Thursday, October 31, 2013

Tawashi update

Remember those acrylic sponges that I was so excited about?  As exhibited in a previous post...


I started to crochet some and here's what they look like!  I made a few to give as thank you gifts to some friends.  I think they could make a great gift for eco-conscious friends.

School Shenanigans

Sometimes, this happens:

And then this happens because of it..


And I'm so swamped with things I have to do that having to pull the broom out of the closet to clean up that mess is just a minor time suck that I wish I didn't have to deal with. Know what I mean??

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

NOTHING is sacred...

That thought occurred to me today...and it specifically applies to the three year olds and older.  This afternoon I found D rummaging in her dad's t-shirt drawer.  "What are you looking for?"
"A white t-shirt!  I need one of dad's white t-shirts so I can play dress up!"


Friday, October 18, 2013

Food

Food is so important...before I became a mother, I didn't much think about food.  I mean, I did insofar as I am definitely a foodie - I thought about eating food all day long. In fact, one of the reasons why I cannot stand to (nor do I) sleep in is because if you do, you miss breakfast!  Well, breakfast is delicious!

Once I became a mother...

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Lined bodice



Holy Spiccoli!  This may have been the hardest thing I've ever done...on a sewing machine.  That is a lined bodice of a dress for D.  That's right, I underlined AND italicized the word "lined" because it was so hard!  Luckily, I found a really good tutorial here.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

This.

Is what happens when a four year old gets ahold of your lip liner and a pencil sharpener...

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Creativity flows

I just got off the phone with a very dear friend who said something that was so insightful. In my opinion, it should be made into a bigger movement in childhood...

She has three boys. The older one who is probably about six years old now comes home every day and draws for hours. And she is noticing that her two younger twins, three years old are doing the same. She says, she thinks that after bring at school for five hours, learning and being engaged the whole time, creativity and artwork helps them to process the day's learning. That absolutely makes sense!

Unfortunately, today's society hardly allows for that. Children are sent the schools and then shuttled off to another organized activity, then home, the homework and dinner. When do they have time to process? When do our children really have time to breathe?

I am guilty of this on some days. But I also neglect to give my child the tools to create with. After all, she is just a child. I need to remember to always give her access to her paints. Yesterday, we did this and she sat down a painted beautiful pictures of raspberries, strawberries, a rainbow...blueberries on a bush, and my favorite, cherries.

So, somehow we have to work to make this a movement. Giving children uninterrupted time to breathe and be creative. Being strong in our will to not be afraid for our children to just sit and "be" and just be bored.

Boredom is just the pause before creativity flows...

--
917.847.3012

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Water Kefir!

I love kombucha..but every time I hear about how it's made, I hesitate to make it because it's made with tea.  I can't drink tea.  I can only drink decaf...but then, I came across this great Water Kefir recipe from Nourishing Kitchen.  I love that she gives you exactly what you need to buy to make the water kefir (Ball jars and beer bottles) and then where to buy the Kefir grains.

 Here are the kefir grains.  Then I loaded up the jar with 6 cups of sugar water.