This is a silly little idea, but fun. Glue or stick something round on your paper, and draw lots of little legs and heads. The jewel stickers work well for this, but buttons or pompoms or circle stickers would be just as fun. How many bugs can you draw?

So, I’ve been keeping up with my laundry, but not my blog. This is a ‘no apologies’ blog, so I’m not feeling sorry about it, that’s just where things are. Mostly because I have been falling asleep with the girls, and that is when I usually find a few minutes to sort through my photos and write. I really really really need to night wean Penelope, she is over 1 now. But I have been too tired at night to do it! Which of course leads to more tired. So, going to bed early for a while. Not the first time I’ve tried to night wean her, hopefully this time I will keep getting enough sleep to remember what I am doing until we get through it!

While we were in Vermont one of our favorite haunts on Nenny and D.Pa’s property was Hemlock Brook. On one walk there we counted twenty eight Salamanders. And Rebecca had to touch each and every one. Some of them ran away, but she got her finger on most of them. They are poisonous, so they tend to hold still and say “Hey, I’m red. It would be a really bad idea to eat me, right? Right? You know that, right?” Near the end of our visit we researched the salamanders, made a terrarium, and kept one to watch for a day before setting it loose again.

Hemlock Brook is a lovely place, with enough water to make pools to splash around in, although not big enough to swim in, lots of big rocks and sticks to move around, diverting the water, making damns, deepening pools, mucking around in the mud. Lots of wonderful moss covered fallen logs to sit and walk on too, and little waterfalls and tunnels. I really wish we could have brought it home with us. The water around us in the South SF Bay Area isn’t nearly as clean, many of the streams are contaminated by mercury from natural sources and mining in the coastal mountains. Ick.

Penelope’s favorite thing to do at Hemlock Brook was eat mud. In case you were wondering, and I know I was, the brook gets it’s name from Hemlock the tree, not Hemlock the poisonous shrub. No relation. But still, my husband and I have an ongoing debate, how much mud should you let your children eat? How much mud do you let your children eat?

Do you think this design is cute? Then you should go vote for it (and whatever else you like) at the Spoonflower weekly fabric design contest. I designed it. I’m having fun with their themes. I don’t think I’m going to enter next week, but the collage theme after that sounds like fun.

In other news, we had a great Vermont day today. It started with my waking up at 5am. That’s okay, I probably fell asleep around 9, and Penelope only wakes me up 3 times at night now instead of 5 or something. Those first four hours are the really important ones for not being a zombie, so I’m grateful. I got sidetracked.

We dropped Grandma/Nenny off at work, then went and played in the river for 45 minutes. It’s a lovely wide shallow river, so we waded out into the middle where there was a huge rock to climb on. Rebecca got soaking wet of course, and ended up in her underwear. Then we went to a happy cafe for morning snack. Then we went to a bigger-on-the-inside-than-the-outside antique store, where we bought Jesse’s sister some willow ware for her collection. Then we had a lovely lunch and Jesse had a beer sampler at the Long Trail brewery, sitting right next to the same beautiful river. One more antique store, the grocery store, and we picked up Nenny and went home.

Rebecca, D-Pa and Nenny went out to an evening concert and ice cream on the village green, but mom and dad and Penelope were too tired!

Don’t forget to vote for my fabric design!

Do you live in the SF Bay Area? Do you live near Mountain View? Well, if you do…

Have you heard of FabMo? It’s this wonderful small organization devoted to re-distributing all of the fabric cast off from discontinued designer fabric samples. Apparently after trade shows and product cycles and what not there are dumpsters full of fabric samples, and this local organization gets them, before they go into the dumpster, organizes them and has free distribution days once a month where you can make an appointment and go take whatever you want. Really. They have a donation tube to help pay for their small warehouse space, but it’s free and fun and great for teachers and crafters. Their website explains it better than I did.

But we went, and it’s the real deal. Rebecca picked out a treasure of small mosaic tiles and hand sized leather samples. I picked out a stack of roughly 1′x1′ fabric samples and a stack of doormat sized wool rug samples. Penelope has been falling over a lot lately…

I realized near the end that since they are mostly upholstery samples, even though I was sticking to the ones labeled as linen & cotton, they were probably covered in teflon and brominated flame retardants. And, being me, I sort of freaked out and haven’t really figured out what to do about it. I washed them all, and then started worrying that my washing machine was contaminated and the next load of baby sleepers I put in was going to be poisoned for ever. Yes, at the same time I am quite aware that I am being silly and have a problem. My home is statistically likely to already be full of bromine so, chill mama, right? We do what we can and try not to worry too much. How did we get on the topic of my plastic phobia again? Darn, I need to stop doing that.

Ahem. FabMo! They’re doing something cool, check them out if you live in the SF Bay Area.

Here is Penelope with her first blessing of red. The downside was that although the dye came out of her skin reasonably well, her slight cradle cap was red for a month until I got tired of people asking if she had some horrible skin condition and put some oil on her head to dissolve it. Worked amazingly well actually.

And Rebecca about half way through. I was sort of hoping her hair would stay dyed purple, but it came right out.

It was hard to pick just a few pictures, but in the end I couldn’t resist the baby foot! You can see how grubby Penelope is in the background. I love my messy girls!

Breanna sackrey Says:
May 20th, 2010 at 6:26 pm edit
yes I do wear shoes regularly but I do not read your blog regularly but I intend to browse after I am done entering giveaways. teachloveread at hotmail dot com

And I decided to give an additional pattern to one of the handful of folks who claim to read my blog at least sometimes, (or ever!), which I love to find out!

So congratulations also to:

Hilda Says:
May 17th, 2010 at 4:51 pm edit
I used to read your blog all the time but I admit it’s been a while since I’ve been here. My blog list is just a little too long these days! I do wear shoes, or flip flops, or slippers just about all the time, although I happen to be in bare feet right now….

I understand about the long blogroll – Mine is about 10 times longer than I can read right now! I click around randomly in my list and always find something nice though!

If you are crushed not to win my pattern, remember you can always buy it!

And what will you win? Oh, right. Well, I would say any pattern in my Etsy store, but because of my move, two half finished soft-circuit patterns, and getting distracted by the next One Yard Wonders book there is only one pattern in my Etsy store. Technically there is a Halloween pattern too, but I’m not reposting that until July, what? I should just relist it now and stop being mad at Etsy for not letting you change the number of items for sale before charging you for relisting all of them? Yes, I’m mad at Etsy. Stupid Etsy. Okay, okay.

So your choice of two patterns. Comment on this post, tell me whether your read my blog normally, and whether you like to wear shoes, just so I can tell who is paying attention, and yes, I will email internationally! As mandated by the Sew Mama Sew post the giveaway will be open until through the 20th, and I will ‘ship’ by the 24th.

So comment, (were you paying attention?) and then head back to Sew Mama Sew to check out the rest of the giveaways going on. Should be good times. I’m off to pack lunch for tomorrow, then crash, bed.

But while I was looking for pictures of the quilt I came across this shelf of cans and boxes from an antique mall in Vermont, isn’t it wonderful? Just imagine it’s a little less blurry, I get nervous taking pictures in shops, I’m sure someone is about to yell at me. I feel like that a lot really.

Also, the snow fort Jesse & Rebecca made, isn’t it awesome? Love Vermont in the winter. I’m not sure I could handle how long winter is there after living in California for 12 years.

If you’re interested, you can get a free pdf copy of this book – Courageous Parents, Confident Kids — Letting Go So You Both Can Grow – which is a collection of essays of which I have only read one so far, I downloaded the book this morning. But so far I’m enjoying it.

Not running away, but assembling Ikea furniture, a great activity for little hands. Rebecca loves using the little torx drivers, and putting all the bolts into the holes.

I know I haven’t written for almost a month, things are getting a little more organized around here, I’d say were 80-90% unpacked. That’s depressing. I do have a lot to write about though, I’ve even been doing some sewing! I just need to make Monday blog-ahead day, or schedule some time for it. That’s what I feel like I need to work on the most right now, coming up with a house cleaning, girl educating, mama crafting schedule where everything can magically get done at its appointed time… There may be too much fantasy in there. I’ve started Fly Lady though, which is one step towards such a miracle schedule.