Take Two

We made another set yesterday.

I was right about the lighter colored ring on one side of the first batch. That part doesn't color much. The second set we made also has the light colored ring, but much smaller.

The other parts do color very nicely though. Here's a picture of cousins having loads of fun. Our house has been full this afternoon, lots of joyful noise.

Anna, Jairus, Cephas

Michaela

I made the second batch in some glass dishes and a mold I found today at Goodwill.

The star mold didn't work at all. I couldn't get the crayon out without breaking it.

I melted them at 250 for 25 minutes. I can't figure out why other people's crayons seem to melt so much faster.

I think I made these a little too big, a thinner disk would be nicer. But look how cute they are packaged like this:

Making crayons

I decided to treat the kids at school to new crayons this year, the old ones were getting pretty sad. Last year they started asking most days if they could bring their own crayons in.

That meant I had two big Ziploc bags full of crayon bits that I couldn't possibly throw away.

Yesterday Anna and I started making big mixed crayons out of them.

It's fun. We peeled a few crayons, cut them into smaller bits, and then put them into some heart shaped foil things I got free a few years ago. I'm going to have to find another mold that's not as girly.

We followed this tutorial initially, but after 25 minutes at 170 degrees, they weren't melted much at all.

We had to go to town then, so we let them cool back down, and then I cooked them for a bit later in the evening at 230, and then we had to go again, and then finally at 250. Eventually they melted and we took them out and cooled them. They're really pretty, but have a row of lighter wax at the top/bottom. I'm not sure if that's because of the higher heat or the heating and reheating. Hopefully next time I'll not try to squeeze it in on a busy day.

Here are a couple more super cool ideas I found when I was looking for more information:

Cookie Cutter Crayons

Bunches of ideas

I've found a wide range of temperatures, from 150 to 250, so let me know if you try it, and what you think works best. I'll keep you posted on what we come up with too.

Food Experiment

I try to be good about planning menus and shopping the sales, but I definitely have the bad habit of forgetting what we have in the pantry and freezer.

So as a fun experiment, I'm going to try and only use what we have in the house until we get cleaned out a bit. I'm thinking I'll have to buy milk, and one treat thing for each of us. Anna and I want caramel for our apples, and Matthew's getting frozen pizza. I'm also going to get a couple of cans of chicken noodle soup, just in case someone gets sick.

Our menu for this week: (Not weird at all yet)

Thursday: Spaghetti and Salad
Friday: Casserole from the freezer
Saturday: Home Group
Sunday: Farm
Monday: Brats with kraut and Fries

I'll let you know how it goes.

Pavlov and Me

I was googling "How to get to bed on time" and ran into this guy's website. I don't know anything about him, he may be a crazy internet kook, but I'm intrigued. Especially this about how to get up right away when your alarm goes off.

Just now I did three reps of the whole get ready for bed and set your alarm and then get up right away thing. It took about 30 minutes. I had the strong urge to hit the snooze each time, even though I wasn't really asleep.

I'm excited. I think this might work.

Overheard at school

"Yes, you may take the pliers out to Mrs. _______, but children may not touch dead birds."

A project!

It's been a long time since I made anything. The sewing machine has actually been under the table for awhile, but I got it back out today and had a pretty good afternoon.

I got started making legwarmers, since Anna's refusing to wear pants, and legwarmers are $5 at Target. For less than that, I can get a nice wool sweater at Goodwill and cut it up and have lots of fun. I like to try and find sweaters that people have already washed accidentally, because then I don't feel so bad cutting it up.

Here are the 3 sweaters I started with. The dark one and the pink one were "pre-felted" wool, and the Tommy Hilfiger was all stretched out. It was pretty, but cotton, so I wasn't sure how it would work.

To make leg warmers out of a wool sweater, all you have to do is felt it, and then cut the sleeves off at the arm, straight across. It makes a kind of cropped sleeve sweater when you're done. I use pinking shears, but I don't think it matters. Usually that's all you need to do. Then pull them on the little legs and you're done.

For the cotton sweater, I had to make the tube a little narrower, so that it would stay up. Just turn it inside out and sew a line along side the seam, then turn it back right side out and try it on. Repeat until it fits, and then cut off your excess.

Then I had the bodies of the sweaters to work with, so I made this little bag first. I think it's fun that you can reach through the neck to grab something small, or lift the flap for big things.

Out of the cotton sweater, after much fiddling, I made this little dress for Anna. I'm pretty happy with it.

I posted all of this to Craftster. Eeek!

Ain't no mountain high enough...Day three.

We had a nice lazy morning this morning, watching cartoons and eating free breakfast, so we didn't get out of town until Noon.

On the way home we stopped to see Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in KS. It's a fun thing to do. We drove 22 miles on dirt roads to get there. It was windy as all get out, so we didn't take many pictures, I could only get one of Anna.

I grabbed the registration book and looked at it for awhile in the car, would you believe 17 people visited already this month? There was someone who had been there before us, and as we were leaving we passed another "hiking" to the top. On a nicer day it would be fun to have a picnic at the covered table.

Anna was feeling sick as we got back on the road, I think an hour of dirt was a little too much. She fell asleep and so we didn't make any more stops.

She was certainly glad to see her Daddy tonight.

I have to thank Marci Penner and her "Kansas Guidebook for Explorers" . If the Kansas Sampler Festival hadn't come to Garden City, we might not know about the Kansas Explorers Club or the Guidebook, and both have brought good fun to our lives. We love exploring Kansas!

Meltdown. Day two, evening

Anna fell asleep on the way back from the Breaks, and was none too happy when I woke her up to take her to Wal-Mart. The "dress" she'd been wearing all day was WAY too short, and she needed some leggings. She was very much against this. We went back to the hotel, where she spent an hour crying about it. I finally got her calmed down with the promise that she only had to wear the leggings to church, and then she could take them off. This is a post-church dramatization of Anna being sad about the leggings.

We went to Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Anna was good and quiet and charmed everyone around us. It's nice to be able to go to church wherever you are.

After Mass we got dinner from El Reynaldo, a recommended local Mexican place. We brought it back to the hotel to eat so that Anna could get those leggings off.

She was worried there would be nothing for kids to watch on TV, but we found something right away. She loves "The Lawrence Welk Show". She sang, danced, and played imaginary instruments.

Then we had a bath and did one of the little craft projects we bought at the store yesterday. She painted a heart shaped box to keep her barrettes in.

Over-tired, she crawled into bed and complained about it for an hour...I think she's asleep now.

Aaahhh...

Gimme a break! Day two, afternoon

After lunch I thought we ought to go up to St. Francis to explore a bit more. The drive up was great, I love those flat horizons, as far as you can see.

First thing we did was the River Walk along the Republican River. It was a perfect afternoon, just warm enough with a little breeze. We had a nice ramble along the 3/4 mile trail (one way), I was worried it would wear Anna out too much, but she was a trooper.

Afterwards we had a little snack at the picnic tables.

Then we stopped at a little store to go potty and get a snack. Anna requested fruit. How did I get so lucky with this girl? I got directions to the Arikaree breaks, and we took Lady out on the road again.

I'm not, historically, much for scenery. I like to get out and see pretty things, walk around in them, but not to see them from the car. But the Arikaree breaks are breathtaking. My breath actually caught. You've got to go see them. It's like nothing you've ever seen in Kansas, out of nowhere. My photo gives you no idea of how cool it is.

We also passed from Kansas into Nebraska, and marked Anna's first travel to that state.

Goin' with the flow-Day two, morning

We woke up bright and early, watched a little PBS kids while we ate our cereal, and went out to the car...to find a nearly flat tire. We asked the desk clerk for directions to a service station, got air and the recommendation that we get it fixed ASAP. So then we went to Kansasland Tire on Main St, and find they're all backed up and it'll be a couple of hours to get it fixed. I popped Anna in the stroller and we went to downtown Goodland instead of Wallace Co.

We had a fresh bear claw in the Daylight Donut and then went shopping at the thrift store, finding lots of fun goodies.

Then we went to the Hallmark and looked at Christmas ornaments and cards and pretty things. Before we knew it, the tire place called and we went back to get Lady. Inside the tire shop they had lots of big tires, and Anna had a wonderful time crawling through them.

It was too late to try to make the sales, so I asked for a recommendation for lunch. The girl at Kansasland said Crazy R's was great. First we went by the courthouse, because Mom always liked to see the courthouses. It was pretty, with some neat red and blue tiling.

Behind it was a park! Here is Anna "eating a cookie at the tea party in my house" at the top of the slide. We had a lovely visit there.

Then we had lunch at Crazy R's, which had big wooden booths and neat stuff hanging all around, and tasty fries.

Running away from home, day one.

Ennui led Anna and me to throw all caution to the wind and run away from home this weekend.

We just headed north, to pretty and unexplored country, to go where the wind and whims took us.

It is pretty up here, rolling hills sometimes, flat sometimes, always fun. I'd never seen the giant Van Gogh in Goodland, so we took the interstate after Oakley to find it. On the way I saw a sign for "The Craft Peddler" so we took the exit and went to Brewster. We found a fun little shop with two sweet ladies and we got a few things for some projects.

Then we went to the elementary school in Brewster and played for awhile on the playground.

On to Goodland, (or, as Anna called it, "Goodlookin") with a delightful stop at the Van Gogh. What fun. There were visitors in the guest book from all over KS and MO, with a few from other states and one from Italy.

We made a stop at Wal-Mart to buy some hotel snacks, Anna chose Princess cookies with delight.

In Goodland we looked for a cheap hotel with an indoor pool. The Super 8 was cheap and nice, but no pool. Across the street there was a new Comfort Inn, with a pool. I stopped and asked the desk clerk if they allowed non-guests to swim, and he said that he would. So we are staying at the Super 8, and had a nice swim at the pool across the street. Here's the darling in a strange pose. We had a great time pretending to be fish and flowers. The flowers grew when the other person splashed and made "rain" and then we'd be picked and put in a vase on the table.

After our illicit swim we ate at the Harvester restaurant, chosen because it was on the same access road we were on, and because Daddy is harvesting and planting while we're gone. It was yucky, but fun. We were the only patrons, other than employees and strange town regulars who went into the kitchen to refill their coffee. Anna asked why the waitress was eating, shouldn't she be bringing our food? Back at the hotel Anna ate a few cookies and announced she was ready for bed. Here she is talking to Daddy about her day. Then we prayed all together as a family, with Daddy on the cell phone. It's been a fun day. I think tomorrow we'll head to Wallace Co. for the County wide garage sale. And then...who knows?

Wordle

I'm on another tech team this year at school, and one of the cool things we learned about was wordle. It's a fun little tool you can use to make word clouds out of any sort of text you'd like. You can link to your blog and see what comes up, or paste in text, or type up your own list.

The more times you type in a word, the larger it will appear. You can play with fonts and layout and colors all you'd like.

A few tips:

***copy your text each time you create one, because it will be lost if you go back.

***To put it somewhere else (like your blog) you need to (alt+print screen) and then open it from your clipboard somewhere else (I use adobe photoshop) and then crop it and save it as a jpg and then put it in like anything else.

Here, for example, is a wordle made from one of my favorite Anne chapters, 25 in Anne of Green Gables "Matthew insists on puffed sleeves" I just googled it and copied it from the text (provided by Project Gutenberg)

I'm looking forward to doing it with my 6th graders, having them describe themselves in Spanish and then make a wordle out of it. I think it'll be a fun way to practice and reinforce vocabulary.

Overheard at Wal-Mart

Woman on a cell phone:

"She just cusses at the clients too much."

The sock doesn't fall far from the drawer.

When I picked Anna up from the bookstore after school today I was surprised to see her outfit. She confirmed that she dressed herself. 3 bows, legwarmers, flip-flops, long sleeved shirt, dress, all in the same general color family...

I was thinking she was a strange little girl when I remembered what I wore today...

Chopsticks!

Tonight, when I told Anna we were having Chinese food (Shannon's yummy stir-fry) she squealed with delight and ran over to the silverware drawer.

"It is Chinese food so I can use my chopsticks! They are eating things! For eating Chinese food!"

She knows this because she has asked a zillion times about them, when doing her "chore" of putting away the silverware.

During dinner she said:

"I call these my gymnastic noodles, because they are from the place where they do gymnastics."

After dinner, when getting ready for bed, she informed us (while laying on the floor with her head on her blankie) that she did not want to go to sleep. Matthew told her she could just lay in her bed in the dark and think. She told him:

"I will think that I want to get up."

Little pink flats

I looked really cute today. A new little knee length A-line skirt with an Italian street scene, all bright and cheery, little pink flats with flowers on top, an embroidered jean jacket. Cute.

As I was leaving school the teachers were teasing me about how I was supposed to stay and sub in the afternoon and I explained that Matthew and Anna were gone, so I had the whole house to myself. They told me to hurry and get home.

I hopped in the car smiling and sang along with the radio some, and thought about 9/11/01, remembering and wondering at the fact that my 6th graders weren't even in school yet.

I pulled into the drive and saw that the trash pile was on fire.

I looked around a little, for someone, because I know that sometimes fires on farms are purposeful, but I couldn't see anyone. I called "the farm" (Marion and Joan) but no one answered and I remembered Marion told me he had to go to Hays. I called Matthew but he didn't answer. I tramped gingerly through the dried knee high weeds to get a peek at the fire. No flames, but lots and lots of smoke and lots of wood to burn and dried weeds and metal and things that scared me.

I tried Matthew again. No answer. I tried to pull the hose over to the fire, but it didn't reach. I decided to go get my watering can. Matthew called back and confirmed that the fire was an accident. The man who is going through the trash pile to take out what he wants and pay us for it was here earlier using a torch, so that must have been what started it. I filled up my flowered watering can 4 times and put out the fire, dirtying my sweet pink shoes and getting weeds all stuck to my cute skirt.

I feel a little bit like a hero.

My new favorite quote

"Start by doing what is necessary;

then do what is possible;

and suddenly you're doing the impossible."

--St. Francis of Assissi

September Gift

At just the right moment, it rained, and the million dormant sunflowers all came up to see me.

(I wish I could take a better picture) (or get better resolution here) (but you get the idea)

And people say it's not pretty where I live.

Slippin' 'n' slidin'

I guess the "5 and up" age limit might not just be about safety. At 5 do you understand the concept of flinging your body onto the slide? We couldn't explain it to Anna, even after I demonstrated.

She found a way to have fun though--

4:45 AM

5 minutes after getting everyone back into bed, with dry sheets and jammies...

Anna: (yelling, from hall) Mama! I have to go to the bathroom!

Betsy: (eyes still closed) OK, you can go by yourself, you're a big girl.

Anna: (still yelling) I will go in this bathroom so I don't wake you up!

Betsy: Thank you, Anna, that's nice.

The lonely garden

--or--

So that's why pickles were invented.

--or--

So that's what tomato cages are for.

I finally went out and spent some time in my poor garden today. With all of the rain, I haven't needed to water, so it's been neglected. The weeds made a fence around the whole thing and it's work just to get in.

The zucchini seems to have given up, crowded out by the massive tomato plants.

The yellow squash is fighting valiantly back, I think I'll have another 15 squash later this week.

The cucumbers, who've mixed with the cantaloupe, are all over the place and producing zillions of cucumbers. I don't even like cucumber.

The tomatoes, sans cages, have grown wild and taken over yards of garden, but they're sprawling and thick and so no light gets to the little tomatoes, and they're perpetually green. And nibbled by bunnies.

The cantaloupes, which did look so good, now look like an elephant came and stepped on them, or like vampire bunnies came and sucked all of the insides out. I really don't understand what happened there.

The watermelon still seems happy. When should I pick him?

Here's the bounty for today. Some of them look too big to be good to me. Does that happen? Do they get too big to be good?

Girls Day In

Today Anna and Mama ignored the messy house, forgot about the unfinished classroom, and threw all responsibility out the window and spent the whole day in Mama's bed watching the Olympics and building things out of pillows. It was lovely.

Time to get back to it!

Go World!