Another Brennen plug

The sound quality's not the greatest, but I love this song. You could hear it live, this weekend at the Tumbleweed Festival!!!

First Full Day of School Dress

I finally took a few pictures of Anna in her back to school dress. I used the same pattern as the Ball Party dress, Simplicity 5226, the super simple slip dress version. This time I used my serger and finished up all of the inside seams! It was really fun to know that I did all of the steps for a change.

She picked out the fabric and the pattern and the ribbon for the front. I think she did a lovely job~ and I'm glad she likes this simple dress! I'm a lucky Mama.

Chelsea Visit!

Chelsea came to town! It felt like it was just for a minute, but it was a good minute.

Anna and Chelsea and Jim. Thanks for coming!

Glueing stuff!

*cheater post* So tired from back to school...

This to That

What do you want to glue to what? Ask them and they'll tell you which glue to use~a delightful tool.

**I fixed the link**

Teacher Apron

I might be able to resist making Anna's teacher a present, if her teacher wasn't also my colleague and friend. Since she is, I couldn't help myself.

I saw this teacher apron pattern in May and thought it would be an awfully nice thing for a Kindergarten teacher to have. 5 and 6 year olds are messy and slimy and snotty... and sweet.

These are not great pictures, I finished late one night and wrapped it right up to take to school the next day.

It was pretty fun to make, except that I goofed on the apron skirt the first time I put it together and had to do it over again. Grrr... That's probably why the 1st day of school dress became a 1st FULL day of school dress. Photos of that soon. :)

Cover ups.

I bookmarked this idea in the spring, and early in the summer I sat down to make a pair of cover ups for my two swimming buddies.

Sewing all of those rows of shirring got old really fast. I don't think I'll make one of these again, but they sure are cute!

Booster seat

I found these foam placemats at Goodwill for $.50 each. I got all six, cut them in half,

and used spray adhesive to stick them together.

Ta da! A booster seat for Anna.

Some Cabin

Here are a few pictures from the cabin this year.

I "ruined" the trip by suggesting we do a project (which the sister agreed to!). At least we both finished a quilt top.
Anna brought me these sticks and asked me to build her a raft.

I was very pleased with the result, but when I showed it to her, she said: "I can't sit on that!"

This is her water-bending. She is obsessed with the Avatar cartoon, thanks to Daddy.

Flamingo Nap Mat

Anna needed a nap for Kindergarten. Red and blue vinyl? No way!

I actually used foam from a nap mat from the store, it was cheaper than buying foam from the craft section. I cut off the vinyl (surely I can use that for something...) and made a new cover with fabric, an old towel, and a scrap of batting.

Looks snuggly!

Glitter Toes!

In preparation for school, Abby and Anna and I painted our toes all glittery.

First a layer of paint, then fine glitter sprinkled over the top, then a clear coat.

Very fun! (and much cheaper than the $25 salon price).

Sculpey Fun

Long long ago, when Levi and Lauren were here in July, we made sea creatures out of sculpey for the Library Summer Reading Program.

I made a rainbow fish.

Levi made an otter.

Lauren's starfish.

Matthew's amazing octopus didn't win, and I was shocked. Isn't it wonderful?

I didn't think I was going to like playing with the sculpey-it veers enough into "art" to make me nervous-but it was fun and pretty satisfying! We all sat around the dining room table working on our creatures for a couple of hours, (Anna too!) happily listening to a story at the same time. I'd recommend it.

Back with a Bang!

blurg.

I guess it'll be after we get home from the cabin that I get back to it. Maybe.

Look for me in August. :)

Oregon!

One Home

William E. Stafford (from Kansas, former Poet Laureate of Oregon)

Mine was a Midwest home—you can keep your world.
Plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.
We sang hymns in the house; the roof was near God.

The light bulb that hung in the pantry made a wan light,
but we could read by it the names of preserves—
outside, the buffalo grass, and the wind in the night.

A wildcat sprang at Grandpa on the Fourth of July
when he was cutting plum bushes for fuel,
before Indians pulled the West over the edge of the sky.

To anyone who looked at us we said, “My friend”;
liking the cut of a thought, we could say “Hello.”
(But plain black hats rode the thoughts that made our code.)

The sun was over our town; it was like a blade.
Kicking cottonwood leaves we ran toward storms.
Wherever we looked the land would hold us up.

*****

Anna and I are off to Oregon today for camping and family and coffee and fun. I should be back on the 19th to tell you all about it. Hope you liked poetry week. It was fun for me! :)

Kansas Poet Laureate

Door of the Grass

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

for Beth

Where to go now that all roads dissolve?

How to follow deer paths or sudden partings of

big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass

into the field so deep that you can no longer see the edges?

No need to answer, says the wind. Just walk.

Just stop in this surprise of clearing

where some other has stopped before you.

Listen to the careful tremble, the heavier rushing

tumbling upward and out from the tops of

bordering cottonwoods. Let it sweep back

over you. Your mind only blossom and stubble,

breaking against what you thought you knew

until it too blows free or roots deeper

into something like bedrock turning under us.

Here in the house of the grass,

wind tells the sea in you, the old stars in you too,

welcome home.

Our new U.S. Poet Laureate

One of the Lives

W. S. Merwin

If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
so that she had to go to her grandmother’s in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
I would not have travelled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley with its river sliding past the amber mountains
nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall.

Anna's Fourth Year

written for her fifth birthday May 19, 2010

She still doesn't like to drink

anything unless you

count answers

because she'll drink

you dry asking--

abstract words

will be dripping

with meaning

you've wrung into her

bucket of thoughts.

She asks to make dessert,

maybe cinnamon toast.

She tells you she's

used too much sugar

(force yourself to swallow

with a smile).

She creates and crafts

construction paper hair

for her doll, a

picture of LOST's island

for Daddy, a pillow

for Mommy imprinted

with her small hand. She

goes to pre-school and becomes

older, talking about kids you

don't know, her world bigger

than what you contain, her body

nearly too big to hold

when she sleeps,

her ingredients and ideas

beyond what you supply

(more than the love

of one person.)

She poses just how

she wants to stand

no matter what you think.

She digs her

own thoughts

in Poppa's garden,

piling up questions

like a bucket of potatoes.

--Aunt Linda

Antidote

We had to write another poem this year for the Summer Reading Program.

Antidote

One, two , three,

Four, five, six.

One, two, three,

Four, five, six.

Kick,

and pull,

and move,

and breathe,

and leave

the brain

on land.

Silly Sisters

I got up, picked out my clothes for church-jean skirt, white shirt, ooh! I'll wear my pink shoes. Fun.

Then I went to town to pick up Abby and laughed and laughed when she stepped into the car.

Luckily she thought it was funny too.

Skee-ball