angry chicken

a big bag of postage stamps

We were at our neighborhood thirftstore yesterday and found a goldmine—which has taken up hours of our time already. I love these kind of surprise crafts.

For $1.99 I found a huge bag of stamps still stuck to letters. I mentioned to the 8-year-old that I loved to soak off stamps and save them when I was little. I didn't know if she would know why I did this or if it sounded fun to her, but she immediately got it. I shouldn't have been surprised, this is the same child who collects corks, string, and bits of recycling which she crams under her bed.

We soaked them in water for about 10 minutes and they slid off easily. I don't think I have done this since I was 10. I loved do this so much.

They dried in about 10 more minutes. Not totally, but dry enough for her.

And we found a blank book. She wanted to put them in right away.

So fun! We have so many left to do. The BEST part is we found a whole envelope in the bag, with a typed letter inside—it's like a nancy drew mystery! The girls are so excited. It is from Spain, written in english. The stamps come from all around the world all addressed to the same couple, but so much is torn off the address, it's hard to know, which makes the mystery more fun.

I want to show them craft ideas with stamps too, like these shoes. I especially like mounting the stamps grouped by color, and this drawing with stamps is also wonderful. I know just gluing them in books is pretty satisfying too, so I will try to back off. Or get my own pile of stamps.

our new girl

After talking about getting a dog for about a year with the girls, and researching Boston Terriers and  Pugs, we adopted one last week. The girls were hoping for a black pug puppy, I was hoping for an older pug which needed a home. Pete was game for whatever. We found an older one, and we all love her so much! I am so glad to both help an adult dog and not have the crazy puppy vibe in the house right now. I love puppies, but you know what I mean. Maybe a pug puppy in a couple years. I love her fawn color, she really is so cute, and I am not just saying that because she is ours. I was willing to adopt an adult pug with issues but fortunately she has none and was very loved at her old house. Her previous owner is elderly and her health and limited mobility was making pet ownership really hard.

She came with the name Angelina, which of course we have kept. The girls added the middle name of Meatloaf. She is 7 and has the sweetest personality. The cats are displeased, but are coming around. She doesn't know they don't like her, I have to break it to her gently. They are slowly meeting each other under my watchful gaze. Cat's claws and pug's bugling eyeballs are not a good mix. She's used to cats (and other pugs) sleeping with her, so she's game. I do think the cats will sleep with her at some point. Maybe.

homemade frozen yogurt treat

My almost 6 year-old (!) and I made this raspberry frozen yogurt (with no ice cream maker) after watching jamie oliver make a similar one with mango. Here's that recipe. The trick is to use frozen fruit. We also added a bit more honey and sugar because the raspberries were pretty tart. This was all in the food processor and took no time at all. We just played with the proportions until it seemed really thick—like it would freeze well. White sugar made it grainy, but after it froze overnight, the graininess was gone. We ate it right away and it was semi-soft, after freezing overnight it was perfectly scoop-able. I always have a ton of frozen fruit on hand because I am crazy about not wasting it, it's so great to put in smoothies, but I never thought to make it into a frozen yogurt ice cream type treat. It's lovely between two lemon ginger cookies.

creatvebug class special! ends soon!

Creativebug is offering a great sale on all their a la carte classes. You can buy a single class, and have access to it forever, for only $9.99! This offer is good on all the a la cart classes, and mine are in there, too.

This sale ends on June 22nd and is a perfect way to see the quality of classes they produce if you don't want to jump into the subscription plan.

My classes:

Homemade Apothecary

Clothespin Dolls

Rock n' roll Undies

Journal of family life

Peter Pan Collar

bracelet making and more

I made some leather and jute bracelets with Delia a few weeks back. I used this fine tutorial right here. They were so easy to make and quite addictive. I wouldn't use jute again. It's pretty, but itchy. I think this is now being used as a key fob, or it's tied to a dance bag or something. I want to make more.

related to making stuff:

The whole family has been taken over by DIY Skills. It's a site for kids to tackle challenges and to master skills. Think baking, animating, camping, hacking, film making, sewing, chemistry, computer programing, you name it. Insanely fun and motivating.There is too much awesomeness to write about here—it's pretty involved. But you can get a sense of it all if you watch the video, and look around at all the projects kids have done and read the FAQ.  The real embroidered patches are supposed to be available for sale next month. I asked and they answered.

new class at creativebug—clothespin dolls!

Last month the excellent people from creativebug were here at the house (while they were in Portland for Quilt Market) and we shot a couple classes.

The first one is available now! It's right here!

And you can see a preview here.

Delia is teaching this one with me and she did a great job. It was pretty fun to do a workshop with my 8-year old daughter. The other two girls appear in the next class, which was a hoot to make, for sure. Right now this class is part of the subscription package, which is a great deal—unlimited classes for a monthly fee.

And, they have a cool promo right now where you can watch a class for free.

They also have a Father's Day free printable card on their blog. The blog is really wonderful, so much good stuff in there.

packing tape postcards

We made some postcards out of packing tape a bit back. And then we mailed them. They were received without any issues. So exciting!

We got this fabulous idea from All About Collage, by Todd Oldham, which we picked up at the library along with all his other books in that series. They are pretty swell—nice big photos and simple clear directions.

We put the stamp over the tape and everything else was sandwiched in between. Liddy even got the brilliant idea to add flowers inside of hers. Mail art makes me (and the kids) so very happy. I want to send a can again.

recent books I have read:

I am almost done with Some Kind of Fairy Tale (I really like it so far) and I finished The Best of Youth about 2 weeks ago which was light, yet sad and funny. It was nail-biting in a good way. For some reason I was wanting a tragic ending, which it did not have. This book reminded me of a less zany version of a Johnathan Ames novel. 

I am so obsessed with the book list you all helped me with, I can't thank you enough. I've read 4 books from that list already that I never would have found (I think some titles were in the comments, too) and Pete has read Dog Stars. Thank you!

a better batch of homemade dry shampoo

I made dry shampoo a bit back and it was almost perfect, but not quite. I used corn meal in the blend, which was too lumpy. It was kind of chunky and grainy and my eldest daughter complained of bits. It was also too light for her brown hair. I looked around and found this great tip for adding cocoa powder to make the whole batch darker—which is much nicer for most hair colors, I think. I also ditched the corn meal. We added grapefruit essential oil and have been using this a new batch a whole lot.

I know some people wonder about dry shampoo. Why not just wash your hair? Well, you know how it is, especially with long hair, it's just not reasonable sometimes, or even needed all that often. Also, my hair, as I have gotten older, has gotten a lot finer and the powder adds some body and fullness that I really like, especially on my roots.