Play With Your Food January 15, 2009

I’m feeling sick as a dog today, as I was yesterday.  The grating sound of children’s television motivated me to do a craft project with my little one.  I am proud that one of his growing, but still few, words is sew.

I set up the fabric markers & crayons on the floor of the craft room/office and let him go to town.  He made a banana with eyes and requested I make a “cheese bar”.   I haven’t finished the cheese bar but I have to say I think it’s fetching so far.  Here is a photo of the banana in process.

I also made a lollipop, baked potato and a reversible spaghetti/pizza number.  We just filled them with rice and sewed them up, bean bag stylie.  Easy, durable, not plastic and definitely not DORA the SCREAMAH!

The wee one is giving it all a good wash below.

I have been meaning to brag tell you about a great trash score.  A good friend of mine teaches (very well, I might add) at a public school in a neighboring town.  They got a grant for new play kitchens and I bought a set from her at a very reasonable price.  After hauling these heavy pieces to the car I saw MORE in the trash.  I loaded the car with 3 complete sets (it was all that could fit, it was like a Survivor puzzle challenge).  I went back but the rest had already been picked up by the big green monster.  I have a set in the basement I meant to put on Craigslist before the holidays but never got around to it,  am going to list soon.  I think I will make the money I paid my friend back and maybe a little extra to spend on a mom’s night out!  That money went to a good cause, new books for the classroom.  Why the other teachers didn’t do the same I don’t know.  It would have kept the stuff from the landfill, made the classrooms a little money and the playsets would have gone to good homes!

I still have to scrub some stickers off and fix up a few more handles but these are quality school grade pieces.  Love them, thanks K!

Okay, now I nap.

Bloggy Playdate January 4, 2009

Yesterday I met my first virtual friend in person.  Mimi Kircher, funky doll creator   and all around amazing artist, invited me over for tea, a chat and to check out her studio.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to hanging out again!  It was fun to talk blog, flickr, fabric, family, etsy, and art with her.  In addition to chatting, I could have spent hours just photographing her home.  It was chock full of life and creativity.  I think if I could make up an ideal job for myself it just might be photographing the living spaces of others – peeking behind the curtains!

Here are some shots from her studio:

And I took this one on the way down from her attic studio.  The portrait is of her as a child and the woman in the mirror is the talented Mimi herself.

I was trying to explain to my husband that this was MAJOR blog fodder, meeting Mimi Kirchner!

I couldn’t show up empty handed. I was inspired by her quote in the latest Craft Magazine about the oft used phrase, “This is not your grandmother’s craft”.  Click on the link and read it, it’s a good one.

I sewed some buttons from my Granny’s tin on a vintage piece of linen with lovely french knots (a skill which escapes me).

So thanks for a lovely afternoon, Mimi, and for sharing your non-virtual space with me!

And if you’d like to check out more of her work, including the very fine mustachioed and tattooed men, click here to be whisked away to her etsy shop.

New Year, New Room January 2, 2009

I am not a believer in Feng Shui, mostly because I know very little about it.  But as I walked down my hallway and counted no less than 7 piles  to step over I started think of them as obstacles.  Not just piles but hurdles that are accumulating in our lives that just can not be good for our mental health.  Or physical for that matter, poor little guy slipping and tripping down the hallway as he runs at full speed (is there any other speed?).  So I spent the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 picking up piles.  Instead of focusing on the fact that in their place more piles would sprout up magically and instantaneously,  I let the piles lead me, like Hansel and Gretel, to the biggest pile in the house – the craft room.

I was so embarrassed by the “before” shots that I tagged them private!  I’ll put up the afters because honestly, being accountable on the blog was a big motivator, but the shots don’t capture the room or the feeling I get being in it. Taking them at different times in the day did not help.  Ok, excuses over.  Funny but I feel a little nervous about sharing my little sanctuary.

Jumping now:

I bought the depressed looking lady I named Maudlin Maude from my cousin’s booth at the Antique Mall near my parent’s house.  I added a bit of ephemera to her in hopes of cheering her up.  My cousin refuses to share her  source of great thrift in Washington, NC so if any readers have any NC tips for me, I’m listening!  (Hi Pat, Thrift over family?!!!!  Soooo not my style!)

I got the paint by numbers in Delaware on the trip down. My husband pulled over because I was losing it in the car.  I got 3 PBNs at a super price!  And you’ll recognize the vintage suit my little guy wore to the Bar Mitzvah. Makes me smile every time I look at it.

My calm collection

I love this corner.  It’s stuffed with my some of my packing supplies and yet remains cheery!

I don’t have the heart to get the rest of my NC scores up from the basement because I’m thinking the room has reached maximum capacity!

It is a tiny room full of my crafting supplies and collections to keep &  sell but I love it now that I can walk in (without obstacles), sit, breathe and work.

What do you do for storage in your craft room?  Love to see links to photos you have shared of your creative spaces!

Happy 2009

Extra Buttons December 5, 2008

When I was visiting my parents last summer my dad gave me a beautiful old tin full of buttons saved by my Granny who died before we could pour over them together.  I first wrote it as her “collection” but that was not right.  I have collections of things, wonderfully frivolous things like wooden men with moustaches and Swiss chalet barometers but this was something else.  My granny saved these to use.  The kind of repurposing that wasn’t bloggable but rather a necessity.  How fast I have traveled from her mindset.

When I was younger I  marveled at how far I had traveled from her circumstances.  She gave birth to her 4 children in a house with a dirt floor surrounded by farmland in a place literally named, The Great Dismal.  I was born in Thailand and grew up traveling back and forth between Bangkok and the United States.  I did not save my buttons for a very long time.  I cringe to think how many of those “extra buttons” packets I have tossed in the trash with the tags of my new clothes.  I remember refusing to eat an apple from the tree that grew in my other grandmother’s yard because I was wary of fruit that didn’t come from a super market and have a waxy sheen to it.

My granny who prepared many a dinner for her family from meat trapped and/or hunted by my granddaddy must have seen me as so strange when I announced in college that I was a vegetarian.  How privileged and foreign to her I must have seemed.  And now we are moving in a direction that would have looked more familiar to my granny, partially fueled by the economy but coupled with  a general move toward simplicity and a desire to make a change.  A change in the lives of our families and in the greater world.  I am not growing my own food or buying locally exclusively.  I am not biking to work or driving an electric car but I no longer throw away my buttons and it’s a start.  A start I think my granny would be proud of.

I finally dug into the stash to make a ring for the sister of a boy becoming Bar Mitzvahed this weekend.  The beautiful Jodie over at RicRac has a great tutorial that inspired me to give a whirl. The ring to the right of the “extra buttons” ephemera is the one I made for Sarah.  I think the bottom button is made from shell?  Any help identifying?  She is 10 and I hope she likes it.  While I was making them I made one for myself to wear this weekend as well.  That brown and red one is all for me!  This is a really easy and fun thing to do with buttons if you haven’t tried it yourself.

It a great feeling to wear something on my finger that my granny saved, sewed, touched and possibly wore herself.  So thank you for the buttons granny and for the lessons it took me a long time to learn.

Science Museum & Through the Viewfinder November 27, 2008

I will share with you, but only you, the trick of getting the Museum of Science in Cambridge all to your self.  Go first thing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  It was lovely.

I’ve got my Alphabet Sunday shot all cued up and ready to roll.  D will be for the Science Museum this week.  Don’t worry I used to teach kids to read, you are in the hands of a licensed professional.

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Something I am really really excited about is this Flickr group. The TtV or Through the Viewfinder shots are so inspirational.

Today at my father-in-laws place I borrowed his Minolta Autocord and fashioned a sleeve from a cracker box and took some shots off his balcony.  His camera was busted and couldn’t be focused but I was giddy to be taking the shots up there on the scary high balcony.  I took the shots with my Nikon through the box and ultimately through the viewfinder of his old camera.  Check out the Flickr group and see some of the elaborate contraptions that folks have made.

I am feeling an awakening of creativity lately, more like a redefinition of what craft is. I haven’t sewed much, made a collage or crocheted something but I have been taking photographs and it makes me feel so connected to others and then back to myself somehow.  And then there is thrift.  I told my husband the other day that thrifting was my craft and we laughed but now I think maybe it’s true.  I feel like I’m exercising my creativity when I see something in a thrift store and think of a new use for it or know that it would sell and that someone else, somewhere, will treasure it.

Ok, is it the turkey overload or maybe the wine?  I don’t know but I’m getting weepy tender feelings about thrifting and/or TTV photography.  I guess I am grateful for new things.  For learning something today I did not know yesterday. I am thankful that we have the option to not be stagnant.

Here is my first TtV shot:

Slightly different perspective.

Another one from today.

This wispy hair in this one brings me back to being weepy.  If I am this reflective and weepy on Thanksgiving, what in the heck am I going to be like on New Years for sh#t sake?!!!

Celebrate the Turkeys November 24, 2008

But who is the Turkey?

.

I saw this turkey craft at Bella Dia and immediately envisioned it on the Thanksgiving table.  What cuteness, what family goodness, what bragging rights…what a mess!

I invited a friend and her son over for dinner and to get in on the crafty fun.  We talked up the project to the kids, traced their hands and I want to type that we had a loving conversation about all we were grateful for while humming kumbaya but it very quickly turned into a grumpfest of epic proportions.  The kids were running around banging objects with vigor and warning bells went off in our heads fairly early that this was not going to be the simple craft we originally thought.

Their hands were at once so pudgy and so small.  We traced and my friend started sewing the little hands, like sides together, while I worked on cutting life sized turkey feathers out of the felt.  An aside, did you know you can get eco-fi felt made from post-consumer plastic bottles?  Messed up crafts for the Earth!

Here is the first frog turkey:

So this one was abandoned and we moved on to plan B, sewing but not turning the turkeys inside out.  But imagine in the meantime kids doing kid stuff (pandemonium) + craft-frustrated moms with short tempers.  I’m just thankful it’s over.

The potato bar helped sooth all frayed nerves.  That’s right, dinner at my house is first class all the way. Butter AND sour cream baby.

We went with bigger hands and managed to construct the wonkiest birds this side of Thanksgiving.

And for comedic value here is a comparative between the talented Miss Dia’s Turkey and ours:

Yeah.  They can’t all be beauties.

Happy Thanksgiving friends!

Keep on Truckin’ Turkin’ ,

Tracey

Feeling Rather Wonton-ish November 20, 2008

Last night was craft night, a rockin’ good time as usual!  I decided to make a pair of pants for my little one out of a thrifted sweater.  I gained inspiration here and here.  I bought a couple of sweaters on half-off day, for a buck each.  I have a really cool nubby one on deck but I started with the fake chenille sweater.

Here is my little one this morning on the way to drop his brother off at school wearing the pants that I crafted with much help from my group.

It took me three tries to get the seam right.  Kate dubbed my first attempts, “Crotch-hawk pants”.  Seems a little wrong now that I write it and there are sweet little shots of my bubulah in the pants but last night it was tear inducing hilarious.  I just could not visualize how the two arms would come together to make a pair of pants.  Chris saved the day, moving next to me and basically holding my hand through the process (Thank you muchly!).  On the third attempt they came out looking like pants.  Pants that fit my 6 year old but with a generous roll up at the bottom they are pants that fit my 2 year old as well!  The best part is that Lauren turned the body of the sweater into pants for her son, matching buddy pants!!!  I have hilarious shots of her first pass at the pants which I’ll post later with her after shot!  Funny how I didn’t manage to capture my wonky stage.  The last bit of the sweater was turned into a dickie which I can’t wait to give to my secret swap partner at the next craft night!  She’s going to LOVE it!  So don’t fret, no sweater was wasted in the making of these pants.

I encourage you to give this a go.  It is the best kind of craft; cheap, fun, a little challenging (for me anyhoo, maybe you are an A+ student) and can be done in one sitting!

Now if this was someone else’s blog they might write about how I feel asleep in this chair during Top Chef after eating a few too many wontons but since said person has not put a blog together we won’t be speaking of it.

Chess Club October 30, 2008

Today is the first day of afterschool chess club and so I made my big guy this shirt last night at craft group (a rockin’ good time which warrants it’s own post).

I freezer paper stenciled this chess piece on a scrap piece of linen, I was thinking it’s a pawn but my son saw queen (6 year olds are all about power).  Now that I see the photo it looks a little like I affixed a napkin to the front of my son’s shirt but I don’t think it plays that way in RL and I am going to keep telling myself that!

Keeping it short today as I am feeling the Halloween crunch, moving into full court press mode right about now!

Looking forward to seeing all your photos of costumes and Halloween fun.  Leave a link if you’ve got some Halloween tricks to share!

WhatKnot has an Etsy Shop! October 21, 2008

Melissa from WhatKnot has opened up an Etsy shop with really lovely handcrafted items for babies and children.  Think of her when you’re filling your homemade holiday list!

I purchased a tote and crayon roll as a gift for a little girl about to turn 3, sorry if this ruins the surprise Kath.  Being the dear that she is, she included this super cute placemat and fabric markers with the tote.  My little one had a blast decorating his placemat this morning, drawing a basketball, a nose with chuggas (you can guess what those are), the family, and a potty on it.  It was exciting to watch him feel very proud of himself decorating what I thought was going to be a placemat.  When he finished he informed me he would like it to be hung up with the curtain in the living room, pointing to the window and his work and saying, “Up, up, up!!!”.  So now it’s on display for everyone, but most importantly it’s on display for him.

Thank you Melissa for the wonderful gift and for making good old fashioned things that help kids learn, grow and feel good about themselves (without flashing lights and a talking donkey)!

Breaking News… October 17, 2008

I’m the maracas!  Well, I’m the curator this time of a Treasury that made it to Etsy’s FRONT PAGE!!!

The treasury is called, GET STUFFED, and it features taxidermy and taxidermy inspired greatness.  Checka, checka check it OUT.

And in case you’re in the market for some vintage funk – come on in to the DOLLHOUSE!