Homemade Play Clay

We used toake this for the other kids and I just thought of it today. Classic recipe, but I will post it anyway. Of coarse ours is kinda organic-y looking since all I had was whole wheat pastry flour and olive oil...there is room for improvisation, needless to say.

Stove Top Playdough
--from Vicki Lansky's book "Feed me, I'm yours"
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp cream of tartar
1 cup water
2 tsp food coloring
1 tbsp oil
(I made 1 1/2 times this recipe, held the food coloring out till the end, split the dough in half and did two colors)
Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat 3-5 minutes. It will look a globby mess, but as soon as it forms a ball in the middle of the pan, it's done. Flip it out onto the countertop and knead it until it is softer and cooled off slightly. ( this would be the point where I divided and kneaded in the food coloring. the paste kind makes darker colors. I also kneaded in some almond extract to make it smell less flour-ish.)
See, easy peasy. If you have the ingredients, it takes like 5 minutes and is much more pliable than store playdough.



-- Post From My iPhone

A Big Girl Room Remodel

The baby girl is getting bigger and bigger by the day, unfortunately. She is now completely potty trained--day and night. She has felt free to climb out of her crib and wander at her leisure for some time now. And, let's be honest, I never really "decorated" her room the first time. We bought one pack of vinyl pink sticker thingies to put on the wall and a fancy bedding set from Babies'R'Us and that was about it. We didnt even repaint the loft turned nursery for her arrival (LAZY).
So, it is the time!! On my first excursion to Atlanta to visit my sis, we hit the ever-fabulous Ikea. I had been looking for some color inspiration for this potential room and found a great comforter cover there. A few accessories to match and we were out of there for less than $50. Deal of the century. Add onto that another $35 in paint and about $20 in odds and ends and it brought me in just barely over $100 for the entire project....well, that and about 2 days of my time, but I will give her that for free.

This was the starting wall color with sticker things still in place. Obviously we had already started dismantling things. We are messy, but not quite this bad!


Now, I am going to start right here and now and say that I blatantly stole lots of ideas straight off the internet and particularly etsy. There are some of the cutest wall decals on etsy, for pretty reasonable prices, too. But, not within my budget and frankly it is easier for me to just wing it with a paintbrush than to actually take the time to order anything. I am a big proponent of "you can always paint over it".
So, here goes.
All things start with a proper tape job.

And a new wall color (BAM!!).


And so, we begin the design portion of our show.....
Gigantic branch coming out of the wooden wall.

Embellishment of said branch.

Add a little branch on the other side for symmetry....we MUST have symmetry...

Hmmm, perhaps i forgot to mention the red stripes on the back wall......oops.....we like some two-tone rooms around here...

Anyway, must tie the red stripes into everything else. The poppies were kindof an afterthought....also stolen from etsy....I was getting a little over-swirled with the branches. I had planned for some kinda graphic swirlyness under the window, but changed at the last minute.


Now this "over-doing it" portion of our show....the mural branch was lacking something. I decided it was a worm....and a crown on the bird.

A valance and some ribbon over the existing curtains.

And finally, some linens and a handmade bedskirt added to a bed made of two footboards so it is low and my baby wont fall far when she tumbles out in the middle of the night.

Oh, and a gigantic orange bolster and the cute night light lamp from ikea. And the handpainted sign from Aunt Katelyn.

Ta-daaaaaa....


Here she is trying it out for the first time....she seems a little freaked....

......sharing her spot with the big bro....

....oh, did I mention the awesome green sheets....oops.....

...fake sleeping....

.....fake sleeping only lasted for seconds, then the jumping began....


I know she is bad! There is no covering it up. But, she is like the cutest thing ever, so what am I going to do?!

The End!!

Ollivander's - Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. (a tutorial)

Caris is on a big Harry Potter kick these past couple weeks. The Sorcerer's Stone is pretty much running on a loop in the living room and she is giving lectures to me about Dumbledore and the "cat that turns into a lady". 

Also, at every opportunity she is casting spells on me that will either open me up (alohamora) or make me float (wingardium leviosa)--all performed with either a stolen wand from her brother or any random stick she comes across.  As anyone who knows me is well aware, I am incredibly proud of my baby. She is awesome.  Not every two year old in the world is capable of mastering "swish and flick" with such panache, put a proper wizard needs a proper wand...

So, now we come to the crafty portion of this post. Admittedly, I overdo things to the nth degree....that is a given at this point.....

These are the supplies. Total cost = $5.  That is just one dowel chopped up.  The little things on top were mini candle holders that I sawed the base off with a miter saw (can you say protective goggles).

Then--again, I overdo--I embellished them with a woodburning tool (and also burned 3 holes into my shirt which is unrelated to this project).


And finally, color and finish. Caris handpicked metallic purple for hers, Jack requested gold and I made the blue for Julia just to be funny. It is her favorite color and I made it tiny so she can carry it in her purse....she will be thrilled, I'm sure. The other is just an extra to use up the dowel.


The older kids already have proper wands from previous birthdays/Christmases, but who can't use an extra?! Am I right?! And they are personalized!
This is Caris's first of her very own, though, and she is loving it up!!


;o)

IKEA=awesome!!

We went to Atlanta this weekend to visit with the sister and bro-in-law. They just moved there so they don't yet have a handle on all the city amenities, but I knew I wanted to hit IKEA.



The girls headed there on Sunday while the boys went gocarting and buying blanco zapatos ( long sorted story). It was terrific as ever and I managed to escape for less than $150--which I thought was pretty good.
Caris is in need of a new big-girl room so we shopped for that...very successfully. This pic isn't what we got but is one of many many beds Caris tried out.


We got recyling bins, a coffee carafe, a giant mug for Julia, and a clip on bedlamp for Jackson, and a couple of gifts I was needing in the near future. Good haul.
I should have gotten some whisks because I do love a whisk.




-- Post From My iPhone

Guide to Mommy Porn

May i just say that my husband proudly sent me this--and even recognized the Outlander reference having never read the book..... Considering that this is 2009 and not 1709, that is damn near as good as him giving me some bad guy's head in a sack!!! Then they have....well you know how it ends....

Vicki Iovine: Girlfriends' Guide To... Mommy Porn: What We're Really Fantasizing About

Tudor Houses are Awesome

Anyone who knows me knows my love of all things English-y. I have a particular adoration of wonky Tudor houses. They are also called half-timbered houses or timber frame, but to me they are just Tudor ala King Henry.
We in America have a version of these....they have it in England too....that is called Tudor revival. Drive through some fancy neighborhoods-and even some not so fancy ones-and you will see the decorative trim that is on gables that is a throwback to the real thing. These houses are not authentically timbered but have trim styled like they are--there is no relation from inside to outside of the house. I am not hating on these...they are cute and I like them fine, but that is not what I am talking about here.

In true, ancient half timbered houses, the entire house was made with a timber frame. There are no studs inside the walls like modern construction. The builder made a giant frame for the house out of big heavy timbers and pegged them together. In between the beams the space was filled with rocks, bricks, rubble, sticks or anything they could come up with to fill in the space and then they "stuccoed" over the filler. The walls were as thick as the beams they made them out of and the beams were exposed on the inside and outside of the house. This is what an authentic wall was filled with....minus the glass frame, obviously....


There is modern timber framing....I live in a modern timber framed house. Kinda the same as the authentic, but not really. The whole "filling the walls with junk and stuccoing over it" thing is not very modernly energy efficient. This is what a modern timber frame looks like while being built....this is mine....

All smallest upright in that frame is 6X6 inches....some are bigger than that. But now, instead of filling in between them, we attached SIPs to the outside of the frame. This means you can see the beams on the inside of our house, but not the outside....so we faked it on the outside.
Inside....
Outside..

Enough of all that construction talk....THIS is why I love them. We took these on our awesome trip to London that we just got back from....click on any of these to go to the photo-set and see all of the ones we took.






And finally, here is a funny story. We were walking through Hampstead Heath and happened upon the most picturesque, perfect little cottage in the woods. It looked like something out of Hansel and Gretel and before we even got up to it we had discussed how lucky the resident was and wondered how they lucked up and got the gig that got them living in the cutest house ever in the middle of this awesome park, etc, etc.... This is the house....



Okay, now wait for it.....



It was the park bathroom....i would still live there forever....

Harry Potter Featurette!!

I cannot WAIT!!