The Rowdy Pea

acorn dolls at critical mass

I've spent most of my crafting time this month working on a big order for a Waldorf school in Massachusetts. Today was shipping day, followed by an ice cream outing to celebrate our hard work. The Etsy shop and all the crafting opportunities that have arisen because of it would not be possible without the tremendous amount of support and encouragement I get from my family and friends, especially Josh. He is so good about picking up extra slack around the house, and taking Ivo out for hours-on-end outings whenever I have a deadline to meet.  And they come home from their walks in the woods with pocketfuls of acorns almost every time. Ivo empties his pockets onto my work table and says, "Look what we found for your dolls. Hats!"  I'm so lucky to have my helpers. Josh even helped me think of some new ideas for the shop, which should be freshly stocked in the next few weeks or so. For now we are focusing on getting ready for our annual roadtrip to Petoskey to celebrate the Fourth of July the way Norman Rockwell intended. Cheers :) 

a book for papa

For Father's Day, Ivo and I made Josh a book about our recent fishing trip up north. Ivo dictated all of the text to me, and then I picked out the pictures and put the pages together. When I asked him what he wanted the title to be, he said "Moby Dick" because that's a grown-up book about fishing. So here are some excerpts from Moby Dick:

To create the text, I put a slide show of our fishing trip pictures on the computer and as we watched it together I asked Ivo to tell the story of our trip. Then I wrote down his words. This was a really fun project and very easy to make.  Ivo loves hearing his story, and Josh said it was his favorite present ever.  Here's the whole story of Moby Dick:

We are going fishing.

We bring my life jacket, the rowers, and a tackle box.

We bounce the oars. 

In the canoe the fish swim under my seat.

We are rowing.

Papa casts his line.

We see a turtle, a line, and a loon.

All the fishes that we caught is model.

Then we row back to the dock.

We feel happy. 

 

We tried to make the cover look like an old-timey leather bound edition (it looks better in person than in this picture). The binding is a pamphlet stitch, which is very easy and only requires a nail and some string. Here are some good directions for making a book with a pamphlet stitch in case you want to make your own story.

 

milkweed pod babies

I went back and fixed the links, so they should work now. Thanks for letting me know.

These milkweed pod babies were inspired by this amazing post from The Little Travelers.  I lovewhat she says about fostering connection, not collection. And that not only makes a lot of sense, but also rhymes. How completely perfect.

These babes were so simple to make. I just put a wooden bead on an inch or two of pipe cleaner and felted wool roving into a little bundle around the pipe cleaner. Then I added the acorn cap and a little more wool to make the milkweed pod cradle nice and soft. They look so sweet I almost wish they were real.

inspired by old glory

New in the shop, just in time for the Fourth of July . . .

These red, white, and blue fairy bell rings were my mom's idea.  At last year's Fourth of July parade Ivo and his cousin Quinn both had little American flags which they brandished with such exuberance, I think we all got poked a few times. Those little flag sticks are pointy!  These will be just as much fun and require a lot less supervision. Good idea, Nana!

birthday goodies

We put together this little bundle of felty goodness to help celebrate our friend Abebech's second birthday. Her party was on Sunday and of all the rotten days to get sick . . . poor Ivo was so disappointed to miss out on the fun. I'd been telling him for a few days that after lunch on Sunday we would walk over to Abby's party, so when he saw Josh and I warming up soup and making sandwiches, he started trying to convince us that he was well. "Hey, mama, *sneeze* Hey mama I'm not sick any-*sneeze* anymore."  And my favorite, with his hand on his forehead, "Hey Papa, my brain is cold, I can go to the party." We ended up walking over with Ivo in the jogging stroller to deliver the birthday girl's present, and wouldn't you know it, the party was in full swing and she was sound asleep with a cold and sniffles. Her mom was so sweet. She had a birthday bag for Ivo with a party favor, and the craft project (a clothespin doll), and even a hat and noisemaker AND a piece of cake. Ivo called it his "take home party." 

Here is a picture of our homemade gift bag. This is just two pieces of scrapbook paper wrapped around a box, like a present, but with only three sides taped closed.  Then slide the box out through the open end, and voila! A gift bag. Ribbon handles add a pretty touch if you have some ribbon lying around. The pretty paper and ribbon can be used by the recipient for arts and crafts, or the bag can be reused, or recycled.

cute and clever!

I love my new mesh market bags so much I just had to post about them. They fit right in my purse so I can always have one on hand for quick trips to the store. For the big shopping days they are the perfect alternative to those plastic produce bags on the big rolls.  Josh wanted to use them for foraging but I told him no way. Bags this cute have to stay dirt-free as long as possible :)

I bought them (on Earth Day, no less!) from a new Etsy shop called Zummi, and I got to be her first customer--yippeee! I don't know why that made my day, but it did. It's fun to discover things. And I'm not the only one who did apparently because she is sold clean out of bags at the moment. It's nice to know that I won't be the only one at the store with a head of Romaine tucked into a "fashion" bag--hee!

little napkins

Like a lot of families these days, we are everyday cloth napkin users.  It's great for the environment and for our home economy, and so cute too. What's not to love?  The regular sized ones are cumbersome for small hands, so I made these junior-size napkins for Ivo and his friends. They can even double as a little placemat for nibbly snacks that don't really need their own plate.  I didn't expect him to be too excited about napkins, but he surprised me with a big smile and said, "Mama you made these for me? Wow Mama thank you so much. I love them." I think sometimes just having something little, and special, and your very own can be so nice, even if it is just a napkin.

spring cleaning

We've been doing our spring cleaning this week, which is one time in the year that I am very thankful to be living in an apartment.  No yard work, no outside work at all, and then as if by magic, beautiful healthy flowers, green, manicured grass, tidy shrubbery and hanging baskets just appear. Oh, wait, it isn't magic after all. We do pay for it when we write our rent check every month. But still, it's pretty painless and the building managers go way over and above any of the standards I would have for my own house. Josh is so looking forward to getting a house once he graduates and we get re-settled in a new place, but I could happily live this way for a while. So much less work! Our spring cleaning consists of opening the windows, re-arranging all the furniture, lots of vacuuming, scrubbing and dusting those little forgotten corners (how can a 1,000 sf apartment have so many forgotten corners!) and just adding some little spring spruce-ups. 

These new junk-hiding curtains were a little spruce-up project for the kitchen. The old ones were a bright African inspired print of red, green, black, yellow, and white, so this pale Amy Butler floral print made a huge difference in our tiny little galley kitchen. 

I also cleared off our kitchen bulletin board which we usually use to hang postcards and photos and artwork and gave it a little Easter egg theme.  Ivo loved it and has spent many moments looking at the eggs. The little shelf is to hold objects that sort of relate to the theme, in this case eggs, but we haven't decorated any yet. Can you tell I made the Easter egg sign with those block-style Stockmar crayons we bought last fall? My handwriting is usually a little nicer than that, but those crayons are clumsy for writing. They do last a long time though.

And one more picture of the nature table, which Ivo has joyfully participated in creating and maintaining. In the foreground of the picture is his St. Patrick's Day present, a shamrock, in a pot painted for him by my awesome friend Molly, and way in the back is our eggshell and moss garden that we copied from The Little Nest.  In between are two little clay nests that we made together, pinch-pot style.  One holds a pompom bird named Quinn Bird that Ivo made a few months ago and has cherished ever since.  In the other is "tiny Wilbur" (borrowed from our Pig Mania game) and an acorn cap ("Wilbur's pillow"). And I also noticed that Ivo re-arranged the two brown bunnies so they are kissing. Sweet!