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Asa's knight themed 5th birthday party- this weekend
Maxine's 2nd birthday garden party- in two weeks
gifts and decorations to make, cakes to plan and bake, supplies to be brought in!
AND i am helping Lee with a new t-shirt design to sell this weekend, as our garden is in the 8th annual Toronto Island Garden Tour, which has large numbers of tourists coming to the Island.
crunch time! i'll keep going.
this is a no-knead bread- with 5 minutes of active time, but 14-24 hours before you can eat your yummy bread. it makes an amazing crust and a spongy rich tangy inside. it tastes similar to a really good quality baguette.
basically, you mix the basic ingredients for a minute, leave it alone for 12-24 hours until you want to bake it and it is nice and bubbly. then you stir it and rise it again on a tea towel with cornmeal on it. then throw it in your cast iron enamel dutch oven in a really hot oven. (by the way, Target has a very highly rated fake Le Crueset for 1/5 the cost, which i got for Mother's Day!) here i did one loaf spelt and one loaf white. the white is tastier for sure. i usually use spelt flour for most baking but it didn't turn out so great here (a bit too wheat-y tasting and heavy). maybe i'll try rye and/or a mix next time. anyone have a good recipe for a no-knead whole grain bread?
ps- rural mama has a similar recipe posted that you can keep taking from all week. is this one of those things i'm going to keep seeing everywhere now? i had never heard of it!
bench monday: sea wall, with my eldest boy, after monday evening piano lessons
two kittens, a ginger cat brother named Minouche and a tortoiseshell sister named Fromca, have come to live with us! they are 10 weeks old and we got them through a cat rescue agency. they had been living with a foster family after being rescued with their mama and siblings from a high-kill shelter. they are the nicest sweetest cats. i can't believe how lucky we are!
my man and i had a cat together way back in the day who died about 3 years ago. here's our old kitty Chinook (with Lee as a baby- 8 years ago!)
we were so heartbroken we thought we'd take a bit of a break from having a pet. the kids are at a perfect age for getting cats and they are SO HAPPY! the kitties are very tolerant of the children and the children are being so sweet with the cats- i'd say it is an excellent match! on the first night they were here, Asa picked up Fromca and said excitedly, "She's vibrating!!"
yay! welcome, kitties!
we have a lovely little school here on our island. Lee went there for pre-school and kindergarten, and Asa is now there for his kindergarten years (in Ontario we generally have junior kindergarten- JK- which is an optional year, and senior kindergarten- SK- or, at WMCC- 'blue jay' and 'robin' years) I feel extremely lucky to have this little school for the kids to blossom in!
yesterday was the spring concert- Animals of the Island Sing Songs About Animals. (I like the self-referential nature of the theme.) The teachers really went all out for the sets and costumes- all made from stuff they had laying around the school! You can see the forest on the left, the lake in the foreground, the meadow in the centre back, and the city (including the CN Tower) on the far right. I don't know if you can tell, but the 'grass' is green faux fur. Asa is the fox in red.
**i have to say, i am very self-conscious of this post after reading Urban Craft's rant about 'craft blogs' going off topic. I am for sure guilty of posting pictures of my garden, my children and my food! (and my childrens' kindergarten concerts) I guess i always considered my blog a 'craft blog' BUT i guess it must be more of a creative lifestyle blog (okay, I try). I personally like reading about aspects of peoples' lives other than just what they've made. What do you think?
i've got such a long list of things to do around here (now that the dollhouse is done). one of those things is patch all the boys' pants! if you have a boy (sorry, the girls don't seem to blow out the knees in the same way) you may want to look at this method!
(there's no way around it- i'm sorry- this is a post about patches. oh- what could i have done to follow my last post? anything would seem dull!)
i cut out patches of strong fabric (corduroy, denim) and zig-zagged around the edges. then i used a really strong iron-on adhesive to bond the patches to the pants. i don't mind sewing, but i find it realy hard to get up into the legs of kids pants. this was a quick and easy solution!
i made this dollhouse for my little friend Joni. she lives in an island house in the winter and on a sailboat in the summer, so she could never have anything big. the solution? a collapsible dollhouse-in-a-bag. we have basically the same problem (well, small house but no boat) so i was thinking ahead to the future for Maxine. She's too little now, but i really wanted to make one.
here are all the rooms:
* i can't take credit for the nice photos above- my man took them for me (he has experience with miniatures and sets: here and here)
here's what it looks like not set up:
i was inspired by this idea for the house, and i first saw the people on Colorfool.
i ordered the wooden people online, and made everything else out of my stash, except for the walls and floor, which a friend cut at his shop out of birch plywood. i spent about 6 months working on it, off and on, and i'd say the whole thing made good use of my slightly compulsive tendencies.
I gave it to Joni yesterday, and i could tell she liked it because as I was walking away I could hear "And now Joni's going to take a bath and Jonathon's going to sit on the sofa and Nina's..."
as part of Kootoyoo's My Creative Space:
Maxine's birthday prep is underway:
- some fabric for making flags
- some wooden peg people to make 'guys' of our family
- a green dress to transform into the 'birthday dress'
one of the best things about our Island, and one of the hardest things to write about, is our community. that's a word that is thrown around a lot but one that i think most people don't ever experience in a true sense. i know i never did until i moved here 10 years ago. i read an interesting article on mothering.com about co-housing, ('It Takes A Village To Raise a Child') and it struck me that 'this is what we have!"
On our Island, we have no stores and the mainland is a ferry ride away, so we borrow from each other a lot. (DVDs, food staples, a bottle of wine here and there)
Our houses are very close together (often about 10 feet or so between houses) and our lots are small, so we know a lot about each other's lives, for better and worse sometimes!
There are no cars on the Island, so we see each other coming and going as we walk or cycle, without barriers of glass or metal, and we have a 12 minute ferry ride during which to visit on our way to town or on our way home.
There aren't too many of us: 250 houses. We are varied in our ages (6 months old to 94 years old) and our socio-economic standings (some of us deliver the newspaper and return bottles for a living, while others of us are doctors or lawyers). Our houses are part of a community land trust so that this diversity is protected.
We socialize together (Talent Night, Gala Weekend, weekly community dinners) and have our own traditions (Spring Equinox Bonfire, Easter Egg Hunt, Fire Parade). We have a wooden cut-out stork that makes its way around to announce each new baby on the Island, and after each of my children was born, neighbours brought 3 course home cooked meals every night at 6 pm for 2 weeks!
Our next-door-neighbour Grahame is someone who, in another place, we might never have gotten the opportunity to get to know. But because we are 'together' almost every day, he has become one of our close friends, and godfather to Asa. He takes the kids to the playground, lets Asa play the drums at his house, takes Lee out to hit the ball, and pushes Maxine in the "weeee!" (swing). Last weekend, he even stepped in and helped Lee with a paper mache project for school. All this, and he also takes care of all our gardening needs, as he is a professional gardener. I like to think we don't get all the benefits of this relationship. Grahame doesn't have any kids or grandkids, so i think it's nice for him too.
living here has made me feel blessed, and part of something bigger than myself.
the nice people over at Janome Canada loaned me a Janome FM725 felting machine a while ago. i did a 'top 10 tips' for their website, and i just finished a stuffie tutorial that they will also put up. (it's the kitty, now in the tutorial sidebar on the right here on my blog)
here's a screen capture shot from their website:
i really like the felting machine- it's definitely saved my wrist and a lot of time poking down those designs (i still lay everything out by hand- the machine saves on elbow grease)
here's my bench monday
i made this for a mother in our family for mother's day. it's a little tin travel photo box, first seen here (tutorial). so sweet.
i think a kid would like one too. Maxine kept at me as i was trying to photograph it- 'pictures? pictures? me?'
my gifts to all you fabulous mothers-
some flowers:
an essay about the mother of the moment, Michelle Obama. Here's an excerpt:
she has made herself an example by validating our ongoing struggle between personal identity and the all-consuming role of motherhood.... (I)n the giving-of-love business, there can never be enough. Every single day, each of us walks a fine line of guilt over whether we are doing as much as we could for our kids or whether we have given over too much. The biggest balancing act beyond our to-do lists is in managing how we mothers see ourselves....(M)others remain in the trenches as their family's emotional maypole. By acknowledging and honouring this quiet struggle, Obama reminds us that there is little more important than the giving and caring we offer the next generation. Happy, well-loved people make happy families and a stronger, better world. And for that Mother's Day gift to all of us, she has certainly earned her stripes as the new Mom-in-Chief.
and a funny video:
especially Happy Mother's Day to you Mom- I hope you got your present in time! the robin and nest were for you!
kirsty at kootoyoo is hosting 'my creative space'- post a picture and description of, yup, your creative space. i became aware of this just after Maxine (age 1) had gotten ahold of my camera and snapped this picture of my workspace. fateful.
jar of buttons, paint and paintbrushes, necklaces made by Lee as a preschooler, snap press, fabric that covers my printer, mystery project.
what's in your space?
1- we've been doing the winter/summer switch over. 3 days later, i'm ALMOST DONE! it is very complicated because- a) with a 3 year age gap between kids, nothing can be handed straight down from one kid to the next b) hand-me-downs coming in from outside the family to be introduced at the right time c) the sorting of what to do with OUR outgrown things d) everything is musty and needs to be washed
here's the chaos:
2- school fundraiser! Lee wanted to sell 50 cookbooks to get the GRAND PRIZE! of a Nintendo DSi. working VERY hard, he sold 60, which was the highest in the school. he went out in the neighbourhood one day by himself with a pirate dress-up mustache and goatee, and he must have decided at some point he didn't want it on anymore and tried to rub it off. my man and i laughed so hard at our little salesman with the dirty face. (but we hid it, don't worry.) we had to take a picture:
3- now my boys and man are going away for 10 days to visit family in the States. the girls will enjoy some quiet time here at home.
here's my girl testing out her new boots from the try-on pile:
i'll miss the boys for sure but i think good times will be had by all!
i made this little guy for Maxine's friend's first birthday.
i'm working on a tutorial for it if you're interested... you'll see it in the sidebar when it's done.
