One Inch World

Holi [Wikipedia] is an Indian spring festival of color. You put on some white clothes, you pelt each other with water and powdered dyes, and you get very messy. I think we have missed the last two years, we went when Rebecca was almost 1, and now we’ve taken Penelope when she was also under a year. We always mean to go every year, but depending on the weather the whole thing can be more or less appealing!

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!

Yes, I realize that the winter holidays are so last month! And frankly, we did this last month, but there you go, right now my house is full of moving boxes and not so full of exciting crafts! Two weeks to go.

The pine cones were a Friday Art Group project, we painted them white and then sprinkled them with kosher salt – it comes in larger flakes than table salt, but not so large as rock salt, and makes reasonable glitter substitute. We have no glitter in our house. Okay, we have one bottle of clear plastic glitter somewhere, but I don’t know where, and if I did I might not say.

The mini tree is a dead bonsai tree my husband gave me… We stuck it in some flour play dough and baked it. Somehow the tree wicked up the salt (maybe it was salt dough, honestly I don’t remember, it keeps a disgracefully long time.) and turned whiter than it was to start with, kinda cool. We hung lots of little mini ornaments on it with tweezers and fingers. It was a great fine motor activity, and lots of fun. The mini ornaments consist mostly of plastic beads and sequins in various arrangements strung on earring wires from the craft store. I have them from years ago, but next year I should find more earring wires (just short wires with a flat bump at the end – you could just twist a loop instead) and let Rebecca make the ornaments. I don’t think that tree is going to make it to next year, maybe we will have to use one of the still-living bonsai, it would be much sturdier too, even if it wouldn’t give as much of the ‘winter’ aspect.

Merry Christmas from Vermont, (vacationing with the in-laws, much more satisfying than California!)

We had our sort-of annual gingerbread house making party yesterday, and it was a lot of fun. This year I skipped the nervous breakdown inducing making of 50 billion slabs of gingerbread, and we all used graham crackers. They work better than 3/8″ thick slabs of gingerbread anyway, they aren’t as heavy, although they don’t taste as good. I tried calling a local bakery, but they laughed at me. Someone mentioned they sold slabs at Nobb Hill, so maybe I’ll try that next year.

Anyway, there was plenty of candy and icing and graham crackers, and at least 10 houses constructed. My best friend and I collaborated on Donaldson Castle, complete with body hanging from the ramparts…

Today, through Kiva.org, I loaned $50 to a tailor in Ghana. Join me in my December drive to give a helping hand to people in poverty.

Finally finally finally I have a pattern in my Etsy store. Now of course I need to start another one! But the ice is broken and I’m getting my toes wet, or frozen, or something!

Now I have to go do one of those sidebar widgety things…

I have been trying to find time to post this all week! Oy!

I finished my halloween candy hiding witch ball, and I like it. The red imp is coming along too. If you stick a rectangular mini-candy bar the wrapper sticks out her mouth, but I’ve decided that’s just fine. I think the square ones will fit in better, but I don’t have any, and I’m not buying any candy to see or I will eat it!

Since we had a witch finished we worked on /w/ activities. Over two separate days actually, and I still never got to making a big W sheet for our alphabet binder. Rebecca didn’t want to, so we’ll just move on without it. W-whatever.

We wrote W’s with soap on the mirror, then w-washed them off.

We did some w-walrus walking (on your arms, dragging your legs like a tail), and some w-wheelbarrow walking (on your arms with mom holding up your feet).

We w-wiped plant leaves with water to clean the dust off. We didn’t stick with this for very long!

We worked with wire and wire cutters to make a wire sculpture in a styrofoam block, wrapping (not /w/) them around markers and pencils to make twisty springs.

We got our DickBlick order, (yay new paint!) so we got to spray liquid watercolors on paper. Also, duh, “cleans up with water” does NOT mean washable! It means you can clean your brushes with soap and water, you don’t need mineral spirits or turpentine. That was for our tempera paint, now I’m going to have to figure out whether I can make it washable with some kind of soap or not. But, the colors are MUCH nicer, and the washable paint has turned many of her shirts into ‘art shirts’ anyway, so maybe we’ve just graduated to student tempera.

Rebecca drew W’s to make w-waves using w-white crayon on blue paper, and we did a couple ‘w’ worksheets.

Also this was our first week of co-op preschool, crazy times! I think it’s going to be great.