JACKpot!

Seriously! Look at what Jackie from Smoothpebble sent me!!! From top left, clockwise:

• Card by Seasprayblue (I really want to order one of her prints)
• A fabulous seedpod. I love these but have never owned one. Does anyone know what flower it comes from? It’s inspiring me to start a nature drawer/box/shelf/something.
• A pressed Dusty Miller leaf lovingly sewed onto a card.
• A nifty cut out of said Dusty Miller – I have always loved the structure and fuzz of this little plant.
• Are you wondering yet what’s in that cool little hand printed box on the bottom left? It’s the best part – hand embroidered wool felt cuffs:

And they fit just perfectly. (I was smart this time and put the bracelet on my left wrist while I took the pictures with my right. Very unlike last time I took a picture of a bracelet on and ended up dropping my camera down 4 cement steps. No, it never recovered.)

I mean really, how can you not love these? I just need to find the perfect tops to wear with each of them. This may require shopping as I’m not liking my wardrobe right now. (Good excuse, aye?)

Crafty mail rocks!!!

OK, better go decide on what photo to mail out tomorrow for the Scent of Water Photo Swap. Or maybe I should go to bed? Nay.

Rocket Ship Birthday Party

The little man turned 4 last week and I threw him a rocket ship birthday party with the help from family over the weekend. Everyone had a ton of fun. I like to pick themes for birthday parties. It helps narrow down the possibilities. His 3rd birthday was all about bugs and his 2nd was about balls (click on each to see a few details). So far it’s been a breeze choosing a theme as Seth’s preferences have been very obvious. Here’s a rundown on our rocket ship party.

Invitations & thank you notes – relief print of Seth’s shadow rocket (see yesterday’s post)

Decorations – The piece de resistance was a rocket ship tent purchase on clearance after Christmas that was given to Seth for his birthday. I wanted to paint Styrofoam balls to look like planets and hang them with paper stars in the gazebo but ran out of time.

Food & beverages – We kept it simple here. For that matter I don’t think I’ve ever kept it this simple for a gathering of any kind. Just bottle drinks for the adults, juice boxes for the kids, chips, veggies & dip and one rocket ship cake. The cake was made from a box mix. Better than purchased, not as good as made from scratch. But again, time was an issue. (Although I didn’t give Eleanor anything other than water to drink, she seemed to be good at finding other’s left overs to shake. Good thing there was a pool to rinse her off in.)

Activities – Now here’s were I had fun. Regardless of the theme it is summer and was in the backyard so water was involved. A kiddy pool, sandbox and slip ‘n slide provided wonderful entertainment. The kids probably would have been satisfied had I done nothing else – but not me. Two rocket ship related activities were a must:

1. Astronaut portraits – We gave Seth an astronaut costume for his birthday. If this didn’t have the triple purpose of present, party prop and Halloween costume I wouldn’t have spend the money. (Yes, I realize I’m tempting fate by buying a Halloween costume this early in the year.) Each kid got to try on the suit and helmet. We had them pose in front of a backdrop made from left over tar paper stapled to the wood fence and spray painted with a star scape. I’ve cropped out their feet for a more “realistic” look and am including a print or two with each corresponding thank you note. The kids were so cute patiently waiting their turn. They each wanted a shot with the helmet closed as well as open. Many wanted multiple turns.

2. The second space themed activity was a scavenger hunt. I compiled 6 stock photos from those available from Microsoft. I hid a pile of these pictures in 6 locations in the neighbors yard. Each type of picture in a different location. After showing the kids what they were looking for and giving them directions I let them loose. The object being to collect all 6 pictures and return to me for a surprise reward (rocket ship stickers). I’m mean – I also made them count each one our for me as proof. If they didn’t have all 6 I would have them lay the pictures out on an uncut original sheet to see what was missing.

Just in case you want to host a space scavenger hunt of your own I’ve included a pdf for you to print. Make sure to print one more than the number of kids participating. Cut all sheets into 6 pictures except for one sheet to be used as the example. How well you hide the picture piles depends on how old the kids are. For preschoolers I wouldn’t get too sneaky. Here you go: space-scavenger-hunt

Thank you gifts – I adore thank you gifts. They’re inexpensive and fun. Sticking with our theme we included “sand from the moon” and some rocket balloons. To keep the cost down we split out packages of rocket balloons and wrapped in tissue 4 balloons and 1 or 2 blowing straws per child. Then we mixed up a bucket of homemade moon sand based off this tutorial – basically 2 parts play sand, 1 part cornstarch and enough water to create the right moldable consistency. Don’t expect it to be like the commercially processed moon sand but this is just as fun and a heck of a lot cheaper.

A big thank you to my parents and hubby for all heir help putting this together. Sometimes my ideas are bigger than the possibilities and it’s good to have a support troop to ground me.

Shadow Rocket Invitations

So much to tell you. For now, I’m going to start with these relief print rocket ship invitations I’ve been wanting to post about for a couple weeks. The invites are for Seth’s 4th birthday party and were inspired by his own creativity. It all started with this shadow:

Seth was making shadows on the kitchen counter with an office binder clip. You should have seen his face when this rocket ship appeared. We just had to take a picture for posterity. A few weeks later I was searching for inspiration for making the invitations when hubby suggested I look at Seth’s shadow rocket. Perfect! I modified the size of the shadow, printed and cut it out. Tracing both this image and a bottle cap to serve as the basis for Saturn onto soft-kut I was able to get away with out much free hand work. The beauty is that I very minimal drawing capabilities, so this fit the bill nicely. I carved the image out to make a white line relief print, adding the stars at whim and washed it up. Nothing like Rouxhauser’s fabulous chickadee print but I thought it was going to look nice.

Of course, I had to mix up a good green color. I rolled on the ink for a nice smooth coat. Next came the ultimate test. I smoothed down the paper with the barren and crossed my fingers.

Peeling back the first sheet of paper with nerve racking.

In the end all went well. Green for the invites, yellow for the thank you notes. I preferred the print on the yellow card stock as it had a little more tooth to it. The green paper was a little slicker. The biggest problem? Finding time and space for the cards to dry without little hands getting to them.

Making Fire

Ever started a fire without a match? I hadn’t until this last weekend. It was so cool. I was utterly astonished that I did it. Using only the items shown below: birch bark, frayed twine, char cloth, flint & steel

I unraveled a 3″ piece of twine and placed it on a piece of birch bark. On top of which I placed a small 1″ or so square of char cloth.

Char cloth catches a spark easily so this is where I aimed when striking the flint against the steel.

Once a spark catches on the char cloth I folded the birch bark in half like a taco and blew gently. Here’s my sis giving it a go. Can you see the smoke coming out the end? First the frayed twine catches then the bark.
At that point we placed it on a pile of tinder and got a good blaze going.

Can you believe I made that without modern conveniences? I’m still astonished. Now I feel I need to purchase a flint & steel as well as make some char cloth before our next camping trip.

Raspberry Leaf Tea

Seth really enjoyed making raspberry leaf tea over an open fire last weekend. It was a bit of an eye opener for me as well. Not only did I find out my 3, almost 4 year old likes tea but I learned of a whole new crop I can harvest from the raspberry bush the kids gave me for Mother’s Day. Here’s how you can enjoy your own cup:

1. Take a couple handfuls of dried or fresh raspberry leaves and place in a large banged up pot of water.

2. Make sure you get all the leaves in there.

3. Hang over an open fire and then go do something else for a while. Maybe a little camp craft time?

4. Steep at least until the water starts to steam. Length of time depends on how close to the fire you hang the pot. I think we let ours sit for about 15 minutes. It doesn’t get bitter like green tea so you can’t over steep.

5. If your pot doesn’t have straining holes you may want to poor it though a sieve or strainer to prevent too many leaf bits in your cup.

6. Pick out the perfect camp tea cup and enjoy a light and refreshing drink of tea.

That’s it! Can you believe how easy it is? It was tasty too! Even better was the pride my son felt from being the one to make the tea. Pretty sure that’s why he thought it tasted “yummy”. Wonder if he’d feel the same way if I made it on our stove here at home? One thing is for sure though, I’ll be drying all those branches of raspberry bush I cut down this fall.

Wolf Ridge ELC

In addition to hiking at Tettegouche State Park we did some phenomenal activities at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center over a long weekend. Here’s a taste:

The Ropes Course – a 6 section course way the hell up there ending in a zip line to the ground. Click here to see a short 12 picture slide show of me, hubby, sis and even Seth doing sections of this course. There’s also a pic of Eleanor trying to get in on the action. The course is basically a series of height and balance challenges to cross sections of wire or wood beams. Please don’t ask why.

More hiking – can’t get enough

Learning about Ojibwe life back in the 1700s. We learned how to make rope, brew raspberry tea and start a fire without matches. I hope to tell you more about those things over the next few days. We also learned about the summer house and the winter house for the Native Americans in the region over 200 year ago. This is a picture of Seth listening intently to a story his Auntie was telling him about the Windigo. Today there is a thriving Ojibwe culture in Minnesota and I enjoyed learning more about the heritage of some of my friends.

Rock climbing – WAY harder than it looks

Checking out the inflatable planetarium – rather boring to look at from the outside but filled with wonder on the inside.

If you just can’t get enough of me and my family see my northshore flickr set for these and a few other photos from the trip.

I HIGHLY recommend the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center for those looking for an educational nature experience. They have teen camps, family camps, college programs, intergenerational elder hostels, you name it. Great for kids who have outgrown campy camps and are looking for something with more challenge to it. I completely intend to bring the family back as “official” campers once the kids are a bit older. The ideal age range? 8 to 88 or there’s abouts.

Wolf Ridge

Greetings from Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center. I am so happy to be here. So many choices of what to do over the next few days. Bliss.

See other pics here.

Toadstool Swap

Look at all the goodies I got from Sara at allabouteden! She rocks. Postcards, vintage buttons, swatches, strawberry softie and two, count them, TWO toadstools. I really should take some better pictures so you can see all the lovely attention to detail that she gave them. One is ingeniously on a stick and has found a home in one of my house plants. I just love that because I was seriously wondering what I was going to do with a toadstool softie.

Personally, I think I flaked a little. I did complete my toadstool but it lacks creativity. I pretty much followed the directions. Nothing more, nothing less.

I had wanted to use all re-purposed fabrics and succeeded with the stem (old pair of jeans) and the vintage buttons on top but failed on the rest. The colors I had in my stash just didn’t add up. Additionally, I had wanted to add detachable bugs. Or rather, three sneaky bugs to be exact. (I know, kind of corny.) Unfortunately, I ran out of time. The whole project just reminded me of how long it’s been since I’ve sewn anything. I think I need to practice on some of my own stuff before I force it on other poor unsuspecting souls.

Wanna make your own? Try the tutorial over at LucyKate Crafts. Or go see some of the amazing work that’s shown up in the toadstool flickr pool. Personally, I think I’ll stick to these beauties from now on:

Neighborhood Clean-up Reflections

Through my work I volunteered for some neighborhood clean-ups over the last week. Four to be exact, one per week day. There was supposed to be a fifth today but it was postponed due to the outrageous heat index. Here are my reflections on the experience:

Day 1 – There is only so much time a person can spend picking up cigarette butts. I’ll admit it, I use to smoke. At that time I didn’t give a second thought to tossing my cigarette butts out the car window or putting them out on the sidewalk with the sole of my shoe. Granted it was the late 80s and I was pretty young, but I now feel ashamed. The amount of cigarette butts we picked up and the resulting smell was simply disgusting.

Day 2 – You can tell a lot about a neighborhood by the trash you find. The next time I move I’ll consider picking up trash in the prospective neighborhood for an hour or so. It’ll be research on my investment.

Day 3 – Picking up trash is like weeding a garden. No matter how many times you go over an area there always seems to be more. The pieces just get smaller.

Day 4 -McDonald’s is bad for the environment… in more ways than one.

Help make your neck of the woods a little cleaner. Try one of the following:

• Take a walk with a friend/child/pet/yourself to pick up trash. Bring a plastic grocery bag (along with gloves) and don’t go home until it’s full. I use to do this weekly with my dog, until she got too old and I had children. I miss it.
• Check with local green groups and sign up for an organized clean-up event
• Organize an event yourself through work, your block club, your play group, anything. If you’re in a book club, consider gathering the group together to pick up trash around the local library. Many townships will provide you with bags, gloves and pickers if you ask. They’ll even do a special garbage pick up at the locale. All you have to do is pick a date and get out the word. Induce people to help with food or, as we did, the bonus of being able to wear jeans to work.
• At a minimum, make sure the properties you live and work on are properly cared for. Be a land steward for an inch or a mile. Every bit counts.

All it takes is a half hour. What do you do to help clean up the world?

Looky-Loo

Like I mentioned a couple days go, not a lot of finishing going on right now, so I thought I would share with you a project Seth and I completed two weeks ago. We took a 3-day road trip to attend hubbies maternal family reunion. Here’s how much time I spent in the car with my husband, 3 yr old son and 13 month old daughter, including pit stops:

• Friday – >9 hrs to get to my parents
• Saturday – 1 1/2 hrs to the reunion, 2 hrs back (3 potty stops!)
• Sunday – >9 hrs home

Yikes! Thank goodness we had borrowed my mom’s minivan for the trip. This meant higher mpg but shorter length of time since the parent not driving could sit in the back and entertain the little folk. We do have a portable DVD player but I refuse to pull it out until the last couple hours of the big trips. This means I’m always on the look out for travel games for the kids that I can keep tucked away when at home to keep them special and interesting for the drives.

For this trip we added a looky-loo or I spy game for tor Seth and a shaker for Eleanor. The goal of the game being for Seth to find each item on our inventory list by shaking and turning the bottle. I still can’t believe how quickly we put this together. The night before we washed out a water bottle and collected some small objects. (Note – the smaller the better) We also colored rice base on Ayama-chan’s tutorial. When I suggested colors to Seth I rambled off the primary colors and Seth piped up “I have an idea! We can mix blue and yellow to make green!” While the green was predictable, I LOVE that he came up with the color mixing part. My efforts to expose him to the color wheel are paying off!

OK, back on subject. We let the rice and the bottle dry over night and put it together in the morning similar to Ten Ten’s tutorial. As Seth can’t read yet I kept the inventory list separately so I could absentmindedly ask him if he could find x, y or z in the bottle while I continued to knit. Here’s a listing of what we put in our bottle:

• a nut and bolt
• a rubber band
• a button
• a plastic centipede (really too big and may need to come out)
• a tiny Lego
• a paper clip
• a fake key from some junk mail (also too big as it clogs stuff from moving around)
• a sea shell
• a feather charm
• a large tooth (I don’t know what from, it was in a large cabinet of beads from my parents. Seth loves it.)
• a small chunk of crayon
• a shiny red rock
• a penny
• plastic flowers
• a safety pin
• a small chunk of a cinnamon stick
• a small cork
• a metal star

It was an excellent lesson in size – i.e. what would fit through the bottle neck. Honestly, I think we could add more items so more things show up with each shake or turn. As I haven’t glued the lid on yet, we may just do that. Also as I mentioned above the centipede and key are a little too big as they fit through the hole but clog up the works – so keeping things very small is key. Eleanor enjoyed shaking her brother’s looky-loo so much that we threw some rice in a smaller bottle with a childproof lid. Of course, we left this and grandma and grandpa’s but it wouldn’t take much to make a new one.

I’ve been thinking of doing something like this for awhile, but my idea was a lot more complex as it involves sewing. I love how simple this version is. Thanks Ten Ten!