Back in the Saddle Again...

Well hello there, blog.  Remember me?  I remember you... kind of.  Its been awhile, and Im sorry for all those things I said before I left.  Im sorry for the things I didnt say too.  I should never have just abandoned you like that.  I guess I just got in over my head, tried to balance too much on my small plate at once.  Kids, crafts, house, schooling ... dinner... blog.  My priorities may have been out of order when I decided to upload pictures and serve cheerios for dinner instead of actually cooking something.  But still, I missed you, blog, can you ever forgive me?

Tofu Love

Tofu Love
Originally uploaded by mothercrafter

Bracelet made from the dead parts of other jewelry. powered by tofu!

ATTACK OF THE KILLER MOMOS

Lately, I have been furiously sewing sock monkeys.  My daughter chose a pink Paul Frank sock monkey to be her favorite buddy shortly after she got him for her first birthday.  She named him ‘Momo’, her word for monkey.  Her little brother’s bedtime buddy is a red version of his older sisters.   There is a deflated blue momo that kind of floats around the house, standing in for any momo that is lost at the time.  We call them all “Momo”.

I have sewed this faded pink monkey back together too many times, it is obvious that his time is running out.  As a former girl scout, I believe in always being prepared and I took the time to educate myself  on the art of momo creation.  Here is the LINK to the instructions I liked best.  The author is funny and forgiving.  I highly recommend you make a sock monkey, and that you use these directions.  I was amazed with how simple it was, I was even able to tweak the pattern to get a replica of momo.  I knocked out a decent  momo in a day.  My mothers old socks became the momo who lives on my bed.  My honey and I like to leave him in funny poses and places for each other to find.  Oh that momo, we say.

That’s when it happened.  We got momo fever.  The kids and I.  They were so amazed to see this momo come to life!  I'm pretty sure they thought I was god for that day, since I was able to create a momo seemingly out of thin air.  So I started digging around my sock drawer and… nothing.  I don’t deserve to be called a pack rat anymore, not with the paltry selection of boring socks in my sock drawer.  Geez, what happened to all my mismatched socks!  I BOUGHT socks soley for the purpose of creating more momos.  These dudes take me hours to make.  I like to make them long and skinny, like the original pink momo that was the inspiration for them all.  I want each to be perfect.  And for what?  For who?  Besides the novelty of finding my 3 year old up at midnight, having a tea party with a gaggle of faceless sock monkeys, what's the purpose?

Maybe I am doing something good.  Momos make my kids REALLY happy.  I have to admit they make me happy too.  They’re just so goofy.  Maybe other kids need momos in their lives too.  I enjoy making them, although they do take way too long to make.  I’ve fantasized about sending hundreds of momos to hospitals, handing them out to the homeless dudes holding up signs at shopping center exits, to anyone who looked like they needed a friend.  I could send momos to starving children in third world countries, to spoiled rich kids who need a simple toy to keep them grounded.  Unfortunately I currently have a day job (mother) and even if I didn’t I don’t think I could make enough momos to heal the world.  Momos are good, but they arent THAT good.  I mean, I've never seen a momo working to cure AIDS or create clean drinking water.

Next best thing, I suppose, momos are now for sale.  I'll be at the craft fair at the Elks Lodge in Sacramento tomorrow.  I just found out about it, gosh good think I just keep 10 or so momos on hand.  You know, just in case.  I wish there was a huge demand for custom momos.  I am a freakin momo master.  I guess what ever doesn't sell will get to attend a few more tea parties with my daughter and the OG momo.

Guess what everyones getting for Christmas?

Mommy Blog, Be Damned!

This is my craft blog.  Its my serious, big girl, little jellyfish blog.  What is all this mommy shit doing on here?  Oh, that’s right.  I have kids.   Wonderful and frustrating kids.  Wonderful on the mommy side, frustrating on the craft side.  Kids and crafts mix very well, but kids and mamas and crafts… not so well.  All I want to do is make my own pipe cleaner puppet but Maddy will want me to break out the glitter.  Then the paint.  When we do art together, I'm on clean up detail.  AND THAT’S FINE.  But after hours, or when I manage to sneak away to *gasp* embroider a tea towel or maybe sew a sock monkey or two (just who do I think I am!) I am lost in the non-mama part of me.  I leave little pockets of grown up craft projects hidden around the house.  Shoe boxes are my best friends, they are the perfect size.  One is a sock monkey kit, and it contains a few momos in various stages of creation.  If I have 10 minutes, I can attatch an arm.  Another box is for jewelry.  If I don’t take a few minutes out of the day for my artistic self, I am not a fun person to be around.  And if I literally only have a few minutes, its nice to be able to just pull a box down from behind some books on the bookself and slip away to craft land with out having to set up or really think at all.  But then I go back to reality and my day job, which is ‘Mama’.  I suppose its only natural that I am blurring the lines on this blog.  Mommy and craft.  Its not a crafty mama blog.  Though I like the term ‘crafty mama’.

So this is the birth of my ‘mommy blog’.  I hate the term.  I’ve heard it before.  But my kids say funny shit sometimes and I want to share it with the world.  Maddy asked me yesterday if my ‘tummy’ was getting big because there was a baby inside me.  I seriously heard that "dun dun DUN!!!" from horror movies.  She could have jinxed me!  Then she clarified and asked if it was the milk inside my ‘tummies’ that was making them bigger, you know, for the new baby.  OH, that’s right, she calls boobs ‘tummies’.  After I said no, no babies, we have a nice family and my ‘tummies’ are full of milk for Charlie, not any new additions to our family, she still seemed skeptical.  She then asked if my ‘tummies’ were full of coffee.  “Coffee or milk, mama”.  She asked, multiple times.  Thankfully we were in the car and she soon fell asleep.  Shes a funny one.

So from now on I pledge to keep my craft life and mommy life separate, at least on the this blog.  Mostly separate anyways.  Just don’t call it a mommy blog.

You can read more about my hilariously confused children by subscribing to my new blog, the link is under, well... links.

The Frugal Mama

Crafting on the Cheap

  It’s easy to come up with fun crafts for your kids without spending any money.  Toilet paper tubes, tissue paper from an old gift, macaroni, junk mail… it’s all kid craft gold.  Glue sticks, safety scissors, crayons and tons of other school sale staples are super cheap around this time of year.  I’m talking less than 5 bucks to make a serious art supply box.  Oh and don’t get me started on the 99cent store.  GOLD.  I keep two different boxes on hand: one box of things like paint and scissors that are best used with my help, and a box of coloring books, paper and washable crayons and markers that the kids can get out and play with by themselves.  If you haven’t experienced crayola’s washable markers and crayons, you are in for a treat.  They wipe off.  Simple as that.  They wipe of CARPET.  Give the people at crayola a prize, this makes up for all the dumb gimmicky crap they sell.

  The hidden away art box also holds supplies for future projects.  Old socks are new sock puppets with a few buttons and scrap fabric.  Ribbons from birthday gifts are ribbons for pig tails.  Anything shiny goes into the art box for later use.  The spoons and forks I used to steal compulsively from Denny’s when I was younger are now hanging as wind chimes in our front yard.  I wanted the kids to be able to hear the wind and I wanted to stop grabbing the cheap metal cutlery when what I needed was a decent knife.   Unfortunately, I hung it too low and the knife grazes the head of any tall visitor who comes to our door.  Not too welcoming.

  The best thing is, no matter how bad you think you are at artsy stuff… your kids are worse.  Hey, it’s true.  I don’t care how unartistic you claim to be, you will totally kill in a drawing competition between you and your preschooler.  And your preschooler will look at your mangled tree and say, “it's BEAUTIFUL, I want to make one like YOURS!”  But one way your kids will beat you in creative competition is, well, creativity.  Our adult imaginations have been sucked dry by the media and what we’ve come to learn as the right and wrong way to create. 

  My son stole all of the paint brushes yesterday, while we were trying out water colors for the first time.  His sister didn’t say a word; she just started using her fingers.  DUH.  No crying, no hitting, just messy fingers.  She was so pleased with her polka dot paper.  Charlie left and came back with a pair of his shoes, filled with crayons.  He pushed them around the kitchen like cars.  No right or wrong way to play, no right or wrong way to create.  There is no such thing as artists block when you’re a kid.

Raising kids on the Cheap

  As thrifty as I am, I am finding it hard to be a thrifty parent.  I’ve been broke; I’ve lived on ramen noodles and beans.  But feeding my kids ramen for dinner because we are low on everything makes a little ball of guilt in the pit of my stomach that I didn’t get when it was just me.  When it was just me, the only feeling in my stomach I got was from the ramen. 

The good news is they like cheap food.  They like ramen, a lot.  “Noodle soup”, we call it.  I usually add some vegetables for them to pick out.  They like peanut butter and jelly, they like cheerios.  I can cook decent dishes with little in the house, but it’s nothing the kids, or their dad, will eat.  I stick with the rule of a fruit or veggie at every meal, two at dinner.  Whole grains never white bread.  I don’t buy soda, chips or anything with tons of sugar in it.  Don’t get me wrong.  We are NOT starving.  But like so many people, I find comfort in food, and when I don’t have 4 boxes of vegetarian sausage patties in the freezer, I start to panic a little.  Frozen peas instead of fresh green beans, just to save a dime or two?  Makes me shudder to think about it. 

  While I can’t control how many veggies get wasted at dinner, I can make some simple changes around the house to save a few extra bucks.  I have banished paper towels from after meal clean up in favor of a towel I cut up to make into little wash rags.  It was ugly, no one will miss it.  I can’t believe how fast we went through paper towels, and it was all just from cleaning off the kids after we ate.  Charlie is a good thrower, the window behind him, wall, floor, chair… Charlie… covered.  It would take at least 10 medium weight paper towels to get things clean enough for the next messy meal.  Now I only use one rag a day and toss it in the wash pile after dinner.  Saving money on stuff like that helps reverse the ramen noodle guilt feeling.  It’s better for the environment too.

I realize the kids will need more as they get older.  It was very hard to convince Maddy that she did not NEED a Hello Kitty sweater from Target.  She cried, she screamed, we left.  I tried to turn it into a learning experience and include her in ‘making’ her own.  I tried to explain to her that her home made Hello Kitty sweater is even better than the one at the store because she helped make it.  She seemed dubious and she’s only 3.  Eventually they will refuse to wear hand me downs from their cousin, from craigslist, from thrift stores.  Eventually, they will need text books and computers and designer shoes.  If I recall correctly from my stint as wanting be in the popular crowd in Jr. High, there is a fine line between ‘need’ and ‘want’, especially if social acceptance is what you ‘need’.  But sooner than that, they will need to go to preschool. 

The thought of sending the kids to school both thrills me with my new found freedom and terrifies me.  What on earth will I do?  Oh my god, will I have to vacuum?  Charlie fears the vacuum and I refuse to traumatize him.  I hate vacuuming, I’m glad the kids feel the same.  Madeline is 3; she is potty trained and wants more than anything to go to school.  We talk about it all the time.  I tell her she can’t go to school until she can put away her toys, pull up her pants by herself, write her abcs, play nice with her brother…  it is the ultimate incentive for her.  But as much as I stall, she IS ready.  As a still newish mom, I had not had the pleasure of knowing just how expensive preschool can be.  Is this the price for genius baby school?  Is Maddy going to come home and recite the classics?  Will they at least teach her to look after her brother?  Because I would need someone to baby sit while I go out and look for a job to pay for it all.  That’s what I thought when I learned how much a macaroni necklace and few hours without Madeline would cost.  I cannot afford for her to go to a private preschool.  For our family, it would not be money well spent.  I don’t need someone to teach her numbers, to look after her all day all week, to sing songs to her and play games.  That’s why I am a stay at home mom.  I need a place she can go and be with kids her age, for a few hours a day, for a few days a week.  We already do ‘lessons’ while her brother takes his nap.  Don’t get me wrong, her education is very important to me.  We read all the time; I try to make every little thing into a learning experience.  What I can’t teach her from home is how to interact with kids her own age.  That is why she NEEDS school.  But there’s no way I can spend all of my grocery money for the month on 2 days of preschool a week, just so Maddy can play with other kids.  So far the library has been a wonderful start.  Story time is FREE, Madeline has her independence from me while I chase her brother, and she gets to be in a learning environment with kids her own age. 

  Wouldn't it be great if a bunch of parents came together and just kind of made their own preschool?  Free lesson plans are free all over the internet, and really, all the kids require is an adult or two to lead some songs, read some books and clean up some glitter.  I’m not claiming it would be easy.  I don’t think it would be anything close to easy, but it could be fun, and cheap.  If all the moms take turns bringing snacks, buying supplies or hosting or teaching… whatever, it could be so great!  This could be my desire to be a teacher taking over, or this could be a really good idea.  And my desire for my child to get what she needs.  It’s right in between homeschooling and preschooling. 

  Long story short, there are ways around spending money.  It’s nice to be able to say to my 3 year old “why buy it when you can MAKE it yourself?” and follow through.  I don’t want the kids to ever feel like they are less fortunate.  They have everything they need and more.  But I can’t make internet myself.  I can’t make new tires for the car; I can’t make a dinner that everyone will like.  Unless of course it’s Noodle Soup.

INSPIRED!

I am a believer that art can not be forced.  If I get bit by the art bug and the kids are sleeping... get the F out of my way and don't expect the dishes to be done, because IT'S ON.  But sometimes the smallest things can become a roadblock.  Like if I cant find the stack of old playboys I bought from one of my friends dad's 10 years ago, and I NEED them for a collage idea I have.  I might just stop dead in my painted tracks.  Or, an unfortunate example, the Hello Kitty cradle I worked on so diligently... something went wrong and I have all but abandoned that project.  Maddy still asks about it though, so I know I will finish it eventually.  I think I feel stifled sometimes, by my kids and my lack of contact with the adult world.  Working made me feel productive in a way that having a clean house just doesn't.  But last night, I think I busted down another self created restriction in my quest to regain my artistic side.

I found my old portfolio from highschool!  I was in "AP" art, which was sweet because when my smart friends would talk about the rigors of their advanced placement chemistry and math classes, I would just shrug and smile and say 'I KNOW what you mean, AP classes are tough!'.  It wasn't tough.  It was great.  It was fun and inspiring to work with a class of creative people.  We messed around, we did what we wanted.  We ditched class and went to taco bell and our all knowing teacher would just shake his head and ask us how our latest project was coming along.  Anyways, this mini trip down memory lane helped me return to the creative mind set I once held.  My stuff wasn't great... but it was decent, and I am still proud of most of the pieces. I found old sketch pads (lots of pages left for my current creative self) with old ideas, pencil sketches of old friends and rough sketches of projects I was working on.  To say the least, I felt INSPIRED!  In addition to sketch pads, I found a canvass to paint over and use, and a pad of paper to PAINT on.  PAINT?  unheard of!

It's so neat how much I remember about the models who posed for my class, just by by looking at the old sketches.
I remember this woman was really funny and super fun to draw.  

This was supposed to be a color study, I just liked it so much that its been hanging in my kitchen since we moved here.
 I will never finish it, the paint I used was at least ten years old and the canvass was an old one I found and gesso-ed over.  

I am aching to have an art day with the kids.  I feel anxious; if I don't use this little burst of creativity then I am afraid it will fade.  I started (ANOTHER) notebook of ideas and what nots.  Hopefully my current restrictions, the lack of a camera (thanks ebay seller eforcity-select for screwing me over and trying to scam me, you will NOT get away with this!!) my lack of internet, my lack of TIME, always... hopefully they are still not enough to weigh me down!

hard at work

OPERATION PAPER MACHE, failed?

It would appear that spray paint was a bad choice.  After painstakingly putting layer upon layer of glue soaked newspaper on my recycled cardboard frame.... I tried to take the easy way out and spray paint it white instead of just painting it like a normal person.  SPRAY PAINT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND.  It dried out the paper and made it curl and buckle in a few places.  Just a few places?  No big deal?  Well if you have children, then you get what I'm trying to say here.

Imagine a perfect wall... its got some neato wall paper that you wouldn't have thought would be cool, but it somehow works out and you cant imagine anything better than this random, awesome, wall paper.  Oh and its the last of the wall paper, there's no more.  Just to put things in perspective.  Put a 3 year old in that amazing room and she'll find a little corner that is kinda lifting up.  Just a little.  You couldn't have noticed it maybe, but she can.  And she'll peel it.  She'll peel off the whole damn wall..  And then she'll ask what happened.

So there are a few places on the cradle that are imperfect.  They need to be sealed with I don't know what.  I feel so bad, I wanted it done by the time we went camping.  Then I wanted it done by the time we had her second party, with her grandparents who live up here.  I am feeling a bit defeated, and haven't tried anything besides peeling a bit off to see what kind of damage it will be up against.  It's not looking good.  I just so baldy want to finish this thing.  If I had some extra cash, I would buy some modge podge and seal it and paint it in one night.

Maddy got a ton of Hello Kitty stuff for her birthday, but very few toys.  I almost want to buy her something, not that she needs anything.  Mostly what she got were clothes.  Nail polish, a back pack... its not really age appropriate for a 3 year old.  It was all Hello Kitty, she screamed with joy.  But she's ONLY 3.  I would like to see her face light up when she sees her new tea set, not her new Hello Kitty lipstick.  A cradle for her dolls is something she both needs and would be able to play with.  Thats kind of my explanation for feeling so awful that I haven't finished it for her.  I feel like an asshole for not getting my kid a toy.  What she really wants is a kitten (she wants to name it 'hello kitty') but Honey's allergies and my commitment to change only Charlie's diapers or a litter box, not both, prevents that.

Its my duty as a parent to post embarrassing pictures of her.  Happy Birthday Hello Kitty (Madeline) 

Top it all off, I've misplaced my battery charger for my camera so I cant upload any of the pictures I took for Maddy's party, ebay, etsy and this blog.  DAMN!  and I can forget trying to sell our old kitchen table on craigslist.  No pictures, no deal.... and I am using it as a garden table and don't want to give it up.  More on that next time.

I'll be back in a week with a freshly charged camera (thanks ebay) and a ton of pictures and stories to go with them.  well maybe not a ton.  but at least 2 decent adventures of me trying to be a parent and an artistic human at the same time.

Oh and be sure to check out this guys blog: http://sinclaretattoos.blogspot.com/  You can see the custom Hello Kitty painting Madeline got for her birthday as well as some sweet original art.  He also tattoos, so if you are in the Chico area, stop by Sacred Art Tattoo and say hi!