Yay!

J found a blank book I'd made a few years ago, and was very excited when I told her that it was blank so that she could fill it up with her own story. She worked diligently, narrating her story to me, and then copying the words into the book. I like the surprise ending. 

"Yay, we're going to have a new baby."

"Yay, the baby came out." and "Yay, the new baby is having a birthday."

There are no more words, but the baby continues to grow and have birthdays. 

We must stack tables on top of tables to make the cake high enough for the baby to reach.

Finally, the baby has grown taller than the chimney,
which says puff, puff, puff, and the Mommy stands nearby.

St. Lucia Day

On the heels of St. Nicholas day, comes St. Lucia day! We've enjoyed learning about these people of both history and legend, whose memories have become so closely associated with Christmas in various countries. We like to keep Christmas about the nativity, but learning about these special people who loved Christ is a fun way to prepare for Christmas.

Lucy of Syracuse, according to the stories, carried food down to the Christians hiding from persecution in the catacombs. With her arms full of bread, she put candles in a wreath on her head to light the way. She was martyred for her faith during the reign of Diocletian in 304 AD.

Lucy Cats

We made bread the day before so that we could have them for breakfast this morning. I was confused why the buns, called Lussekatter or Lucy cats, were shaped like an S, or what cats had to do with St. Lucia! Quite the mystery, until I read this:

The Lucy cat is an interesting little cake. If you look closely it has the appearance of two eyes. We remember that Jesus told us how the eye is the light of the body. Yet, in the tradition of St. Lucy, her physical eyes were gouged out. Yet, she saw the light of Christ with her spiritual eyes. And so, in the Lucy Cats, she reminds us that we need to open our spiritual eyes so that we can also see the light and not fear the darkness.  During the longest night of darkness, and with a simple pastry, she tells us to have faith and to rejoice and sing. As St. John wrote, “And the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.” (John 1.5) - source

 What a sweet story for the weeks leading up to Christmas, while we are anticipating for the coming of Christ the true light!

Materials: felt cut in squiggly-leafy shaped strips,
green and yellow (and orange) pipe cleaners,
white pony beads and a bit of fabric glue.

The girls and I made St. Lucia wreaths from pipe cleaners and felt. I don't use pipe cleaners often, but a friend suggested this activity and we thought we'd give it a try. The original tutorial is from here, but I used felt cut into leaf shapes instead of fabric. 

fun with beads and pipe cleaners. 

The girls really liked twisting the pipe cleaners and putting the beads on. Getting the bead-candles to stand up was definitely the hardest part. I let the girls go play while I wound the leaves on, and was able to prop the candles of with the leaves. Then they came back to help me glue the berries on. 

We were pretty pleased with the results. :)

They make a cute table decoration as well, and will store nicely for next year I hope. 

Happy St. Lucia day! May your eyes be full of light!

The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. - Matthew 6:22

A happy St. Nicholas morning

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

This is one of our favorite mornings each year, and today was quite sweet. We had a St. Nicholas party earlier this week, and so we already read our St. Nicholas stories, ate our St. Nicholas cookies, and found coins in our shoes once - but I couldn't resist doing a little something again this morning.

The girls put out their shoes last night, and found them this morning filled with quite a lot of gold (chocolate) coins, and a few stickers - each girl got stickers just right for them - ocean creatures and pink ponies. There was even spontaneous sharing! It was a simple treat, but enough to remember the secret kindness of the real St. Nicholas, the joy of charity and gift giving in this frantic season.

So we spent this quiet St. Nicholas morning coloring pictures for the stickers, nibbling on chocolate [and coffee], while listening to the last few chapters of The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe. We picked up on the joyous chapter where the stone creatures come back to life:

Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing round him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. Instead of all that deadly white the courtyard was now a blaze of colours; glossy chestnut sides of centaurs, indigo horns of unicorns, dazzling plumage of birds, reddy-brown of foxes, dogs and satyrs, yellow stockings and crimson hoods of dwarfs; and the birch-girls in silver, and the beech-girls in fresh, transparent green, and the larch-girls in green so bright that it was almost yellow. And instead of the deadly silence the whole place rang with the sound of happy roarings, brayings, yelpings, barkings, squealings, cooings, neighings, stampings, shouts, hurrahs, songs and laughter.

This is a bittersweet day for me: reminding me of the joy of children and life, saints and loved ones in heaven, and the kindness and goodness that connects us all. This reading from C. S. Lewis seemed just right. Life, color, laughter returns with the king.

And I had my own little St. Nicholas Day miracle! I've been wanting an out of print book for a few years, but used copies are listed on Amazon for ridiculous prices in the $1,000's. I set up a saved search thingy on Ebay. Occasionally I get an email saying the book is for sale for something like $100, and I just delete the email. Last week, I got an email saying the book was listed for $5.98! I snatched it up before someone else did! A nice thick book arrived in the mail just in time for St. Nicholas Day, so this morning, I'll settle in with my coffee for some reading.

I'll share our The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe studies soon! In the meantime, wishing you all a happy St. Nicholas Day.

Find activities and stories at the St. Nicholas center, or read my other St. Nicholas Day posts.

Homeschool Official

Since my oldest is now in first grade, we registered for homeschool this year and we have quite a bit more structure and curriculum. The kids and I are excited and eager for it to go well. I'm trying to stay organized, yet laid back. Serious, but fun? It's a hard balance for me to find - let's hope I get there quickly!

Here's what we're up to:

We start at the breakfast table, and move upstairs to our school room, so I carry this basket with me with my essential stuff: weekly curriculum guide; read aloud books; coloring pages and lapbook games to keep the preschooler busy while I'm working with sister, copywork to keep big sister busy when I'm getting my stuff together; phone; pens, crayons, stapler and other supplies.

We've started a bug collection, so every dead bug we come across lands on my mantle. It mostly looks like I haven't dusted for awhile - but there's potential, I think.

Our nature books are just above our nature table, so we are always identifying birds or bugs, or adding rocks and acorns to our nature collection. 

We've added two neat bird's nests and a turtle shell to our nature collection this summer.  Also, we found some cool polka-dotted seed pods from a tree, but they withered up so L drew a picture of them for the collection.

Oh, how I wish our school rooms was super pretty. For now I'm settling for sort of organized and mostly in one place.

We're using a history spine, with a Charlotte Mason approach (lots of nature and living books). Below is a list of some of the curriculum we're using, along with some other resources. We use our library a lot, and do hands on art projects frequently too, but these studies are framing our year. We also have a church curriculum and ballet class - so lot's to do!

• Story of the World - This is so conveniently arranged for new teachers like me - and my kids really enjoyed the readings.
• Ancient History Portfolio Junior - I'm very excited about these portfolios. Lou loves hands on projects, and with this portfolio, that goes nicely with Story of the World, we can do a reading and then do a little project. This is just perfect for us. I'll probably use this history combo at least for the next 4/6 years.
• Homeschool Journey also makes a Nature Portfolio, which we purchased, but are saving for next year. We've already got the bug and nature collections going, I thought I'd save it for later. But it looks like just as much fun, and I'm looking forward to it. 
• Right Start Math - I love this program. Check it out.
• Ancient Science - fun projects of a wide variety. We'll use this book somewhat sporadically as the projects correspond to our readings.
• Free Print Clearly and Print Clearly Dashed font for copy work - We're working on handwriting and letters with both children. I'm kind of new to the concept of copywork, but I'm beginning to realize how valuable it is. This simple font is great for copywork, and the dashed version is great for tracing letters. Another free font that includes the ruled lines is called Penmanship.
• I'm using the beautiful Jan Brett's alphabet tracers and fun and quick DLTK mini-books for my preschooler.

What curriculum are you using? Good luck this year!

Sneak Peek [with Embarrassing Photos]

I don't usually have much trouble designing with the kids around, but the actual sewing, with pins and projects spread out on the floor and the dining table, the hot iron steaming - that can be a bit tricky.  So during the months I was working on Flip Dolls and Other Toys, my dear husband gave me many weekends home alone to put in some serious hours sewing. He and the kids would go visit the grandparents for a weekend, and I would have 48 uninterrupted hours to make a huge mess, assembly line stacks of projects, and do my hand stitching with a line up of cheesy movies. It was fabulous.

I would keep in contact with John and the kids with a quick skype over breakfast, and loads of photobooth shots of me, cheesing for the camera with the projects I was working on. I was giggling over some of these photos this evening, and thought you might enjoy a peek into my working process. Be warned: there's quite a bit of goofiness, some failed prototypes (read the captions for the details!), a bit of bed-head (with a surprising number of hairstyles over the last two years), and lots of coffee!

Unfortunately, this female super didn't make it in the book, because I made her shirt from the same fabric as her SKIN COLOR. Sheesh. Let's keep it clean, folks.

Coffee, and cheerful first morning. 

Coffee, a drafting ruler, and a frantic second morning.

The productive mess in action - can you spot the three different projects laid out here?

Not pleased with this square bottomed ukelele with floppy strings.

Sharing secret plans with one of my crocodiles!

Many months, and many ukuleles later... shape and string success!

Sitting pretty with my first finished birdie.

Prototype and finished Bearded Ladies - no more nubby arms, simpler hair, and a scale that matches the other flip dolls.  And I'm still totally sane. No really.

Prototype and finished Conjoined Twins. The bigger one is better, right? Wait, is something missing?

Blue Birds and Robins keeping me company. 
Nothing goofy here, just my favorite little toy. :)

Many months and a move later: 
doing book revisions with my cheering squad present this time.

The book arrives in the mail, and we can't keep our hands off it!

That's me! 
Wait, I'm flipped, too...

Thanks for reminiscing with me. Quite a lot of fun over the last two years! My only regret is that I didn't take pictures of all my mistakes - although the topless super hero is definitely a favorite. I think toy design may be one of the most fun jobs ever - at least one of the most playful, eh?

How about you? Do you mix work and play?

A Successful Scrap Quilt

I've been wanting to make a quilt for our bed for a long time. I considered making a cool tree quilt like this one, or this beauty from purl bee. The colors in this triangle quilt have me swooning. Okay, check out my quilt board already. 

But ultimately, I decided to go with the less expensive, less time consuming scrap quilt. Let's face it, I have a hard time finishing big projects like this, so I thought I'd make it easy on myself and just do squares. I did end up piecing a few squares, so that I could include some fabric scraps - but mostly its just 8" squares. 

As I was assembling it, I questioned my scrappy choice because it just wasn't as pretty as some of those others. I could have at least limited my color palette... But then John and the girls came in and started pointing out the fabrics they recognized and telling me which ones they liked best. That's what this kind of quilt is all about, right? Lots of memories. 

Puppy likes it. And about two minutes later, everyone else was snuggled in, too. So, yeah, that seems like a success. What do you think makes a good quilt?

Share Birthday

We decided to have one party for both girls this year, and the girls started calling it a "Share Birthday." They really latched onto the sharing idea in a way I hadn't anticipated. For all the effort of trying to teach them, beg them, force them to share... sometimes it just flows naturally - and isn't that beautiful? And maybe I should remember to stop lecturing and just spend more time baking with the kids, eh?

When we prepared the cakes, we baked  the batter in tuna cans, making two very small, very tall cakes. I thought this was a lot of fun, but I was also worried - how exactly do you slice and share a very skinny cake? My mom, my trusty baking guru who is always on the other end of the phone, suggested cutting each layer in half, height wise - making the layers shorter and making more layers. Enough so that each guest could have their own little cake.

I told the kids about this idea, and explained that they could pick what color layers each guest received - so it would be a little gift they gave their guests. They pretty much thought that idea was AWESOME, and immediately had me call everyone to find out what their favorite color was.

[A couple of side notes about the cake:
1.) Making the layers shorter also meant that the birthday girl cake layers were a little neater and straighter and made the cakes tidier all together. Nice.
2.) One cake mix made about 14 tuna can size cakes, which I cut in half, so we had 28 layers. Each birthday girl had 6 layers, and each of the 5 guest cakes had 3, except for Daddy who got an extra 4th layer. You could also make nine 3-layer cakes.
3.) Even the small 3 layer cakes were really too much for a guest to eat in one sitting - it would have been super cool to have a little take-out boxes for the guests to take their extra cake home. Alas, we kept the leftovers.]

After choosing the colors and arranging the layers, I finished icing the cakes on my own. But the girls wanted to do more. They wanted to make more surprises for their guests! As I was icing the cakes, I realized I was going to have trouble telling them apart - so I had the idea that the girls could make cake toppers. I drew a set of circles on cardstock and had them draw a picture of each guest (and themselves) in a circle. There was probably a neater way of assembling them than what we did - but with a little scotch tape, blue paper and some grilling skewers we ended up with these cute cake toppers.

Our guests were also super gracious when I required each of them, one by one, to carefully cut their cake in half and pose for a picture with their cake and cake topper. It was exciting for me and the girls to see them opened as well, since they were pretty messy looking pre-icing, and so lovely when cut neatly open. Each cake got some oohs and aahs.

The cake toppers made nice party favors for grandparents and aunts. I think they would be cute in a potted plant. I love the set of our family that each girl made, and will probably do something with those soon...

I had a lot of fun doing all of these things with the kids - baking and scheming, color matching and drawing.  It seems to be the best of parenting, the easiest and most fun part, and the part too easy to forget at times - the being together, sharing our days. This was so hard to grasp in the beginning, but its becoming clearer to me now. Here's to togetherness and the passing of time. Many years, my not-so-little ones!

Please, let me know if you have any cake questions. Although I wrote more about the cakes here and there are a million rainbow cake tutorials on the web. Much fun and great wow factor - I definitely recommend it!