Category Archives: crafts

costumes for the girls

Life with Miss Mairi Rose is often an adventure.  For months and months she told everyone who would listen that she was going to be a mermaid for Halloween.  After a while I, seasoned parent though I may be, even believed her.  This went on for at least 6 months and I started making plans in the back of my head.  A month before Halloween she woke up one day and announced she was going to be….

a coyote.

So she could play a joke on the neighbors and scare them (in a playful way).

Okay.  I’m flexible.

That lasted for a week or so until she heard of a different, better joke.  One that she could play on a lot of people.  She decided that she was going to tie a rope around her waist with the ends kind of picked apart a bit.  When people guessed what she was she would say, “I’m afraid not!” (a- frayed-knot).  She greatly enjoyed using that line for about a week.

“Guess what I’m going to be for Halloween!”

“Abraham Lincoln?”

“I’m afraid not!” she would glibly reply with great enthusiasm and much emphasis.

Elijah was aghast.  A chance for a homemade costume and that was what she was going with?!?  Several of her siblings tried to talk her out of it, but she stood her ground.  She was being a frayed knot.

One afternoon shortly before Halloween, when no one else was around, she quietly cuddled up to me and in a very little voice said, “Mommy, is it too late to change my costume?”

And so we came full circle, back to a mermaid…

A modest mermaid costume is a tricky thing to pull off.  I made the dress from some cotton velour I had about.  You know how I love my double duty Halloween costumes (Galen got a new pair of winter pants this year) and she is in need of cool weather clothing.

I strung a seashell necklace, she strung a seashell bracelet.  The starfish was needle felted with the beads sewn on after it was formed.  The tulle skirt is supposed to be the ocean.  I’m not sure if that’s clear, especially in pictures since you can’t really see the layered colors and wavy texture too well.

The tail snaps on and off so that the skirt can be used separately.  She’s forever looking for new costumes for the little shows she puts on and I thought it might be useful.

Our littlest love, as you well know, was a lamb. I knitted roving to form the bonnet, needle felting the ears.  The tights (see this tutorial) turned out so adorable and fit so well that I think I’ll have to make several more pairs.  The shape of the body was based on the Sis Boom Carly Baby Bubble, greatly modified to suit our needs.  I made it out of batting.

    She was born right in the midst of lambing season here.  Two of the lambs up the road share her birthday, with the others mostly being a day or two to either side.  For the first few days after she was born she didn’t cry, but made these tiny little bleating noises that made her sound rather like a baby lamb herself.  It seemed fitting.

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baby things, celebrations and festivals, crafts, Kids, sewing, toy making, Yarn Crafts
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costumes for the boys

We made wee pumpkins to package up treats in.  I traced a cake pan to get circles of orange tissue paper and twisted it all up with some green floral tape.  We made a couple of sizes to hold various things.  These are the tiny ones.

Legolas Greenleaf

He bought the wig and pin and sewed, gathered or constructed the rest.  We went to the fabric store and he picked out what he wanted, down to elastic (which he ended up not using) and thread without so much as consulting me.  Back at home and he started cutting and stitching.  I worried a bit about the many things that he might not take into consideration as a novice sewer, but bit my tongue and stayed out of the way and as you can see he clearly had it all well in hand.  The only thing he asked my advice on was the making of the gauntlets.  I talked him through drafting a simple pattern based on his measurements and he executed it perfectly.  I had absolutely no concerns about his ability to make his own accessories (a.k.a. weapons), which he carved and burned designs into.

The Jockey

Holy-moly.  This one almost put me in an early grave.  This boy and his ideas I tell ya!  Whenever I mentioned his costume plans to people, they always commented on how easy it would be, because surely he must have most of the gear already?  Nope.  You see, jockeys do not wear black britches, they wear white.  A plain riding helmet?  Completely unacceptable.  I was handed a sketch, which I then had to transform into a workable, wearable pattern…and then redesign when he opted for an entirely different fabric.  He did all of the sewing himself, down to the hand embroidered horse (amazing right?), with me talking him through each step.  It really was quite the undertaking.  But through it all I kept thinking, how often will I be able to help one of my boys with a dream sewing project?  I mean really now.

And our dear little Robin Hood.

Goodness he’s adorable!  But, eek, don’t tell him I said so!  I would be in an awful lot of trouble you know.  While making his costume, I took the opportunity to start teaching him a bit about using my machine.  While I did the majority of it, he did sew a couple of the straight seams himself.  He was mightily pleased with himself and is pushing for a new project that he can do all on his own.

Iain made the bow, quiver and arrows for him.  Actually he sold them to him for a very reasonable price.  There was a catalog and order form and everything, even a three cent shipping charge for carrying them downstairs.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Holidays, Kids, sewing, toy making
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extreme pumpkin carving

He says it’s tradition.  I maintain that we are intelligent enough and creative enough to come up with better traditions…

I wanted a print of Seraphina’s hand for her baby book.  And I thought if it went well we’d do a print on her pumpkin as well.  Conventional wisdom is to try to get a baby’s hand print while they are sleeping.  I set everything up, down to putting her to sleep on a towel and rolling her sleeve up before she drifted off.  And of course she woke as soon as we attempted it.  squish, squish…green paint ooooozing.  She laughed when we rubbed it off and laughed when we painted more on.  Instead of hand prints, we got grab prints, and one smeared little foot mark.

Last year we grew our own Jack ‘O Lanterns.  This year I prioritized using that space for edibles.  Apparently my children have very expensive taste in pumpkins.  I’m planning on finding room for big pumpkins again next year! (we did grow lots of pie pumpkins this year and they are amazingly delicious)  We saved seeds from these as we carved, some to roast and some to plant.  I think we’ll try growing them around the edges of Sunflower Field.  That’s what we call our wiffle ball field, with the wall of sunflowers marking the edge.

There was so much flesh leftover from these big beasts that I made a batch of pumpkin butter.  We had a few warm nights where we huddled together under sleeping bags on the porch and read bedtime stories by flashlight and the glow of jack o’ lanterns.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Gardens, Kids
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kindergarten in the garden

Honestly I sometimes resent the amount of time and energy it takes to homeschool the older boys.  We now have one at middle school level and one high school.  That is a lot of work, not just for them, but for me as their teacher.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy teaching them, very much (well, most of the time!  There are days…).  Add in a third grader and baby and my days are full, full, full.  I’m sometimes nostalgic for the quiet, slower paced days when we could just “do kindergarten” all day long.

Mairi Rose had a challenging summer.  I spent a lot of time meditating on how to approach the coming school year with her, trying to figure out what would nourish her soul, ease her troubles and hopefully nurture her into a calmer phase of development.  It didn’t come all at once, but eventually, what became clear to me was that this girl needed a deeper connection to the natural world around her.  I set about planning ways to immerse her in the magic of the ever changing seasons, to give her the chance to be grounded by the earth.

After much frustration last year, I decided it was better to do one thing in a day well and with great care and attention then to be frazzled and frantically trying to create a “full day” for her.  We now have one yoga day (I’ll try to post more on that at a later point), one project day, a nature walk day, baking day and story day where I try to do something a little special with, say, props or puppets.  I do wish we were getting out for walks every day, but right now that is just not happening.  I try to make our one day as unhurried as possible.  Even if we do make it out other days, this is the day where we don’t have to rush back home, in theory anyway.  Even with this simplified arrangement there are days and even the better part of weeks that we miss.

In the notes section of my calendar I jot down the planned projects and baking items assigned to each week.  I’m working from a general theme that everything is related to.  We started off with “herbs” and have moved on to include both herbs and the harvest.  We made dream pillows full of sweet herbs from the garden.  Rosebud has been enjoying mixing her own herbal tea blends and takes great pride in serving them.  Together we made lavender-chamomile lotion for the girls bedtime massages.  Actually Elijah swears by it for sore muscles after riding!  We’ve planted garlic and daffodils.  I’ve been sharing stories about herbs with her.  After learning that chamomile is good for teething, she began bringing in bunches from the garden for her sister, whenever she thought her uncomfortable.

Together we made a garden loom.  I was going to make it myself and just show her how to weave with it, but we had the gift of time together, apart from the others and I thought I’d give her the chance to do some building herself.  She really got into it and again showed a lot of pride in her work.  These are her special things.  They are dear to her heart.

A Kid’s Herb Book: For Children of All Ages by Leslie Tierra has been a wonderful resource.  I have two minor criticisms regarding this book.  I wish they used more natural sweeteners in the recipes and maybe less sweets in general.  I also feel like occasionally they ruin the magic of the stories by over-explaining at the end, stating exactly what you were supposed to have learned, instead of just letting the lesson sink in through the power of the tale.  But both of those things can be altered for personal preference and otherwise I find it invaluable.

I try to keep a list of ideas on hand to give our life and lessons some continuity while kind of rounding things out for her, so if I have a spare moment I can implement them.  Little things like harvesting some herbs to go with dinner, playing a game of Wildcraft, turning her normal bath into an herbal bath or simply brewing a pot of tea together.  At the moment we have one day a week where all three boys are at their own nature program for a full morning and afternoon and I take advantage of that time together trying to channel that laid back all day kindergarten mindset of yesteryear.  It’s rapidly becoming my favorite day of the week.

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building, crafts, Gardens, Herbs, Homeschooling, Kids, Mothering, toy making, Waldorf
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Sukkot

With a third grader in the house, we find ourselves yet again celebrating many of the Jewish holidays as we work our way through the festivals of this particular school year.  I’ve really been enjoying eating out there.  Most days anyway!  Some days it’s quite cold and it’s always inconveniently far from the house.  BUT, it also drags us out into what may be some of the last days before serious cold hits.  Days that we might otherwise over look in our haste and let pass us by.  It pulls us out of the house, out of usual habits, out of ourselves and there is often something wonderful about that.  Tomorrow night we have some friends joining us.  Such a treat!

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building, celebrations and festivals, crafts, Homeschooling, Kids, Waldorf
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in the beginning…

Some scenes from our first week of school, that have taken me a full month to post!  Every year has a different feel, with different priorities.  I can’t quite explain why, but this year it seemed really important to start the school year off working all together before we broke off into separate age-appropriate groups.  This is tricky with kids kindergarten up through high school!  I knew we would be visiting the art museum, so I basically made that our focus for the first couple of weeks.  There are actually some really nice lesson plans in the teachers resources section of their site.  I utilized a couple of them and everyone worked at their own level.  There was one on geometry and quilts.  I made it easier for some and harder for others and adapted the whole thing to our life style…meaning we didn’t stop at paper quilts, but broke out fabric and needles as well.  I’ve been re-working our homeschooling room and decided that I’m sick of the poster of hatchling turtles.  It’s feeling old and tired.  What better way to kick off the new year then with a project that instructs while beautifying our space?

I started every morning by arranging large sheets of paper on the floor, with art supplies in the center.  I had them all lay on their stomachs.  Each day I would choose a different piece of classical music to play and they were to draw how it made them feel or anything that they thought of as they listened, the idea being less to create a perfect picture and more to get used to conveying emotion.  I have no idea where this idea came from, it is not my own, I believe I read about it many years ago.  Afterwards we would go around and anyone who wanted to share would talk about what they drew and why.  Elijah, who thinks in horses the way that I think in yarn, complained about the mood changing.  Of Rhapsody in Blue he said, “At first it was like a lipizzaner doing dressage, but then it suddenly became a herd of mustangs racing full speed in a cloud of dust.”  I would then pull the big boys aside for a bit to talk about the composer, the time period and significance of each piece.

The butterflies!  We listened to a free Sparkle Story where the children surprised their homeschooling parents by decorating with butterflies as a teacher gift to start the new year.  Mairi was inspired to start making butterflies out of coffee filters that she found in the craft drawer.  Iain and Elijah picked up on her idea and started making intricate paper cut ones while referencing a field guide with actual pictures of butterflies to copy.

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crafts, Homeschooling, Kids, sewing, Waldorf
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midsummer

We came home to peonies just on the verge of bursting into full, frothy blossom, blooming peas and the very first ripe strawberries of the season.  We’ve now entered that time of intense growth.  I swear, everything in the garden, including the weeds (!) doubled in size over the last week.

We may have gone a bit over-board with the Summer Solstice treats.  One morning for breakfast it was lavender scones (we modified this recipe) topped with whipped coconut cream and dew covered strawberries fresh from our garden.  The following afternoon peach cobbler for baking day, with the last of the frozen peaches from last year.  There will be more soon!  Delicious ripe peaches on our trees, bought in cases from the orchard, available for snacking whenever we please, oh I can’t wait.  Then there were strawberries, dried in the oven, just because we never tried it before.  One batch came out a little over-done, one a bit under, but we every last one of them anyway.  The summer sweets don’t seem to be stopping any time soon.  We baked strawberry rhubarb pie today.  It was fabulous, but now I’m out of honey, maple syrup and every possible kind of flour.  So, I guess things will let up a bit…at least until shopping day.  I’ve been indulging my sweet tooth these last few weeks.  I’m being quite naughty.  I don’t care and you can’t make me.

Only a child of mine would deem an axe a necessary tool for making floral crowns!  A little bit into the process Elijah decided that some birch bark would really be “just the thing”, moments later he reappeared with axe slung over his shoulder and a decent chunk of tree dragging behind.  Floral crown making somehow morphed into iris leaf plaiting.  They are wondering if it can be wound into a hat like straw.  My pantry is festooned in yards of iris leaf braid.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the experience of being a teenager.  By next year we will have two such creatures in our house.  I myself was a very typical teen.  When my parents went away for the weekend when I was 16, I threw…a dinner party.  I served fettuccine alfredo and garlic green beans (because you’ve got to have your veggies. duh.).  There were other things too, but I distinctly remember preparing the fettuccine and the beans.  Fresh green beans from the little produce market that I worked at part time during the summer.  Because, come on, what kid would serve frozen green beans to guests?!?  Lame-o!  I bought myself a set of new candlesticks to use as a center piece.  They were made from a combination of clear and teal glass in three different heights.  There was piano music playing softly in the background as guests arrived and sparkling cider all chilled and ready to serve with dinner.  I only wish I could remember what I served for desert.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Food, Holidays, Homeschooling, Kids
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May Day

Nothing went as planned and yet, everything was just as it should be; dancing, music, friends, family and what eventually turned in to a beautiful spring day.  We danced the May Pole, dyed eggs and shared brunch with our neighbors.  In the afternoon; the beach…first trip of the season for most, first trip of a lifetime for one.  Happy children back on, near and sometimes (just briefly) in the water.  Tic tac toe in the sand.  Apparently none of our sand toys survived the year.  Galen brought a garden hoe instead.  Mairi planted stick “trees”.  Steve used paddles to signal to Iain and Elijah who had kayaked off to an island.  Galen used them to be a bird.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Holidays, Kids, Waldorf
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Spring

Bread birds ~ We used this recipe for the bread

It’s finally starting to feel a bit spring like here.  We’ve had some warm days.  Slowly, slowly, slowly there is a bit of work and a bit of growth happening in the garden.  The weekend before last we planted a couple of trees, including an apricot for Seraphina.  Steve brought home a whole tray of various violets and her brothers and sister planted them all beneath her tree in the warm spring sunshine.  It snowed two days later because that’s the way spring is here…give and take, back and forth, really almost right up until summer when the steady warm weather truly settles in.  The pansies and violas made a cluster of little snow mounds under her tree.  The patch of wild ginger that Galen and Mairi Rose planted didn’t fair well under the snow.

We hung swings in the front yard.  Just four of them for now, dangling from beams of wood, strung from tree to tree.  We did this once before, at our old house, the Easter that Galen was a baby.  Rosebud excitedly told me that all we need is a slide and it will be just like we have our own real playground.

It was all the rage to try to extract the treats from your Easter basket as though you were a horse.  This is perfectly reasonable behavior, yes?

We ended up with some strangely colored eggs this year.  We didn’t have our usual dye stuffs on hand so did some experimenting.  If anyone is looking to make grey eggs, we unwittingly discovered about 4 different options for you.

Baby girl received a new Easter bonnet and such a rosy-posy, kissable little dumpling was she.  She has officially been sick more than half her life at this point.  Just a little cold really.  Unless you happen to be a very tiny person with a very tiny nose, in which case it’s a pretty big and overwhelmingly miserable thing.

Sunday was glorious, with the temperature hovering around 60.  I spent a lot of time trying to convince my children that this does not constitute “swelteringly hot” nor “scorching hot”, neither is it justification for a water fight to keep them from “dying of heat”.  They wholeheartedly disagree.  I’ll happily keep my sweater on, thank you.  After the egg hunt the Papa Bear and boys started up a game of wiffle ball, while Mairi made sand cakes, complete with real birthday candles, on the sidelines.  In between games they pitch to her and let her hit a good many balls before going back to their play.  My sister and I sat field-side; watching, knitting (both of us) and nursing (just me).  Her making an ascot with a pretty leaf pattern at the ends, me going back and forth between a cardigan for me and Elijah’s birthday sweater, depending on how free my hands were at the time.  Wiffle ball morphed into football, with Steve on his knees in the end zone, and teammate Galen jumping joyously into his arms.  After a very long while we decided to go for a walk, just to the edge of the woods, where the water was rushing and falling under and around the path and the kids settled in to game after game of “Pooh Sticks”, before heading home for dinner.

Our neighbor brought us over some beautiful Pysanky.

This blue and orange one was painted specifically with blessings for Seraphina in mind.

Wasn’t that a lovely gift?

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baby things, celebrations and festivals, crafts, Gardens, Holidays, Kids, Life
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made

The details on some of Galen’s birthday gifts….

First up some pants.  Somehow, all of the sudden none of his pants seem to fit, it’s amazing how that seems to happen overnight sometimes!  The few pairs that did still fit were uncomfortable or in poor shape.  He prefers comfy “mommy pants”, meaning mama-made, though he does sometimes call them maternity pants on account of the stretchy waist bands.  This first pair is our favorite.  They are reversible pants made out of two layers of flannel.

  And the other side:

Pair #2:

Brown corduroy that reverses to flannel…

And #3:

A pair of single layer twill pants, made with spring in mind.

Iain and Elijah carved him a ukelele holder…

And of course there was a birthday sweater…

Remember his need for a very particular birthday sweater this year?  I made the largest size, added 4 extra increases and several inches to both the sleeves and the body.  Fingers crossed that this one should last him a while!

And now everyone has one.

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celebrations and festivals, crafts, Kids, sewing, Yarn Crafts
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