amount for the year. We have used the cards a couple of times but they have so far all gotten paid off quickly and we've stayed far ahead of the game, enough so that Beo and I have decided to use a bit of our tax refund so that he can accompany me to a meeting I'm going to in warmer climes. It will be a much needed vacation for him, and we'll have a bit more time than usual to spend together.

It hasn't been all sunshine and roses, there have been slip-ups along the way, but we've kept working towards our goals and I feel proud to keep moving in the right direction and holding to the values I want to stick with this year. If you've fallen off your own bandwagon, don't forget that it's yours to stop when you need to. Pick yourself up, brush off, and climb right back on. If I hadn't done the same, I'd be in a cloud of dust myself.

Pomanders

Pomanders were the air fresheners of the Victorian era. These days, they can be a fun and simple craft. While you can make a more in-depth, long lasting pomander, you can just do an easy short-lived decoration for fun too. That's what the kids and I did--or more accurately, what I did and the kids watched. We made simple pomanders by pressing cloves into the rinds of oranges, and finishing off the look with a ribbon. Please note, this is slightly more difficult than one might think! We lasted a few minutes with me getting a clove started and Sprout or Bird pushing it the rest of the way through, but it's a bit tedious for a 3 and almost-5 year old. Still, the end result was quite pretty and the kids were still proud of the role they played. Bird was thrilled with her "Baby Sun".

May all of you who are traveling have safe, uncomplicated journeys. May you be surrounded by love. May you feel peace and light in your heart. May you have lots of scrumptious goodies.

Happy Holidays!

Recycled Holiday Love

Happy Solstice Eve! We are planning a lovely day tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to it! This year we made our own tags for our cookie tins. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while. Last year I remembered to save my favorite Holiday cards, so we got started. While I have pages of stickery gift tags, these are so much nicer! As you can see, it's really quite simple. Just choose a card, and cut out your desired tag shape. (They certainly don't have to be square or rectangular, you can get creative!) Use a paper punch to cut out an opening, and tie a piece of ribbon through. We used the back to write our "To" and "From". This is a fun and simple way to be earth-friendly, thrifty, and look clever doing it. Happy Solstice!

It's For the Birds

This year we've decided to put our Winter Holiday emphasis on Solstice. After all, it fits in much more nicely with our belief system, and darn if it doesn't make things less stressful to spread things out. Beo's Mom wants to have a fancy Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve? No problem, we already had our fancy dinner! We have to travel all day on Christmas? No problem, we already had our special day! You get the idea. I'm hoping this will become a family tradition.

I'm trying to instill in the kids a sense of the magic and wonder of the season. With how little they are, I'm keeping things simple too. Lights, newness, nature, peace and giving--it's all good. One of the fun things we've done is to make Solstice Gifts for the birds. In addition to a traditional garland of popcorn and cranberries which we draped on the bird feeders, we made these fun little numbers. These were a suggestion from a Veggie Boarder who owns a wild bird feeding store. They're totally simple to make. Just hollow out an orange, mix peanut butter with birdseed, and fill. I had everything ready to go so that there was no need for patience or frustration on anyone's part. The actual activity for the kids lasted all of about three minutes, but they loved it, and enjoyed setting them out for the birds. It's a simple way for them to get to honor nature.

Paintings

Another aspect of my "Stop Whining, Start Doing" mentality has been taking up the tasks that were previously unthinkable to me. This includes getting out my oil paints. In particular, one of my paintings just clashed horribly with our new, soft sage look in the living room. I knew it was bad when Beo didn't even hang it back up on the wall. I don't think this was anyone's favorite piece that I've ever done. I painted it in the basement in our old house, when I got my paints out to do a few fun pieces for the kids rooms. That was a brief period of artistic inspiration until I realized I was using a fume-intensive medium about 6 feet away from our gas water heater. I finished up the kids pieces in the garage, and my paints have been stashed away since then. When I was cleaning up recently, I was ready to put the former living room piece in the basement. I thought: "I'll get around to repainting it someday." Then the voice kicked in and I hauled it out to the garage instead. The next nap time that the kids both actually napped, I started on it. It took two nap times and a weekend, but I got it done. It's different than the kinds of things I normally do, but I like the general feel of it. We'll see how it does once it dries and takes it's place up on the wall. Regardless, it was good to have brush to canvas again.

Finished Projects

My Dad is doing better. He called twice yesterday and sounded good. He can feed himself but is still having trouble with liquids. They were moving him out of the ICU based on his improvement though, so that's a good sign. My Mom is at peace with waiting to decide whether or not to make the trip to Thailand herself to bring him home. I'm just so grateful that he's okay, and anxious for him to be home. To make things interesting, my sister hit a deer on her way to my Mom's house Friday night, and totaled the front of her car. Apparently it's still operating fine. What next? Hopefully this streak is over.

In the midst of all of this chaos, I've finished a few projects. The first is painting. Below are some pictures of the kitchen. It turned out a lovely turmeric gold. This is Sherwin Williams "Harmony" Zero VOC paint again, in "Ceremonial Gold" The stripes have greatly improved and will require only a bit of touch up now.


I also finished my sister's afghan. This is something I've been working on for 2 years. I did it all freehand, with no pattern, just a concept. I don't think I'll ever take on anything of this scale again. It took me a while to learn how to switch colors, so the beginning isn't as smooth as I'd like, but it's made with love and will keep her cozy in Alaska.

The past couple of days have been strange having it done. I'm used to always having something to work on. I was really hoping to have it done in time to hand deliver it to her in June, but somehow I didn't believe I'd do it. Now I feel like I have idle hands in the evening. No excuse to watch T.V.! I am planning to make another one for my other sister, but I am not ready to take on something that monumental again right now. I have a few unfinished projects sitting in the wings. We'll see if I decide to restart those, pick up something new, or give the needles a break for a while.