Busy Hands Homestead

"I am sorry, I can't help", she says sliding my tax forms across the table. I don't remember if she wore glasses, but if she, did she would have been looking at me above the rims. "What is it that you do again?" I wince and opt to believe that the condescending tone was only in my imagination. Sylvan is sitting on my lap. "I am a mom", I say embarrassed.  Was I blushing?  I scrape a bit of dried clay off of my fleece, " I do lots of things." I am between day one and two of three days in the kindergarten classrooms at my daughter's elementary school.  I had spent the last two nights in the studio rolling out clay slabs until the wee hours of the morning. What do I do? I am a non-entity on a tax return.  I don't exist.  I am invisible. I do things. The thoughts run through my head. I am productive. I consider myself a valued member of my community.  Really. I smile. "Well.  Thanks for taking time out of your day t...

An Empty Gym.  Gallon jugs of tempera paint. Rolls of colored paper.   Scissors. Glue.  A closet of voting booths lined with canvas. Satin Banners.  A few busy kiddo's after school and busy mama's that stayed on for late nights and  Ready. Set. Go.  The backdrop for the Lowell Elementary Christmas show:   All the windows line up for one continuous scene.  Notice the snow flakes?   Snow flake crystals are formed on multiples of three... thee pointed stars, six pointed, nine, twelve etc...  I think it has something to do with the angle of the water molecules.  So,  I folded them on 30 or 60 degree angle resulting in stars that have either 6 or 12 points.  A super late school night for Ivory and Sylvan who patiently looked at Christmas books while Adam picked up our new stacked washer...  My coordinating skills are lacking sometimes - but then I thought that this back drop ...

Life has been busy - incredibly busy.  In between running errands, loading kilns and my monthly coop shift I sat down for a few minutes to make ornaments with Ivory and Sylvan.  These are quick.  They are simple enough even for Sylvan to remain engaged through out the duration of the craft.  Materials: assorted colors of felt pieces ribbon thread sewing needle scissors How To: I ask the kids to choose their colors and then I cut the shapes for them: 1 set of leaves (or more if desired), 2 flowers, 2 stars and 2 small circles. The flowers, stars and circles are cut while holding two sheets of felt together Make a loop out of ribbon and tack the open end together String the large flower, the star and the small circle onto the needle (Sylvan can do this with assistance, Ivory on her own) Scrunch them down against the loop and return the needle to the center through the flower, tacking the stack of felt to the loop String the remai...

This took me 10 months to finish... and it is all wrong - wrong yarn, wrong gauge, wrong size. I knew it was all wrong just a few rows into the project. I finished it anyway. I learned new skills. Next time I attempt this, I will splurge for nice yarn, the correct gauge and make two that are a reasonable size. Now that I know what I am doing. This one I am giving to a friend to use as a display for toys in a shop window.

This afternoon, during nap time, I put together a small draw string bag complete with a super plush lining (which was a pain to work with).  The lining is perfect for muffling the clinks of it's content and maybe just fancy enough to be a bag of jewels in Ivory's princess filled world.  In it's aftermath however, I will be sweeping up purple fuzzies for days to come.  "Why", you might ask, "are you spending that sacred nap time sewing a silly little draw string bag?"  It wasn't just nap time, but double nap time.  That is right, both of the children are asleep. Well, because the kids got this for Christmas: A super awesome, positively amazing marble run crafted by my husband in his shop behind the house.  (Yes, I have better pictures of this.. but, just look at Sylvan's super excited face, and that is why I chose this one over all the others.) So now we have a marble problem.  There are somewhere - underneath furniture, in corner...

Throughout the holiday season our oven is turned on, the house smells like cinnamon, and cooling racks line the little counter space we have. We baked and iced eight different kinds of cookies and piled up tins filled with dozens of holiday treats. Anyone lucky enough to stop by our house went home with a plate of goodies. We made cardamon braids and delivered them to friends and neighbors. We made a ginger bread house. Last year's gingerbread house was made from a recipe I found on the internet, but the final dough was disappointing at best, and this year I wanted to use the recipe that my mom used when I was a little girl.  I can picture the green clad, almost square cook book of German Christmas baking recipes sitting on her shelf in the living room, but that book is hundreds of miles away. I finally remembered to ask her for the recipe. My mom emailed me the recipe. Adam made the dough. I cut and baked the shapes. While Sylvan napped we glued it ...

Many, many months ago I ran across this image on Pinterest: Keepsake Hug Pillow "This is a great gift idea for grandparents", I thought to myself and I dutifully pinned it onto my craft ideas  board. Perfect, because it can involve our entire family, because I have a giant stash of fabric and perfect because the final gift folds in a small envelope I can ship across the country. I don't however have a fancy sewing machine that would make nice neat letters and numbers, and as time went by I kept coming up with new ways to design our hand print pillows.     We traced our hands onto a thick cardboard folder.  I cut them out and then traced them onto Wunder Under.  Ivory pealed he paper backing off of the fabric hand prints and I ironed them into place.  While I sewed one, Sylvan paraded the other two around the house.  Each of our hands a single petal of a flower. Red, orange and yellow thread added a little detail.  And...

Ivory has been asking for a pair of overalls.  My little girl, who I have to wrestle into anything but leggings, skirts and dresses, or dress up clothes, wants a pair of overalls.  Not just any overalls: She wants purple overalls. Sure, I could probably google purple overalls and buy a pair.  I could walk into a clothing store. But the truth is, I haven't even tried.  I try to avoid shopping as much as possible.  I try to avoid it so much that I just put the button holes and slip stitched the leg cuffs on the brightest, most purple overalls at one in the morning.  Here they are.  Done.

I finished knitting Adam's present yesterday morning, but didn't manage to tie up all the loose ends until just now.  In between icing the Almond Star Cookies and pulling tonight's pot pie out of the oven, I sat down for a few minutes and now the gift is completely done! FINALLY! I based the hat on a free pattern that I found online. I made a few changes.  The most obvious is that I added the curled edge to the hat to make it more hat like.  I also permanently attached this mustache rather than making a few different exchangeable staches. Well, dinner is ready and Adam just came inside. The pot pie smells fantastic!

     We are four days into the new year, and I finally made that puppy chow I have been saying I was going to make for a few months.  Every time I walked into the pantry to retrieve the ingredients either my chex or chocolate chips had disappeared.  Even today, when I pulled the chocolate chip bag from the shelf, it was almost empty and I had already put the butter and peanut butter in a pot on the stove.      Lately, I have been flailing, struggling to find my way through the chaos that surrounds me, but today I was determined not to get swept away.      I poured the remaining chocolate chips into the saucepan, and added a square of baking chocolate.  It was in its nondescript white wrapper.  I paused momentarily, and then tossed it in.  I didn't care if it was bitter or semi-sweet, it was all I had, and it had to be good enough.      After few handfuls of powdered sugar dusted, c...