still life everyday

canvas transfer.

2012-02-12T07:14:00.002-05:00

Ssssssh, this is a gift for my husband for Valentine's Day. We don't usually exchange gifts, but I wanted to try this project. He never reads my blogs, so don't worry.

I used this tutorial from Elsie Larson.

I really wanted to do this with a wedding picture of ours. It seemed antique enough to match up with this technique. So, first you print a picture onto photo paper. I think you need an inkjet printer. Not totally sure on that, but I have one, so that is cool. I printed this one, which is one I love, but got overexposed in the corner, so I can't use it very much.

I printed this on 8.5" x 11" photo paper, then trimmed it to 8" x 10" I bought a simple, cheap canvas at Michael's. I think it cost me $5.99.

I used this Utrecht acrylic--matte gel. I had bought some a long time ago, and really have never used it. You cover the canvas in this. Make it a rather thick coat. then press the picture into it, lining it up. Now, remember that your image will be reversed. There is a feature on many basic photo programs that allows you to mirror flip your image. I think you can do this in MS Paint. So, if you want to do it the proper way, you can. I didn't care.

You allow this to dry to several hours. I did overnight. Then you get a spray bottle of water, and spray the back. Now, I have done a similar technique for art journaling to make stickers. (Hey, should I do a sticker tutorial? Does everyone know how to make stickers?) I am just warning you that this part is very time consuming, messy, and tedious. But I like the results. This is what it looks like when you first start rubbing and start seeing your image.

Now, remember that the rubbing is a kind of rough process, and yet, you don't want to rub too hard, because you will rub off your picture. So, find a kind of middle road of rubbing. (Oh, geez, like you know what that is.) You'll see what I mean. Unlike me, start at a corner that can bear to be rubbed to the canvas. Once you see the picture without a film, stop and move to another area. I rubbed some parts of my photo off, but it actually makes it look very antiqued.

And the finished product:

Hanging on a wall.

Which looks exactly like the one on the desk. Awesome. I forgot to mention that you should put a layer of gel medium on top of the picture after you are done rubbing to protect. That is all.

crayon valentine's cards

2012-02-09T17:06:00.002-05:00

We received a note in the pre-K folder last week that said we could start sending valentines on Monday, and that there needed to be either one for everyone or none. Which makes sense. Nothing stings more than being Pig Pen with one valentine, or worse, Charlie Brown with none. This being my first year as a mother of a child in school, I was scrambling. Do I make? Do I buy? What the hell?

I checked out Pinterest and saw a lot of tutorials for homemade valentines. I preferred doing that, but also didn't want it to be insanely hard. Beezus and I looked through a lot of ideas together. She did wonder why so many people post pictures of boys on Pinterest. Yuck. Boys.

We do like to riff on other people's ideas and create our own thing. So, go ahead. Open up your Valentine!

Shoot, kraft paper came with the sticker. Sorry about that.

Yes, that is a circle crayon. (I couldn't find heart-shaped silicone pans. DAG! I am too impatient to wait for Amazon on this one.)

ANYWAY, this valentine was so super easy to make, and really a lot of fun to do with Beezus. This morning, we made swirly circular crayons. The tutorial for that is right here. Those take half an hour at the most. And that time is mostly removing paper from crayons.

Basically, you need the crayons you are attaching. And this:

I found those felt heart stickers at Michaels in the sales section for 15% off, or something. I thought it would be a good sealer for our valentine. So, I cut cardstock Kraft paper into 4" x 6" rectangles. I created a very simple document that read "color the world with love. happy valentine's day. love," and printed it on construction paper. I used red, but I think it would have looked great with black ink. I liked the organic and faded feel of the construction paper. It looked earthier, if that is possible, than the bright cardstock I had. I did have to trim the construction paper before loading my printer. I printed four copies for each sheet. I then cut them to 3" x 5". We then glued the paper to the kraft paper with glue stick. Now, we just dotted each corner, which was important for attaching the crayon. Then, we attached a foam sticker to attach the crayon. The crayon bottom was a little concave, so that is why only gluing the four corners was helpful. We could press the paper up into the crayon. Then pretty much we were done. Bea signed her name on each of them. I did half and Beezus did the other half. So this is definitely a craft that you can prep and then have kiddos help. I cut everything while Beezus was at school, and we put them together when she got home. As you can see, she inherited my sense of balance.

We created a lot of different color combinations. Purple/pink/peach, orange/red/yellow, green/blue/teal, magenta/purple/pink. And in the same way, we used different color construction paper and matched them up with the crayons as best we could.

I thought I would do a close up of the different color combinations.

Then we sealed them up with a kiss and sent them to school.

Button, button, who's got the button?

2012-02-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

I have been struggling to start this introduction, because I am just so dang excited. So, as most of you probably know, I have an identical twin sister named Sweetie Pumpkin Kitty, SPK, otherwise known as KellyAnn. You may have seen her comments around town. I am blessed to share my life with someone who loves crafting, art, sewing, and finding funky shizzle as much as me. We have literally been hitting thrift stores together since we were walking. (Thanks, Mama!) We are always collaborating, talking craft, getting together to do stuff, and bouncing ideas off each other. Interestingly, she and I have very different styles that intersect beautifully. We like much of the same stuff, but have totally different aesthetics. For example, we noticed that in her house, she has a lot of curved furniture and items, and everything in my house is straight lines and boxy. Hmmm...genetics are cool. ANYWAY, since I started this blog, I have been trying to convince her to share her cool crafts on here. So, today, I am so excited, because my sister finally finally agreed to share something on this blog. I'm hoping she will do this more regularly, but for now, I'm just excited about this one. Please give her lots of love and a very warm welcome.

Hey Y'all...Ang told me I should guest blog and do a tutorial for my infamous button flowers that I totally ripped off from Pinterest, which let's face it, is the whole reason Pinterest exists for me...inspiration and blatant thievery. So I love love love flowers. Let me just put that out there. Except that most everyone in my family is allergy-ridden. I buy flowers every week from Trader Joe's and 7 times out of 10, someone is allergic. Sigh. What's a flower-loving hippie to do? Well, I say break out those buttons and let's get to it.

Yeah, that is what it looks like now, but how did it get that way? Okay let's start with the very easy button/paper flower...find some interesting paper. I used some old collage paper I had. I was trying to do a black and white theme, but there is no reason not to use whatever appeals to you. I cut all my flowers into four petals, but I think it would look great as a circle or pointy petals, really this ain't science. Whatever works for you. I cut a piece of floral wire about 6 inches long. It's kinda pointy so I just stuck it right through that paper. Kinda angry like. It was freeing.

Now, Audrey, my daughter and Angie's spirit animal, and I picked some buttons in white and some in black and stacked them. I tried to use interesting buttons that looked good together. But one cute button will work as well.

Then you bend the floral wire and poke that sucker through the other hole of the buttons and through the paper flower.

Now that the wire is through everything, twist it tightly around the longer piece of wire.

Now here is where I decided to go a little different. By all means you can be done with your flower at this point, but I bought these really cute floral stems at the craft store. They were all wrapped in a pretty green paper, and they were really sturdy. So at this point I got the floral stem and made a loop.

Then I twisted the floral wire around the loop so the flower was secure and standing up on the floral stem. As far as the fabric covered vase goes, Audrey and I found an old, empty Pringles can sitting around so we washed it out. We found some pretty black and white fabric to go with our flowers. We measured the can and added a half inch to top and bottom to fold it under so we wouldn't have fraying.

Then I applied some Mod Podge around the can, and wrapped it with the fabric. Then I added some hemp rickrack with fabric glue because I love me some rickrack. Small, large, pink, hemp. It doesn't matter. If I can add rickrack to something, I generally do.

And done...pretty button flowers for all those sneezers out there. Unless you are allergic to adorable!!!! Thanks, Angie for letting me share! And thanks to Cooper Satterfield for taking pictures for me!

"Someday, I'll be a real flower."

v.d. t.p. f.y.i.s

2012-02-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

In the last few weeks, perhaps because I find so many brilliant crafts for children on Pinterest which leads me to blogs I have not seen and crafty mamas working with toddlers, I have been keeping our toilet paper cardboard rolls for crafts. It's not that this hasn't occurred to me before, but I just couldn't think of anything cool to make with them. I found these very cool yetis made with toilet paper rolls.

After I did the birds on a wire, I was thinking that toilet paper rolls might be cool candle holders. So Beezus and I kind of brainstormed. Beezus rushed headlong into hers, but I wanted to plan it a little more. More on Beezus' craft in a bit. The candle holder was a fun one.

As you can see below, I cut a heart out of the roll and kept a strip to hold up the heart. Then I cut another heart out of the center of the original heart. Using kite paper and newspaper, I mod podged newspaper print on the cardboard. Using kite paper, I glued the transparency onto the inside of the heart. That is my pre-newspapered heart there on the messy desk.

After everything dried, I then cut the back in a snip.

I have many yarzheit candles for Lucy, so I used one of those.

I then put the heart around the candle and lit it. Hard to see the candle here.

And all lit up in the dark, it has a lovely effect.

This was the first one, but I am pretty sure we are going to make more in different shapes, like Waldorf stars, or maybe even birds. I would think this craft could be made without a toilet paper roll.

Beezus on the other hand drew the heart and cut it out. And without looking back at me...

started putting heart stickers all over it. She had no desire to make a candleholder herself. So, she invented her own craft, which I thought was quite clever.

Then we cut the back of it.

Punched holes in each side...

Braided three pipe cleaners in two strips, tightened them into the holes.

And created a little Valentine princess crown.

birds on a wire

2012-01-30T16:43:00.001-05:00

Today, we took a break from Valentine's Day to do this craft from lilla a's blog. I just love the way these look. Actually, I love stained glass projects, or fake stained glass projects. I did this Waldorf star last year, and still have it up in my window, though this time, I was determined not to repeat the errors of last year, which was simply that we only cut one star, so it looks cool from the inside, but not from the outside.

Anyway, the process was very easy. All of my glue sticks are out of stick, because little people steal them and leave them open. Harumph. But that was actually fine, because I used two-sided tape, and it was easy to work with.

First, I took an 8" x 8" piece of black card stock, and folded it in half, then I drew two birds in white.

Then Beezus and I cut them out like so.

Then I opened them up and lined it in double-sided tape.

That is just one bird, whereas the previous picture is two birds. (Did that make sense?)

Then I pulled out my kite paper. I love having this kite paper. It was more expensive than other kid craft supplies, but I have also had an entire book for three years. Kite paper stands up BEAUTIFULLY to all kind of crafts that tissue paper doesn't. I have some other crafts in the pipeline that Beezus and I wanted to do with kite paper. The cool thing about Lilla's birds was the beautiful way the tissue paper laid on top of each other, creating new colors. Beezus and I used red as the connector color.

After we were done, and taking down our snowflakes, Beezus said that they should be birds on a wire, and I loved that idea, so we used double sided tape and sock yarn to create a wire, and the lovely birds watching the world go by.

button and yarn hearts

2012-01-28T19:00:00.002-05:00

I love buttons, but I do not sew. One of my favorite things in the world is a jar of buttons. I don't know why. I keep a jar full of buttons I have purchased for various crafts, or ones I have found. I really should buy a jar or two of vintage buttons, but for now, these are just a shitload of very colorful buttons.

So, combining my love of buttons with Valentine's Day, Beatrice and I decided to do a wee craft today. I guess it wasn't so wee after all. First we sorted out all the red, pink and orange buttons.

Then we grabbed a piece of canvas from our canvas pad. Very useful material. We cut out a heart and drew a faint outline on our canvas, then began hot gluing the buttons to the canvas.

And then...

We achieved button love! We framed it and it is very attractive. I am going to keep searching for a cool frame for this, like a gold, swirly, lovely frame. And I might stain the canvas with tea, since it is very white. I just want it to look antiqued.

In other Valentine craftiness, I created this weird thing to hang on the door. I saw these cool Valentine window hangers. There were very small, though, and I had this crazy wire heart from an old conversation heart door thing that was gifted to me. It fell and broke one of the hearts, so I pulled the rest off and was left with this wire heart. So, I took sock yarn, and created this cool 70s effect with it. Or Spirograph effect. I loved Spirograph as a kid. One of my favorite things ever.

I took it down, incidentally. It looks better on a wall, or window, rather than a door. It needs light behind it. Our front door is all window, but I can't figure out how to hang it since a wreath hanger isn't working. I will report back when I have sorted out the details of the button heart and the yarn heart.

Happy Valentine's Day, soon!

striped shirts

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

I know they say people with a few extra pounds should never wear horizontal stripes. And yet, I have an obsession with stripes. I cannot stop buying them. All kinds of stripes. Most recently, Le Gap put out some gorgeous striped boat neck long sleeved shirts. I bought the white with black stripe shirt. It fits beautifully, even on a gigantic fat person like myself. Scoff at the horizontal stripe rule. SCOFF! It was so lovely that I wore it out to dinner that night for Indian food. And Thor flung navartan korma at my beautiful white with black striped shirt.

Yes.

There is a turmeric stain on the front.

I bleached with a little itty bitty q-tip. It was ruined. After one wear. And then I started thinking about how cool it would look if I could silk screen something to cover the stain. I don't have silk screening equipment, but in 1997-1998, I worked as an artist's assistant. At that job, I mostly cut amberlith/rubylith, which is a frustrating, precise job, but is the first step of silk screening. Amberlith is masking film. You literally cut the image out of the film on top of plastic to make a negative image for silk screening. It is very easy to try to pull up the amberlith quickly and then rip your entire image. And then you cuss and kick something. I really don't know why I am explaining it, but I guess the point is, sometimes I think in amberlith. Like I look at images as negative/positive space and think of it on top of other images. Maybe this year I should buy some damn silk screening equipment.

ANYWAY, I have been thinking about this since I ruined the shirt. What image would look good over my white with black striped shirt? I first thought of my Obey Frida image, then my husband reminded me that I would have a Frida over each boob, or relatively close to each boob.

In the end, I found a vintage anatomical heart, and decided to change the color to blood red. I bought some printer, iron-on transfer paper, and created this:

And since I have a trigger finger, and already printed the Obey Frida image, I cut it in half and put it on this weird stripe shirt I have with brown and pink stripes. (i heart STRIPES, PEOPLE!)

I had so much fun with this iron-on transfer paper. It just makes me want to silk screen shit, though.

crayon hearts

2012-01-24T09:22:00.002-05:00

I found this craft on Pinterest. It is originally a Martha S. craft. I am just warning you that our craft looks nothing like theirs. I followed the directions and did not improvise. We just suck at ironing things, cutting out things, and hanging things. So, there's that.

I should preface this by saying that I forgot it was Valentine's Day in a few weeks, and we should be doing heart crafts. Beezus loves hearts, so this is like her favorite holiday EVER. If she got to go door-to-door and get candy, and then Santa came overnight, she would want it to be Valentine's Day every day. Everything is PINK! And RED! And PURPLE! And PINK!

Anyway, I thought this was beautiful, and looked like stained glass. The way they hung over each other in that delicate, becoming way. So first you get some crayons. We did this craft with six dirty crayons.

Peel the paper off and start shredding them. Using a pencil sharpener to shave the crayons into fine crayon-y pieces.

You then get a large piece of wax paper and put the shaving in them. Fold the wax paper over. Try desperately hard not to get it lumpy, but crayon shavings are a little like glitter, except not so contagious.

Lavender and deep purple. After you fold it once, MAKE DAMN SURE you fold the edges in. I did not do this for the purple and now have a purple towel. Which is fine, it looks cool, and I needed a new art studio towel.

You can see the results of my first iron. YAY. You put a piece of paper, or kraft paper, or paper bag paper, over the whole thing and lightly iron. Put the iron on low or medium, but it takes almost no time. You can smell the wax melt.

Here we are with our cool new colored wax paper. It is very pliable and lovely when it cools. Then you cut out hearts. We did decide not to use a cookie cutter for our hearts. Which is why they look nothing like Martha's hearts. We strung them with sock yarn, unlike Martha and her silk thread. And hung them on a dowel.

You can make this look much cooler than me. I just know it. Share your Valentine Day Crafts with me, please. Looking for cool heart crafts. xo

green juice

2012-01-12T08:56:00.003-05:00

I juice.

Perhaps that sounds odd, but a few years ago I spent more than I did on a month of rent for my first ten years of apartment living on a juicer. It is the Omega juicer and it is the best thing I ever bought. It juices everything. Beautifully. It cleans easily. It is perhaps my favorite kitchen appliance besides the coffeemaker. I bought it a few years ago when my crappy 20 buck juicer started to emit a smell that can only be described as burning. Plus, that thing was a bastard to clean. I also was living a raw food lifestyle, which was fine and lovely, but demanded vegetable juice. I have made ice cream, apple sauce, babyfood, all kinds of cool things.

I wanted to contribute to the vast recipe list on the internet of good morning juices.

This one I drink most mornings. I either drink this or a smoothie. Just depends on the mood.

Green Juice

two apples
one lemon (rind removed)
five stalks of celery
1/4 inch of ginger
6 leaves of romain lettuce

But beware, if you leave the juice setting on the counter for a moment, you might come back to find little fingers poking in your green juice.

art studio

2012-01-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

This year, I am going to combine this blog with my old still life with circles blog to make one focused on mindful parenting and art and crafting. Whew. Reintegrate, that is. But I am still in a two blog mindset, and dammit, I am just making it easy on myself.

We have had a lovely few weeks. Some projects and exciting things came to pass, and so I thought I would share them here.

First, it was my 38th birthday on the 4th of January. Yes, I am a solid, right smack dab in the middle Capricorn. Most of the adjectives attached to Capricorns are fairly boring--practical, sturdy, organized, disciplined, loyal, patient, careful, reserved, traditional...yeah. Well, some things in that list are very true, which is that I am happiest when I am organizing things, putting my ducks in a line, planning my next move. This year, I had no expectations for my birthday. It was a Wednesday. Everyone was back at school/work on Tuesday, and random Wednesdays don't make me excited. But I was cool with just hanging out having a normal day around the ranch. I decided to get coffee with my sister, and when I got home, Sam and the kids were so excited, standing in the dining room beaming. First, they ordered flowers with peonies and spray roses, and I realized that the card was signed by just the kids. Joy. They were so gorgeous. That was enough. Being with my family is enough.

Then Beezus and Sam urged me over and over to go into the art studio. Now, I knew my woodworking husband was up to something, and I kept saying stuff like, "Are you working on some earrings in there?" Just to tease him. When I walked in, it was better than a thousand earrings. He built a cubby/shelving system for above my art desk.

That metallic box on the lower right corner of the shelf is a cool box I found at the ReStore, and which stores all my acrylic paint. Sam built the shelf to specifically hold that box, and the other cups with pencils and brushes, he measured for each cubby, so this piece was designed just for me and just for this space. This was just the best kind of gift--one I didn't know I needed, but now seems impossible to have lived without.

I love it. And then the bonus gift was that he gave me the afternoon to clean and organize my art/studio and office (as you can see, it gets chaotic.) Here are some pictures:

Organized and practical! I hung a cork in the middle for those inspiration pieces sent to me, or gathered by me. I also bought some beautiful red boxes to house different art gear. What an amazing space he has given me. He gifted me inspiration and creativity. He doesn't always understand my compulsion to create art and write, but he is so supportive.

I took the opportunity to clean and reorganize the entire room.

Next to the desk is my shelf with paper, bins of art supplies for the kids and I, envelopes, laminate, books, sketch books, and all kinds of gear.

Moving left of my art desk and turning around, this is the kids' art table, and my writing desk/computer space.

My computer desk.

Then the door, additional storage, my wall of jizos and day of the dead altar. The shelves are filled with kid games and puzzles. (still can't figure out where to hang/put my easel. It is so in the way all the time. For now, in the corner I am not using.)

gifts given and received

2011-12-26T16:24:00.001-05:00

Ah, fare thee well, Christmas. May you rest well until next season where I can glitter the hell out of you again.

I thought I would share the gift I made for my sister's family. As you probably know, I am an identical twin, and my sister has three children--aged 9, 6 and 4 (two months older than Beezus). Every year we try to give something handmade to one another. She made my kids the cutest stuffed animals ever. The ballet pig is for Beezus since she was born in the year of the Golden Pig and the elephant is Thor's. She named him Sir Nigel Flopworthy. Thor calls him Da.

That monocle has velcro and goes on his arm if he is feeling less dramatic.

I initially had painted her a mizuko jizo, since she has been saying she wanted one for her house. But it didn't exactly turn out the way I envisioned. So, I sat with it. I had no idea. Then I walked around the pre-stretched canvas section of the art store, seeing if I could envision something for her. And then, I saw three canvases bundled together. Each canvas was four inches by twelve inches, so together they were like a square...it came to me, and I could envision exactly what I was going to do.

Three paintings, one of each kid, representing their beautiful personalities. Ones that worked together or individually.

I hope they like it. The first one is Audrey, who loves doggies, so I have her holding a dog with a spot over its eye and a paint brush, and her one eye painted. The middle one of Maxwell is of him with a bone and magnifying glass since he always seems to be exploring and trying to discover something. I just see him as a paleontologist. And the blue one is Cooper casually hanging out and yo-yoing, which is his personality. I like stripes, so painting each of them with stripes and gray outfits was fun. All in all, I loved the way they turned out.

Merry Boxing Day. Hope you are kicking the crap out of someone. (Just kidding. I know that Boxing day isn't about boxing.)

glitter ornament

2011-12-23T09:47:00.000-05:00

My friend Ralph recently referred to glitter as the herpes of craft supplies. It is true. Once you are exposed, it never goes away, and you spread it to all your friends. I used to avoid it like the plague. Everytime I would use glitter, it seemed like three months later I would still find glitter underneath my eye. It is like Easter grass or tinsel in that way. Damn Martha Stewart crafts. She will be here forthwith be referred to as M.S.

But Beezus loves glitter as the day is long. And honestly, I love glitter. It makes things shiny. I like shiny things. I actually bought some M.S. glitter for my mind jar experiments. A whole box of them in six colors and two styles. Hearts and stars. The reason I selected them was because they are larger and heavier than ordinary, impossible-to-clean glitter. ANYWAY, that is not my point, my point is that the heart and star glitter actually cleans more efficiently than the itsy bitsy glitter and has become an okay craft supply to use with Mama's guidance.

Yesterday, Beezus' friend and our next door neighbor came over to play and they wanted to paint. So, I set them up, and I was looking through my craft supplies and found styrofoam balls. The other day, someone was telling me that they have pretend snowball fights with their kids utilizing styrofoam balls. Isn't that an awesome idea? And so, as I was contemplating this as an afternoon activity, Thor seeming to read my mind and salivate at pummeling his sister and her friend by throwing things, I had a different idea.

ORNAMENTS!

That is a holiday craft.

So, I set the girls up with some of that tissue paper squares I bought at Lakeshore Learning store the other day. I can't remember how much this box of tissue paper squares were, but it was something I saw and thought, "That would save me a lot of time and buying of tissue paper, which I use almost exclusively for crafts in very small pieces." There are 10,000 squares in 20 colors. Very useful even though they look completely impractical. We did those little ornaments with the little tissue paper squares, and I thought they would look like stained glass if we decoupaged them.

So, I pulled out some styroglue, but you can use Elmers, or Mod Podge, or even just paint, which works quite well as a glue for glitter and tissue paper. I buy these little bowls for paint/glue from Michaels that I can toss, or I use plastic paint palettes to keep glue. I just pour glue in and let the girls put it on like paint. The girls used some combination of both paint and glue. Bea glued hers and used pink tissue paper. I actually created one out of blues, purples and whites. As you will see in the final product, Beezus' and mine look almost identical in different colors. I am 37 and she is 4, so this is really a craft for everyone. Thor tried to carve his with kid scissors and a pencil, then painted it with yellow/brown paint, so his looks like a half eaten apple. The neighbor girl half painted hers, and half decoupaged it.

It was very fun. Then we sprinkled, sprinkled, sprinkled with glitters--hearts and stars. We used little lids from babyfood jars to stand them up. Our hands got messy, I am not going to lie. And it took all night for it to dry completely, but that was okay. It was a before dinner craft, then this morning, they were dry. There is heart and star glitter all over the craft table, but because they are large glitters, they fell to the floor when the girls stood rather than in everything. That was fine with us, though. Sweep sweep, and it is fine. When the girls were done, I straightened a paperclip, made a small L-shape in the bottom of the paper clip. Then I pushed it through, then looped it with pliers at the top. This ornament is so light, it really doesn't need to be reinforced in that way. I used an ornament hook for it to hang on the tree. I think it would be cool to decoupage a name on it, or use letter stickers to decorate it with each kid's name, if you wanted. It is also not Christmas-centric, so you could use this for a solstice/yule tree.

Happy holidays.

some recent projects

2011-12-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

I've been needlefelting a shitload of stuff. Ornaments, mostly. There is more, but they are gifts for my niece and nephews and my sister reads this space. I like the aggression release of felting. It helps. I have also been trying to construct a felt bag, though I am terrible at sewing. Maybe it will just be my needlefelting bag.

The red piece is going to be the flap and the other pieces are going to be the long handle.

And then, I am at the end of this painting. Not sure if I really like it. It was supposed to represent the duality of spirituality and grief. Mizuko jizo is a joyful bodhisattva, yet grieving. The tower of stones is supposed to represent all the babies. Perhaps I should have continued them up, up and up. Maybe I still will. This piece is 36" x 48", so larger than both my kids standing next to each other. It is acrylic on canvas. And I think I will be showing it at the show five in January. I am in two minds about it.

I'm also wondering if anyone can give me pointers for making prints or postcards of my work. Do I photograph it? And if so, is there a trick to photographing artwork that I should know. Has anyone used anyone in particular that they like? Thank you for any information.

some solstice crafts and activities

2011-12-19T08:25:00.000-05:00

Each day since St. Lucy's Day until Winter Solstice, we do an activity/craft related to the solstice or winter or Christmas. It has been a wonderful and easy way to integrate the seasons into our day, and tie us to rituals that soothe our aching souls.

Snowflakes are a perennial favorite for every preschool classroom. Hell, every classroom. And that is because they really are such an easy, lovely craft. I actually hadn't cut a snowflake since I was a child, so I had to look it up. I knew it involved folding paper and cutting. After I cut the snowflakes, I gave the children some glitter, glue and stickers to decorate their snowflakes, then we hung them on the studio windows. I love them. Beezus decorated her snowflake with strawberries, because she misses strawberries in December. *sigh*

The following day, which was the 15th, Beezus, Thor and I made pomander balls. I had seen these things before, but had no idea what they were or what they were called. I found the idea in the book Celebrating the Great Mother. Actually, all the crafts we are doing this season comes from that book or the book Circle Round by Starhawk. Perhaps I should have started with this part, but before St. Lucy's Day I sat one night with herbal tea and a piece of paper on a clipboard and looked through all my seasonal craft books. I wrote down ideas of things to do for our solstice celebration and things to do before solstice. Basically, a list of crafts, and every day, I have been doing one that pops out at me. I didn't make a formal schedule or anything, but just for idea starters.Maybe it sounds weird or hokey to share this part of my process, but I do get questions all the time about how I come up with crafts, and I thought I would share how. I read about crafts, ideas, ties into nature. I have collected a number of books on crafts and homeschooling, even though I don't homeschool. I just love homeschoolers and their awesome creativity with tying in crafts and activities to nature, seasons, science, math and language.

Oh, right, pomander balls. Pomander balls are an ancient tradition of aromatherapy and protection against infection and disease. They are fruits, apples, oranges or lemons, with perfumes. They are then dried and hung, or put into vases, closets, drawers, as a natural moth repellant and air freshener. I just think they look cool. The kids loved this activity and Thor was even able to participate fully.

We used a chopstick and poked some holes in an apple. Thor poked holes in a lemon.

Then we took some cloves and put them in the holes.

The kids loved this part.

Then we rolled the apple and lemon in a mixture of cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and nutmeg that I ground in a mortar and pestle.

We put it in a dish on our sidetable. But I wanted to show you another idea. You can wrap some cloth or lace around it and hang the pomander balls.

Festive, no? And they smell divine. Just take them out and dry them before wrapping them up, because they might get moldy, if you know what I mean.

The 16th, we made some ornaments with cardstock and tissue paper. We traced cookie cutters onto paper and then used glue, glitter glue, markers and tissue paper squares and created little ornaments to hang around our house.

On the 17th, we baked cookies, cookies and fudge. I love getting the kids involved. This year, this was my second baking day, and I anticipate another one this week some time.In the evening we all sat around the fire in big chairs. We actually moved our chairs around to face the fire. Sam was knitting and I was felting. It was so homey and lovely. The kids wanted us to entertain them. So, I told them to pull out their shiny rock basket and make a sacred spiral. Rocks, shells, and stones are just magical to children. My children are constantly looking on the ground to collect cool rocks wherever they go. We were given this basket by my mother many years ago. I shouldn't even say we, I was given it when I was single. And it has become what Beezus dubbed the Shiny Rock Bask. She named it at age two, so Bask = Basket. I had some stones, like lapis lazuli, quartz, an arrowhead that I found as a kid. And they went in there, then she began collecting. There are shells from Australia (thanks, Carly), Panama, Alabama, New Jersey. The rule is that all rocks must be put back in the bask with the lid on when you are done with them. Also, we have an s'load of river rocks outside (the previous owners put these lovely river rocks under the deck), so the kids are constantly finding cool rocks right outside our home. And not just cool to the kids, but cool to me. But the other rule is that the rocks must fit in the basket. If you find a cool one, and the bask is too full, you must take one out and back to the yard.
I have to say, I should probably do an entire post about the Shiny Rock Bask, because come to think of it, it is a totally versatile, awesome toy/play thing in our house. The kids pull the rocks out to drive matchbox cars on them. They become a gnome environ. They are studied. We talk about our travels and where we found rocks. We name them, put them back. We put them in color order. We also use rocks in our meditations. Rocks are serene, quiet, contemplative. When the kids are crazy, we pull them out, and I ask them to pick a rock that feels best to them--calming and lovely. I ask them to hold it and become like the rock. Sit still. I also ask them to imagine if the rock had a voice, what would it be? See, how cool rocks are?

It is the bask that keeps on giving. In our semi-circle, the shiny rock bask was pulled out, and the rocks were split in half. And the kids were asked to make a sacred spiral. I didn't explain what that was, but I explained what a spiral is. Did you know that the spiral is the oldest religious symbol found? The symbol is about the goddess and the womb, the everlasting life force. Part of why the spiral is used in solstice ceremony is that Winter Solstice is the time when the Earth Goddess gives birth to the Sun. It also is about change and transformation and acceptance. All things we have to wrestle with during Lucy's birthday and solstice.

As I felted, I watched Beezus' sacred spiral take shape. Thor occasionally stole a rock or three. His spiral was a pile of rocks. After Beezus was done, I told her she could take a photograph of her spiral, because it was an impermanent thing. And we worked together breaking it down and talking about that. Basically, it was me telling her about sand mandalas and meditations and impermanence.

Hope you enjoyed some of these solstice and winter crafts. I should be posting every day, but life is busy right now, and I am in the thick of my grief season.

the procession

2011-12-14T07:08:00.000-05:00

This was the first year we celebrated St. Lucy's Day. The last few years, we kept meaning to find a church celebrating. We have even considered traveling to Sweden to visit my friend and celebrate St. Lucy's Day there. But this year, after felting the crown, we decided to do our own celebration. Yesterday, after I dropped Beezus off at school, I drove to the coffeeshop to pick up some beans, and Thor fell asleep, so I bought my sister and I some coffee and transferred Thor into her couch, and we sat and had a cuppa. Except I mentioned St. Lucy's Day and my sister offered to make her a robe from an old sheet. So, in a few minutes, we had a dress, and I invited my sister and her kids over to celebrate.

I had read about St. Lucy's Day in Sweden. The eldest daughter wears the crown of candles, a white dress, a red sash, and carries a tray of Lucia Pepparkakor and Lussekatt, or St. Lucia buns. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I have never made bread from yeast except in a bread machine. So, I thought what the hell, I am giving it a shot. I didn't make the Pepparkakor because it is a ginger snap and only I really like ginger snaps in my house. Here is the thing, I can't really eat wheat or gluten because I react in a way that in unlike Rheumatoid Arthritis. My joints swell. I can't bend over. I feel horrible. I followed the linked recipe above. I have to say there was something deeply soul-satisfying to cover the bread in a damp tea towel, and put it next to the woodstove, which is the only warm place in the house right now. Or sufficiently warm for bread.

In the meantime, I made Mexican Wedding Cookies, because all of our family likes them and mini-chocolate chip cookies, which turned out only fair to middling.

The Lussekatt turned out so very good. WOW. I might bake bread far more often then before, like maybe once a year, rather than never.

So, I baked the bread, made some cookies, made an outfit for Beezus. Now what? Yeah. I served dinner. Like I said, what I read about St. Lucy's Day is that the eldest daughter dresses like St. Lucy and wakes her family with Lussekatt and cookies. At night, there is a procession through town with the others dressed in white with cones on their head and holding candles, singing the Santa Lucia song. Well, we adapted it to two four year old girls, a six year old boy, a nine year old boy, a twenty month old and three adults who have not a lick of Swedish in them.

First, my sister dressed Beezus like St. Lucy, while I prepared the candles for the children.

Funnily, my niece Audrey-girl wore a little dress with red wings and said she was the Red Cardinal of Winter which followed St. Lucy around. I thought that was so gorgeous. I love the way children think, and she is a particularly fancy thinker.

Then, I gathered the children. We turned off all the lights in the house besides the Christmas tree and surrounding lights. And one by one, we lit the candles as they stood in line. Audrey-girl refused to light a candle because birds are afraid of fire. (She really is the best.) I told them that this marks the darkest time of the year, so St. Lucy brings the light to the world.

Then we decided on some Christmas songs, of which none of us knew all the words. It was awesome. And we had a procession through the house and then the yard. All of us. In the dark and cold. It was so much fun.

This is a very weird picture because I tried the outside at night setting on my camera, which apparently sucks.

After our procession, the kids ate cookies and we ate the Lussekatt and drank coffee. Here is one more picture of my girl and I in the cold. Happy St. Lucia Day!

St. Lucy's crown

2011-12-13T08:07:00.001-05:00

Today is the Feast Day of St. Lucy.

This day marks the beginning of our solstice days--the days of mourning and activity leading up to Winter Solstice and Lucia's death and birthdays. December 13 to the 22nd is a sacred time for our family. We use this time, each year it has gotten a little more extensive, to bring our family together with crafts, foods, activities and storytelling about solstice. Winter solstice is the time when the Earth Mother gives birth to the Sun. We balance our daughter Lucia's stillbirth against this idea--we hold of birth and darkness and light. In this way, I suppose, this time is one we look forward to as a family, while we also find it somewhat solemn and important. It is a celebration and an acknowledgment of the balance of nature and light and dark.

I will be sharing some of the crafts we are doing--every day we are planning something to lead up until solstice. I will try to do tutorials for most of the activities I have prepared.

Yesterday, marked the St. Lucy activity, which is to make a St. Lucy crown.

The traditional St. Lucy crown contains actual candles and is decorated with greens and lingonberries. The base looks like this. But the ladies dressed like Santka Lucia look like this:

I took this pictures from Answers.com

Obviously, I am not going to let my four year old wear lit candles on her head, so I started a felt St. Lucia crown. I decided to try to felt the entire thing, as in, no sewing, all felting. Michaels and A.C. Moore both sell needlefelting supplies. Michaels just started this year. I always bought my supplies off of a website like Living Felt. Last year, my neighbor who wet felts came over and we taught each other our felting knowledge over some coffee, which was awesome. I have wet felted a few times, but the truth is I found it easier this time to just buy the wool felt base.

My pictures were much lousier than I thought they were on the little screen. Mama needs a SLR camera. Santa, help a sistah out.

Alright, so here is the beginning part of the crown part. I cut a piece of 12"x12" wool felt diagonally, making it three inches wide.

I then took the remaining sections of the square, as well as one piece of 29 cent recycled craft felt and cut out some greenery.

I basically laid these out on the crown and began felting them together. Felting is a process of rapid movement with a very very sharp needle. The process kind of sews the fibers together. Generally, it is a little more difficult, though not at all difficult, to felt two previously felted pieces together. Just because they are harder and their fibers sewn, if you want to use that terminology. So, I used red roving to make ligonberries to help felt the entire crown. In this picture, you can see the roving, or raw uncarded wool, and the needle. The needle is extremely sharp, and I would recommend being an older kid before giving needlefelting as a hobby. I poke myself all the time and draw blood.

After the entire crown was felted and the leaves and ligonberries were not going anywhere, it was time to make the candles. In this picture, at about 10/11 o'clock you can see the multi-needle tool, which helps you felt a larger area. Basically, you are sculpting while you are punching, the roving, which is as light and airy as it looks, becomes dense and hard.

I am sharing this video, because when I felt, this is what Thor does next to me, like I am dancing. But it is a good representation of what is happening.

Now, I needed to start the candles. I decided to make three. Again, I started with white wool felt. I decided to roll it.

After felting an inside roll, I wanted to add the flame.

I pulled yellow, red and orange roving and carded it together.

I did a very minimal needle felt, which is like a few punches just to give it some structure, but I did want it to look like a wild flame.

I added the "flame" to the inside of the candle, then rolled it, punched the outside of the candle, and eh, voila.

Then, I had to felt them to the crown. Since the pictures from yesterday got progressively worse, I took some this morning on the floor of my studio. (Staying classy!) This is the back of the crown and where you felt the candles onto the base. You can also see what the back of felt looks like.

The semi-finished crown looks like this.

I have yet to go buy some ribbon to tie the crown on in the back, because Beezus cried in the car in the parking lot of Joann's afterschool. She was thirsty, so I went home instead. But I forced her to balance it on her head for a picture. (Ignore the studio mess.)

I will take some pictures of Beezus dressed up in the full outfit tonight.

a grove of trees

2011-12-12T07:48:00.001-05:00

When my husband and I first married, we bought a house immediately. My husband was still in graduate school and we were saving for my maternity leave. Because we moved into our house at the end of November, we excitedly moved right into Christmas decorating. Sam and I rented a second floor apartment on Fabric Row in Philadelphia before house buying. We had a very little tree in the apartment with a minimum of ornaments. Suddenly, we had this seemingly huge house. (It seems quite small to us now.) And no decorations.

So, we were broke. (Did I mention that?) I actually think we moved to our house and didn't eat out for dinner for six months, because we were so afraid of spending money. I was really excited to decorate though, but I had to get creative. I was walking around Joann's trying to come up with something. I budgeted ten bucks or something. I do not sew, but something about seeing the Christmas fat quarters there for two bucks made me think--I can do something with those. I bought a few packs. I walked around the craft area and saw these styrofoam cones.

They looked like evergreens. I bought three in differing sizes, so they would look like a grove of trees. Then I took my fat quarters, and ripped strips from the fabric. All different green and red fabrics.

See, you need no sewing skills, or rather no skills at all for this project, except ripping and pinning. After I ripped the fabric, I took straight pins, and pinned the fabric into place. Funnily, my mother in law was visiting over Thanksgiving. I pulled them out with our Christmas decorations and she said, "What a clever way to use a thread spool." Or something possibly not thread. She is a weaver, so she thought I had glued the fabric on an old conical spool. You can! You can even glue these onto the styrofoam. They make styrofoam glue. I used pins, though, because that is what I had, and I like the sounds of pins going through styrofoam.

I pinned some red ribbon on top after I pinned all the fabrics. I really like the raw edges of the fabric when it is ripped. Believe it or not, I still have the fabric from those fat quarters. I made ornaments that first year too.

And that is it. Easy peasy, as Beezus says. I love them because we celebrate Winter Solstice, and having nature themed decorations is really important to us. And in context, they make a nice backdrop to our sideboard. Some really cheap decorations are on this sideboard too. For one, we cut a huge limb off our holly tree as a flower arrangement. I wrap the huge painting above the sideboard. It is just an easy, cheap decoration. And we use cuttings from our rope to line the nativity scene. We like to put greens everywhere. I also love displaying all the cards we get here.

needlefelted christmas

2011-12-10T19:05:00.001-05:00

I had the most amazing time on Friday night. My friend Janel invited a bunch of women over with their kids to craft. I was so excited, and so were the kids. It reminds me of my friend Betsy's Craft Girls. She used to have these cool wine/cheese get togethers were we just crafted. I'd love to do that here too, but I don't know many people around my area who are crafty.

Anyway, Janel lives a little more than an hour away, so it was actually kind of fun to bundle the kids up, pack jammies for the ride home and head over. I brought needlefelting, because winter makes me want to needlefelt. I have done a few pieces lately that I wanted to share.

First, I needlefelted this little sheep to give to Janel as a hostess gift. It is an ornament. I actually dig the sheep, but she is about one week from being a downer sheep. Only people who have read Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague might know what that means, but let's just say, she is a little wonky and is headed for greener pastures. I still have been enjoying three-dimensional felting.

And while there, I started and today finished a new Santka Lucia ornament. Not sure if I am gifting her, or keeping her.

Sorry for the crap lighting on this one.

I will be posting pictures from the show in the new few days, and some Christmas crafts--easy and cheap decorations I made in the first year of my marriage, and am still using! Hallelujah!

jizo

2011-12-04T14:35:00.001-05:00

I've been sketching for the three foot by four foot painting for the five exhibit in January. Initially, I wanted to do my She's not an Angel painting huge like that, but then I thought I wanted to do something completely different. I sketched this one of myself holding groceries with the words don't cry, because basically that is how every trip to the market was for the first four months after she died.

Then I decided, absolutely decided that I wanted to do a jizo. A different kind of jizo, something that represents jizo to me, rather than in a meditation painting. I wanted the duality of jizo--that he is portrayed happy though he is a bodhisattva of compassion, so he has a grief too.

I decided on the one with the leaning pillar of rocks, each one sort of representing a child that died, and one joyful jizo and the other looking down and sad, out of respect. This one looks mad, but the one on the canvas doesn't.

santka lucia

2011-12-01T16:56:00.001-05:00

This year, I am in an ornament swap at Here We Are Together, which is my friend Miri's blog. If you are not familiar with her amazing blog and crafts and sensibility, then you must check her out. She honestly is one of the most interesting people I know. She is a homeschooling Waldorf mama from Germany living in England. ANYWAY, she paired people up. And the woman whose name I received says she is a Catholic mama who is very into homemade Waldorf crafts and the color rainbow. I wasn't sure what to do, because I do love colorzing things, and making everything rainbow, but I also wanted to connect with the other parts of her too. I also should note that her name is Lucy.

I miss my girl. Three weeks until her birthday and I ache to honor her memory.

And so today, I sat on the orange chair with my needlefelting toolbox and made this for Lucy and for my Lucy. I thought it might capture all the parts of her and me together, even though we never met. I am tempted to keep her for myself, but I made her to give her, and so she will go.

review: Babba Box

2011-11-30T09:54:00.001-05:00

I have never done this type of thing before. I was approached by a company called Babba Box. They asked me if I wanted a free sample of their product to review on my blog. There was no obligation to review this product or to like it. The only thing I received was a free Babba Box and this is my experience with it, and what I thought about the product.

Readers of both still life with circles and still life everyday have asked me how I 1. have time to do crafts with my kids, and 2. how I am creative. I always say that I prioritize creativity in our house, which is an answer that isn't exactly fair. Everyone wants to prioritize creativity, but moving from wanting to doing is really difficult. I have shared pictures of our art studio on this blog and the other, but I forget how much stuff we have. You want glue? We have it in stick, Elmer's, glue dots, tacky glue, superglue, mod podge. You want to color? We have markers, crayons, pencils, paint. It has taken a few years to build up a stash of art and craft supplies. And it is expensive. If you want to create homemade cards, for example, you need to buy the box of cards, the stickers, the markers, the glue, the stamps, the stamp pads...you know depending on what you want to create. So when someone asks me how I have time and energy to do crafts and the creativity to do them, I forget how much footwork already went into creating crafts. I just go into the studio, pull out the supplies and do it. If I don't feel like cleaning up, I don't. It's the art studio, it is supposed to be messy. I have bins that I sweep everything into. But what if you don't have an art studio with all kinds of papers, art supplies, glues, craft sticks and what not and whosits? How practical is my advice to just make time if every time you want to do a craft, or a project, you need to run to Michaels and buy everything?

When I opened the Babba Box, all this immediately came to me. The Babba Box is an absolutely brilliant idea. When the marketing people at Babba Co. asked me if I'd like a free Babba Box to review, I wasn't sure it was my thing. It sounded like a great idea--the Babba Box is a monthly subscription for $29.95. You receive the box every month. There is a theme. For November, the theme was "Gratitude" (perfect theme, obviously. We had already been talking about this a ton around our house.) The Babba Box focuses on four areas: Create. Explore. Story tell. Digital. But, you know, I am a pretty creative person who creates crafts around themes all the time. Why would I need a box to do that every month for me?

BECAUSE IT MAKES CREATIVITY VERY EASY, COMPACT AND DOABLE!

Sorry to scream, but when I received it, touched it, opened it. It was magical. Everything was right there. The ideas, the instructions, the space to expand on the crafts or activities. As I said, there are four areas: Explore, which helps the child (Babba Box is aimed at 3-6 year olds) interact with the outside world. Story Tell, which is a book. Digital, which is the computer/interactive portion of the box. and Create, which are the arts and crafts section. We received three crafts. I should say, that the box above was so detailed and easy to understand that I immediately got what everything was. The crafts came in a bag labeled "Create" with detailed instructions on the craft and get this--all the supplies you need for that craft. And an abundance of the supplies. If it tells you to glue something, there are little glue stickers. That was a revelation and something I thought made this box worth it alone. The Babba Box includes only the pieces for that craft. So cool.

This month, the gratitude crafts were a Gratitude Serving Tray, Thank you cards, and a Trivet, perfect for the Thanksgiving table. We actually busted open the Babba Box the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so we could use our crafts for our Thanksgiving meal.

Our first craft was the serving tray.

Alright that picture stinks because the flash went off, but the craft was really cool. A tray with green paint to paint your hands and make a handprint tray. Thomas hates stuff on his hands, so he didn't participate in this craft. He only dipped his finger in the paint.

The next craft, he loved. And actually, I was so impressed with Babba Box. I was impressed when I opened the box up to begin with. The design is beautiful, well-organized, stylish and just really creative. The second craft was Thank You cards. Beatrice wanted to make a card for her teacher. But both children focused on this for well over an hour.

The other sections were really awesome as well. The book was focused on gratitude for the earth. Just a well-illustrated, well-written book. We have read it every day since we received it.

Beezus' favorite part of the Babba Box was the Explore section, which gets you to explore your outside world. The Babba Box this month included a gratitude camera. BEA's OWN CAMERA! The child is supposed to take pictures of things for which she is grateful. She took pictures around our house, of me and her brother, outside, micro pictures, macro pictures. It is a disposable camera, so it is virtually indestructible. The bag included the camera and a really cool tri-fold frame where you can glue your pictures. They called it a gratitude journal. This Explore activity was just such a creative and simple activity. We haven't taken the camera to get prints yet, but the cool thing is that later we will develop it, Bea will write descriptions of her pictures. It is a craft with many layers.

All I can say is that I think the Babba Box is just a brilliant idea, a perfect gift for your family or another family, for Christmas. I would not review this product if I didn't like it or endorse it 100%. I think it is a great fit for parents who are crafty and not crafty alike. But particularly if you are stuck month to month with new crafts. I particularly like it because we try to focus our crafts and art with the seasons and the holidays, and this gets me out of my rut, plus all the stuff fits into one little box I can put in the studio. I know I would never have thought to make a trivet, for example. So, I guess what I am trying to say is that Babba Box is highly recommended by me as just a great, all-around addition to a home with kids.

magical thinking

2011-11-17T18:17:00.001-05:00

I am trying to sketch out a painting 3' x 4'. I want to do a kind of poster/guerilla art piece that is about grief that is startling and true and people like. I have no idea what to paint. I like my grief girl paintings. I just am not sure anymore. I am also thinking that it would be cool to do a more stylized mizuko jizo on a white background. I am stuck right now. It is AEDM and I have been doing Art Every Day. I thought I would share one of my sketches from my art journal, which is one of the ideas I was toying with for a painting.

It is called Magical Thinking.

five

2011-11-16T08:16:00.001-05:00

I am honored to be included amongst this group of grieving artists in a show this January at the Mulberry Arts Studios in Lancaster, PA. There is a community project wall and you can participate. There is a reception on Sunday, January 15th, from 1p-4p. I hope to see everyone there.

super daddy

2011-11-15T00:48:00.001-05:00

If I had a little sign that I hung on my door, it would say, "Gone Campin'" Our family and TracyOC's family headed out yonder in the hills and camped the shit out of a Pennsylvania State Park. It was awesome. But I didn't get ~~much~~ any writing done, no drawing. I do have a fierce kink in my neck which is making me feel like Frankenstein, but that is neither here nor there, and probably more a result of sleeping at my mother's house last night than camping.

Tonight, however, I had to paint my husband's birthday card. In our family, we draw and paint cards for each other. Even my husband for me. They are the best. I love that our family does this for one another. And surprisingly enough, my husband started the tradition. The first year he did it, he drew a little stick family and it said, "I love you." And then it has blossomed from there. Today is my husband's 39th birthday and since he doesn't read any of my blogs anymore, I thought I would share his card here. He really does do this. I have this picture of Beezus, age 22 months. We were absolutely grief-stricken during this time, so this type of thing would raise our spirit for the entire week. Seriously.

So here is his SUPER DADDY card.

Happy birthday, Sam, in the off chance you see this! You are the best daddy in the world.

days 4, 5, 6 and 7

2011-11-07T16:24:00.002-05:00

I think I am going to change all of these to ink. They will just look better. The theme is Things Found Under Car Seats.

AEDM days two and three

2011-11-03T09:01:00.001-04:00

Sketchbook sketches. Pencil.

November, the goddess of creative chaos

2011-11-01T18:50:00.001-04:00

November has become a being feared and revered. She is a bitch goddess, relentless, demanding and often leaves me in a state of awe and gratitude. As I embark on my second Art Every Day Month (AEDM) and my fourth National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), I beg of you to be patient with my unanswered emails, my confusing and surreal tweets, my angry status updates. For AEDM this year, I'm finishing my Sketckbook project, or rather starting it. I'm not painting this year, or rebinding. Just a sketch a day that might be inked, or might stay pencil. My theme is "Thing Found Under Car Seats." It is purposely light. I am making it surreal, hopefully funny. But first few pages are the straight man jokes. Here are the cover and first page.

calavera

2011-10-31T14:43:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure there is anything easier to dress as for Halloween than a calavera, or a skull from the day of the dead. You really only need some white make-up and a black make-up pencil. You can just use eyeliner if you have nothing else.

I braided my hair back, and put on my Frida Kahlo jewlery from last year, which I created for less than ten bucks from craft store jewelry piece. Wow, my hair grew like a weed this year. It is almost past my shoulders now. This year, I decided to combine my two favorite costumes--calavera and Frida Kahlo.

Beyond that, your imagination is your only confines. I like to look at other skull designs. You can design your face to have flowers, or hearts, or anything. You can use all kinds of colors. I chose to use only black and blue (around the eyes). I also decided to wear my felted flower crown.

And a full body shot. I am wearing a skirt my sister made for me last year. We went to JoAnn's and picked some random "Mexican-y" fabric. I love the way it turned out. I have to admit that I have never considered myself someone who would take pictures of herself, or speak in front of a camera for the whole interweb, but there is something so freeing in this costume. For me, at least.

frida sugar skulls

2011-10-26T14:31:00.002-04:00

I did a post on sugar skulls in September. It was my first attempt and the icing situation was really sucky. Plus, I was using these skulls from Martha S. that I bought at Michaels. They were fine, don't get me wrong, but I don't know. I wanted more.

Yesterday, I went to my favorite store in Philadelphia, the Eye's Gallery. (Well, in competition with the Architect's bookstore) I went in after a long day seeing my father and driving driving driving. I went in to buy a full skeleton for my altar. I ended up purchasing two skeletons and a milagro of eyes, since St. Lucy is always pictured with her eyes on a platter.

Anyhow, whilst there, I noticed a table filled with the ingredients and tools to make sugar skulls--molds, meringue powder, gel food coloring, even the baker's bags for icing. I bought some food dye and thought I would give it another shot. This time I bought Frida Sugar Skull molds. They are also available on Mexican Sugar Skull.com

There is a more detailed recipe on the package, which helps immensely. So, first, one teaspoon of meringue to one cup of sugar. Then sprinkle the mixture with one teaspoon of water. Mix it with your clean hands. It says to mix it for four minutes to get it consistent, and that seemed about right to me.

You fill them with the mixture. You know it is done because it is like wet sand, and you can press your finger into the mixture and the impression stays.

Then press it into the molds, like it is brown sugar. Pack it down hard.

Then, use a piece of cardboard to back the molds and flip it over.

Your sugar skulls now have to harden for eight hours. Which is why I did these around 6p and waited until morning, and different lighting to make the royal icing and decorate.

I feel like this is a good time to tell you that everything you are making here is edible. It just doesn't taste very good, particularly Royal Icing and red gel food coloring, but technically you can eat it.

Royal icing is very easy to make. It is particularly important to use gel food coloring. That is what ruined my last batch of sugar skulls, the liquid food coloring. So, this is the recipe which makes a shitload of royal icing--one pound of confectioner's sugar and 1/4 cup of meringue. Add 1/3 cup of water. Mix with a hand or standing mixer for about nine minutes, until there are peaks.

I decided I wanted five colors and so I split it up accordingly. Added some gel food coloring, which comes in these little containers. I then put them in ziploc sandwich baggies. Don't fill it too much or it will split. I think cut the smallest little corner. I mean, really small. Almost too small to see. In fact, use a magnifying glass.

My icing baggies are ready, the skulls are lined up. Then you begin the decorating. You can use sequin, little jewels, whatever you choose. The royal icing will dry to cement like hardness. You need to let it dry though. And the food coloring, like all food coloring, dyes everything. My fingers are a technicolor wonder

I loved this project. So much fun. These Frida molds are wonderful with all the flowers and fun you have the liberty to create within its bounds.

Each one is different than the next. I love this one of marigolds.

I love the touch it brings to my ofrenda too. Homemade color. Can't wait to see your sugar skulls. xo

Día de los Muertos Altar

2011-10-24T16:31:00.000-04:00

This week on still life everyday, I am going to be writing about different Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, projects. Día de los Muertos is a Latin American holiday that celebrates the dead and the ancestors. Celebrated November 1 and November 2, it coincides with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. (Did I get those in the right order?) Did you know that in Mexico, November 1st is referred to as Día de los Inocentes ("Day of the Innocents") but also as Día de los Angelitos ("Day of the Little Angels") and November 2 as Día de los Muertos or Día de los Difuntos ("Day of the Dead")? Yes, that means that November 1st is a day set aside to honor children and babies who have died.

I think we all knew that deep within us, which is why we connect with Día de los Muertos so viscerally.

Dia de los Muertos Ofrenda from 2010

Anyway, this week, I am going to share with you some projects I will be doing this week. First, I have created my Día de los Muertos ofrenda, or offering, or altar if you will. This might be a little more detailed than you want, but I am going to share how I got from point A to point semi-finished. And I say semi-finished because I am going to be working on projects all week to add to my ofrenda that I will share with you, then I will post the final altar picture.

This year, I was kind of stupefied by where I was going to put my altar. I have traditionally always used a small Shaker table I use for my altar, and it gets filled quickly. So I wanted to go bigger, or more self-contained. My husband is a woodworker by hobby, and I thought I might use some scrap wood and building something. I also was referring to the book Day of the Dead Crafts (You need to buy this book, if you don't have it already). In this book, there are a few ofrendas that use a painting as the centerpiece or theme of the ofrenda, and I wanted to do that.

I have been wanting to paint something not jizo or Zen or Buddhist, but that touched my Catholicism and love of Catholic art, in particular ex-voto or retablos. Latin American and Catholic art do death really well. It is part pathos, part horror, part worshipful, but all real life. Exaggerated and dramatic and beautiful in the way it embraces the darker sides of life. Ex-votos are paintings of tragedies and deaths with a pleading to a saint or gratitude for intercession. Like a visual prayer, it exemplifies the chaos of praying in suffering. In my humble opinion. Frida Kahlo painted a lot of these works. A retablo is a painting of how a saint or the Virgin. It may or may not depict the way the saint was martyred. I have been particularly intrigued by them because I have been re-discovering my saint books. I love this one by Giselle Potter called Lucy's Eyes and Margaret's Dragon. Giselle Potter is such a distinctive illustrator and her work is beautiful in this book. It is mostly illustrated. You need to check it out. It is a bargain book on Amazon.

I am frustrated because I wrote this post, then somehow deleted everything but the first paragraph.
So bear with me here.

Anyway, I sketched very little. Just a vague idea then, painted for an afternoon. I loved painting this work. It is exactly the way I had envisioned it, and a perfect centerpiece for my ofrenda.

The Stillbirth of Lucia, acrylic on canvas, 16" x 20"

Part of the inspiration of this piece and the entire ofrenda really is this comment that a nun said during a spiritual retreat I attended in June. She had been sexually abused as a child, and she became an alcoholic later in life. She said that she thought God abandoned her when she was being abused. But after she went into recovery, she realized that God was crying with her. And that was such a powerful statement to me. Because when you lose a child you hear often about God's plan, and it is hard not to take God's plan personally. I just don't like that phrase, but I like the idea that God mourns with us when we are grieving. That He couldn't intercede, he could only stand beside us and abide.

I have painted myself a few times holding Lucia in hospital gown. One for the sketchbook project. One in this painting featured on Exhale. I know this sounds weird, but there is something so hobo about that image that I like. I'm wearing borrowed clothes (hospital gown) in slouchy socks, holding a dead baby. It is all so stark and exactly as it happened, but more so. More stark. Horrifying. More lonely. I think it is like when we say our baby is DEAD instead of talking in euphemism. This is what happened. I gave birth to her. She was dead. I held her wearing ugly clothing, my ass hanging out. It didn't seem right.

In this painting, though, I found myself shrouded, mourning, beautiful. That is the forgiveness coming through, years of getting used to her death, possibly. And I don't think it was a mistake I came out looking like Mary. I like that ambiguity--is it me or the Virgin? I also always wanted to capture the redness of the lips of my baby. I think anyone who gave birth to a stillborn child remarks on it. It is unnerving and lovely. I wanted our lips to be the only red things, but after I painted it, I had this urge to paint a big sacred heart in the field of yellow. I will show you later how I solved that.

Alright, enough of that. I had the centerpiece, now what? Like I said, I began sketching altars, large wooden pieces--shadow box and shelves with traditional Catholic imagery, but then I went to the basement and saw this mirror that was here when we bought the house. It was moldy along the bottom where our basement flooded, but had some cool woodcarvings I thought I could nick, then I took the mirror off. I found this odd picture and a Fender Jazz Bass authentication label. I think I might take Kristin's advice and use it as inspiration for my NaNoWriMo novel. (Still need a plot, people.)

Once the mirror was off, I saw that I could use it as is. I cleaned it up and it looked pretty cool. I thought about knocking the back out, and creating a shadow box with different levels for display, but in the end, I kept it as is.

And I also now have a cool carved mirror which I might paint some day with roses and thorns and a sacred heart or something. You can see Thor in that mirror

I had intended on building a base for the frame so it could stand alone, but it had very heavy duty hanging wire and could support weight, so I went in another direction all together. I also found a lovely spot for my ofrenda--my dining room sideboard. I hung it. In that space in the yellow field of the painting, I hung my large sacred heart milagro.

I then decided to make differing levels. I went into my husband's workshop and found this raw edged, round sawed piece of wood that my stepfather gave us. He thought we could make a bench out of it, but we just hadn't really gotten to it. It looks awesome in this capacity. I used terrine jars to prop it up.

I forgot to mention that I used an antiqued sacred heart image for the top of the frame. It looks cool, not wonderful, but okay. I liked the terrine jars holding up the shelf, but wanted to fill them with something. Not having any marigolds (and unable to find them in the local nurseries around here) I decided to decapitate the mums I had outside my house. They were dying and in the jars they look lovely and intentional.

I then found a nice piece of slate from our fireplace project and used that for my old wood carved Virgin of Guadalupe. I bought her in Mexico and her rays have broken off through the years, but I still love her fiercely.

At this point, it was about bringing in some lighting. I had these flower lights from Beatrice's tea birthday party, so I hung them around the frame. I also found a cross that I bought from Peru, which I hung from the middle of the mirror frame. And I decided to make a fabric sign for my ofrenda that reads, "El Senor lloro conmigo" (forgive the lack of tildes and accents in that sentence) which means "The Lord Cried with Me." (I moved the Virgin so you can read it in the picture below.) I actually had old sheets in the basement and this light blue one was rough and looked like sack cloth, so I ripped it into shreds and wrote this on it.

Then it was a matter of adding the beautiful things. I added four votive candles each with a milagro in them. A large Virgin of Guadalupe candle. A rosary given to me by my great-grandmother which was made my a blind nun. The death announcements, photographs and prayer cards for my grandmother, grandfather, great-grandmother and aunt. Lucy's picture. Harry's pictures (my father-in-law). Family Catholic Prayer Missals from the 50s which were my grandmother and grandfather's.

I put a wine glass of water out, in my favorite wine glass. Maybe I am mourning my drinking too. A black clay vase and paper flowers that Sam and I bought on our honeymoon to Sayulita, Mexico. I put a silver bowl my mother bought me from Mexico with a nice towel and some Nag Champa soap, which is making this entire ofrenda smell amazing.

On the other side of the ofrenda, I put a wooden bowl of fruit. We always keep our fruit in a bowl on our sideboard, so that was always there. There is also an incense holder.

Conspicuously missing from my ofrenda are calaveras, particularly when last year, that was all there was, no? That wasn't intentional, but I think I am going to either make or buy some full skeletons to hang on either side of the painting. And I will be making some sugar skulls this week for the ofrenda. I love the rustic earthy charm of this year's ofrenda. Also grateful to not have spent any money this year. I just wanted it to be home-y comfortable and lovely.

What does your ofrenda look like? What do you think should be added to my ofrenda?

art table

2011-10-20T08:05:00.001-04:00

I am constantly trying to make our studio space more efficient, because it does triple duty--computer/writing room, art studio and kids' art space. I have a table for my creations with two chairs. A desk for writing. I have four shelves in there to store art supplies, books and toys. I have an easel that folds up and stores in the corner, as well as a stool to use with that easel. And for the kids, I was using Melissa and Doug's kid easel. One side is dry erase board/paper roll holder and the other a chalk board. It worked great for a long time, but Thor had begun taking it apart, unscrewing the screws, hiding them in small spaces. So, it was falling apart basically. And Beezus and Thor argued about who got what side. The paper roll was the medium of choice for them, so lots of shoving and pinching in the name of art.

I finally just put the easel downstairs. THAT'S IT! BASTA YA, MIJOS!

But what to do for the kids? I moved their itty bitty table to their room for art, which they love. And they use it as a table to play restaurant, teacher, tea party...it is too good up there. After our Open House, I had an old table upstairs. This table, actually, is a perennial favorite of mine. I bought it at a second hand shop for thirty bucks. It was an old diner table that someone painted red/orange. I used it as my kitchen table when I lived in the city. Sam and I brought it up from the basement for the party (dessert table.) Anyway, it was sitting in my dining room for a week or so. Too heavy to carry downstairs alone. I was drinking tea, sitting on the floor on the dining room with the kids, and I started cocking my head to the side. Yes, that would be perfect.

See, I love this table at Container Store, and so do the kids. Every time we go there, they want to just sit at it and pretend they are making art. I am not spending almost four hundred dollars on a table for art making. Not when I can create it myself. See, the downside and benefit of this table I have is that it was once a diner table, so it is a pedestal. When I used it to create art, I would lean on the table, and one side would come up, but the kids are not strong enough to do that. So, I bought a new roll of paper, tied a string around it, and created our own art table. I also had two wooden high chairs that I bought for the kids at flea markets, which they sometimes use for dining chairs. They are the perfect height for the kids to use.

The pedestal leaves the ends available to hang the paper roll.

I also had this old wrapping paper cutter, which you put under the paper and just move across, so it cuts it. It works perfectly for this paper roll, and the kids can't cut themselves on it. Looks like Sam was doing some calculations on it himself, probably calculations about how much wood he scavenged this weekend. (880 lbs of it.)

In the end, it was a great way to use this fabulous table, the kids love it, and actually share the space really well.

I think I will eventually tweak the design to hold the roll by drilling two holes into the opposing sides of the table, and hanging the string/twine on each side. Right now, I have to untie the string to change the roll. Not a big deal, but eventually, it would be nice to just slide one roll off and put the other on. I should also mention that I am use the dowel from the M&D easel, which has a hole on each side, the string is strung through those holes, and then loops around the table. It stays quite nicely. This project basically cost me the price of the paper roll.

Love to all.

autumn color order

2011-10-18T16:13:00.000-04:00

I admit that I had a few weeks of overbusy-ness and now catching up on some posts from those weeks. As most of you know, I am slightly obsessed with things in color order. And by obsessed, I mean, that I like to keep things in color order, even though it is more inconvenient in the case of books for example, but look how lovely.

Anyway, we like to do nature-based crafts and projects in the afternoon. The leaves are just lovely right now--all the shades of flames and heart and loves. So, our project yesterday was to go on a long walk around the neighborhood and find leaves in all the colors of the rainbow, so we could arrange them in color order. We also collected acorns, pinecones, and we pulled out our gladiola bulbs from our tea garden bed, because well, they weren't supposed to still be there. I am planting them somewhere else next spring.

Then we played with the leaves and made an enso/circle of life out of them.

It was so beautiful, we moved the candles from our autumn centerpiece and lit it in the center for dinner.

Beezus was sad to realize there are no blue leaves, and come to think of it, so am I.

ensō meditations with children.

2011-10-17T18:34:00.001-04:00

My approach to meditation both in my own individual life and the lives of my kids has been to think of many things as an opportunity to meditate. I know meditation has a specific meaning in Buddhist context, or new age context, in a recovery context and still in a psychotherapy context. For me, I think of meditation as an intentional practice, to clear of the mind, remain present, train the brain to sit in quiet. Many times that involves me pulling out my meditation cushion, lighting candles, incense and sitting still. I focus on my breath, or an object, or a mantra. I don't always just sit to meditate, though. I practice meditation when I do the dishes, walk, paint.

Teaching my children meditation, I hope, will be a gift for them later in life. A way of coping that I just simply never learned. I teach my children that meditation can take place in all kinds of ways. We do sit and chant together. I do many guided meditations. We do spirit animal meditations, which I know sounds hokey and new age-y, but is a really wonderful way to connect children to nature and other sentient beings. We often go on walking meditation where we try not to speak for a few minutes and just take in the present moment. We focus on our breath and steps. The other way I have done this is to teach them about painting meditations. Since Beezus was two and since Thor's birth, I have done painting meditation, so they are very aware of the interconnectedness of painting and spirituality for me. They also respect the serenity and austerity of the moments I paint for grieving women and men. It is pretty cool.

One meditation practice I have cultivated in the past few years is doing ensō meditations and paintings. I actually do ensō painting meditation a few times a week these days. It is one of my main practices. I paint them onto watercolor cards and use them for all kinds of things--anniversaries, birthdays, sympathy cards. I first painted an ensō because a client requested it on her mizuko jizo painting. I did a lot of research after that, looked at and meditated on many pictures of ensō painted by monks and enlightened beings. But that simple request started a journey in this ancient zen artist meditation. I first wrote about that practice here.

This is an ensō I painted in acrylic on canvas paper. It hangs in my studio.

Ensō represent both everything and nothing. The beginning and the ending. It is a symbol of enlightenment, and imperfection. Actually, the open ensō and the closed ensō mean different things. The closed one means the "totality of experience and life" while the open one represents the imperfection in all things. I think it embodies the Zen concept of wabi sabi, or the feeling that everything is exactly as it is supposed to be--imperfect. I use it as a mediation on imperfection, even though I generally close my ensō. Basically, it is an expression of the moment. One brush stroke. One circle. And though we strive for its perfection, its expression at its core, is always imperfect. And so the wisdom is simply that the ensō is a denial of perfection and in that way is exactly as it should be.

And making circles is a wonderful way to teach children about imperfection, your own, theirs, without challenging them to be perfect. I think a good tie-in to an ensō meditation with children would be to read the book Dot. Dot is a beautiful book about art and self-doubt. Ish, also by Peter Reynolds, is a lovely book about, essentially, accepting the imperfection of your art as the beauty.

At any rate, a few weeks ago, Beezus asked me if she could join me for my ensō meditation, and it occurred to me how absolutely perfect ensō painting is to teach children about working meditation and incorporating mindfulness into every activity. And so, we did a meditation session, lit a candle, incense, sat still, imagined the circle. We talked about its meaning and how we will spend our lives making absolutely beautiful imperfect circles. And we painted ensō after ensō after ensō.

She got pretty good.

terrariums.

2011-10-15T16:56:00.000-04:00

I love terrariums. I even wrote about them once here. Part of why I love them is that they are so easy to construct, and so beautiful. So, here is a little quick terrarium primer.

First, find a cool container. I bought this at the Re-Store for two bits (or twenty-five cents.)

Then get some cool river rocks, or stones for drainage. Put them in the bottom of the bottle/jar/container. Careful not to drop them too hard, or the glass will break.

Add some activated charcoal, then some spaghnam moss, which prevents your soil from going into your rocks. (didn't take pictures of this very exciting step, because I fell asleep. [joking]) Then add potting soil.

This next part is super fun. MOSS HUNTING. We have a few different species of moss growing in various parts of our yard. Feather moss.

And this other kind of moss, which is green and grows in a clump, so I am calling it green clump moss.

We found this one with little clovers growing in it, which is beautiful. We added it to the feather moss. And then we considered it done, though we may add a wee little gnome we make out of Sculpty. Who knows?

Such a fun easy project, and as you can see, the entire thing was mostly done by my four year old.

open house and jizos

2011-10-02T10:50:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I had an Open House for other families who have lost children, really it was to display the travel journal. I cooked and cleaned last week, like a fullhouse deep cleaning, which was nice. I do that every Fall and Spring, Summer and Winter. It is like a seasonal change thing, but I spend a week just scrubbing the tiles I don't usually scrub and spit shining the faucets. Okay, not really. But this one was for my homies, so I took time. I also hung lots of my babylost art around my house, pieces I never display in open. These three I painted for a show next January. I shared them here already, but I hadn't seen them together.

From left to right they are: I Wish You Understood (But I'm Grateful You Don't), She's Not an Angel. She Was My Baby. the last one is untitled as of yet, but it is me holding a picture of Lucia. I think it might said, I want my baby, instead of a picture I can't show anyone. I'm taking suggestions.

This morning, I needed to meditate, so I painted some jizo cards. I just needed to sit and clear my head after all the week of busy.

And I started a jizo wall in my studio, since I have so many dang jizos around. I have some in my lounge, so I need to get them on the wall...fun, fun, fun.

kung fu

2011-09-26T23:54:00.003-04:00

I had a canvas with a bunch of not good painting on it, like that crappy jizo, then I tried some techniques I have never done. ANYWAY, I have this old book by Bruce Lee called Bruce Lee's Fighting Style, or something equally forgettable. It was a 29th printing, the binding was broken and it was written on by some kid, so I took some pages out, since I love that style of book with the guys in kung-fu outfits posing mid-fight. It looks so peaceful, even though it teaches you how to kick the crap out of someone. I glued the pages down, then drew my little girl over it. It says, Learning to fight taught me not to fight. Which is very true. I studied martial arts in my late teens/early twenties. Wing Chun. I miss fighting, particularly sparring with my friend Fisher. He taught me a lot.

Mabon

2011-09-21T21:48:00.002-04:00

Yes, I know that Mabon and the Autumn Equinox is on Friday night. I understand that I am a full two days early to talk about it, but we celebrate on the 21st, generally, speaking, because Lucia died on the 21st. Part of the reason we mark the seasons and began celebrating the pagan rituals associated with Mabon, Yule, Ostara and Litha is because we honor the passing of another season without Lulu while welcoming and celebrating the change and beginning of a new season. As the earth changes, our grief changes, adapts to the weather, or contrary to it. But still, everything moves.

Raising our children in an earth-based spirituality is one of the things my husband and I can wholeheartedly agree upon. We agree with almost all the other stuff, like discipline and bedtime and all that stuff except religion. I take the children to Mass here and there, but my husband is decidedly anti- organized religion. Having an earth-based spirituality together helps ground us in what we share spiritually and what we truly both believe in important for our children to learn ethically, morally and spiritually. We are part of something larger--a system of life and death. We like to teach the children to experience the world as something to be respected and alive with change. We teach compassion and nurturing love. The earth is our mother. She will take care of us. We will take care of her. You know, just like the song says.

Mabon is my favorite celebration, I think. I love autumn and celebrating the cooler weather. The coming of winter is something I particularly love. I am definitely a child of the winter. There is a lot to do to honor this change of season. We wake excited. All of us. First thing Beezus said this morning was "It is FALL!" She thought all the leaves were going to fall overnight, which kind of cracked me up. I keep forgetting that she doesn't remember being three totally. Only little snippets of memory.

Anyway, our rituals on this day are really ones shared by the kids and I. Sam traditionally works all day, so he comes home to a clean house, smelling of stew and baked apples, and all kinds of beauty and deliciousness. First thing we do throughout the day is clean. Clean, clean, clean. We call it Fall Cleaning. And we clean so we can cleanse. Sage smudge to cleanse our spirits and our house.

We usually spend the afternoon gathering things for our evening feast. Mabon celebrates the harvest, as well as the autumn and change. And it celebrates the balance of darkness and light. I make a big batch of lentil stew, and some corn, and some pumpkin. Apples are a big part of our day. But first, we gather. We gather wildflowers to make an arrangement. I beg my husband not to weed our lawn from about August on. Not that we are good at weeding any time of the year, but I love goldenrod and the other crazy wildflowers from this area. My husband and I get into screaming matches about weeds. In my opinion, weeds are a term of abuse. It is simply a matter of perspective. Last weekend, I was horrified and angry that my husband pulled out all the goldenrod in our backyard despite me specifically asking him not to. Angry, I tell you.

It rained today. Almost all day, so we decided to tramp about in our rainboots with a basket (my childhood Easter basket, actually) and some scissors, and go a-gathering anyway.We found a lot, including two matted down goldenrods, which look just fine in the pitcher.

We also bought some Indian corn on our way home and two little pumpkins for our centerpiece.

We start with a wooden plate my husband made many moons ago, and besides the flowers, we gather leaves, acorns, things that remind us that autumn in coming.

We then line it with grape leaves. I shared about my huge grape vine in the back. We have been thinking about making a grape vine wreath this year, even though we have one my stepfather made us. It is the vine that keeps on giving.

Then we put three candles in the center. For autumn we put the brown ones, at Yule we will exchange them with red ones, and at Ostara, we will put white ones there. We don't light candles at our dinner table in the summer, because it is still light.

Then the kids and I add leaves, and acorns around the edges.

The little pumpkins and one ear of Indian corn, with the husk taken off. (We bought three with their husks.)

I added sunflowers my mother bought me from the Farmer's Market last week to our wildflower bouquet. We put the bouquet on the sideboard most days, but on Mabon, we leave both on one end of the table, since we always eat at the other end.

With the husk from the Indian corn we used in the center piece, we make a little Harvest Goddess figure. It is so easy. You simply tie a piece of yarn or string or twine as a head, then pull two husks out of each side for arms, and tie them up, and then tie a little lower for a skirt. We added it to Lucy's altar as a part of the autumn remembrance.

We tied the other two ears of Indian corn together for our interior door decoration.

When Sam got home, we ate our feast--lentil stew, arepas made out of corn, and rice. We always start our meal talking about how the day is in perfect balance of light and dark and we are moving to the time when the air gets colder and the days shorter. Then we say how grateful we are for our food and family and sharing this time. Then we chow down.

For dessert, I baked some apples stuffed with walnuts, raisins, cinnamon and brown sugar.

After dinner we light the first fire of the season. It was a small one, because it is actually humid here. We throw in bay leaf and salt as symbols of protection for our home and family, and we do a little sage smudge and pass the talking stick. All in all, it is just a beautiful day. Blessed Mabon, my loves.

sugar skulls

2011-09-20T16:36:00.002-04:00

I have always wanted to make sugar skulls. Not just paintings or papier mache, but real, edible sugar skulls. A few weeks ago, wandering around Michael's, as I am wont to do, I saw that Martha Stewart makes plastic skull molds.

I was delighted on one hand, and on yet another, I was also standing there, my kids spinning in circles in the fake flowers, saying, "What the Fuck?" No, really, Martha?. Skull molds? It is a strange world we live in.

I bought them.

Of course, I friggin' bought them.

Because they are called party molds, I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out for sugar skulls. Sugar skulls are both incredibly easy to make and also a wee bit of magic. My first batch was riddled with first world problems--organic unbleached sugar looks like sand, and so my skulls really looked like sand skulls, which is more DUNE than Dia de los Muertos. And I poured water into my sugar from my Brita filter and too much went in, so it was too wet, which ruined the drying time...see, first world problems.

Let me start with the recipe. One cup of sugar. One teaspoon of meringue powder. A little bit of water, like seriously four drops. Or better, get your hands wet and mix it all together. I went out and bought white sugar, unlike the above picture, and tried again. The consistency is like sand. You mix it, press it into the molds, then flip them onto some cardboard, and they should pop right now. My first brown batch didn't come out of the molds at all--too much water.

So, I mixed the second batch a day later with white sugar, and when I flipped the molds over, the white ones were perfect. I let them sit overnight.

The recipe book I have says, "Mix some food coloring into powdered sugar for icing." Yeah. That didn't work for me. It was terrible. I had cookie icing, and dyed it some colors, and used that, which was very wet. I am terrible at baking and all things delicate. So, they are truly terrible, but I did a few with Beezus screaming--MAKE IT PINK!

The only thing I like about these sugar skulls is that they look like Mexican wrestling masks. But in general, I think they are terrible. I might make some icing for them to experiment, but I really have so much stuff to do, I can't even believe I spent this much time on them. Here are the last four empty slates...still figuring these out.

Tomorrow is Mabon, and we are very excited to be feasting and getting ready for the Autumn. I will blog about our feast and our celebration. With love to all.

repainting the jizo.

2011-09-16T10:51:00.001-04:00

Watercolor is notorious for fading in the sun. And as I approach three years since Lucy's death, I am finding my earliest of post-Lucy watercolors sun-damaged and faded. Take for instance one of my first mizuko jizo. I used to paint two styles of jizos, now, I paint about five. But my earliest jizos were either clusters of jizos, each with a prayer. And the other was more of a pop-art kind of jizo. It just depends on the mood I am cultivating at the moment. I remember painting this one, and the joy I felt at painting Lucy alive and playing peek-a-boo.

Here it is faded out of its frame. So, maybe this is not gauche, or something, but I repainted it very carefully. Now it looks like this.

I'm happy I did it. I was nervous to ruin this painting, but it was undisplayable before, and now, it looks like it did. I even got to tone down that obnoxious signature. Yay.

Today is picture day at Beezus' school. So, she suggested we take a picture of us. We tried.

This one, I was holding the camera, and then Thomas Harry was angry with the entire situation.

This one is the one we set the timer for.

Beezus didn't like the timer one, so she decided she would just take a picture of Thor and Mama.

Have a lovely day. We finally have some fall weather. It is beautiful outside, and so we are going to go play.

the talking stick

2011-09-14T19:53:00.000-04:00

As we approach Mabon, or autumn equinox, we always consult our favorite book for earth-centered celebrations called Celebrating the Great Mother. It is just a lovely book with guided meditations for children and crafts around the seasonal changes and pagan holidays. It has recipes for your feasts, and ideas for decorating your altar.

Mabon is next week, and we have begun preparing by creating our autumn table, which will be added to on the equinox. But for now, we have the staples.

We have recently moved our altar to an old Shaker table next to our fireplace. I'm not sure how long it will be there, but at least until we light our first fire on Mabon. We always have Lucy's candle, local wildflowers in a ceramic vase, salt, sage, a bowl of water, a meditation gong, the Buddha, a mizko jizo, a crystal and a piece of amethyst, incense and for autumn, we like to cut apples width-wise which creates a beautiful star right in the center of the apple. If anyone is interested, I can share the meaning of these items, but otherwise, I will assume you know what each piece is on there for. The other rather large thing in the middle is not a wand, but a talking stick.

The talking stick is something we started last Mabon. It is an activity in the Celebrating the Great Mother book, and we loved it. We were using this beautiful carved driftwood that Ines sent us (see left) as our talking stick, but we kept an eye open for a new talking stick that we could create together as a family for our family. The idea of the talking stick is that it is a piece for the entire family to create. The talking stick is a way to hold a meeting, I believe, in some native cultures, but in a family, we use it as a way to introduce the idea of patience, good people skills, sharing and listening. We found our talking stick this summer. We think it was part of an old chair we were throwing out, but it ended up being perfectly cut in our walkway, and it looked like a talking stick. We wrapped the stick in leather strap. Beatrice sanded it and waxed it with beeswax. We are keeping our eyes open for a feather for the talking stick and maybe something with which to decorate it. In general, though, the talking stick can change, morph and grow according to your family. I know ours will be more decorated when Beezus gets more interested in it, as has happened with everything in our family.

As a family, we sit in circle most evenings after dinner. We light the candle and talk about our day, or read stories, or just wrestle. We drink tea. Thor bounces up and down demanding tea after dinner. (peppermint or chamomile tea harvested from our tea garden with a little sugar and lots of milk.) So does Beatrice for that matter. The talking stick is introduced on certain days, like Mabon, or a birthday. But some nights, like tonight, just when we are feeling gratitude. I thought I should write about it, because it has become a wonderful part of our family time.

Usually we smudge our space with some sage, and bless each person with the smoke. To bless each person, a parent takes the lit and blown our sage stick with a bowl under it to each person. Each person, big or little, takes the smoke from the sage and washes it over themselves. Sometimes I say to each person as they bring the smoke over themselves, "Sacred smoke, cleanse my spirit and make me ready to accept love." We say a prayer of love and gratitude that we are together, and then each person takes a turn holding the stick. When it is your turn holding the talking stick, you get to speak. Only you. No one is allowed to interrupt you, or comment. We all must listen and sit in circle. Thor usually sits on my lap. Because Beezus is so young, she usually talks about what she is thankful for, or what she is upset about (her brother stealing her polar bear Umi). Thomas kisses the talking stick, usually. But it is a great way to start the tradition of talking as a family and having time where everyone is listened to and heard.

If there is a problem, we use the ceremony to hear the issues, then afterward, we sit and talk about solutions. Hope this gave someone an idea for an evening ritual and way of connecting. This evening, I felt so much peace and love after our circle that I realized I had never really wrote about the talking stick and the way it has become part of our daily lives.

wooden anniversary

2011-09-07T14:12:00.002-04:00

The first of September was my fifth wedding anniversary. I definitely hit the lottery with my hunky, funny, cool husband. My husband and I decided to go away without the children for the first time, well, ever. I actually was fine with it, emotionally. I guess that was surprising even for me. The kids did great. I know my mother loved watching the children over night, and I loved reconnecting with my husband. We went to Lambertville, NJ, which is on the Delaware River across from New Hope, PA. There are lots of little antique stores and interior design places there. There is also an awesome flea market, right up the canal path that runs along the river. The canal path is fit for biking, walking, whatever. We took our bikes to get some riding in. The first morning we woke up in Lambertville, we rode to the flea market. It was awesome.

We are really low-key people. We don't buy each other gifts for anniversaries or Valentine's Day. We try to spend time together. But he always sends me flowers on our anniversary and my birthday, because I love getting flowers. The whole thing with the stranger coming to my door, the note to open, the arrangement, the fresh flowers on my table for a week. All of it I love. He did that, because he is wonderful. But when we get gifts for anniversaries, we try to shop together for something for our family. Our feeling about it is that the two of us working together for our marriage is what is to be celebrated.

For the fifth anniversary, the traditional gift is wood. I think our first anniversary, we bought a painting, since it was the gift of paper. My husband and I talked about it and decided to try to find something wood at the flea market and antique shops we poked around this weekend. We bought a few things--an antique side table and lamp (see the picture on the left, sorry about the weird window glare.)

But what I wanted to blog about was my favorite purchase which was an old printer's drawer. You can find them at flea markets and antique shops pretty easily. I had seen them around and always thought it would look cool hanging on a wall as a kind of curio box. I had thought that in passing, but never planned it out. But then, there we were in front of two gorgeous printer's drawers at the flea market. And I said, "What if we hang it above the fireplace?" And Sam nodded and couldn't visualize it and I said "Trust me. This is exactly the look we are going for." And he trusted me. See, printing for me as a writer, and Sam's father owned a print shop, so it is double meaningful for us. I had been trying desperately to find something for above the fire place. I could just absolutely visualize it. We rode back to Lamberville, my husband rode one armed as he held the printer's drawer.

This is the other thing, I love little things, and I have no where to put them. So, I filled the containers with things that represent our family--coins from Panama, Italy and New Zealand. I put the tickets to Sam and my first opera together and another ticket from our first concert together--Sigur Ros. There is the nest I needlefelted, and a perfume jar from Budapest, where Sam's sister lived when we first met. There is an artist's model. There is a pin from the 60s that says "Wages for Housework." Ines' carved wood block for Lucy. There are shells from Carly and some from Sam's father. Snail shells we found in our backyard, a metal medallion from Thailand. A naval pin from my father. There is a lighter from China that has Mao Tse Tung. And a little wooden peg person I painted of Sam, and one of Lucy. There is a pencil from Oregon Lanes, the now closed bowling alley in South Philly. There are religious medals of St. Lucy from Karen in British Columbia. Candles we made. There is a piece of sushi I made out of polymer clay. There are acorns we collected last autumn. And a cameo my grandmother gave me. There is a magnet from Esposito's Meats in South Philly, which was very near Sam and my first apartment. There is a worry doll and a button my sister made, and I just ordered a few terrariums in thimbles to add to it. Each of these things adds up to the story of our family.

This project was so friggin' easy and inexpensive. The drawer itself was only twenty-five dollars, and the little things I have been collecting for years. When we got home, Beezus and I went room to room searching for little meaningful things we loved that might fit in the odd shapes spaces where old printing plates once lived. It is the most personal, wonderful anniversary gift we could have given ourselves. And the best part of it is that it is exactly the look I wanted for above the fireplace. Earthy and funky and totally about our family.

concord grape jelly

2011-09-05T13:35:00.001-04:00

A few years ago, I bought a stick from the Home Depot with a label that said "Concord Grape" on it.

I say I bought a stick, because I couldn't really believe it was going to turn into a grape vine. I planted it in the sandiest, crappiest part of our yard, which was behind our basketball goal, and in the two feet between the driveway and the neighbor's fence. I gave it the best start in life that I could as the possessor of the Black Thumb of Death. Anything that grows for me dies a slow death either from too much water, or not enough, from neglect or obsessive love. From ambitious plans in subpar soil. It reminds me of when I showed my friend Sid my bonzai. "I think it is dying, Sid." She looked at it, the branch she gently touch crumbled beneath her fingers. "Oh, honey, I think your bonzai is already dead."

I don't know why I thought the grapes would be different, but I think it is my ultimately optimistic view of the universe, like Sisyphus, I imagine the rock might stay the next time. One must imagine me happy. I hoped that we could have a fenceline of concord grapes, which rank a solid two in my favorite fruits of all time. (Strawberries win it.) And in the end, somehow Dionysus took pity.

This year, imagine my surprise when the grapes actually friggin' grew. I was surprised at least. I actually like grapes. The grape vine exploded. I have no idea what I am doing, but I asked Sam to make some kind of fancy fency, and string them up.

Layers and layers of concord grapes. It looks like someone who knows what they are doing, even though by all rights they should be dead.

Last year, I had some grapes that grew ripe. I ate one off the vine and vowed to pick them all the next day, but when I went outside the next morning, they were all gone. It was like some clever crow heard my braggardly and lazy ways and alerts the swarms of crows that descended. This year, I tried desperately hard to stay on top of it. Concord grapes are one of the few fruits that stop ripening off the plant, so you must pick them when ripe and beat the birds.

Friday, my mother and I went outside with some buckets and the kids and picked, and picked, and picked and picked. Then posed the children in this very unnatural way with the bowls of grapes in front of them, because don't you always let your kids hang out on the floor with the dog and his Kong ball and play with grapes?

I poured myself a large tall iced coffee and got to work. I got this recipe from my sister for a small batch of concord grape jam or jelly or preserves. I don't know which is which, but the ingredients are literally grapes and sugar, so maybe someone can help me figure out which I made.

Started with four cups of concord grapes. (Or one quart from the market if you aren't fortunate enough to have your own grape stick.)

You then get an 8"x8" casserole (or two quart) Put one layer of grapes down, covering the bottom.

Smoosh (sp?) them up with a potato masher. Squish them. Release the ~~hounds~~ juices.

It gets soupy. Then you add the remaining grapes on top of it. Cover it and microwave it on high for three minutes. My understanding is that microwaving is recommended over cooking for fruits with a lot of pectin, which apparently concord grapes have. You then uncover and microwave for another four minutes.

Your house smells amazing at this point. I mean, totally amazing.

Set up a strainer with a pouring bowl underneath it. Now, remember, we started with four cups of grapes, you pour that four cups of cooked down grapes into this strainer, over a bowl. You want all the seeds out.

Immediately, it looks like this. You push the swollen grapes through, releasing the liquid and keeping the skins and seed in the strainer.

All said and done, it looks like this. It took a lot of squishing to get the liquid. It seemed like I wouldn't have enough, but I did.

Grape juice looks a lot like blood.

Four cups of grapes turned into two cups of grape juice. You then put that in a half quart saucepan. You add equal amounts of sugar to your liquid--so two cups of sugar for this batch, but it will entirely depend on how much liquid comes out of your grapes.

Put on the stove for a quick boil, not quick as in for a minute, but quick as in a rapid boil for fifteen minutes.

They tell you to do the gel test (put a spoonful on a plate, let cool, see if it hardens.) after fifteen minutes to make sure it is turning into jelly, but that didn't work for me. It just seemed like really good grape liquid. It was delicious warm on freshly made yogurt. I was contented, even though it didn't gel. I made a stick turn into something sweet and yummy. I put it in the fridge and the next day...

It was definitely jelly.

YUM! It tastes amazing, everyone loves it, and it goes with everything. Hope you can make your own concord grape jelly/jam/preserves. I will probably have a few more grape related recipes coming your way.

day of the week and the weather

2011-08-30T08:18:00.000-04:00

So, we used to fairly regularly go to story time at a large book store chain that rhymes with Narnes and Boble. I actually think they do a great storytime. Beezus and I would go, then grab some books, get a coffee and read them. With Thor around, we haven't gone as frequently. The storytime reader used to always ask what the day of the week was and every other kid seemed to know, but Beezus really didn't. And I realized that was because I hadn't really taught her about the days of the week. I don't know why. It just didn't occur to me.

So, I decided to create a kind of chart for us to do every morning where we talk about the day of the week, the season and the weather. When I redid the kids' room a few weeks ago, I hung it up there and we are using it more frequently than we did before. Now, we have added gratitude to our list and each person picks something they are grateful for for the day, which cannot be the same as the day before. Thor grunts at something and Beezus translates, so it is often books, since books are right there.

Basically, I re-used an old dry erase board I had in our kitchen. The board itself is also magnetic. I took the weird magnets that came with it and reused them too, but gluing them to the back of the old watercolor paper. I created these little seasons/weather in scrap felt and glued them with tacky glue to old pieces of 140 lb. watercolor paper. I used watercolor paper for painting, and sometimes cut my own sizes, so I have all these irregular scraps that I used for Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). I guess I need to change the "Three things we are thankful for today" to "Four things", because Daddy got involved in the gratitude list.

I recently hung the board in the kids room, which has made it more central to our morning routine. We used to have it in the back corner of the studio and maybe used it once a week, when we remembered. The kids love this little cubby part of their room. I think in the next few days, I will do a post about their bedroom, because we recently redid the space to make it more fun, creative and useable.

Here is a close-up of all the tags I created. I made the days of the week each in their own color, so that Beezus could start to find them more easily. The bag was made by my sister for my paint brushes, but I rarely travel with them, so I re-commissioned it for this project. The weather was so fun to create, but as the year has gone on (I created this last Autumn) I realize that I need Hot, Cold, Warm, Chilly, maybe Humid, as well as just precipitation. Where we live often just gets cold as hell without snow or rain. I still feel a little like I'm not sure what weather to create. During the winter, it seems like cloudy is up there everyday, when it really is more than cloudy. Any ideas on how to resolve that?

I have to say that I loved this project when I created it. It has definitely helped Beezus understand the concept of seasons versus weather and helps her remember the days of the weeks. Now, she is starting to be able to spell the days as well, because she looks for the days by letters. All in all, an easy repurposing project, since I bought nothing new to create this day/weather chart.

Thanks for reading along.

rainy thursday

2011-08-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

I love rainy days where my kids get caught up in playing and I get to tweet and blog, catch up on some stuff, like the giveaway and news post I did on still life with circles. We actually have had a thunderstorm-y, humid day where I still haven't put on the air. I love the windows open. But Beezus' bangs are sticking straight up in the air and are all wet. It is so sad.

We have an absolutely incredible farmer's market in town here on Saturdays. It is part of the reason we moved here, because of the farmer's market and festivals they have every month or so. We ride our bikes up there and buy our veggies. One thing I love about farmer's markets is some of the veggies that are only there. One I love love love to cook with are squash blossoms. I just went outside to see if our zucchini plants, which had zucchini, which then died, had any blossoms. Only a few. And none of them ready to harvest. At the market, they have six blossoms rubberbanded together for a buck, so I bought four bucks worth. This is what I do with them--I saute a little olive oil, garlic and shallot, then toss in cherry tomatoes. We get a whole s-load of volunteer cherry tomatoes every year. They migrate and move locations based on where the wind blew in the fall, but we eat them and they are delicious. This year they are next to my rose bush. So I salt and pepper them, and toss in the destemmed squash blossom. I drizzle a wee bit of balsamic vinegar in the last moments of cooking. I sometimes put spinach in too for a warm salad in September or October. For this particular batch, I served it over some spinach leaves. It was delicious.

At the same farmer's market, we bought some peaches and nectarines, and looks like they grew some fruitflies by today. Anyway, I'm sure y'all know what to do, but if not, I thought I would share what we do with fruit flies. I get a mason jar. Put the offending fruit in the bottom. Make a paper cone. Literally, paper rolled up and taped with a wee hole. Stuff it in the top of the jar. And you catch fruit flies. I think you can use balsamic vinegar if you have no fruit left. Then you take them outside and release them.

In other news, our concord grapes are freaking out of control. They are monsters. I am just anxious about the whole deal. I mean, last year, they were ready. I said to Sam. Tomorrow, I will go out and pick them, came outside the next day and the birds wiped our grapes out. This year, I have been eating ripe ones. I read that concord grapes do not ripen off the vines, so you basically HAVE to leave them on there until they are ready. Man, I want to pick them.

Also, we came down from dressing upstairs, and went to let Jack in, and he was proudly displaying the baby rabbit he killed in his mouth. Then Ride of the Valkyries popped into my head, and I felt like a shit. It was a very somber moment for Beezus and for me. I don't like my dog killing things, though he is getting quite adept at it. He has killed a squirrel and a groundhog and now, a bunny. Beezus asked to see it, and she said, "She was very little, mama. Her sister will be sad." And yes, I think her sister will be sad. So, we decided to bury the baby rabbit. Beezus made a stone for her grave. I said some words, like "In your next life, may you find a dog-free yard." And "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, may there be many carrots in the afterlife." We said the "Our Father" and "Hail Mary," tossed some dirt onto it and said good bye.

Sorry to end on such a somber note. Have an amazing weekend.

sofrito

2011-08-24T09:59:00.000-04:00

When people ask me what Panamanian food is like, I never know how to answer that question. It reminds me of this potluck dinner party I went to where everyone was supposed to bring a dish from the country of origin or heritage. Something they grew up with. I decided to bring platanos (plantains). In Panama, they are on the side of every dish. Either very ripe and sweet called maduros. We eat them with arroz con pollo or paella. Or green and unripe, which are double-fried and salted, like large chips, called patacones. We just eat them. With anything. In Puerto Rico, the green ones are called tostones. At any rate, I went to this party and my friend Kadi from Nigeria came with the same exact dish--maduros--prepared the same exact way.

Panamanian food is a little bit of everywhere, because Panama City is a hub between the New World and the Old World. People from everywhere came there to work on the Canal. My mother is one of twelve. I have forty-seven first cousins, fifty-nine second cousins and it goes on and on. My family, though, has a lot of women. Four of my cousins married brothers or cousins from another family in the same village. That family was from China. So, many of my cousins are Chinese. At parties, there was fried squid in hot Chinese spices and paella with all kinds of sausage and seafood. See, my grandmother's mother is from Spain and her father is from Italy. So we eat many Spanish dishes and Italian dishes. I would say that paella is the party dish we make at every gathering.

My mother cooked Panamanian food as well as Italian food for our family growing up. She also happened to cook a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch food, German food for those not in the know. (Pennsylvania Deutsch became Dutch at some point in history.) She learned to cook what she could find at the markets and my father's aunt was Pennsylvania Dutch, so she taught her everything about cooking German food. In the end, I learned how to cook a bit of everything, and then when I went off to college and became a pinko vegan, I learned how to cook vegan/macrobiotic. I actually worked as a vegan cook through the weekends and summers.

At any rate, this is a lot of background for the recipe I am sharing today, which is sofrito. Sofrito is the base of so many Latin American cuisines and dishes. It is like the Latin American mirepoix and bouquet garni. So, part spice, part veggie, part ingredient. I was so excited when I found frozen sofrito made by Goya. I was a corporate whore and barely had time to shop, let alone cook, so finding pre-made sofrito was heaven. I used it in everything. I must have used it for years before looking at the ingredients and realizing it was made with MSG. Why? I was so diligent about reading ingredients. It was surprising I had never noticed it. Could explain my addiction to it.

My mother used to buy sofrito from the Puerto Rican ladies in the biggest city near where I grew up. Sometimes she made it herself. There are many many different ways to make sofrito--Cubans have a recipe, Puerto Ricans, Panamanians. This is the one I like because it is basic and good on everything.

First find a little girl in a princess dress to pull the leaves off a bunch of cilantro. Remember stems make cilantro bitter. (Oh, Jen, sorry. I forgot about your cilantro thing. You can stop reading here.)

The recipe is four to six bell peppers, two onions, a bunch of cilantro, four or five plum tomatoes, one red pepper, ten to twelve cloves of garlic, a shitload of cumin, a dash of oregano and love. You can put a hot pepper in it, if you are so inclined. I cook for the childrens, so I don't add spice to it. Chop the shit out of it, then put it in the blender, food processor, or immersion blender. And blend the shit out of it.

It looks like this. Like pesto, now that I see it in this light. I then bag it up in individual sandwich bags. I have a ladle with cups marked on it, and I use about a half a cup of sofrito for each baggie.

Like this. Then I freeze it and pull it out. I use it for making fresh beans. I used it for meat for my husband--for burrito meat or for just meat like pork chops. You can add orange juice to it to do a pork marinade that is like a little bit of heaven. Very versatile. Hope you enjoyed this. It was a short one.

making staples

2011-08-22T17:18:00.001-04:00

Lately, I have been trying to make more pantry staples at home. Well, maybe not lately, this is sort of a morphing process over the last few years. I wrote about making yogurt a few weeks ago, and I have been doing that for a few years.

For example, Saturday, I ran out of mayonnaise, looked in my cook's companion book, and saw that it was incredibly easy to make mayo. And eh, voila, in a few minutes (literally less than ten), I had a whole terrine full of mayo. I will post a how-to make mayo next batch, if anyone is interested, I know some people get nauseated just looking at a dang picture of mayonnaise, but I don't. LOVE. MAYO. I only have a finished product picture.

Honestly, I think it is a combination of the fall-like lack of humidity, the open windows and the fact that the baby is not quite a baby anymore, and running and playing. I have time to do some extra weekly things. Most weeks, I hit the market, come home and make a sort of weekly batch of staples. I make yogurt every second week or so. But I get home with fresh eggs, I hard boil a dozen of them while I am unloading the market bags. I eat eggs, but no meat, so it serves as a quick protein source for me during the day. I also roast eggplant at the same time for baba ghanoush. It lasts, perhaps, two days in this house, since it is a favorite of mine. Maybe in the next few weeks, I will post my baba ghanoush recipe, since it is so delicious it will blow your freakin' mind, like this video.

One day, I popped over to my sister's house and she was making butter. She picked up a dairy cookbook--like how to make cheeses, sour cream, butter, etc. We ate gluten-free toast and homemade butter, and then another, and then another. Fresh butter is amazing. So, even though I don't have a standing mixer, or a blender (smoothies killed my blender and I am searching for a new one), today, I decided to give it a whirl. I figured it would only cost me the pint of organic heavy cream. The price differential between heavy cream and butter isn't significant, but the taste is worth it.

Making butter is so incredibly easy, I am a little embarrassed that I am writing about it, but I thought that for people out there like me, who thought it was magic, would like to know that it is easy and how to go about making it.

First, one pint of heavy cream in a bowl, like so. (Yes, I bit the pint of heavy cream open, because I am such a bad ass mother...shut your mouth.)

And you just start mixing it. This is hand mixer, but apparently standing mixers are easy, less fussy. I took my netbook into the kitchen and read some blogs while it was going.

It passes through a stage where it kind of looks like whipped cream, which I suppose it technically is, and then it gets a little lumpier. At this point, I was doubting it would ever be butter,

I'm still there. I forgot to mention NPR was on, so that helped. Alice Waters is going to be on Fresh Air today. Awesome. It was not too long, but I should have been better at timing it. I think this was about ten to fifteen minutes.

AND THEN ALL OF THE SUDDEN...

my wet heavy cream turned into butter with buttermilk pooling in the middle. I mixed it a little longer. Apparently, this whole process would have taken less time if I had let the cream come to almost room temperature. Whoops.

No worries. I strained it. In the bowl is fresh buttermilk. As in the expensive milk you can bake crap with, yes. You have to knead the butter at this point. You get slightly slimey, but in the name of butter, so it is totally worth it. I also cut in some salt, because I also love salt. It helps the liquid come out.

One pint of heavy cream made 3/4ths of a crock of butter. Yum.

Final product. Wee bit of buttermilk and a crock of butter. Perfection.

Hope you liked this. My next staple piece will be about making sofrito, which is a staple of Latin American cooking and is so friggin' awesome you will want to roll in it.

fingerpainting

2011-08-20T17:32:00.000-04:00

Beezus asked me to finger paint today while I was painting. I said sure. She knows how to set everything up and do it herself.

Thor asked me for something and I noticed that he was fingerpainting too, and perhaps was a little aggressive on the pink. We paint paper, baby, not our bellies.

Then the boy turned around to paint too, and I realized that Beezus actually finger painted Thor rather than him finger painting himself. He looks pretty tough with pink and orange.

Then he gave me this cute little smile, and his little panzita hanging over his chonies, and well, I bought him a firetruck and a pony. The reason I didn't notice that Beezus painted the baby is that I am painting this rather large painting for our house. It is our family. There are no faces yet, and my daughter finds that absolutely disturbing. But I am going to outline and draw faces in oil crayon so it has a crayon-y feel to it. It is two foot by four foot.

some hightlights from the week

2011-08-19T16:31:00.000-04:00

We have had a fun, productive week here at the ranch. Okay, we don't live on a ranch. We live in suburban New Jersey. But we have a dog that we wrangle. Sometimes.

Here are some of the cool projects we did this week. Well, Beezus is starting pre-K this fall. We have an incredible public school system. Graduating classes are a little under one hundred students. So each grade in elementary school is only one teacher, which is cool. Small classes. Lots of perks for individual attention. The only thing they asked the students to bring the first day of pre-kindergarten is a fabric tote bag 13"x13" or something. It said, "Available at Joann's. Personalize it however you want." I guess smaller hands don't do as well with backpacks and getting projects in and out. I was psyched. Hit the Joann's in my town. (We don't have much, but we have a Joann's!) I admit that I was a little disappointed with the selection. Basically, there were very little options--black or white. And then I found a three pack of blue, lime green and magenta for $8.99. Done. Two extra bags which will find a use in this house. Beezus told me she wanted a unicorn. Um, okay?

I suck at sewing. But I had a shitload of felt and I'm decent at sketching, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

She wanted it to be a pegasus/unicorn when it was all said and done. I don't know how I managed to bend the horn, but I did. It is bent from being in so many tough unicorn fights with griffins and shit.

I forgot to mention that one the way out of the Joann's she saw bling, like your name all blinged out and then a damn rainbow all bling-ed out. So I bought some crystal iron-on letters for her name. And dare I say, that I bedazzled the bag. Check that out, son. Real diamonds. Nothing too expensive for my girl.

So, then Thor kept snatching the satchel away and claiming it at his own. He even bit Beezus to keep her bling-ed out pink unicorn-pegasus bag and fill it with matchbox cars. So, then I remembered, HEY, I have a blue and green one. So I made him one that hopefully is bling-y enough.

DRAGON!

I still might bedazzle it with the name THOR in large diamond letters. Muy muy macho.

The next project we did was make ice cream without an ice cream maker. I suppose every one has already done this sort of thing, but it was new for me. So, here is how it goes--1/2 cup of chocolate milk (soy or cow.) Add one tablespoon of sugar. Mix it all up. Put it in a little baggie. Make sure the air is out of it. Seal it. In a larger plastic freezer bag, add ice. I used two trays. Then I put SIX tablespoons of salt. Then I added the baggie of chocolate milk. Then I added another tray with a few more tablespoons of salt. Then you send your kids for their winter gloves, and shake shake shake. (picture on the left.) For ten minutes. I ended up doing most of the shaking, to be honest. But Beezus loved eating her chocolate ice cream.

We also made a crown. Construction paper and odd stickers here and there. I took it in sepia and she covered her face like I am the dang paparazzi.

We did other things, but I can't quite recall them right now. We are going to start on our nature table next week, hopefully. Until then, with love. XO

candlemaking

2011-08-14T23:06:00.001-04:00

A few years ago, my stepfather's childhood home burned to the ground. It was devastating to go through the rubble. The house was an old General Store, and the first post office. When the doors closed for business, his parents just closed the doors, took out all the things that might stink and left everything as is. An old cash register. Some things we simply could not identify, others were left unscathed. I actually wrote about it on Glow in the Woods a few months ago. It was a piece that didn't get many comments, but I liked it. Mainly because the days of helping my stepfather were haunting and beautiful and left a very strong feeling of beauty, devastation, tragedy and loss that I ended up understanding more fully after Lucia died. If that makes sense.

As we catalogued every thing, we found things that were salvageable and my stepfather asked me to take some of the things. Strangely juxtaposed against the devastation of a complete home fire, I remember some pieces vividly, a toy school bus. A wagon. Boxes of jello. My stepfather gave me a box, completely untouched by fire and water. The box contained, ironically enough, all the equipment and needs for candle-making, probably from the 50s or 60s. It had a lot of smoke damage, but I took it. I had grand ideas of making candles for gifts. That was six plus years ago and I still haven't made one dang candle. It was raining today, and we were putzing around the house, trying to find things to do. I pulled all the candle crap out and you can see the smoke residue on everything.

The glass double boiler was always used for candle making, so I am keeping it solely for that use. There were about eight boxes of parrafin wax. And a few boxes of wicks.

I love this box. It is perfectly designed and beautiful. I am a sucker for any advertising from the fifties, particularly useful household item, like canning wax. It looks so exotic.

I cleaned up the double boiler, opened a package of wax, put it in the top and started the stove. I read virtually nothing about candlemaking before this enterprise, which was probably not the best idea. I figured how hard could it be. I have wax. Some wicks. A double boiler. Surely, I can figure this shizzle out, no?

See, that double boiler cleaned up quite nicely, no? Blocks of wax over blue flame. It felt right in the rain.

It takes a while to melt blocks of wax. And I did read, not so long ago, that wax catches on fire if it gets too hot, so you know, I hovered, taking pictures in various states of melt.I won't publish all of those pictures. They are like wax porn.

While I was waiting I took a photograph of a scale I recently purchased at the ReStore. It was one dollar and fifty cents. It is in metric (kg). I have no idea what I am going to use it for, but it looks cool as shit. Behold, the scale for less than two buck!

Whomp, there it is, melted and blurry wax. We are ready to make candles. Now what?

So, I lined a jellyroll pan with aluminum foil and got a mason jar or two, and poured in some hot wax. It was great. I put in the funnel, and it spilled everywhere covering me and the aluminum foil in hot wax. It was really awesome.

Then to add insult to injury, I started dipping. Dip a wick. Pull out. Wait a few seconds, redip. Nothing. Happened. Just a kind of wax-y wick.

I changed strategies, and took the jars of hot wax off the jellyroll, stomped around the kitchen, played with the kids, then picked up the foil, and pulled off the now-warm wax.

I created sheets, and rolled it around the wick to create a candle, or something shaped sort of vaguely like a candle might be shaped if it were made by blind, one-armed elves. Since it was still warm and malleable, it was easy to work with and gave me a false sense of arrogance and how fucking brilliant I am. I then dipped it in the hot wax, rolled it like playdough, so it would become more and more candle-y looking. It worked.

I took really terrible pictures of the procedure, but here is kind of what it looked like. They are kind of ugly, but I think they will work. Okay, they are absolutely hideous, like grotesque bastardizations of candles, but it sure was fun!

Then I put some now congealing warm wax in smaller containers to create votive candles, but before we wicked them, we tried to make wee little candles for our votive holders. Sam got involved. I love how he can work so delicately on little things. His candles looked like dipped candles. I am obsessed with little things, so little candles are awesome.

I poured the rest of my wax into containers, and wicked them. The big one I tried to add some dried flowers, but it really just looks like lumpy things are in it. I also used a beautiful river rock to weight the wick. That seemed kind of pointless after I did it. *sigh*

In the end, I made a bunch of ugly candles, which I will love using. I am definitely going to keep practicing my candlemaking, because it was a ton of fun, and also a good skill for the apocalypse. Thank you for making it this far. You deserve some kind of ugly candle for that.

some recent work

2011-08-14T18:19:00.000-04:00

This one is for a certain red headed babylost mama. Shhh, don't tell her. She asked me for it, and then I never followed up, so I am just mailing it to her. I don't think she reads here.

Trying to paint some jizos like pop art, but not digging how they are turning out. This one is 16"x20" and it was for a SHARE art auction. Back to the drawing board, me thinks. Or I don't know. What do you think?

This was the first one, and it is very dark and not appealing, so I am going to gesso over it, and paint something not babylost related, like a little girl who can fly for Beezus, or a unicorn. She loves unicorns.

jizopalooza

2011-08-10T17:15:00.001-04:00

So, you know, on International Kindness Day, I felt like I wanted to connect with Lucia as part of my kindness and then I ended up putting it out there on the My Face that anyone who commented on the thread would get a handpainted, original jizo from my tonglen for grieving parents and families. Yeah. So, I got twenty-three responses. Well, more actually, but some people said they already had one, which didn't matter to me, but still, twenty-five 4"x6" paintings. I began wondering what I was thinking. I did the first meditation session the first night, and you have all seen some of those paintings. But I realized when I sat down to do them in the next few days, that I kept obsessing about perfection and they were getting worse. I ended up not even photographing like eight of them.

I am a busy woman. Doing even one painting is a luxury these days, and here I was throwing out eight of them. Oy, vey. AND I had twenty-three to do. So, I decided to sit with it for a few days, and then I remembered the joy and calm I felt doing the mizuko jizo gesture paintings, which was the intention, to do the paintings as meditation and shed the self-consciousness of painting. That is Lucy's gift to me after all--to paint for healing, for joy, for calm, for peace, for suffering, for others. And so I meditated and painted this series of twenty-two mizuko jizo paintings for grieving women and men in our community and across the world. Each painting did not take very long, because I wanted it to be an instinct, a movement of my hand, like a jizo enso or something. A study in jizos. Mizuko jizos are supposed to be happy little bodhisattvas, but sometimes I make them contemplative or grief-stricken. I think when I am in the thick of suffering, but mostly, I make their expressions full of the love and joy I want to impart on the parent or family member who receives it.

If you don't know about tonglen meditation, it is a meditation where you literally take in the suffering of another being and blow out relief of the suffering for that person. Pema Chodron talks of it extensively, though I was first acquainted with it in therapy with a Buddhist therapist who suggested it as a way of understanding and forgiving my own grief. Because I know the pain of early grief, I connect with that feeling of chaos, anger, hopelessness, sadness, aching and blow out the compassion and peace that I have come to in my own life. So, my process is that I set my space up, clean it, light a candle or incense, literally a pillar of smoke, which rises like a prayer to G-d. Then I breathe in the suffering of the grieving parents. Sometimes this is an overwhelming feeling to take it into me, which sounds hokey and new agey, but whatever, ifyou have lived through that grief, you know the kind of oppressive weight it can feel in your chest, then I breathe out my own peace and compassion, and consequently, that helps me, because see I am one of the grieving.

Anyway, then I begin painting my jizos. In total, I did four sessions of meditation and painting over two weeks. Here are some pictures from this morning, when I hung them like prayer flags around my studio, and there is one of me posing in front of them with my new Android phone.

And here they are one by one.

So, this was my last day or so. Now I have to mail them off, which is a process but I am more than halfway there. Thank goodness for my mother coming this week to help me with the kids. I have been in the studio for days...love to all.

homemade yogurt.

2011-08-08T08:39:00.000-04:00

I know a lot of people make their own yogurt and it is not magic knowledge. But this is something I just started doing last year. I thought it was too hard, complicated, time-consuming, messy, then I tried it. It is quite easy. You just have to stay on top of your milk on the stove. SO, let me share with you how to make your own yogurt.

Basically, I always use a quart of milk. Usually 2%, but sometimes whole, because it is so sweet, you don't need extra honey. But then you have that extra fat. It turns out divine with whole, just sayin'. So, it is kind of essential to have a thermometer, preferably a candy thermometer. You don't want it to touch the side or bottom of your saucepan.

I decided to do this post after my yogurt was done, but this is actually a nice view of the candy thermometer. You want to heat your milk to exactly 185 degrees F. It takes a little bit to get to 175, but then it moves quickly to 185, so you really need to hover after a few minutes. This temperature is right before boil. If you go over that, your milk and conversely your yogurt, will have a burnt taste. So, be gentle, people. At 185, turn off the heat and let your milk cool until 115 degrees. At the same time I am doing this, I put a full teapot of water on to boil. Then I fill my thermal coffee carafes. That is where my yogurt will set. I used to just cover everything and put it next to my oven light, but it was spotty if it would set.

So, while all the milk is going, fill those carafes with boiling water. This gives the thermos a base of heat when you pour in your milk/yogurt. So, when your milk hits 115, mix in two tablespoons of yogurt at minimum, but you can use more. I use more. I generally start a batch by buying my favorite yogurt, which is usually Erivan. I just buy a little 8oz cup and add the whole thing to my warmed milk. And then I mix it with a spoon, or fork. There is no magic to it. Just add and mix. If it is lumpy, that is cool, just try to get it touching all your milk, if that makes sense. Then pour the milk into a carafe. I need to split it into two carafes. My sister does her in a cast iron pot, then covers it with its lid and puts it in the oven by her oven light, or in a just used still hot oven. Here is the thing about yogurt that used to turn me off. Let it sit for six to eight hours. Or overnight. Or for a long ass time.

In the morning, get a big ass bowl, and a big ass colander, and put them together. Line the whole thing with cheese cloth...

Like so.

Then pour your yogurt onto the cheese cloth, and eh, voila, see your progress. If you are trying to do this in like six hours, check before pouring. It may still be liquid. This batch I made at 4p and this is now 7a, so it sat in the thermoses for a while.

The reason for the bowl underneath is to catch the whey. If you don't care about the whey, then just drain through a colander into your sink. But sometimes I bake bread with the whey as the water of the bread, and it is amazing. So, whey can be substituted for water in recipes. Give it extra protein and tumminess. Don't get turned off by the green color. I also dumped by first catch of whey, so this is a second draining. See, I love Greek style yogurt and that is really just strained yogurt. You can choose not to drain it at all, and just eat it with whey. We all have bought yogurt and noticed the liquid on top of it after opening, that is whey. This process just minimizes that liquid.
I then spoon the yogurt into a French terrine container and store it in the fridge. I use it in a week or two. When it get to a point of being almost gone, I then make another batch using the bottom of this terrine. See how that works. One 8oz container of yogurt could theoretically last you forever. Also, you can use flavored yogurt, and the yogurt flavor or sugar will not affect the next batch.

Enjoy your next batch of homemade yogurt. YUMMY!

gnome pocket

2011-08-02T22:09:00.001-04:00

I have no idea when the gnome thing happened. Some neural pathway lit up straight to the magic center of my brain the first time I saw Wil Huygen's book Gnomes. It just had it's thirtieth anniversary, so I must have a seven or eight year old girl, and ruing the fact that we lived in a place without too many gnomes, as the map included showed me. All I know is that my mother wouldn't buy that book for me, so I studied it in the library. I wanted it.

One of the cool things about being an adult is buying the things denied you as a child. I now own Gnomes, and Secrets of Gnomes, a Gnome Christmas, and a bunch of other gnome books. (Take that, MOM!) I also own a pair of Doc Martens. My first pair of black Docs. My only other pair were a purple pair I bought off the discount rack at Zipperheads when I had my first waitressing job. I think I didn't pay my electric bill that month to buy them.

Anyway, back to the gnomes. The children are as enraptured with gnomes as I was as a child. After Beezus came into being, I rediscovered the magic of gnomes again. I think I first bought a garden gnome, then decided to refind the Gnomes book, and then it all went downhill from there. So garden gnome may be the gateway to CRAZY.

And so, I have combined my love of gnomes with the definite parental need of having toddler-friendly activities to occupy the kids while out in public. Beezus has always been pretty good when we go out to eat, and part of that is pure planning. I bring crap to keep her occupied before the food comes. Diaper bags are only so big, so everything really needs to be compact. So, I created what I call the Gnome Pocket.

I am truly, truly terrible at sewing, but I made this out of one sheet of felt. You know, the kind you buy at Joanns for 29 cents a sheet. It is recycled plastic or something. I have no idea. But I had some of this felt, which is 9"x12". I folded it with one end longer than the other, then blanket stitched the whole thing with orange embroidery floss. This took less than fifteen minutes to make. And as of now, it has lasted two point five years, or something. This is such a weird picture, but the felt is brown. I did needle felt a little mushroom on it, just for practice. Anyway, all folded and sewn like this makes it 9 inches by 5 inches, approximately, which fits nicely in a diaper bag.

The magical thing about this gnome pocket is what is inside it.

GNOMES! MUSHROOMS! FAIRIES! ACORN GIRLS! PEG GIRLS!

Okay, first off, the first picture has a rolled piece of felt in it. Another twenty-nine cent piece of felt, which is actually...

a campfire for the gnomes. I felted a few pine trees, some logs, and a campfire. Again, a quick creation. I basically fold it in half with the trees laying flat against the felt, and roll it. Awesome.

What else is in the gnome pocket? Well...

Two felted mushrooms,

Three peg girls, Daisy, Strawberry and Butterfly,

Four acorn babies--one for Beezus, one for Thomas, two of Lucia (I ordered a second one when one went missing/assumed eaten by Jack the dog, but then recovered.),

Two acorn fairies, one of Beezus and one of Lucy, and of course, it wouldn't be a gnome pocket without...

GNOMES!

When I first started creating a nature altar/table, I searched Etsy for nature table things, and came across this amazing shop called Painting Pixie, she handsews these little gnomes for each season. We intended on using them on our nature table, but then we started putting them in a little drawstring bag and taking them with us to play at restaurants and doctor office waiting rooms, and before you knew it, we had the whole collection of little beings to play with on the road.

I wish I could tell you that I created all these little things, but I didn't. I bought each of them. The acorn kids I bought from Dream Child Studio. We also have a few felted crowns, and other wonderful things from her shop, like the fairy ring. The little painted peg girls are from a shop no longer selling, but I loved them. I actually bought them for the girls' room when Lucia was in my belly and I was looking to commit to making their room more girly.

At any rate, the great thing about the gnome pocket is that it is light and soft, so it can be maneuvered in and around essentials in the diaper bag, and it is fun for kids of all kinds of ages. My nephew, age 9, plays with my daughter aged 4. And Beezus loves to pull it out to share with kids when she goes over to someone's house. We stuffed the gnome pocket in the bottom of her backpack on a long flight, and she made up all kinds of scenarios. Some days she just plays with the gnomes, other days with the acorn girls. All in all, though, it has been a lifesaver more than once. Gnome pocket, a perfect companion.

Random Act of Kindness Day

2011-07-28T17:29:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, July 27th, was International Kindness Project Day(tm) by the MISS Foundation. As most of you know, I am a MISS Foundation HOPE Mentor. A few weeks ago, I had the great fortune with another blogger and HOPE Mentor CLC to meet the Executive Director of the MISS Foundation, Kathy Sandler. She is a compassionate, loving soul and being with her was easy and wonderful. She invited me and CLC to tell our stories over some dinner with another non-profit director to explain why the MISS Foundation is so important. It was wonderful to be in a place where our birth stories are listened heard and our babies are honored.

This year, I wanted to do something special for Kindness Project Day, and I was drawing blanks all day. Beezus has been taking gymnastics camp all week from 9a to 1p, so this is kind of the lead up to pre-K, which she starts in the fall. (gulp.) She was fine. She walked into the room and didn't think about me again until I showed up waving on the other side of the window. Mama, on the other hand, was a little beside herself. If this week wasn't so dang busy, I probably would have been emotional. As it was, I couldn't wait to pick her up, scoop her up in my arms, and gobble her.

Yesterday, I suppose, I was a little emotional already when I dropped her off. Then Thor and I headed to Starbies for my first random act of kindness. I know STARBUCKS??! The Evil Empire of Coffee?!?! Go ahead, get indignant. Sadly, Starbucks plays a role in my grief as perhaps the only place I would go that wasn't absolutely necessary. Perhaps because it was a corporate, anonymous place where I could walk in, have a latte and no one was going to ask me about the baby. So, in that way, Starbucks kind of became a bit of a wooby. I should also add, apropos of nothing, that it was the first and only place I have gotten hit on after Lucy died. Yes, it was by a lesbian. And yes, it felt damned good, and helped my mood immensely.

Anyway, yesterday, I went in and asked for my iced latte, my sister's coffee, and a fifty dollar gift card. And when she was going through everything, and I was paying, I asked her if she could keep the gift card and buy the people behind me in line, and all the next few people who came in, coffee with it, until it was gone. And then I eeked out, "My daughter died, and I'm doing it in her name. Here are some cards to explain." And by that time, my voice was breaking up, and my hands were shaking, and I realized that even though I have said it many times, in many different ways, it sometimes still knocks the piss out of me to say that my daughter died, because some days I still cannot fucking believe that this is my life.

I ran out of there, even though the lady cried too, and gave me all my coffees for free, and doubled my giveaway, which they did last time I did this in a Starbucks, which is what is also cool about Starbucks.

I went to my sister's house to cry, and help her sew something, which got me out of my head. I am counting the helping sew as part of my kindness project, because I suck at it.

Then I called my husband and he told me it wasn't kind at all to just spend money on people, particularly money for our family. We had the discussion beforehand a few weeks ago, but I guess the fifty bucks came as a shock, because who spends fifty bucks at Starbucks? And why is it related to Lucy? And I just cried and hung up on him, and was feeling very not kindly at all. In fact, I felt like I caused more pain than not.

I came home and realized that I needed to do something for other grieving parents, and so I put a call on Facebook to paint free mizuko jizo altar paintings for anyone who wanted them. I received twenty-five requests, which is amazing. I started immediately last night, and began with my friends who lost their first baby Luna, and then between their second and third baby, they lost a set of twins all after twelve weeks. And both of them were so present for me after Lucy died, that it was an honor to paint for them. And really it is an honor to paint for everyone. It feels selfish that I should get to paint so many jizos and be in a state of meditation for so long. I am grateful for the opportunity to spread kindness and hopefully I inspired someone else to pay it forward in Lucia's name.

First five jizo paintings for International Kindness Project Day.

On Going Nuts and Play Stations

2011-07-26T15:06:00.000-04:00

When I first decided to stay home with my daughter Beatrice, people asked me quite frequently what I did all day. It was generally said like this: "What do you doooo all day? I would go nuts." I generally took it as a well-meaning question. One of genuine interest. To be frank, all of my friends were single, young, and didn't have any idea what you did with a kid for ten minutes, let alone 24 hours. Now when I am asked that question, I feel a surge of sympathy, which I don't mean condescendingly, but it is hard to think and be creative after you have been working in a corporation, or for other people, for so long. Your day is laid out clearly. You know what is expected of you. You get feedback. The reason I know this is because I wondered the same thing before I stayed home. I decided to stay home, but it seemed like it would be overwhelmingly boring.

The first few months of Beezus' life, I breastfed in front of the television. I watched daytime television programs over and over again. Television was my entertainment and staying home drove me nuts. It seemed impossibly impossible. And every day I thought, "Next week, I will go back to work." As Beezus got older, I turned the television off. I realized later that the early days felt like I was just on long weekend. I needed that period after birth to relax and zone out as much as possible. When I finally de-worked, I could see that life at home was going to be a beautiful, amazing, creative adventure.

One thing that staying home hasn't done is drive me nuts. It does the opposite. It makes me calm and gives me focus. Going out in the world makes me a little nuts now. It's so loud. People are rude. And I am a weirdo. The parenting nuances and philosophies my husband and I have adopted came about organically as we have learned to parent one newborn through four-year old, through the loss of our second daughter and into the birth of our third son who is turning sixteen months in a few days.

My husband and I didn't read a lot of parenting philosophy or dogma before we became parents. We did what felt natural, then gravitated towards philosophies like our own. We tend towards Waldorf toys and philosophy, because they tend to be simple and beautifully made and inspire creative play. One thing we were sure about it that we didn't want big bright red and blue plastic toys all over our house. Kids live here. That is obvious, but we didn't want to feel like only children live here.

I guess the other element of that is the noise of children's toys. My husband has degenerative hearing loss and wears hearing aids. Background noise upsets him. Life feels chaotic when there is some whirling dervish of a toy beeping and clicking and screaming and playing carnival music. It is so chaotic and uncomfortable. Being at houses with all that crazy noise make me feel claustrophobic, like I am suffocating by sound. When Sam and I first got together, I was someone who came home and turned on NPR for some background noise. So, being mindful of his hearing loss has taught me to turn off one thing before turning on the next. When we sit to eat dinner, all music, television and toys go off. When we sit to talk, we talk. We don't listen to music as well. When we listen to music, we don't play games, we listen. It has been very good for me, because I am a multi-tasker and it helps me to be present with the task at hand. Bea's little friend came for dinner one night, and during dinner she said, "It is really quiet here." And I hadn't thought about it before, but it is quiet.

But besides just the noise chaos we have quelled, we quelled the toy chaos by organizing our house into play stations, though we never intentionally called it that. That was something that also came about organically as I learned to stay home and introduce creativity into our daily lives. I dare say it is the thing that saved me from going nuts and kept our day moving and creative.

What I mean by stations is that there are areas in each room designated for play and that contain toys. Nothing was formally introduced to our children as, "Here, Children, this is the only place you may play. The other area is Adult Human area." Rather, we just kept all the toys contained in one place, and each room has a different type of toy/play. So, throughout our day, we move throughout the house. That keeps us from being bored.

In our living room, for example, there are two baskets stuffed with toys. One for Beezus' toys, and one for Thor's toys. There is also a Rody, and a wooden castle with some princesses, horses and knights. Both kids love both of those toys. I pulled out the Rody for this photograph, but generally, he is in his stable, which is the space between the red couch and the secretary. We also bought this sweater ball, which is easily made out of old sweaters. It is fun to kick and throw, and it doesn't hurt when you get nailed in the nose. So the kids feel free to play ball in the house.

This bookshelf in the living room is one most people don't notice. It is under one of our sidetables. But it contains the homeschooling and craft books I have collected. When we feel bored, we pull one out and pick an activity. The best books I have on that shelf are Celebrating the Great Mother, which has seasonal based spiritual activities and crafts, and The Kids' Nature Book, which is 365 activities for kids for outside. That book is listed by every day of the year, and is dictated by a Northern Hemisphere weather system and seasonal nature book. We try to follow it a few times a week when we are interested in an outside activity. Celebrating the Great Mother also has guided meditations for children, which my daughter LOVES, perhaps more than anything else we do during the day, and ways to customize seasonal altars, which we do. Guided meditation with children is a wonderful way to inspire storytelling and imagination as well as calm them throughout the day.

Around the fireplace is our music stations, which is a big basket of instruments. See, it's not that we don't like noise, we just need to do it mindfully, and purposefully. Every day, we play music at some point. Beezus has taken two Music Together classes, and the CDs from those classes are great for leading our music time. Our favorite song is The Earth is Our Mother, which is the hippiest song in the world, but the kids just love to play drums to it. I haven't gone out and bought every instrument together, but have sort of amassed them over the years.

When I took the picture of the basket, I decided to lay out all the things in that basket. Lots of stuff fit into it, and it is great to have an open space for the kids to reach in and play music whenever they like. We also love the play scarfs, which we bought on Etsy. We dance to some of the instrumentals on the Music Together CDs, and use the scarfs to dance, for picnics, for superhero costumes, for our altars...if you don't have play scarfs, get some. You won't be disappointed. Give a kid a scarf and see what happens, because that is what creativity is about.

The play kitchen is unsurprisingly in our own kitchen/dining room area, and the kids make dinner when I make dinner. We also have a shopping cart for them to use the area like a market. Kids of all ages love playing in pretend kitchens. I think the great thing about play stations is that I don't micromanage my kids' play. I merely move from room to room to do my daily chores and duties, and they switch gears to play. It also makes clean up so easy, because we use a lot of all purpose baskets, so we can sweep everything up and put it in the basket and return it to its corner. Our shopping cart works in that way for our kitchen area. I do find wooden eggs in my pots and pans, but in general, the kids are good about keeping toys with toys.

My art studio has a ton of kids art supplies, puzzles, legos, games, and other stuff. I see a clock on the floor for learning time, and a piano and the play phone. There is so much here, because sometimes I need to paint commissions and don't have a babysitter. So, we all hang out together, and they can explore their own worlds.

I also have a little easel for them and a table to draw and do crafts. We sometimes move the easel into the basement, then bring it back up in a few months. This space is a space that can get splattered with paint, glitter, glue and mess and there is no screaming. It is a mess-welcome space. I think that encourages mistakes and true art.

Even our guest bedroom downstairs has a play element, it has a trunk filled with costumes. This area is actually the side of my son's crib. We removed it to create a day bed for him. I took the crib, and turned it 90 degrees, and use it as a costume rack. Beezus has a lot of different kinds of princess costumes and play things, and this is great when she is having a playdate, so the little girls can look through the dresses.

Lots of hats, bonnets, and hoop skirts in that trunk, which gets stuffed and closed when we have company. It doesn't look like the children go into that room at all when company is arriving. Though, funnily, my mother came to stay one weekend, and turned down the sheets, and Beezus' little stuffed elephant was in a sling taking a nap.

In the basement, where our washing machine is, we have toys that we received that blink and make noises, and the kids love going down for chores, because they can play with new toys, or old toys that have been forgotten, or are just a little below their age level. In their room are books, and baby dolls, and stuffed animals. All in all, there isn't one area of the house that doesn't have something to play with, and there is no area, save their shared room, that there isn't an adult element to. Even the bathroom has a basket of Schleich animals that they play with in the bath and beyond.

I guess to wrap up, part of what makes staying at home wonderful is giving yourself the freedom to figure out what makes you nuts and preventing it. I hate clutter and noise, so I got rid of the noise, and solved the clutter problem with play stations and baskets. I still step on little toys, and as you can see in the pictures, some toys end up in the dress-up area, and costumes end up in the music basket, but before I set up my house this way, I was going nuts collecting all the toys to move them to one area with toys. Hope this is helpful to someone. I would love to hear about your experience figuring out some of this stuff.

Coming Along

2011-07-20T07:48:00.000-04:00

Paintings.

2011-07-18T11:48:00.000-04:00

Did I mention that my work is going in a show next January at the Mulberry Art Studios in Lancaster, PA? I am starting working on some pieces. I'm doing a series of my girl with stillborn baby. I guess I started painting them because I felt like a three year old, and also like a fifty year old woman. I recreated my She is not an Angel piece on a 16"x20" canvas in acrylic. It was originally 4"x6" watercolor. I want them to be really graphic and poster-y and japanimation-like. But they say all the things I wanted to say but could never articulate to people. I hope they resonate with people.

chai concentrate

2011-07-14T12:43:00.001-04:00

Perhaps everyone already knows how to make fresh or homemade chai concentrate, and I was the only sucker out there buying bags of floor blend chai, steeping it for too long, then drowning it in cream and sugar. It is amazing how much taste paper has when you have bagged tea. Must. Buy. More. Loose. Tea.

Needless to say, during the summer, I really don't even make bagged chai tea for myself because the whole icing process takes so dang long and gets watery, and meh. I'll just drink iced coffee. Yes, yes, I know I can buy chai concentrate at the market, but it always is too sweet for me.

Last week, I went on vacation with my in-laws, and my sister-in-law showed me how to make chai from scratch. Well, chai concentrate. I was hooked on a feeling--of chai. I can warm it without losing taste, or just pour it over some ice with a bit of milk and call it an afternoon (caffeine boost).

So, let me just preface this entire post by saying that whenever I say that I want chai, I think of that Kajagoogoo song, Too Shy, except I change the words to "Too Chai Chai". I blame my wacky sister for that one. But just so you know this is what is going on my head right at this moment.

You're too chai chai. Hush Hush. Ay?You?Ay? Eye To Eye? Eye Ooooo I? I do AYE!

If you have any ideas what that last line of the refrain is, I would appreciate insight. The hair in that video, and the dancing for the love of all that's holy, my Lord. Remember, kids, prolonged cocaine use results in that. Just. Say. No.

That was my PSA today.

Alright, onto chai. Firstly, I consulted Le Google for other chai recipes/ideas, and people are very passionate about the correct and proper Indian way to make chai. I just like how it tastes, and thusly, I make it in a way that reflects no tradition or ritual. I just make it.

So, the herbs and spices for chai are cinnamon, black pepper (now, I am thinking of Cibo Matto's White Pepper Ice Cream, who incidentally, I saw in 1994 and they were wearing silver spacesuits with skirts while they performed. I heart Cibo Matto. I should have linked them instead of the too chai chai song.) So, let's just pull out the mortar and pestle and talk about ingredients in there:

One cinnamon stick snipped with kitchen shears.
Some (I used six) whole tellicherry black peppercorns
One star anise
Three pods of cardamom
Six whole cloves
Two bay leaves

I then ground it together, roughly, but still mortar and pestled the shit out of it.

I then put it in the linen tea bag, which actually is a bouquet garni bag from the kitchen store. I used about six cups of water in a saucepan. I sliced fresh ginger, about 1/4" of it and put it loose in the water (I can pull those out fairly easily, unlike all the other spices). I put it on a pot to boil. Your house smells awesome, if an awesome tea isn't incentive enough.

Once it began boiling, I started my timer for about five minutes. After the five minutes were up, I turned off the heat and added my loose organic assam tea in one of those metal tea infusers. You can use any black tea. I have read on some websites that you absolutely are not to use leaf tea for chai (there is an Indian pellet type tea as an alternative), but I think it tastes good. I used two tablespoons in a tea infuser. Steep for ten minutes. After removing the tea and spices, I added sugar to taste. I use raw sugar for everything, so my measurements might not match yours. And incidentally, if you don't have all these infusing helpers (linen bags/infusers), you can put them loose in the water, then run them through a strainer. I just am not too coordinated with that type of pouring. As it was, I spill a quarter of my chai when getting it into a mason jar.

I use mason jars for just about everything and my chai concentrate is no different. I couldn't pass up hot, perfect chai tea even on a 95 degree day, so I had a small mug with 3/4 tea, 1/4 milk, because that is how I roll. But only you really know how much cream you like. Experiment. Next batch, I may add some vanilla bean. Holy cow, that sounds good.

This is what I am enjoying as I sit and write this post--iced chai tea with half and half. Yummikins.

Crayons and other stuff

2011-07-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I should transform this blog into our home crafting, Angie-art, weekly goody blog. You know, I make a lot of stuff at home that I used to buy and we craft our asses off. Anyway, I didn't paint much on this past vacation. I tried, but it wasn't in me. I did get motivated to make some stuff around the house, like baba ghanoush with freshly roasted eggplant, a large batch of garbanzos to make a ton of hummus, goat's milk yogurt and other stuff for the kids. I am going to bake some dog biscuits this week, since I have never done that and the dog misses being at my mom's place. Must. Win. Love. With. Food.

Before I left, I was packing and Thor wouldn't be put down, so I had the laptop and googled "scherenschnitte waldorf stars with kite paper." See, I have the kite paper. And the scissors. And I like waldorf stars. I finally found what I was looking for, but the page was in German. I used Google Translate feature, which is a godsend, and made it with Bea, while Thomas slept on my back. I guess I probably could have packed, but I really was mostly done, just needed to double check crap, and I didn't want to be bothered. I can definitely snip and glue stick with a kid strapped to my back.

Please ignore my overgrown flower beds. I almost mowed them yesterday and called it even.

I love the way it looks like stained glass. Black cardstock and kite paper, though I think you could definitely use tissue paper. Kite paper, though, is more like vellum, and stands up to a lot more abuse than tissue paper, and with the way Beezus cuts, you need abuse-friendly paper.

Today's morning project was making some new crayons from some old ones. I read this on my friend Miri's blog Here We Are Together. Funnily, I just clicked over to check the link, and she has tissue paper stars over there too. Her blog is beautiful and creative. She's a homeschooling mama, and explores all kinds of beautiful crafts.

So, this is what I started with a tupperware filled with half bits of crayons. I also had a mini muffin tin, which is here on out going to be designated as the crayon tin. Even though the crayons are all non-toxic, I still don't want my mini-muffins to taste like crayon, or my crayons to have any weird muffin attributes.

I peeled most of the paper off the crayons which still had paper. I also found some chalk, which was a score for the Beezer. She thinks chalk is cool. Then I put it in color order, which I am wont to do. How in the name of all that is holy did I end up with so much orange? I did have all the purple lumped together, then I realized that there is a blue-violet and just a violet. I separated them out before their unnatural mixing left us with a blue-violet-violet. The horror.

I took the broken pieces and added them to the tins. Some of the colors had very few broken pieces, so I broke them all by myself. I read that you should spray the pans with some kind of oil/non-stick spray, but I forgot, and this pan is non-stick. I didn't have any trouble getting them out, but just thought I should share that.

Bake at 275 degrees for 7-9 minutes. I went with the seven minute time frame and still had some lumps, but they are crayons, not mini-muffins. They look fine. Lumps doesn't really matter in the end, I wouldn't think. It absorbs into the crayon. I mixed them and the lumps disappeared. It also occurred to me that you could probably use candy making molds, which come in fun kid shapes, like cars or cats or something. Beezus received some crayons "rocks" from Santa, and I think we could probably make all kinds of cool shapes.

I stacked them for effect when they cooled. I know you can fridge them to cool faster, but it was only ten-fifteen minutes before I felt comfty getting them out. They were the perfect size for Thor to color with. He is a little, uh, violent with the crayons, so this seems perfect for him. (Please ignore the fact that Thor changed the order of yellow and orange. It is disturbing me in this photo, even though his cute tootsies are making up for it.)

Bea liked rolling her new pink crayons, and watching what happened. I liked how you could cover large swaths of paper easily with the side of one.

We had a ton of crayons left over, so I made another batch of mixed color ones, like red, orange and yellow. This is my second batch. And please do not be alarmed by the molten wax all over everything. That was my own dang fault for pulling them out all hot like they were, in fact, muffins rather than molten wax. Gentle is not really in my nature.

This craft was awesome, easy and quick. I also think you can do them in the microwave with paper cups. Probably google-able. I am doing this with all the nubs I can find. I just loved how they turned out and how easy it was.

mindjar

2011-07-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

This post originally appeared on my blog still life with circles on april 25, 2011 called meditating with the childrens.

I don't usually do posts like this, but I write fairly often on here about meditation and Buddhism, and meditating with my children, and so, today, I was thinking that maybe I should do a post about my experience with teaching Beezus to meditate and what that has been like. Teaching meditation to my children has taught me more about meditation. I like what Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it." So, if you struggle with finding a moment of calm, maybe this can help you too. I frequently use the same techniques when I meditate that I teach my children.

When Beezus was a year, I bought a book called Baby Buddhas, which is meditation techniques for children. And it has been an amazing resource. I just didn't even know why anyone would teach children meditation. Or really how they could do that. Meditation is difficult for most adults. But now I actually think it is much easier for children. If we can set them up for finding ways to deal with their stress later in life, awesome. Basically, know this starting out, you are not meditating, the children are meditating. So, you will guide them. It is relaxing, but not your meditation. You are helping them stay in the moment. So, think of this as learning how to guide meditation for your children. If I begin meditating with Beezus, and she is unfocused, I just stop and ask if she'd like to try again later, or what we can do to focus.

I had an adult colleague, who used to use similar techniques on herself. Guided meditations, that is. She read them out of a book. She recorded them on her computer with her webcam, then made mp3s out of them, then put them on her Ipod and listened to them at lunch. I think she did the same thing with yoga workouts for the gym, since in the moment, she felt silly and forgot which move was next. I always thought that was an awesome technique.

Oh, right, the childrens. We sit cross-legged on the floor in a circle, or Beezus sits on my lap. She most frequently sits on my lap when we do guided meditations when she is upset, or exhausted and having a hard time. Sometimes I guide her on walks through the woods, to meet a spirit animal. I know it sounds hokey, but kids love that they can be a player in a story we create, and she turns the corner and tells me the animal she is feeling most like. That meditation is incredibly insightful into the place my daughter is at mentally and emotionally. When she is feeling like a giraffe, or a panda bear, or a tiger, I understand what she feels like a little better. Alright, totally hokey, but it works.

So, here is a basic meditation. We often start with a meditation gong, or bell. The meditation gong we picked up at the new age bookshop in Philly, and it was less than ten bucks, and well well worth the money spent. I try to make meditation fun, interesting, a time of finding strength and renewal, not a burden. So, I have the meditation gong, which both Thor and Beezus ring. I often catch Thor at the altar, ringing the gong on his free time. Children are attracted to music and beautiful sounds, so that helps to get them interested in this time. I change who rings it, and sometimes they both ring the start of meditation. One right after the other. Who cares? There are no rules, so make it fun as you go through it. What works for your family is most important.

Thor is a little young, but he likes to climb on us when we meditate and it is fun to try not to move or giggle when he is exploring us. That is a form of meditation and focus that is good and fun for kids to learn too.

The guided meditation I use most frequently is just guiding her breath and learning gratitude. So, first, we sit in a circle with the gong. And I say something like this, "Let's cross our legs, sit up straight, smile, wiggle our toes. We are having a fun meditation for compassion and to give thanks. First, let's imagine ourselves like trees, our back extend down down down into the earth, the spine, which is the hard bone in your back, goes into the ground, and sprouts roots, and soaks up all the goodness and strength from the earth, and then your head will move upwards towards to clouds, to capture the rain. We are a big tree. sturdy and strong, and ready to watch the world around us. Now, we start to mind our breath and slow down. We will breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in love. Breathe out madness. GONG. Breathe in love. Breathe out sadness. GONG. Breathe in love. Breathe out badness. GONG. I am so grateful we are here together in this circle, listening to this bell. Let's breathe quietly for a few moments, then when you hear the gong, you can open your eyes." And in about a minute, I ring the bell. That is it. You can go as long as your child can handle it, but I try not to overextend my daughter's patience. Short and sweet, and sometimes she asks to do it again, so we do.

Today, we created mind jars, from the book Moody Cow Meditates. It is about a cow who has a bad day and his grandfather comes to help him deal with his anger and mixed up feelings. So, they create a mind jar, and use it to focus on meditation. It is really easy to make. Basically, you get a jar--spice jar, baby food size, or even a mason jar. First, put some glitter in the jar. Little glitter is better than like star glitter (which is heavier), but either works. Fill the jar 3/4ths full with warm water, then the rest of the way up (with some room for shaking) with glycerin. You can get glycerin for really cheap at the craft store, or grocer. It is used in baking to brighten up icing color, so they sell wee little jars of it, which is perfect for this craft. After the glycerin, add four drops of liquid soap. Put the lid, tightly on the jar, then shake it. It is essentially like creating a snow globe, but you can help you little one pick colors, make it their own. The goal is that when they are feeling out of control, they shake the jar, then sit and watch the glitter settle in the water. It is like our minds when we are angry, frustrated, things feel impossible--our minds and emotions are all shook up. I help Bea stare and not stare at the jar, that middle gaze. When the glitter settles, we finish our meditation. This one is a really great technique to use in lieu of timeout. When our minds are shook up, we can easily get shaken up again, and that is what the jar is useful to show, how our emotions can be shook up and crazy, but we don't have to shake the jar. Beatrice loves her mindjar, and it works great to help calm a crazed kid.

Hope that was useful for someone out there. If anyone has any questions for me about meditation, or anything else really, just put it in the comment section here. I am trying to write more and could use inspiration.

*This post was edited to add to add some pictures. After I wrote this, I thought maybe you'd like to see what a mind jar looks like and the meditation gong. We made two yesterday. One for upstairs and one for down. The shorter one was shook up right before I snapped this picture. You begin meditation with the gong, but gently hitting the side of the bowl, the bigger the bowl, the longer the ring. And you stay quiet until the end of the bowl's sound.

6.10.11

2011-06-10T11:44:00.001-04:00

Holy cannoli, it has been almost a month since I have posted on this blog. I am sorry. I have been painting most days. I went through a short dry patch some weeks ago. Here is some of the work I have done in the last few weeks:

A few weeks ago, while I was talking with someone on the phone, I doodled this lady with a watercolor pencil or two I found in my desk, then painted her with sparkly water I was drinking. Then I outlined her in ink. I liked her very much. It occurred to me that I should try painting her on a bookmark, since she made me happy. I guess, partially, this is how I have been feeling lately--all full of joy and love. Then, I painted this card for my friend Kate's shower gift. It works with pregnant ladies too. So, that made me happy.

Other work:

once a mother gave away one of my paintings on her blog, and it was this one. It is 6"x9".

I was also invited to participate in a show in January, and I will be creating this in acrylic 16" x 20". I am so psyched about it I could spit. Ooops, just did.

Meditating Mama for Angie.
Angie and I share a birthday and a name, and a bunch of other stuff, including losing a child in the same way. She is pregnant with her rainbow baby, so I painted a rainbow around her, with gold leaves to represent her beautiful son, and a butterfly for the new little one.
4"x 6" and watercolor.

Mediating Mama in traditional Buddha art style.
Watercolor.
4"x 6"

This piece was commissioned on my Etsy site. She wanted both the sky and the aura, and so I was reminded on the traditional Indian/Tibetan works of Buddha with the orange and yellow aura, and tried it with the meditating mama. I liked the way it turned out.

5.19.11

2011-05-19T15:49:00.001-04:00

Trying to update this space more frequently, since it is neglected and at night when I am trying to fall asleep, I can hear it whimper.

Meditative Jizo.
6"x 9"
Watercolor.

As you may or may not know, I sell my work on Etsy right here. The Kenna Twins.

5.16.11

2011-05-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

Been painting here and there, and posting some new items on my Etsy site. Hoping to generate some new custom work, because I am in a funk of inspiration. I need things spelled out for me, because I am both dim and tired. I guess I'm not really in a funk at all. I'm painting, right?!?! I just feel like I am pulling every painting out of me with pair of tweezers, which is tedious and painful.

Here are some things I did yesterday.

Joyful Mizuko Jizo.
6" x 9"
Watercolor

Meditating Mama.
4" x 6"
Watercolor.

Yesterday, I also made some sculpty sculptures with my daughter. A one inch sushi, a little calavera and a mizuko jizo. We baked them and eh, voila, instant window sill additions.

New work

2011-05-11T19:09:00.000-04:00

May

2011-05-05T08:41:00.001-04:00

I haven't posted because I haven't been painting and it had been weighing on my soul. Arguing with my inner muses and self-doubt. I owed people paintings from a giveaway that I held in, gulp, February. I just couldn't meditate in that creative space, and so I let them go until I could. Finally, I just had to put a brush in my hand so my ass and head would follow. I started on Tuesday evening when my husband came home from work, and began painting and it flowed, and I wanted to paint more. I painted until 1a, then woke up and began painting again until I had to leave the house, then came home and finished the paintings I had sitting there. In total, from Tuesday until this morning, I painted eight illustrations. Some were watercolors I had to do over again until they were what I wanted, but here is a sampling:

2011, hello.

2011-01-29T19:58:00.001-05:00

I am so terribly sorry for ignoring this blog. I actually have been painting or sketching or journaling most days. Not all great, but I also have been trying to let go of those good and bad judgments and just create to free my mind. I have been in quite a state, personally, so art for art's sake is incredibly liberating. I actually led a workshop on the creative journal on January 22nd, and it was an incredibly powerful experience. The participants were grieving women, a grieving father, two grieving grandmothers (one of which was my mom) and my beautiful twin sister. (I'm not just saying she is beautiful because she is my twin.) I am really excited to find opportunities to lead more women in this process.

Anyway, I have been doing a lot of illustrations with watercolor. I finally uploaded some of those works, and so here are a smattering:

I just did this one today for my friend Janel of her sister, brother in law and niece and nephew dogs.

This one is for my sister's sister in law's daughter. Cheebus, that sounded complicated. I realized that I hadn't given her a gift for Christmas. I did an illustration for her room for her baby shower, and thought I would paint something for her now that she is 19 months, or so. No, she doesn't have a cat, but I like drawing little girls with cats. Sue me.

This is one I painted the other day when I was feeling down of me and the children. I saw a painting on Etsy that I loved of a woman with a striped dress and a boy, and I wanted to paint myself with the children, so I kind of combined the two. Is that stealing? I don't know. I don't mean to steal, beautiful Etsy painter.

I miss Art Every Day Month and the whole ritual of painting a painting everyday. Did I mention that that month of painting, I did not open ONE tube of paint? I used all my dried paint and rearticulated it. I thought I should mention that. Anyway, I have been writing a children's book in my head. Well, actually, it is a story I tell my daughter some nights when she asks for it, and I have wanted to illustrate it. And I have another half-assed, uh, I mean, half-written. I am going to try to illustrate them this year. We'll see how that goes considering I have the attention span of a gnat on six espressos. I also miss all of you. I see knitting has welcomed in the new year, and I love love love it, though I can't knit. I just like seeing knitting. Bye.

Creative Every Day 2010

2011-01-07T11:37:00.001-05:00

Art Everyday Montage at OneTrueMedia.com

2010-12-01T10:59:00.002-05:00

For Art EveryDay Month hosted by the lovely Leah, I chose a word each day that encapsulated my mood or day. I then painted a 5" x 5" watercolor, which is now a book. I also finished and completed NaNoWriMo, which is why all the writing paintings at the end of the month. Here is my month in watercolor. Enjoy.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

day twenty-four #aedm2010

2010-11-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

One day, I may have a normal looking watercolor picture here. I have so much to do, I can't quite believe I am blogging this right now, but five minutes won't destroy everything, will it? I may look happy here, but paintings are deceiving. I need a butler monkey. Even if he couldn't bake, still, we would have a monkey.