penny carnival

'The rain is like a baptism'

One of my favorite movies in high school (and this might make some of you youngins realize how old I am. 35) was "Say Anything." I was so in love with Lloyd Dobler. Still am, really.

The movie is set in Seattle, which of course is thrilling when you're 16 and you sort of think Seattle belongs to you even though you live in a suburb 86 miles away. That was before Nirvana and Pearl Jam made it big, and then we really thought we had something to brag about--even us sheltered kids from the 'burbs who probably couldn't relate to half of the angst those guys sang about.

My friend Simon, who lives in Seattle, has this for his status update on Facebook this morning: "The drive to work in the rain through tree-lined streets that were shedding their leaves, listening to Classic King FM ... I heart the PNW!" (Translation: Pacific Northwest.)

I'm four hours away, on the "dry" side of the state, and it's pouring down rain here today, too. The rain is like a baptism (a Lloyd Dobler line) on my back patio. (I don't have any profound rebirth to report. That line from the movie has just always stuck in my head.) 

The rain sounds more torrential than it is because we need to clean the pine needles out of the gutter, but I almost want to keep them there because the sound of the water crashing down onto the concrete reminds me so much of home. 

Rain was a constant growing up in northwest Washington. It didn't keep you indoors during recess--you just wore your slicker or played kickball under the "covered area" at Roosevelt Elementary School. It didn't stop you from riding your bike through Whatcom Falls Park. On especially wet days at home, you stayed inside eating grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup and doing arts and crafts at the card table with your big sister. When you got older, there were first kisses in the rain and nights out with your girlfriends when the roads always seemed to be wet.

I've got the icks (again!), so I don't much feel like being out there today. But it's a perfect day for hunkering down, getting some work done, and then hopefully finally sewing up the girls' Halloween costumes later tonight.

If it's rainy where you are and you're looking for an arts and crafts project to do with your kids, check out these 3-D pumpkins I wrote a tutorial for for the new About.com site. You can use them as Halloween decorations or save them for Thanksgiving dinner and set them out as place cards.

One other crafty thing to report--the last book sling I'll be making for a while:

 

(Note to self: if someone ever asks me to applique the letter "S" again, just say no! Damn those curves.)

I put my little Etsy shop on vacation for a bit. Just too much other stuff going on. It's not like I had that many orders, but it takes a lot of time and care and I really admire the people who make a living out of doing that. I'll open it back up soon, but I need to get some Christmas and birthday gifts made for my own family first.

Don't forget that you can make your own book sling. Tutorial here.

And speaking of book slings, one that I had the pleasure of making recently is hanging in a home that many of you are probably familiar with, if you're a fan like me. Meg from Sew Liberated did a trade with me--a book sling in exchange for some of her patterns. I was quite honored that a talented person like herself would want something from my humble craft room. You can see it hanging for little Finn here.

About ... my new gig. And little red riding hood love

I'm pretty sure I hinted that I was up to something new behind the scenes. Did I say it sometime last week? Last month? Honestly, the days are running together and I'm quite proud of myself for remembering to wear pants today. Sometimes I even brush my teeth (but not if I go to bed after midnight, in which case I wear my pants).

Are you following me?

Anyhow, for the past two months I've been preparing for a new writing/crafting gig that just went live the other day. I'm the new "guide" to kids' birthday parties and other celebrations on About.com.

Here's my new site:

kidsparties.about.com

It's really a writing job, but I'm planning on putting all sorts of birthday- and party-related tutorials on there (hence, the crafts). I'll always alert Penny Carnival readers here when there's a new toot there, but feel free to bookmark that link, too, for your party-planning pleasure. Just some basic stories are up right now and links to existing articles from other guides, but I'll be adding content almost daily so check back often.

Can you believe someone is actually paying me to write about how to throw birthday parties?! This is right up my alley. Really, it is a TON of work, especially as I've had to learn their whole formatting, programming gobbley goop (Hello! HTML coding?! Who has to do that anymore? Why don't they just use Typepad? Oh, because then their site would look as crappy as my blog does right now. I see.)

But besides the late nights, I'm having a blast brainstorming all sorts of birthday themes and crafts and decorations. And with the holidays coming, I've been writing about how to throw Christmas parties for kids (Caroling! Polar Express in Your PJs! Gingerbread House Making!) and what to do for Hanukkah and New Year's Eve and everything. By the way, we're totally going to celebrate Kwanzaa this year. I hate to admit it, but I didn't know a thing about it until I wrote a little article for about.com. What a beautiful holiday!

Rest assured, it is not going to be a site about how to throw over-the-top Super Sweet 16s and how to beat other parents for the best party favors. Good grief! You can read more about my kids' parties philosophy of the bottom of my bio page.

By the way, I also am featuring "real" parties on the site, so please, please, please tell me about any fun ones you've thrown and send me pictures. kidsparties.guide@about.com.

So without further delay, here's one of my first tutorials for the site: How to make birthday invitations by creating a fabric collage, scanning it, and then printing it out. 

 

Step-by-step photo instructions at that link above.

I made those invites today for Magpie's 2nd birthday party (like how I'm multitasking?), which will have a Little Red Riding Hood theme.

Speaking of Little Red, a friend hired me to make matching Red Riding Hood capes for her daughter and her for Halloween. I didn't get a shot of the little one, but here's the mama version:

I'm kind of in love with Little Red Riding Hood right now (as if you can't tell).

OK. An hour until midnight. Maybe I'll make this a pajamas-and-clean-teeth kind of night. Maybe I'll even floss!!!!

G'night.

Repurposing a quilt top, this little piggy, and my sweet Bo

It has taken me 10 minutes to start typing this post because my hands are busy feeding my mouth a big hunk of bread that just came out of the oven. I would like to tell you that it's some earthy, nutty, whole wheaty bread, but it's not. It's white sandwich bread, made with overly processed flour. There's butter melting on top of it. And I'm in heaven.

First, congratulations to my friends Carolyn and Scott and their daughter Joey, who welcomed baby Julian into the world today. I always get weepy when that much-anticipated e-mail comes (or Facebook update, I should say. E-mail seems so old fashioned now, doesn't it?). Good work, Mama. Now cuddle up with your little bundle and get some rest.

I have a partial update from Saturday's trash-to-treasure presentation. As a reminder, the newspaper gave me $25 to buy some junk at the big indoor yard sale they host, and then I had 24 hours to come up with a plan to repurpose it. Then, in front of a (very small) audience, I transformed it.

One of the items I bought--for $5--was a quilt top. I don't think I'm going to win any points for creativity here, but I basically just used it like I'd use any fabric and turned it into an Emmeline apron:

This was the last project I did at the show because I knew it would take a while, so I sent the audience off to do more shopping while I sewed it up. They came back at the end (well, some of them did) to see the result.

Thanks again for everyone's encouragement before the show. It went fine. Later this week, I'll show you what I did with wooden alphabet blocks, an old picture frame, and a soda-bottle crate.

Now, shifting gears ... to poverty.

There have been a couple of pivotal moments in our 4-year-old daughter Bo's life. One was when she saw the Broadway production of "Annie" last winter. It's probably not P.C., but she still likes to don the Annie dress I made her and scrub the floors "like an orphan." Hmm ...

A second pivotal moment was when her beloved preschool teacher Miss Kathleen quit her job at the school to go back to social work, helping homeless women and children find permanent housing. Ever since then, Bo has been on the lookout for homeless people. She also sometimes asks me if Miss Kathleen has found a home for Annie yet. (After which I fruitlessly try to explain the difference between fiction and reality and then give up and assure her that Annie is with Daddy Warbucks now.)

Anyhow, on a more serious note, Bo's concerns about poverty--especially children without enough food to eat or without a place to live--has been growing. I asked her last week if she'd like to do something to help, and she said yes.

Together, we came up with a plan: she's going to make crafts that she'll sell at a local farmers' market and then donate the money to a crisis nursery here in town. So between now and Oct. 10, the date of her sale, we'll be stocking up on crafty-kid inventory.

She got started tonight with a project I've eyed for months now.

Presenting Bo's very first papier mache pig puppet:

 

(Turns out an empty thread spool makes a great snout.)

The little pig is drying now, and tomorrow he'll get a coat of paint and something to wear.

I'm sure we've all read articles about kids doing good things for charity, like donating their birthday gifts to a cause. I love seeing that, but I have to admit I've always been skeptical about how much the parents are pushing it rather than it coming from the kid. Not that it'd be a bad thing that they're pushing them to do. On the contrary. It's just the pushing I don't like--or the assumption of pushing, since it's just the cynic in me that questions the kids' motivation.

But I can tell you this crafting project of Bo's is coming straight from her heart. It's the first thing she talks about in the morning and the last thing she says at night ("are we going to help the people tomorrow?"). I'll never question those feel-good articles again.

It's enough to warm a mama's heart. 

Bread warms up other parts of me. One more slice before bedtime ...

Stick-bound book tutorial

I've got food on the brain (when do I not?).

Our garden is on the verge of exploding. So far, we've been able to eat what it grows but I think within the next week it'll start outpacing us and J's co-workers will mysteriously find zucchini and patty-pan squash sitting on their desks in the morning.

Enter this recipe for ratatouille from The Leftoverist (A.K.A. Sarah, a friend of mine from high school who I've mentioned here before). I've got it roasting in the oven right now. The smell of the basil is killing me (in a good way)--not to mention the smell of tomatoes that's lingering on my fingers. 

I plan to eat it this way tomorrow.

I'm convinced that Sarah needs to write a cookbook. Her photos alone are stunning, not to mention the artwork her sister Naomi has done for the blog.

Now, if I were to write a cookbook, it would be this big:

In other words, itty bitty. 

This little booklet is one of the make-and-take crafts I'll be teaching at the county fair I mentioned last week. I'm running a booth as part of my gig for the local newspaper as a blogger for its "Down to Earth" Web site.

Everything will be made from secondhand materials, so I've been hitting every thrift store and garage sale in town over the last few weeks collecting supplies. Even the hole puncher we'll be using to make these books was a 99-cent find from The Classy Rack (don't you love it when thrift shops get clever with their names?). 

I figure this little booklet, which is bound with a twig and some twine (or yarn or strong string--whatever you have handy), could be used for grocery-shopping or to-do lists. If I were really great at entertaining house guests, I would print out the recipes of the food I made for them while they were staying with me, bind the recipes together this way and then give the book to my friends as a departure gift. As it is, my last house guests were lucky to get clean sheets and take-out pizza.

If you can find a use for this little booklet, please enjoy this tutorial:

1. Choose a front and back cover for your booklet. The paper should be cardstock-like, so consider using cereal boxes, softback book covers, old calendar pages, etc. In the pictures here, I used the front and back cover of a small coloring book from 1967.

2. Choose some filler paper. I like to mix blank pages with pages from old books, dictionaries or graphing paper.

3. Find a twig, pencil, chopstick or other short stick and a piece of strong string or twine that's about 15 inches long. (The length of your string will depend on how tall the book is that you're making.) 

4. You will also need a hole puncher, scissors and either a clothespin or paper clip.

5. Arrange the papers in your hand like a book, sandwiching the lightweight paper inside the heavier cardstock. Tap the stack on the table so that the edges of the left side are even and hold everything together with your paper clip or clothespin. 

6. If the papers aren't already all the same size and shape, trim around everything so all the pages (including the front and back cover) are the same size.

7. Punch two holes on the left side of the stack, a few inches apart.

8. Lay the stick on the right side of the holes. 

9. Poke one end of the string through the top hole of the book, pulling it through so that about half the length of the string is sticking out the front of the book. Wrap the string around the stick once or twice, then poke the string back through the hole toward the back of the book. Pull so the loop around the stick is snug.

10. Repeat that step with the bottom hole.

11. Pull tightly and tie the ends of the string together in a double knot on the back side of the book. 

12. Trim the ends of the string. Or don't. Whatever.

You're done!

The stick binding isn't practical for, say, a journal or anything else you'd be opening often and writing in at length. But it's kind of a cute, earthy way to present something special, like maybe a wedding program (grrr ... there I go again re-doing my wedding seven years later). 

While I have your attention, I just have to put a plug in for some amazing Spokane talent. Last night, J and I attended a fundraiser for a food co-op that's opening soon here. For an extremely reasonable price, we were treated to some top-notch entertainment, including book readings by 2006 National Book Award finalist Jess Walter and columnist Cheryl-Anne Millsap, both of whom are fantastic people as well as talented writers.

And then pianists Brad Greene and Kaylee Cole took our breath away. You can hear some of Brad's music on his site and Kaylee's here. I know we're all busy people, but if you get a sec give them a listen. 

Hope all is well, my bloggy friends.

 

Make a dragonfly with Em

I'm sure I've said this here before, but I'm never totally sure who all is out there reading Penny Carnival. It's so fun to receive comments on posts to get to know people better, but I know there are still others hanging around who don't chime in. Lurk all you want! That's perfectly fine! (Although I do love to hear from folks.)

One reader I do know about is my 6-year-old niece Em (not her real name, but close). Em loves to dance, sing, go to kindergarten, make art and be a fabulous big sister and cousin. When she was a tiny baby, she was all eyes. She would lock her gaze on you with her great big beautiful peepers, melting everyone's hearts. She's still taking the world in, one wonder at a time (and taking it by storm often, too).

I'm across the state right now in my hometown, visiting my parents and sister. We were doing crafts with the kids the other day and Em had a great idea--how about if she created a tutorial for Penny Carnival? Fabulous. I'm on the mend from strep throat, so I'm thrilled to get some help around here. 

She invented this dragonfly craft on her own and dictated the directions to me as I took notes and photos. 

So here you have it ... a dragonfly craft courtesy of future craft blogger and wonder girl Em. I wish you could hear her voice as she explained these steps. Carol Duvall in training. The comments in parentheses are mine ...

1. Fold a piece of construction paper, starting on the long end. Keep folding, (accordion style) until you get to the end.

2. Choose a twist tie, whatever color you want. Twist it around, then you twist it around again.

3. Then choose whatever color paper you want. Cut a circle. This is going to be the head. At the very bottom put a little bit of glue. Then stick it onto your dragonfly wings.

4. Then flip it over and that’s the front of your dragonfly. Draw a face on the front.

5. Then cut antlers (yes, antlers! squeal!!!) from either the same color or a different color. Cut two little squares out. With a glue stick, you glue the antlers on.

And there you have it! A dragonfly.

Not to be outdone by her older cousin, Bo had to get in on the action. So here's her tutorial for coloring on a piece of paper, delivered in the same Carol Duvall tone:

1. I colored in. I colored like this and this. And then I made this. And then watch. I do this color in. Then what you do is put the cap back on.

2. Then just fold it and get another color to color with. Blue, yellow, pink. Any color. Color like this, this and this.

3. Snap it back on (the cap) and that’s the end.

That's it. I'm going to Bermuda. You're in good hands here.

Seeds, kiddie art, fabric hoarding and a purse

I'm fried.

I can't even come up with a clever title for this post (see above). The last two weeks have been a blur--slammed with work deadlines, a fun-but-all-too-fast trip to Portland (Oregon), and these two adorable children who keep calling me Mommy and insist that I feed, clothe and clean them.

In the meantime, I'm longing to sew. And send stuff off that I've already sewn (JennaZ--your book sling is done and lovely, I'm just having a dickens of a time finding a mailing tube that's long enough for it. It's my No. 1 priority for tomorrow. Er, today. It's tomorrow already.).

One thing I have managed to find time for is buying fabric. What is my deal? I should probably not write another post encouraging underconsumption until I rein in this habit. Our trip to Portland last week included an important stop: Ikea. Without sales tax. Weeeee! Plus, fabric was on sale. (Justification alert. Justification alert.)

Then, when I got back home, I stopped at the Quilting Bee in Spokane Valley because they're having a sale. I bought some adorable circus fabric that I'm going to use with this pattern--Feliz party dress from Studio Tantrum. So girly and fun.

Somewhere along the way I did manage to sew this purse, roughly following this pattern from Favorite Things.

I fully intended to follow it exactly, but--I have to be honest here--I couldn't understand half of what they were telling me in the directions. Has anyone else used Favorite Things before? I'm not trying to badmouth them--I'm sure it's more my problem than theirs--but at one point I felt like turning the instructions upside down to see if that helped. The purse turned out fine, but making it hurt my head.

Then we've been doing a little bit of this:

And a little bit of that:

And following these fantastic directions for making masterpieces out of children's art:

You basically trace a silhouette onto a child's painting, cut it out, then paste it on a white background. Simple. Brilliant. Beautiful. 

I first saw the idea on Ohdeedoh and there was some conversation there about how damaging it would be to a child's self-esteem to repurpose their art. Hmmm ... I just told the girls from the beginning that this was what we were going to do. Bo helped me trace and paste. Viola! She loved the finished product and so do I.

So much more to say, but my battery is low and it's, um, 1:32 a.m. Nighty nigh

A HANDy Valentine card tutorial

I'm so naive.

With all the crafting we do around here, I should have known better. I should have known there was no way 3-year-old Bo would have the patience to make the same thing--in this case, Valentines--28 times.

Our score at the crafting table last night--

Bo: 8

Mommy: 20

Ah, well. At least these were simple to put together.

I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw this idea, and I'm so sorry for that. It popped up during my surfing yesterday and I didn't even read the directions, but I imagine we made them in a similar way.

You will need: skin-colored cardstock, red cardstock, scissors, glue sticks, and either computer paper or scraps of white paper and a pen.

Step 1: Have child trace her hand on a piece of lightweight cardboard (like a cereal box). Cut it out. This will be her template.

Step 2: Have child trace the template on skin-colored cardstock.

Step 3: Holding a piece of red cardstock behind the skin-colored one, cut out the hands.

Step 4: Cut or hole punch a heart in the middle of each skin-colored hand. Do not cut hearts out of the red hands.

Step 4: Print out or write messages on small, thin scraps of paper. I simply typed "(heart) Boston" so the kids knew who the card was from.

Step 5: Have the child glue the two hands together, sandwiching the paper message between them so the word part sticks out. Note how the back side is red:

My favorites of the bunch were the eight that Bo made--lots of scrawly tracing marks and a mish-mashing of the hands as she glued them together.

She came home from preschool with a pouch full of cards from her classmates, some really adorable homemade ones included. What was her favorite of the bunch, though? No, not the hands. Her favorite was a Spiderman that jumps out at you when you tilt it. Fabulous.

Last-minute handmade Valentines

Need some quick ideas for handmade Valentines ... like I do?

I just wrote a roundup of links to some adorable ideas on my other blog. Most of them came from the Crafty Crow, so you could head there, too.

This one from Full Circle is my favorite--a bouquet of poppies, each one containing a Dum Dum sucker inside. Our preschool doesn't allow candy, so I'm trying to think of something else I could use in place of the sucker. A pipe cleaner? A pencil?

Anyone know of other good links to Valentine's fun?

Kids' Christmas crafts, part 1 of 3

I forgot to tell y'all about my proud parent moment a few weeks ago. I feel like such a stage mom sharing this, but I think it might be of interest to other parents who are trying to raise their kids in a creative environment. 

So, J and I are at Bo's parent-teacher conference at the Montessori school. Miss Joan is telling us how Bo is friendly, polite, inquisitive, blah, blah, blah. It's all lovely to hear, but I totally perked up when Miss Joan said, "And I'm really impressed by her fine motor skills. For her age, she's quite good at doing detailed things with her fingers."

J gave me a crooked smile from his awkward perch in a kid-sized chair across the circle-time rug. "It's all the arts and crafts she does at home!" we both said at the same time--him with an eye roll and me somewhat resembling a peacock displaying her feathers. Ah ha! Redemption for all the crap I take when I come home with a bag of stuff from the craft store!!

During the holidays, I think even non-crafters get artsy fartsy with their kids. It's such a time to hunker down and pull out the glitter shaker. 

Oddly enough, all Bo has wanted to make these days are spaceships. I have managed to squeeze in a few Christmas projects, though, so the next few posts will be a roundup in case you need a little 4 p.m.-on-a-snowy-Wednesday inspiration.

Here's the first installment:

3-D Cardboard Christmas Tree

We made a tabletop tree one day out of an old cardboard box. Bo loved it because it involved her two favorite things in life: paint and glue.

First, draw a tree on a piece of cardboard. Cut it out with an X-acto knife.

Place the cut-out tree on another piece of cardboard and trace it. Cut the second tree out with an X-acto knife. 

Cut slits up the center of the trees as shown so that they slide into one another. If your slits are snug enough, you won't need glue, but mine was a little loosey goosey, so I hot-glue gunned the crack. 

Give the child paint and a paintbrush and let him/her go at it. At first Bo was just going to do a few brush strokes on each surface, but I said, "I wonder if you could cover the whole thing with paint" and she went for it.

After the paint dries, get out the Elmer's glue, cut shapes from felt or paper or give the child jewels or stickers--whatever--and have them decorate the tree. 

Bo's mint green tree is on display now in our kitchen.

Coming soon, Snowy Pine Cones.

Gift tag tutorial

I'm officially part of the handmade movement now. I sold something on Etsy.

OK, "sold" might be a strong word. I traded. 

I was inquiring about what the price would be for the extremely talented Susannah of Sitting Pretty Studio to paint watercolor portraits of my girls. She wrote back with the figure, then quickly sent a second e-mail saying she checked out my shop (didn't take long to browse through my inventory. I've only gotten around to listing one thing), liked the child's dress I had for sale, and was willing to knock down her price in exchange for it.

Yippie! I feel like such a ... such a ... capitalist. (Or maybe not, since it was a trade.) I suppose I should link to my shop now, but I warn you--the cupboards are bare.

Here's the dress in question. I'm making it for her in size 18 months. 

So all of a sudden I realized I need marketing stuff, like packaging and tags. That's the kind of stuff that's fun to think about for down the road, but not so fun to come up with at the last minute.

I did some dinking around with tags tonight. I'm not totally happy with this because I want to convey more of a modern feeling than a vintage one, but I thought it might make good gift tags for Christmas gifts if anyone's interested. This is the oldest trick in the book, so forgive me if you did this in 8th grade when you were studying the U.S. Constitution and wanted your report to look all aged and antiquey, you overachiever, you.

Here goes:

Cut desired shapes out of scrap pieces of white cardstock using regular scissors, pinking shears or some other decorative-edge scissor.

Punch a hole in the side or top corner of each of the tags.

Brew some black tea or coffee. Place the tags in a dish or deep plate. Pour the tea on top of the tags, swishing them around a bit to make sure they're submerged.

I poured the tea on top while it was still hot and I think that made the tags' corners curl a bit, which I liked.

Let soak for a couple of hours, more or less depending on how dark you want the paper to get.

Transfer tags to a clean, dry surface. Allow to dry. Stamp or write words on the tags.

You can't really tell in these photos, but the tags look somewhat timeworn.

Attach them to gifts with ribbon or fabric scraps. Turn up your crafty nose next time you pass the gift tags in the "seasonal" aisle at the store. (I say this but earlier today I caved and bought two rolls of toxic, unrecyclable wrapping paper from Target. But it was soooo beautiful! I'll skip showering this week as penance. My oily Italian hair will fuel my car by the end of the week. This is a fantastic plan.)