WHO'S BUYIN' ?!?!?

I'm ON to something here, methinks!!! Re-usable, eco-friendly, and down right warm-n-cozy happy-ass hand knit SANITARY NAPKINS!!!  RIGHT?!?!!!!  Oh, YEAH, that's how I roll with this knitting gig!!!  A "Knitty Sani"!  Choose your colors, throw 'em down there where they go, and yer all set.  Good to go!

Earth Day!

Well, I had planned on keeping Lo home from school today so that we could celebrate Earth Day by going for a hike to the falls, planting some seedlings, and making glow-in-the-dark watercolor Earth paintings. But apparently there is a school field trip slated for today at the Anchorage Museum of Natural History to study polar dinosaurs. Lo very much would like to go. It's only until noon, so I'll tag along too and we'll just head home for our fun after the field trip.

Here's a link to what we were doing on Earth Day last year. I can't believe how GREAT the weather was that day!!!! Right now we still have snow on the deck, 32 degrees and overcast....

Happy Earth Day to all!!!

ALtErNaTiVe eggs.....AND IT'S MY 2ND BLOGIVERSARY!!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEW! It's pastel HELL time again!!!! I shant go into another Easter Rant again this year.....I promise. This weekend is our Spring celebration here in Still Under 2 Feet of Snow, Alaska. Always a weird thing trying to honor Spring when the world outside is covered in cold white and MUD.....bare trees and grey skies. We're in that yearly bummer of a phase where the snow is both melty and icy hard, depending on the time of day, so you can't really ski, snowshoe or sled anymore (as evidenced in this video of me trying to ski on hard icy snow):

.....but you can't hike on the trails and enjoy the ridges yet, either. For the past few weeks I have perused blogs teaming with burgeoning spring! Sunny photos of kids, sans coat and hat, outside soaking up the freshness! Things have been quiet here in that respect....still, but with a stirring below that will eventually enfold in all it's fecund GLORY!!!! Oh, YEAH it will!!! But it will be awhile...~sigh....

In the meantime we've engaged in our usual Bring IN the Spring activities.....forcing willow branches inside, starting some seeds for the butterfly garden, making a gourd birdhouse, etc. And now, we are on to the eggs. Lo will be playing hooky from school today so we can do our eggs and other Springy things. I've tried to keep Lo out of the Easter Schmunsky isles at the grocery store so that she won't catch a glimpse off all those cheesy PAAS coloring kits! Glitter, Disney characters....and that nasty "tie-dye" one. Ever notice how STICKY the PAAS "tie-dye" eggs come out?! INSTANT pet fur and lint magnets....

Since my head has been in such a PAINTING space lately-I've been gettin' CRUNK on canvas for 2 months now!!!!- I thought it would be fun to incorporate a little of that in this year's Just Say NO to PAAS egg decorating.

This year, we decided to decorate eggs that would last for future Spring decor and celebration. We created our own mini egg canvases......on which to embellish in many ways. I bought some cheap fake decorative eggs from Micheal's (you can also use plastic Easter basket eggs), and gessoed them white just like you would prime a canvas for painting. From here we experimented with both acrylic paint and fibers- silk, wool and cheese cloth.

Here's what you'll need:

plastic eggs

sand paper

white gesso

paintbrush

various types of fibers

glossy Mod Podge

Here is our process:

1. Use sandpaper to lightly sand the surface of your egg-just enough to cover the egg in sandpaper scratches. This will provide "tooth" for your gesso to adhere to.

2. Apply 2 coats of gesso to your egg. Let the first coat dry before adding the next.

3. Take your wool or silk fibers(for mine I used wool roving and silk pulled from hand spun silk yarn) and gently pull the fibers away from each other.

4. Cover you egg with a coat of Mod Podge and place pulled fibers on the egg.

5. Gently paint on more Mod Podge and use your brush to manipulate the fibers where you would like them to be placed.

6. You can also keep your egg canvas white and paint it in what ever style you like with acrylic or watercolor paint.

7. Let dry...and display!!!

And what's THIS?!?!? A poor lost dinosaur egg! HOW did it get there with the other Spring eggs?!??!

A quick and easy tutorial on how to make Dino eggs will have to wait until next week! Plus, I have a bit to say about this 2 yr blogiversary....

MERRY SPRING!!!!

Winter light-Solstice's symphony in blue

The shortest and darkest day of the year. A time when the sun peeks above the horizon for a mere 5-ish hours a day.... leaving our outside world awash in Solstice's symphony in blue. From the lightest periwinkle to the deepest indigo...a fresh blanket of white snow and trees dressed in crystalline hoar frost. My breath escapes me at times when standing out in it. It is so beautiful and just begs for quiet and reflection. It is still dark now at 8am but I anticipate today's rising sun and hope it will be clear enough for spectacular colors and morning "elfin" glow (Dea's word for Alpine glow when she was little) on the mountains.

Inside on solstice is a different story!

The glow of wood burning in our stove and the light of our many candles and lanterns warms our home and souls. Today, my hopes are that Lo and I will enjoy the morning outside and an afternoon of making beeswax candles and ornaments, cookies, reading stories...bathed in light and just being. The sweet scent of bees wax and it's beautiful warm color adds to the glow within. I just wish Dea and Huz could be a part of it-they have to work today.

Lanterns and candles we have been working on:

Lemons, walnut shells and seed pods make great vessels for beeswax candles!

Tomorrow our light will return, little by little, every day. I look forward to it but am also grateful for it's unhurried return... and the lingering of winter color.

Woman's day

Last week my friend, Nature Lady, hosted a crafting and cookie exchange at her house. It had been awhile since I was able to attend one of these lovely get-togethers and this female-infused creative chat time was something I really needed! And this time, I actually got something done! What usually happens is that I scramble to get all my crafting paraphernalia in the car and by the time I get to Nature Lady's house I realize I've forgotten some key component in the making of the particular craft that I'm working on. Like the sewing machine.

I was totally thrilled with myself for making alot of headway on the crayon roll I'm making for Lo. I SUCK at sewing-both hand and machine- so this was BIG for me! And so nice to accomplish this in my friend's warm home among other like-minded mamas, hearty soup, sinful cookies, and good conversation. It hearkens back to an older time when things were simpler, more in tune with the natural, and more connected.

And here I sit on the couch plugged into my new laptop. As much as I LOVE it and can't wait to really take my photography to the next level with it, I think I'll put it away for now. (For the vulgarly decadent Chocolate Star recipe, buy the latest Better Homes and Garden's Ultimate Cookies.) Off to bake more cookies and enjoy the new 23 inches of snow we have!

Outside...unplugged.

Homecrafted gifts for the holidays!

I've been scrambling this past weekend to get this year's Holiday Season events organized and scheduled! Making lists, checking them twice, and thrice in most cases... I thought I would post some of our favorite crafts from last year to share. I know I've really enjoyed the abundant creativity I've found through everyone's blogs the past few years. For all of that, I am grateful!

Here's a game the kids love to break out around Thanksgiving, right about the time that we're watching "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving".
This Native American game of dice fits well with the Thanksgiving themes that work for our family's yearly tradition. A really great tactile experience as well as a lesson in history, economics and counting! A simple but engaging game. Check out the tutorial HERE.

Dea made these cute angels with her 6th grade class a few years ago and re-created them last year for her grandmothers. Simple materials and process resulting in a surprisingly beautiful gift! HERE's the tutorial.

A couple years ago, Huz made a set of kindergarten wood unit blocks for Lo. It was so simple! Just a matter of buying 2x4s of pine, following a spec chart, doing the math, ripping the wood and sanding with a belt sander. Lo was amazed with this gift handmade by Daddy and has been incorporating them into her play almost on a daily basis since.

Block tutorial

Dea made these beautiful eco-friendly Japanese style hangings with handmade specialty papers from around the world. Click HERE for the tutorial.

The possibilities of silkies are only limited by the imagination! One of the cleverest ideas that Lo has had with her silkies was to make a basic doll with a hooded cape over it's head! More HERE.

Magic crystals abound in our wonderland! A fun activity for the kids...or, perhaps the "gnomes" can surprise them with a bunch of these treasures when they next go outside to play!

Happy Birthday my little one!

I don't think I ever have felt more gratitude for 2 warm, cloudless, sunny days than I did this past weekend! 2 days of 70+ degrees! In Alaska! In MAY! At the beginning of May!!!! For the last 4 years I have lamented the fact that Lo can't have an outdoor party with games and fun in the sun like the awesome shindigs we had for Dea's July birthday when she was younger. That she was destined to indoor parties with a slight chance of it being fare enough to do a little running around outside. We could not have asked for finer weather for Lo's birthday party, yesterday! It had actually called for rain yesterday and when I woke up to blue sky, I prayed that it would hold for the party. Lo's friends started arriving around 2 with not a cloud in sight. They had a great time-as did the parents-enjoying the sunshine out on the deck and on the property. The teens set up a fun scavenger hunt resulting in a treasure of wood butterflies that I had scroll sawed. They then got to transform them with the watercolors. What a beautiful colorful bunch of butterflies they created and the kids loved it! Then we played a game of What animal am I? Tape a picture of an animal onto one kid's back and then that kids asks the others YES and NO questions to figure out what the animal is. Such a simple game but the kiddos are SO into it! It got quite raucous with all the kids mimicking animals! Then it was on to eating some munchies, singing Happy Birthday, devouring butterfly cupcakes and opening prezzies. And then more running around amok in the yard and swinging in the play garden, while the parents conversed, the teens kibitzed and all seemed to relish and bask in the day.

Lo has received some amazing stuff -handmade from me, Dea and Nature Lady, some ETSY crafters, as well as from some other great online shops...all of which I would like to showcase in some posts later this week!

I LOVE putting together "Party Bags" for the party goers! I'm always searching for unique stuff and I really enjoy making things as well. I try to lean toward a Waldorf toy approach in the hopes of catching the interest of a non Waldorf parent. Always a pleasure to introduce someone to natural non-Disney, Non-plastic toys! This year we made ribbon wands, story dice(something we did with the spec. ed. kids I used to work with to spark ideas in writing for our fairy tale unit-except we used paper. Boring!), Billy Bob teeth, the butterflies, Stockmar multicolored pencils, a bag of soil and Alaska wildflower seeds, all packed up in a terracotta pot that they can plant the seeds in.

She'll be 5 years old next week...time is going by too fast, folks....

Finally! ...Spring arrives...

3 or 4 Black capped chickadees were scoping out this little birdhouse that Lo painted! Delightful to think of a family of birds to view, but I just stuck the birdhouse on this cut branch that is leaning in the corner of our deck-very precarious!!! We'll have to find away to secure the whole thing! It was wonderful to sit and watch them explore it while I sat in the sunshine and finished up Lo's new doll.

Unexpected beauty! Our forced branches that we glue-gunned tissue blossoms on are actually sprouting leaves!

The last few days have been GLORIOUSLY sunny and warm! 60 degrees! The snow is melting fast up on the mountains and I'm amazed at how quickly our yard melted! Within 3 days we experienced The Melting(a noticeable diminish in snow pack), The Rivers(suddenly that melt is released and our property and driveway are inundated with little riverlets), and now we are in The Bog phase(still can't kneel on the ground without getting your pants wet). Usually this is drawn out for a week or two or four. Not so this year! And it's nice. Around this time last year we had experienced similar gorgeous days that had us out on the deck playing and doing projects in shorts and tanks. And then WHAM! we got hit with 17 inches of snow! Mindblowing! HERE is the page of posts on this freak snowstorm(scroll down). Now, a year and 1 week later, we have been out on the deck drinking in the warmth and light, working on party favors for Lo's Birthday party on Sunday .

I CAN'T even imagine a snowstorm happening now.And we're finally starting to see those welcome signs of Spring! Yay! We're catching up to everyone out there in the blogoshpere who have been talking about springtime for WEEKS!!!!

Lo was begging to get her ears pierced for her Birthday(Too young! Already went that route with Dea who couldn't stomach the maintenance!) so we settled on a new hair cut-looped about 5 inches off!