Harder is Easier

One of the greatest lessons I've learned as a parent is that doing things the hard way often makes life easier in the long run.

I thought of this as I was letting Julio help me load the dryer.

This was severely hampering my progress on the excavation of Laundry Mountain.  But, as tedious as it can be, toddler work leads to real work.  I'm convinced that the more I let him enjoy it now, the more he'll want to do it later.

Besides, I told Diego to leave his lunch plate on the table yesterday because the dishwasher was clean.  When I came back from getting his little brothers dressed, he had emptied the dishwasher and loaded it with all of the dirty dishes.

I'm not sure who was prouder, him or me.

Flowers in Wax Paper

Ruben and I made this last spring.  We went to the garden, collected flowers, arranged them on wax paper, put another layer of wax paper on top, placed the whole thing between tea towels, and ironed it until the wax paper was well stuck together.

This is certainly not my original idea; I learned how to do it almost forty years ago, when I was in preschool.  But, I did discover something good when I did it with Ruben:  magenta bougainvillea and red geraniums keep their vibrant colors for months!  The orange nasturtium stayed pretty bright, too, but the fact that the bougainvillea and geraniums have such flat petals made them very easy to use.  The other bright petals and leaves that we tried faded fairly quickly, some turning brown as soon as we ironed them.

I'm going to make some big sheets of this to use as a window treatment in my kitchen.  My window is on the shady north side of the house, so I think that will help the flowers resist fading, and I'm sure it will look nicer than the raggedy paper shade that's been there for the past eight years.  I'll show you some pictures when it is all done!

On another note, I would like to wish a very happy TENTH birthday to one of my favorite readers, Beatrix!!!

Plastic Trash

I am in love with Fresh Mesh.  I am not sure what I am going to do with it, but I find it strangely beautiful.  For years, I did not think twice about throwing it in the recycling bin, but now that I have a huge collection, it is a monument to my kitchen efforts: the empty bags from innumerable avocados, sweet potatoes, onions, lemons and garlic.

I have also been saving little plastic kitchen bits for the past three years or so.  This is just a fraction of the collection:

The colors are so vibrant, and they look beautiful as a collection.  A couple of years ago, I had Diego's preschool class save their bits for a couple of months.  I helped the kids to turn them into a giant mobile that we hung in their classroom.  We talked about recycling and turning trash into art, and we spent a lot of time sorting by shape and color.  It was a brilliant project, and I'd like to do it again this coming spring.

So, back to the mesh.  I have been storing it inside a couple of the larger bags, and I made a little ball of it by cramming a lot of pieces in a bag and tying off the bag.  It is very light and has a fun, squishy texture.  If I have enough of this some day, I would like to make a bean bag chair out of it, perhaps by sewing several bags together to make the cover.

I have a couple different mesh projects that I will share with you soon.  If you have any suggestions, please share them!

Seven Years Ago...

and today:

Happy Anniversary, my love.  How does it keep getting sweeter?

                                                            (top photos by the brilliant Andrew French)

Happy Things

Last night, my eggplant pizza:

Tonight, my favorite spot on the couch:

Welcome to Our Dollhouse (part 3)

Does everybody in our house need to have a cape?  Yes.  When Ruben asked for capes for the pipe cleaner dollhouse family, I made a bunch of these from felt scraps:

They were ready to go in seconds.  We slipped them over the heads of the pipe cleaner people, and Ruben happily ran off to zoom them around the living room.  Our toy house became super hero headquarters for a few weeks.  These are a very easy way to liven up a dollhouse!

I'm not sure when the kids realized that they fit perfectly on some of our other little friends, but a few days ago, I found this guy on the roof:

It begs the obvious, doesn't it?  The swine flew!

Looking Up

Julio kept asking to be lifted up to ring the bells that are hanging from the ceiling in our living room, a situation that quickly became frustrating for one or both of us.  I attached a long piece of yarn to the bells so that he could ring them from the floor.  I like to supervise him when he's playing with it, so I keep the yarn bundled up under the bells when it is not in use.

Babies as young as six months enjoy laying under the bells and ringing them, as do our older kids.