House Report: Being at Home

Chaos!

Good chaos, at least. Happy chaos.

We've been about a week living in our new house--well, on Sunday night we slept on bare mattresses back at our old house after the toilets in our new house backed up into the bathtubs (turns out that houses that are vacant for two years get things like roots growing into their main sewer lines), but plumbers fixed that for us on Monday and we've been here ever since.

Most of our belongings are still in boxes lining the walls, because our new house doesn't have any SHELVES!!!!!, and poor Matt is still spending most of his time at the old house getting it ready to be sold, but the kids and I, at least, are happily puttering about and finding new corners to read in and watching the chickens learning how to free-range and exploring our new property, which is wonderful and beautiful and poorly-maintained and bounteous. Already, as we drove the other day through town to redeem Will's reading program prize of an ice cream voucher from a local ice cream stand, I looked at the houses that we passed in town and thought, "GAH! Their yards are all so SMALL!"

I have a to-do list so long that I've actually imported it into Microsoft Word so that I can organize it according to priority (lots of painting ratty found-on-the-side-of-the-road furniture to make it look less ratty, lots of shelf building, lots of transplanting perennials from old house to new, etc.), and Matt has a totally different to-do list that's even longer, but we are SO happy. And loving our house. And walking across our yard to the drive-in to watch movies. And last night, coming home after 10:00 pm from a swimming date with friends, we stopped at the yard in astonishment, then sat together on the roof of our root cellar and watched hundreds of fireflies sparkling like twinkle lights in the woods behind the field behind our house--all over the woods, from the tops of the trees to the bottoms, incomparable to anything we'd ever seen before.

To conclude, two photos, the only two, other than cell phone shots of chickens cutely wandering where they shouldn't, that I've found time to take this week:

Yes, I've been permitting the kids to ride their scooter indoors.

And yes, Will's found a spot to read. That's all she needs in a home.

Really, though. We definitely need some shelves.

Comic Book Pinbacks for Pumpkin+Bear Etsy

Back when I did craft fairs, I looooooved making pinbacks from comic books. The superheroes and the sound effects all made good buttons, but my favorite task was to find interesting bits of dialogue to punch out, especially if they said something completely different when taken out of context.

It takes a lot of work to photograph and write an etsy listing, so I've balked at listing these comic book pinbacks individually in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop... until now. For a little while, at least. Call it an experiment. Or call it a discovery of tons of comic book pinbacks as I was packing, and a realization that I probably should neither completely blanket my backpack in them nor give them away as Christmas presents for the next five years.

Or call it procrastination, because unpacking SUCKS!

Here's my first listing, Proceed with Caution:

I'll be adding more comic book pinbacks over the next few days, and every time you see a new one appear in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop, you'll know that there's some crucial house chore that I REALLY should be doing instead.

Doll Dress Designs

My fabric scrap bin gets a lot of turnover, as this is one of Syd's favorite activities:

This garment is cut from a single piece of quilting cotton, with tape to fasten the back and a ribbon around the waist.

Syd sewed the bodice and skirt of this outfit together on my sewing machine. It's held closed at the back with the belt cut from scrap fabric; the garment also features a matching ascot and half-sleeves held on with tape.

This pipe cleaner doll features a dress made from a single piece of scrap fabric, fastened just below the bust with a ribbon tie. Brown flannel hair is held in place with masking tape.

This simple garment is one piece of vintage scrap fabric with a masking tape belt.

I've been brainstorming how to enrich Syd's interest in fashion design--it's MUCH easier to find resources to teach kids computer programming and pottery making than it is clothing design! Once we're a little more settled in our new house (I'm currently writing this post while sitting on a mattress in the bedroom of our old house, a place that I now refer to as my "bolt hole," while Matt makes phone calls from work to try to find a plumber to repair the main line in our new house. I'm pretty sure the toilets aren't supposed to back up into the bathtubs there...), I'd like to set up my older sewing machine for Syd, as well as teach her a couple of simple clothing patterns in her size that she can use independently. I've also got some more larger white play silks to dye for her, because play silks make really versatile costumes. We should continue our drawing lessons, as well--I want to add Waldorf form drawing into the lesson schedule.

Because this is definitely a kid who could be wearing only her own home-sewn creations by high school. Perhaps she'll sew for me, too!

Girl Scouts at the Horse Races

I'm pretty bad about making Matt take the kids by himself to Girl Scout events that I don't want to attend (that Girl Scout camp-out at Victory Field looked SUPER fun... for the children), and signing us all up for the events that I DO want to attend. So although Matt has taken various numbers of related and unrelated Girl Scouts to tea parties at a retirement home, movies at the university, service projects, camp-outs, geography fairs, sports and music workshops, etc., while I stayed at home and actively did not attend those tea parties and movies and workshops and camp-outs, we all went to the latest Girl Scout field trip to Hoosier Park.

Because I've been to retirement homes and movies and baseball games before, but I have NEVER been to the horse races!

Willow tries on the colors.

You're right by the track!

It was all harness racing this particular evening.

If there's not a craft project, it's probably not a Girl Scout event!

 The biggest perk of attending the races as a Girl Scout (along with the souvenir T-shirt and fun patch for the backs of the kids' vests) was getting to go on a barn tour. We visited a barn where some harness racers who weren't racing that evening were stabled:

Syd asked a trainer what was on this horse's legs, and she explained that sometimes a horse's legs get sore after a race, so they put liniment on them and wrap them, but sometimes they have to cover the wrappings with duct tape if the horses try to chew them.

My only prior experience with racehorses was seeing the thoroughbreds at Kentucky Horse Park, and they are VERY aggressive, so once I saw how accessible all these horses were, I reminded the kids to watch their ears and mind their mouths. Harness racehorses are mares and fillies, however, and most of them were about the sweetest horses we've ever met:

Way to mind her mouth, Syd!

Of course, every barn has its feisty horses. I love Will's face in this next photo--I was clicking the shutter as the horse started to nuzzle her, but caught her reaction just after it decided it would maybe rather eat her hair instead:

See Syd laughing? She was the only one who could see it and she wasn't telling anyone, but that dang horse is STILL eating Will's hair!

The kids and I were really only there to sightsee--

--but of course people bet on these races, and there were some spectators who were VERY invested in each race's outcome:

Matt, now... Matt enjoys gambling. I do NOT think that gambling is fun, because I do not think that we have enough money to fool around with giving it away, but I did point out to him a notice in the brochure that stated that if you donated $5 to the Girl Scouts while you were there, they'd give you that five bucks in casino cash or whatever. If you're going to give your money away by gambling, you might as well give it to the Girl Scouts rather than the casino. Matt hated all the actual casino stuff when he went in there, because it was all automated and therefore didn't work right (and do you even want to guess about how long I had to listen to *that* rant on the way home? Not that long, actually, because I fell asleep pretty much as soon as we hit the highway, but still...), but he also got a couple of vouchers to bet on the horses, AND during the barn tour he heard some kid who was also on the tour going on and on about the racehorse that his family owns, AND that racehorse was actually racing that night, so Matt placed a bet on that kid's horse--

--and she won!

I had been a little concerned about this trip beforehand--I was worried it would be seedy (it was, a little, but nothing that we're not used to) and that the kids would see a horse get shot in the head (no on-track euthanizations on this night, yay!)--but it turned out to actually be a really terrific adventure. A couple of times I got chatted up by race regulars who were pleased to see so many kids at the track and wanted to reminisce about their own childhood memories of going to the races with their parents, and all the workers seemed happy to go out of their way to make the sport accessible to the bunch of random kids running around. After one race, which the kids and I watched from right by the finish line, Syd was bummed because the horse that she was rooting for didn't win, and she said, "Why didn't #6 win? She was running so fast!"

The track's photographer happened to be walking by, on his way to photograph a horse that was NOT #6 in the Winner's Circle, but he stopped, came back to Syd, and explained to her, "Number Six didn't win because she started out too fast, and she couldn't keep it up. You've got to root for the horse that comes second or third or even fourth out of the gate, not first."

In the next two races, Syd indeed rooted for a horse that was not first out of the gate, and indeed, in both of those races, that horse that she rooted for won! 

Definitely educational, then, but I'm not sure what subject to call it. PE? Game theory? 

My Latest: Sewing for Big Kids and a Battle Royale

a round-up of free sewing patterns and tutorials for big kids

a discussion of the Japanese dystopian novel, Battle Royale

and a write-up of the pajamas that I sewed for Will out of a vintage Dr. Seuss sheet

That genuine smile of Will's... you don't often see it in a posed photograph. I've got tons of candids of her, tons of photos of her intent on an activity, tons of her gamely posing with artwork or national monuments, etc., but if you ask her to smile for your photograph, she all of a sudden can't seem to figure out how her face works. Does one smile by stretching one's lips and raising one's shoulders? Baring one's teeth and widening one's eyes? Stiffening one's spine and gritting one's teeth? My strategy when I need *something* other than a blank stare is to chat with her while blasting the shutter a million times a minute, flipping through the images later in search of a usable, if not necessarily smiling, expression. Syd's strategy is a little more direct:

And that's actually how I got my shot!

 If only one could have all of one's photo shoots done while turning cartwheels:

That's a pretty workable shot, actually--not a lot of detail, but you can certainly see the garment as a whole!

The Story of the Arkansas State Flag

We travel enough inside of the United States that for for years now, our US geography study has consisted of a detailed exploration of whatever state we're planning to visit or have just visited. It always includes the following:

• memorizing the state's details and symbols and notation of this information on a large US map (I recently tore down this map, since we're moving, and put together a smaller, portable version on a tri-fold dry erase board that Matt and I made)
• reading the relevant book from the Discover America State by State series (I LOVE this series, and am slowly collecting all the volumes as I come across secondhand copies), and the completion of any activities that I especially like from the set's teacher's guides
• reading any good living books about the state and, for Will, one of those larger non-fiction state books (I don't really have a favorite series, as they're all pretty dry)
• cooking a recipe from the state--we still make Philly cheesesteak sandwiches a lot!
• including notable places in our travel to that state--we've visited Gettysburg, the Crayola Experience, and Hershey's Chocolate World in Pennsylvania; the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut; the Trail of Tears and a set of gallows in Arkansas; redwoods and beaches in California; and of course EVERYTHING in Indiana!

As part of memorizing each state's symbols, I usually give the kids coloring pages, and then they research the correct way to color the state bird, say, or the flower, or the flag. Syd loves this coloring, and will often spend a ton of time making each page just gorgeous, but Will is a kid who is thirsty for facts, facts that even *I*, who also love facts, tend to see as dry, and she just soaks them up wherever they lie, and that's how I found that the simple request, "Tell me about your flag," led to a whole swath of information that I had no idea the kid had picked up in her research and retained. Obviously, I grabbed the camera and asked her to do it again!

 In lieu of studying every single state this way (it would take us to college and beyond!), my goal for us is to memorize all the US states and capitals during the course of our big road trip next month, and then to continue with our tradition of in-depth study of states that we're planning to visit.

I can't decide, though: memorize states in alphabetical order, by geographical location, or by order of statehood? Song, poem, or list? All of the above?

Equine Artwork

One lesson from our Drawing With Children studies that I'm really pleased to see Syd grasp is that copying is perfectly okay.

I don't think Drawing with Children specifically mentioned our exact method, but if Syd (Will still rarely chooses to create art, although she did some drawing as part of plans for a butterfly garden a few weeks ago, and was noticeably at ease with it) mentions wanting to draw something in particular, such as the horse that she requested last week, I encourage her to look through our large collection of coloring books and choose an appropriate image to copy. The clean, dark lines in coloring book drawings lend themselves really well to the methods that we've been learning.

Fortunately, we've got a few really good coloring books of horses, and they were enough inspiration for Syd to sit down several times over the course of a couple of days and complete not just one, but many very detailed drawings of horses. Here are some of them:

Just as Drawing with Children suggests, Syd copied what she needed to copy but used it creatively--in all these pieces, she copied the horse itself, but added everything else from her own imagination. I especially like the tack that she adds; because of horseback riding lessons, Syd was able to tell me every single piece of tack that she put on her horse drawings, how to put it on, and what it's used for. I love that you can also tell, just from her art, that she learns English, not Western, riding--can you see where she illustrates that?

I sometimes have doubts about the horseback riding lessons that the children take--they're so, so, SO expensive and must be budgeted for so carefully, and it's not as if the children really have many chances to ride outside of their classes--but the children love their lessons and love the horses that they ride, I can see that the riding is good for their bodies and their hearts, and it's a life skill that I hope will be always useful. Will occasionally speaks of when she'll be old enough to volunteer with PALS, and at Girl Scout camp orientation both kids carefully noted the children at the corral taking their riding tests in order to qualify for "wrangler" camp--next summer, that could be them, if they wish!

Their riding instructor and I have spoken several times about the possibility of offering Girl Scout workshops at PALS; the program head and I have spoken about offering ongoing homeschool classes; and the head instructor and I have spoken about starting a Pony Club that would be inclusive of both recreational and therapeutic riding students. I'm hopeful that in the near future, these expensive yet valuable horseback riding lessons can become part of a larger context of equine enrichment for the kids, and ideally also for a slew of brand-new horse-loving friends.

My Latest: Packed Lunch and Home Repair (and Panic)

a write-up of the felted wool lunch bags that I made for the kids

a review of How to Fix Absolutely Anything: The Instructables Guide to Home Repair

and a round-up of other DIY packed lunch storage solutions--I really want to make a bento box!

Things are a little crazy around here right now. Matt's focused on getting all our utilities hooked up, moving our stuff over to the new house (he's really only got time for one trip every evening, so what gets moved is kind of random--yesterday the coffee table, all our old yearbooks, my writing portfolio, and some potted plants went), arranging the repairs that must be done, figuring out how to make the most massive wall-mounted pipe-and-marble bookshelf EVER (more on that later), and researching the couple of things that we MUST buy--dishwasher, king-sized mattress.

I'm working on downsizing our possessions so that we're not moving for the rest of the year (yesterday I went through billions of glass and plastic kitchen storage containers--do we really need THAT many mixing bowls?!?), packing, and figuring out new stuff that we should probably buy/make/rejigger for the new house--computer station for the kids, TV stand with video game storage for the small living room, probably a second TV stand for the master bedroom so that we're not squinting across the room at our small-ish TV, and where are the kids going to put all of their thousands of treasures, none of which they insist can live in a bin with other treasures, but must instead be displayed, individually, with the maximum possible wasted space?!?

On top of that, I've been doing some crafting/shopping for sleepaway camp next month--Will has no pajamas, the kids both require socks that go "over the ankle," and their own flashlights, and EVERY ITEM MUST BE LABELED.

Oh, AND it's already high time to get organized for our big road trip and dinosaur dig. The paleontology and Laura Ingalls Wilder unit studies need to get fired up, and I need to figure out what to buy to keep us from dying of heat stroke, and I'm worried that I should actually go ahead and pack us for this trip, lest all the stuff that we need--binoculars, bug spray, sunhats, etc.--get lost in boxes and can't be found next month.

Hmm, should I go ahead and pack for sleepaway camp, too, for the same reason?

And what about Will's birthday, which will take place during our dino dig? Should I buy, wrap, and bring her present along? Have her birthday early? Late?

Okay, I need to stop writing now. I have seriously just elevated my heart rate while sitting at a table in the middle of the public library. I'm going to go get that current issue of Entertainment Weekly that's on the shelf over there and not think another thought about my to-do list until I have read the entire thing.

The Eastern Tent Caterpillar Hatches

This was quite a year for Eastern tent caterpillars, and Will, especially, just reveled in them. She held them, she let them crawl on her while reading or doing schoolwork, she lost them in the house and then rediscovered them crawling across the kitchen table or on someone's shoulder (sigh), she built habitats for them to watch them eat and cocoon, she wrote about them in her journal, she showed her friends how she could gently put her hand inside a tent and pet the hundreds of caterpillars inside, she bravely defended them to adults who griped about them being pests--"Actually," Will would always speak up, her reticence about speaking to adults forgotten in defense of her caterpillars, "Eastern tent caterpillars are native to this region. They won't kill trees."

Finally, after the entire caterpillar season was over--after many caterpillars were helped across streets and parking lots, after many caterpillars were brought inside to play before being taken back to their trees, after a jar filled with leaves and twigs and several caterpillar cocoons was left out in a rainstorm and drowned, to much devastating grief and guilt--Will found herself with one last Eastern tent caterpillar, one last chance to love it, feed it, give it a safe place to cocoon inside her kid-made bug barn, and raise it to an adult.

She hatched this weekend:

I didn't realize that the moths would be so pretty! This one is female, and she was so cutely fuzzy. Look at her feathery antennae!

They're nocturnal, which I suppose explains why I've never seen them before, and the females also have a very short lifespan, so we got this one back into her environment as soon as possible so that she could eat, mate, and give the kids some more babies to love on next year.

Will is a little sad that there aren't any more Eastern tent caterpillars around to love, but at least she has a good three dozen tadpoles in a glass aquarium out on the back deck to comfort herself with.

Special Effects Makeup for the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior Badge

Girl Scout badges are something that we work on almost every day, often as part of the kids' schoolwork. If you were diligent about the extra activities that you assign or the badges that you select, you could absolutely use Girl Scout badges as your entire homeschool curriculum, but we tend to work on the kids' Girl Scout badges as unit studies along with our other studies--it's a great way to insert novel areas of study into my otherwise pretty methodical lesson plans.

One of the badges that Will's been working on for a while now is the Entertainment Technology Junior badge. She's filmed a stop-motion animation, built a thaumatrope and a catapult, programmed in Scratch, and done a lot of reading and documentary watching. A few weeks ago, she said that she wanted to complete the "Create your own special effects" step, so I pointed her to the children's face painting book that I had checked out of the library for this, helped her find the face paints and brushes, and set up our giant mirror outside on the deck for her:

The mirror is filthy because, although it's huge, we're always moving it, often outside, for various activities.

Will REALLY wanted to paint Syd's face like a puppy, but Syd just was not going to let her. Syd did, however, consent to act like a puppy for us:

Instead, Will decided to paint herself like a zombie: 

I've been wanting to restock this clown makeup with additional colors for YEARS. Now that we're finally out of white, that's my excuse!

 Will worked hard on herself, with a ton of focus, and was THRILLED with the results!

Immediately after this, we biked over to our polling place so that I could vote in some local primaries (and spend some time with the kids studying and explaining the ballot--it's part of Will's Inside Government Junior badge!). Will was hugely tickled to discover that every single poll worker was interested in hearing the entire story behind her makeup--of course, instead of actually telling them the story, Will just began to act like a zombie who was staggering over to eat their faces off, but that's her way of acting thrilled. One poll worker was so impressed that he clearly sensed a kindred spirit in her, and pulled out his phone to show her a bunch of photos of a greenhouse that he built behind his house. That dude has a pineapple tree in his greenhouse! And a fig tree! With figs!!!

Will still has a few activities that I'd like her to complete before I sew her Entertainment Technology patch on, but to be fair, this badge is HUGE, encompassing what amounts to an entirely different subject for each step. This is absolutely one of those badges that, if you were schooling solely through Girl Scout badges, could take you through an entire semester of math, science, history, creative writing, technology, and art.