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Showing posts with label playtime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label playtime. Show all posts

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Sowing (no sewing)

I can't seem to get any sewing done this week.  

It could be because my sewing table is a mess.  It could be that my insomniac 7 month old is teething.  It could be that I've been pushing all 3 of us through afternoon nap all week long so we could stay out and play longer.  But at the end of the day, when the exhausting bedtime routines are complete and the kitchen is clean and the wine is poured.... I just don't want to sew.  

So instead, here we are sowing!  


Compostable pots!  Kid-sized gardening tools!  Thank you, Ocean State Job Lot!  You have all the things I never knew I needed.


Dirty boots required.


Filling up pots with soil, in our fanciest pink outfits :)


Our supervisor!


Labels written on colorful popsicle sticks!


Tap tap tap


Our supervisor, sleeping on the job.


Taking her watering job very seriously.








Grow seeds, GROW!


The touch, the smell...



...of homemade playdoh.  Every time I make it, I wonder why I ever bother with the store bought kind. (Oh, because it makes a giant mess of my kitchen and uses up all the flour and salt and then I want to make cookies and I have to cry because there's no salt or flour.)
Also, every time I make it, I start cooking and wonder how this mess is going to turn into pretty playdoh:


But it does - like magic!

Once it cools, I knead it in a big ball, then break it in half and roll the dough into two logs, like so:



I break the logs into three pieces each, and roll into balls... leaving six equal-ish pieces of bland and boring off-white playdoh:


Raina jabs a finger into the middle of each, and helps me squirt in some food coloring.  We use regular old grocery store food coloring, but some day I'll splurge on some liquid watercolors or gel food coloring.  We've also made jello playdoh, which makes nice colors and smells great!


 All rolled and smooshed:


all pretty and stacked.
Wait.  Hold up.  There's a color missing!  


THIS is what happens when you use regular food coloring to attempt purple playdoh.  It's a no-go.  A playdoh no-no no-go.  Uh-oh.


Next to the blue, it looks semi-purple.  But really, it's a gooey mess of blue and red, sort of grey, sort of midnight blue, and all kinds of not pretty or fun to play with.  Blech.


Apparently, the only way to really achieve purple is with the aforementioned liquid watercolor or gel food coloring.  Some day our rainbow playdoh caterpillar will have an appropriately purple behind!


Till then, our Roy G. Biv will be named Roy G. Bi.  
 Still pretty.


Raina's first move?  Stack them up, roll them together.
Figures.  
She loves mixing playdoh.  
And paint.
And assuring me, "It's okay, mumma!  Mixing colors is still pretty!"



We let some plastic animals take a walk through the playdoh rainbow mountain so we could see what kind of tracks they make...




And then we cut the mountain in half to find a SECRET HIDDEN RAINBOW!!!
This, my friends, is mind blowing for the 3 year old set.


And before I knew it, the pretty playdoh was all swirled together.


And yeah, it's still beautiful!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

A Quilt Comes Home

One of the many treasures uncovered while cleaning out my grandparents home... this quilt.  I started sewing it with my Gram when I was in middle school!  We cut the squares, sewed them together, picked out a back, added some batting and basted the whole thing together.  And it sat like that for 16 years.


Until today!

I opened it all the way up... for the first time in almost 2 decades... and spread it out on my (dark and messy) living room floor.  It's dark because it's naptime, and it's messy because we have 2 kids living here :).  I tempted fate by tiptoe-ing around this sleepy face to spread out and re-pin the sides.  It was successful!  I used to be able to do anything at naptime - make dinner, go down to the basement to do laundry, even sew at my machine with Lucca in the next room.  Now she wakes up if I uncross my legs too quickly!  So lately naptime hasn't been a very productive time for me.  I cut patterns, lay things out, take pictures... but even typing sometimes disturbs her.  Some days I really really really wish I could get some sewing done, or start dinner, or even check the mail... but she wont be a baby forever, and I know I'll miss these sweet days... so I just do what I can :).

 Some fabrics from the 70's. leftovers from when my mom and my aunt sewed their clothes in high school...

 Some from my middle school home-ec class projects...




 Some cut from old clothes...

 Backing
and a bunch of bright yellow basting stitches, hand sewn across the back.
 Sleeping beauty... thankfully still sleeping!
 Spread out on messy floor in a dark room :)
 Here are some pictures of us lounging and playing on the quilt, which I have sewn together at the edges, but haven't actually quilted yet:


 Self portrait!


The 15 year quilt....

I'm so glad it's finally getting some love!

(I'll update when I do more work on it, pinky swear)