ice cream shop robbed!

[me: "okay, Mare, a really big smile now" awesome.]

Nathan & I take turns staying home with Marian from church for now (although we are fine going about town a bit with a mask, the very love we feel at church precludes her going there: too many little germ breathers will hover), and this week was my turn. Our private religious instruction was...ice cream. She did wear a Sunday dress, though. She recently received the flower girl dress for my brother's upcoming wedding in the mail, which excited her about the last flower girl dress :). Perfect little apron made for her 2nd birthday by our darling friend Cynthia (hey, Cynthia, get a blog so I can link you here!).

Marian was at the computer with me while I was scrolling through my google reader subscriptions when she spotted a salt dough ice cream parlor featured on The Crafty Crow. So Sunday's "what shall we do today?" was easily answered by "Remember that ice cream for a play store...?"




They were all marvelous. We mixed in food coloring and cocoa to make colors and ripples and used bamboo skewers and the stick left over from our fireworks punk for popsicle sticks. Used cherry pits and bits of our yard's ubiquitous sycamore bark for nuts. Broke shale into pieces for chocolate chips.

The robbery (alas!!!):
Tonight, downloading photos, I saw these of her mixing and creating and remembered that I had put the salt dough out to dry (after an hour in a slow oven...too hot!) in a sunny (and out-of-usual-sight) spot on a picnic table in our yard that is partially overgrown by a lilac bush and seldom used. 2 days ago. So I rushed out in the dark and found the cookie sheet on the ground; no icies in sight. When I was frantically ransacking my daughters' recently-rearranged bedroom for a flashlight to aid my searching, the older, still awake, responded to my frantically narrated tale (what will Marian say!??) with, "Well, at least none of the good ones were there."
"???" "I saw the tray there today and only a couple of scoops and popsicles were on it." Apparently one of our animal neighbors (there are all sorts of burrows in our yard, and rabbits and groundhog sighted) liked the salt, has been munching, and finished them up tonight. Arrghh!! Audrey and I are plotting how to spin it to Marian as fun ("You know how we don't want to really eat your ice cream? I think something does!") and remake tomorrow. I'm still a bit sick. Lousy mum.

Blueberries

I hauled the family out to Hollabaugh Brother's Fruit Farm in Biglersville, PA to pick blueberries. I thought the girls were excited and knew Nathan came just to humor me, but found that I was pretty much the only one who enjoyed it at all ("It's hot!" "It will hurt my fingers [sobs]!" "My whole childhood was devoted to trying to teach me to love this kind of work. Instead, I just learned to avoid it at all costs."), though everyone tried and Audrey was fairly determined (and Nathan & Mare put in their time: see them here.)
AND: enjoy it I did! I was exceedingly cheerful and could have kept going for hours. Except we already bought more than we will eat (luckily they freeze wondrously).
Most happily, I was able to buy a huge haul of beautiful local fruit: Queen Anne cherries, Sweet Cheeks apricots, Snow Queen white peaches, lovely plums (Santa Rosa?) with bright red-purple flesh, and plenty of Blue Ray blueberries. Here's the sampling I put up front to eat while I drove the 20 miles home. It lasted 5 minutes.

Marian did cheerfully (and unasked) help transfer berries from my pickin' basket.

Happy Birthday, RedWhiteandBlue!

My husband the addicted cyclist is away for a grand stage race in Massachusetts, and we're in our self-imposed exile of virus avoidance, so this 4th was definitely my least social ever. The town I grew up in, Idaho Falls, though pretty small, has "the biggest firework display west of the Mississippi" (so says the sponsor, but really, it's impressive), and our family & neighborhood have a very firm tradition of exactly how the day should be spent leading up to the very loud and glorious debris-falling-on-your face experience of lying on the banks of the Snake River and watching $Xmillion go up in smoke.

My girls were absolute champions today, quickly getting over the disappointment of our planned visitor's trip-canceling cough with our . Each girl chose a craft to lead us in and I was sponsoring 2 RWB food events. Unfortunately my exhaustion set in and we skipped the cookies. And it rained all day and we postponed our strictly class C fireworks fun (smoke bombs, sparklers, and spinning flowers, ah yeah!)

(hey: I can see someone's illegal display--make that our town's I didn't know about but just found with a quick google search-- over the trees outside my window! I was feeling okay with no fireworks, but it's doing my heart a lot of good. I just called my daughter in to watch, but she got bored & went back to her book, telling me, "you should get to bed soon!" But I'm watching Marian's fever so can't: thus, at the computer trying to stay awake and writing weird run-on sentences that are randomly punctuated).

So, my poor-light photos of our lanterns (Marian's craft, from MS here) & dipped strawberries. Audrey did a fantastic summer-print origami fortune cookie with us, too, but I was really really tired then and didn't take photos. When we have light tomorrow, I'll add the finished products.

nesting

With Marian's health situation stabilized, I'm in full-throttle pregnancy mode: a heady mix of vigorous nesting (reordering playroom & girls' bedroom to carve out a corner for baby), furniture refinishing (when I figure out my new camera card situation, we have great photos of the auction we attended last month), total exhaustion, and reserving and reading stacks of childbirth and breastfeeding books. I used to feel myself quite an expert, but it's been seven years. A realization of just how long that has been was clarified by this: I scoffed at one book for being out of date, then saw it was published after my last birth. I, my friends, am the one out of date. I've been doing a lot of browsing, but just finished one rather excellent book cover-to-cover: Giving Birth: A Journey into the World of Mothers and Midwives by Catherine Taylor. It's definitely a pro-midwife book--no careful unbiased dissertation here--but does allow respect for all women's choices and is carefully researched, not at all an emotional rant. I just got out of bed this morning after reading the conclusion (with some yogurt, of course--I'm a continually-starving pregnant girl through & through!), to write a summary of my favorite parts to my little sister, who has her own new reason to start childbirth research. I'll spare you all of what I wrote, but I loved that Catherine's conclusion emphasized that birth creates not only a baby, but a mother.

Ensuring that birth is an experience during which you realize how powerful,
how strong,
how competent &
how confident
you are makes your mother transformation as integral a part of birth as your baby's safe passage, which does not need to be compromised (look at the statistics) by choosing a situation that allows that powerful woman (me!) to be the primary decision maker in her birth.

wooden toys

These blocks are my new obsession after I saw them on Amy Karol's blog. This tower is pretty chunky: about 6" high & 1 1/2" thick, made of alder wood, and will be part of my leafy nursery decoration. See all of the series here: Fantastic Blocks By Spiel & Holz Design

I'm inspired to add to it (I've been sketching while falling asleep) when I have a jigsaw in the vicinity (visiting my mom in July). For thicker pieces, I'll have to use pine, but I was pleased to discover that Lowe's carries some very nice 3/4" aspen and poplar that I also see in my future...
My favorite wooden toys vendor right now is Fine Wooden Toys. The girls and I loved pretty much every single thing we found on their website & shipping never exceeds $9.95, even for large pieces like the lovely wooden kitchen. I declared an "all wooden Christmas 2008!" ("we'll tell Santa...") and they didn't complain one bit. I believe I will finally be buying the wood rainbow I've lusted after for years (Magic Cabin, my favorite covet-mag, carries it, too):

I thought this piece was particularly brilliant, and, like with the fantastic blocks, am still a bit bamboozled that I haven't seen it before, because I'm an ardent wood toy stalker and especially love dolls and dollhouses :). The hard choice will be between the rainbow, pink/purple, and natural finishes...Of course, wood bits of all kinds are marvelous to have about for crafting and play, and last Christmas was highlighted by my purchases from Casey's Wood Products. A Maine company that sells wonderful miniatures and wood turnings of all sorts, made in New England mills, their prices are great and items beautiful. Peg dolls, tiny bowls, little wood bottles...I outfitted a whole tiny fairy/woodland/pioneer miniature store for my six year old.

I'm hoping I can have the self-control to wait for Christmas for my big order (I need to get back to the pottery studio & earn some money!), but this will likely be waiting for my November arrival a bit sooner:
This particular rattle is from etsy seller red rock zone, but I am tempted by a few other styles available on etsy as well...

Bamboo baby

The most concrete of my baby plans has been buying this yummy bamboo/cotton blend fabric by Robert Kauffman for crib sheets and a basket liner. And a little blankie. I first saw it at SewMamaSew, but the green was out of stock, and the lovely owner, Kristen, who promptly answered my e-mail, said the manufacturer wasn't currently planning on a reprinting. Alas!
Still in love with the leafy graphic, I purchased this sling in the Kaufman brown from an etsy seller, SmallWish. It is reversible to a solid green bamboo. I was planning on being impressed, but when I first touched it to my face, I was re-determined to find the green print. I'm a green & leafy freak, and have a whole new life greeny-delicious nursery (okay, corner of the playroom!) planned. I tried another search with new terms and found Someart Fabric had lots of yards for me to buy, along with um, a lot of other lovelies! The fabric arrived while I was home last week & I actually did get a little weak with delight. I recommend Someart. I talked with the owner on the phone when I had a bit of paypal angst, and thought she was great. Plus, all sorts of good $4 clearance fabric (my other purchases) & I found a coupon code online to use :). Fabric quality & shipping are/were exemplary. And check out this line. Cutie-patootie.

I was originally planning on making bumper pads, but switched to wanting crib sheets of my grand find because this fabric really must be next to a downy cheek. I've talked myself out of bumper pads altogether. We're very accustomed to the look, but they're not necessary (originally designed to protect against heads getting stuck when cribs had wider-spaced slats), and even advised against by the American Academy of Pediatrics and lots of other acronyms. I like my crib's simple, clean lines, anyway, and am feeling good about just letting it shine. Plus, with all of the other decorations the girls and I have planned (and for just a corner, may I remind you), a bit of simplicity is decidedly in order somewhere!

etsy

Too bad I've been spending my computer time researching cloth diapers (I think this pregnancy is no longer in denial phase...good thing since my belly is blossoming with the reality of it all) instead of posting & describing my accelerating projects. And writing about finally being in the same town as a cool indie craft fair (Art Star Craft Bazaar).

Instead, I'll just post this little tidbit I read from etsy today (someday I'll be back...).

We've grown to over 150,000 sellers in 171 countries, and we're just about to reach 1,000,000 members total. This is an exciting milestone for us, and we've made some recent changes to help keep things running smoothly....With over 1.7 million products on Etsy, we're trying to help buyers more easily find what they are looking for....

I was way behind in the statistics I quoted while spreading the good etsy love lately. Long live the craft :).