art table - long winter days pt.2

 It seems like soooo long ago when I moved in the art supplies from the front porch for the winter.  What ended up being a vintage metal assemblage of furniture is our art table.  A wide trough held paper, stickers, crayons etc. ready whenever the mood stuck the boys.  I tried to clean it up, move supplies through every once in a while to keep it fresh but too often it just became another cluttered mess.     SO,  enter in another vintage piece of metal furniture. 

 This tall organizer has been in my studio for about 10 years,  holding....who knows what.  Time to give it up, haul it upstairs and give it over to the family's newest artists.  It gave the table top more space,  more supplies with less clutter and hopefully inspiration.   With a blizzard on the way I'm hoping this updated art table get's some more use.  sooo now what?

penguins - the long winter days pt 1

I had stashed this cool wooden model from a recent craft store raid a few weeks back.  When reading Casper the Ghost comics exhausted itself this afternoon I stumbled upon this.  So while the little one was asleep, Felix & I dove into figuring this thing out.  It was so fun, I felt like I had finally found a project that was at his level, fun and we stayed friends throughout building it.  The result is a sweet pair of penguins.  A mama and a little guy,  how perfect. 
score one for the tired mama......now what are we going to do???

projects, always projects

mr big stuff

Our little Oscar is getting so big now I thought he deserved a new backpack for his summer fun.  Oscar not only is going to start a little nursery school but also is old enough to take part in our summer camp swap we've got goin' ( more details in a later post I hope).  I've been planning to do a backpck for a while and found an hour to whip this one out. I used a simple tote bag shape, adding shoulder straps that are also the drawstrings for the top.   It fits great & hopefully will hold all the towels, swim diapers & toys he needs to have fun this summer. 

Pie or Cobbler? both of course

Let's make cookies mama! hmmmmm,   Scones????  weeeelllllll.....    Pie!   YES!  


During quiet time yesterday felix & I wandered arcross the street to the gardens to raid a friends Rhubarb patch that was going to seed ( I got permission ;).  Felix wanted to bake something and we settled on Rhubarb Pie, one of my all time favorite desserts.  It had been a while since just he & I cooked together.  Rather than 4 little hands knocking,  moving, and fighting over tasks, felix got to do all of them.  It was so calm, while I had to hustle to prep he just chattered away, telling stories of his dreams, friends or telling jokes.  Oh, the 4 year old.  In the middle of our sweet time Todd comes in and starts lobbying for rhubarb cobbler not rhubarb pie.  what the?!@#$  I had a plan.   So felix decided on both,  we'd make cobbler for desert and pie filling for the freezer.   how smart. 

I'm feeling like my little blog is becoming all cooking latley, and while I suppose it is true I'm really missing being in my studio.  Is it unrealistic to think I can do it all??? when there are obviously no more naps?

probably not,  but we still can have rhubarb pie this winter and be very very thankful.

library bag for summer

     Garage sales and estate sale season again,  thank god.  A time to refashion and recycle others things to suit our needs.   This is the first in a series of projects for the boys for summer, a la elsie marley's kids clothes project for the month of may.   While I would have loved to sew a bag, when this heavy duty canvas bag presented itself for $1 I thought I can do something with that.  A simple freezer paper stencil over the printed logo made it a great library bag.  I was inspired by this fabric by Anna Maria Horner.   Now onto getting a library card for Felix, I think he's ready for the responsibility, and a new bag to put all of his books in.  

finally a gift

My first piece of jewelry made by Felix, I swooon. Is this because I took him on a date this weekend ( camera batteries were dead! of course. ) I arrived at school early today, another errand would have surly cost me in between $10 - $25 depending on where I stopped. Felix took my hand immediately & lead me into the classroom and gave me this bracelet, isn't it perfect!
I'm starting a new job tomorrow ( a little PT thing making muffins ) and I am having a little separation anxiety from the boys, so this token is just the rite thing. At dinner we were talking about it again & felix said " mama, you and I are artists and papa makes the music. "
proud proud mama.

worm superhero

our mission: to save those worms in our worm farm.
our job: to split the rapidly declining farm into 2 bins and add as much newspaper as we could to get some airflow.
our heroes: mama, felix and oscar ( in his highchair)

we started a worm farm in early January in hopes of creating some worm castings for starting our seeds at the end of the month. It's one of those "great ideas" one has in the middle of winter for a project, and it's been great. But like a skeleton in your closet, this one can go bad FAST and smell to high heaven. BUT we saved it ! I borrowed an old worm bin from some friends and split the farm in 2. One we'll let go for another month in hopes we can use the castings and the second we can keep adding too. Happy March

Disaster averted.

pressing flowers

Even though our projects together have a 5 min. time span this one was pretty fun. Although I couldn't quite answer his question " why are we pressing flowers mama? " I'm not sure actually. Any ideas for pressed flower projects?