Happiness is our new self-serve cereal station!

I am so lucky to be raising the reincarnation of Heloise (Scarlett). She cleans the other kids' rooms with pride and picked and placed hyacinth blossoms on the dining room table and at my bedside. She added a few hickory nut hulls "to keep the flowers company."

Georgia made her own contribution with the bouquet of hand-drawn flowers

The stage is the awesome creation of cool dad Eric Witt. We greatly benefited from the Witt's move to smaller digs and inherited this cool piece of kid furniture. Behind the curtain are 2 tubs of dress-up stuff and a basket of plastic microphones!

So, pesach. The floor to ceiling clutter control task is complete (Janine laughing) except for this cupboard. This is one of those cupboards you should be wearing a hard hat to open. So still to tackle are this cupboard and a complete wiping down of the ins and outs of all food and dish cabinets. Invested in a tiny collection of springish passover-ware, but plan to build the rest of the collection at yard sales over the years.

Planning the rockingest kid seder ever-I made felt plagues yesterday, there will be hail falling and frogs jumping and water changing colors....

Gorgeousness!

Major change around here...I'm not fighting the clutter-at least not with the vengeance of the past 7 years. A few weeks ago it started to seem more ok. I wanted to let the kids paint even though there was a traveling pony tea party taking over the stairs. It all started with an article I remember reading in Family Fun magazine a few years ago about a "Yes Box." That's where you put activities kids want to do that you had to say "no" to today, but want to agree to someday. So I wanted to make a "yes box" for Channukah, which I never did, so I decided to just say "yes" more. A lot more. Yes to baking, yes to exploring the texture of flour and never making it into anything (waste makes me die a little inside), yes to bike riding after pajamas are on, yes to painting (which they love and I previously allowed biannually). 

Trust me, our house reflects this new approach to parenting (squalor). Then a few days ago something else changed. I realized I was fighting the clutter in our schedule too-feeling like if we just did less somehow family magic would be everpresent. But I'm starting to get it...a certain amount of clutter-the toys and the obligations-is just the stuff of life. It adds a richness and sparks all of our questions and creativity. Then to come full circle with my magazine-rich life, there is an article in this week's Newsweek about how fighting the clutter takes time away from the people and activities we really want to be enjoying. The author argues that it's not the clutter itself that needs to be addressed it's our response to it. 

One more tie-in. I'm kind of obesessed with tie-ins lately. This is the time-pre Pesach- that is Jewishly the most anti-clutter time of the year. The deep cleaning to rid the house of chametz, the water and redemption imagery in the story, and yet we need another whole set of kitchen everything that has to be stored for 358 days a year. Hmm...I'm embracing the irony! Can I reward this epiphany with a trip to Goodwill for a new set of Passover dishes?

Hanging out with mini-me on the front porch

oilcloth redemption-after fits and starts the solution seems to be to use the biggest needle possible to sew this stuff. The one in front is actually just laminated fabric and the one in back is my new oilcloth lunchbag.

The pretzel barrel full of dirt is a "what will grow?" project A la SYC. We put in popcorn, beans, a piece of garlic...all along the edges to see if they sprout. The one at SYC has a banana peel, but I just couldn't stomach that!

Last pic-Stella got the camera and went all over the yard capturing evidence that Spring is here!

I've got the beading bug again-been fooling around with some gifty charms tonight. New bag for spring-The patchwork side was originally a Valentine's day pillow that never got finished. The paper doll side might be my favorite fabric ever. I made my first zippered pouch ever to go with it. It was a no-brainer, but I can't figure out how to line it, even with following the pattern in Bend the Rules. Oh well, it also made a good home for one of my shrinky dink charms. Finally, I copied the exceptionally easy drawstring bag pattern from Lotta Prints back when I had it out from the library and have been wanting to stitch this up ever since. Now I need to think of things I can keep in drawstring bags so I can justify making a zillion of these. 

Made granola from Sweet! this a.m. tastes like crumpled oatmeal cookies...mmmm

Stella has been asking about making a "nature table" for a couple of years now. She wants to look at bugs and "things that wilt." I want a place for the collections of acorns and pine cones and wilty things. So I'd been brewing about where/how to set up the thing and while we were checking out the butterflies at the conservatory this morning, Janine set the whole thing up-which was perfect because I bought a butterfly habitat and had all sorts of ideas for said table by the time we got home. That teeny brown speck in the side of the clear container is "Daisy Katie" who with proper care, will be a painted lady butterfly in about 3 weeks. On the way home Georgia held Daisy's little cup and cooed "Oh Daisy Katie, oh my precious, my little honey." The habitat came with a coupon for 3 more little caterpillars to come in the mail. We set up the table with butterfly books and rubber stamps and all the little plastic caterpillars and butterflies I found around the house and all the potted plants that have come home from various schools lately-then found some great free printable butterfly coloring pages on line and we have a new little nook.

Which is even more perfect because...at Stella's request, I'm planning an Eric Carle unit for spring break. The kids can't figure out how he does those illustrations. Even though I've explained it several times they can't fathom the separate steps of painting and collage. I printed a whole bunch of factoids from his website, reserved all his best work from the library, and found a video showing how he creates  his art. I also reserved a collection of his favorite children's stories and some other books about illustration. We'll be painting and cutting and gluing, and maybe making up our own stories while our own very hungry caterpillar is storing up energy for her transformation.

Spring! outdoor play!

sweet little children exhausted from the first warm day of play

I want to memorize this moment. Seventy-something degrees, shirtless children, and a dolly birthday in the treehouse with lovingly prepared sandcakes with pine needle "sprinkles" and leaves and sticks taped all over the walls for decoration...

How relevant is that sign? I mean that's where I wake up every morning-right at the intersection of fear and hope. That sign has been part of the "Progress" exhibit at COSI for as long as I can remember, but I really noticed it for the first time today. Speaking of COSI, Scarlett gets soooo serious when she is pretending, it's fascinating to watch. They all got so in to serving me "ice cream" in the 1950's dinner.

I finally had a hit at snack time. I've been uninspired and striking out on my packed family meals lately, but Zeke has been into "ants on a log" that he learned to make at school. I packed the "logs" in one container and the "ants" in separate one for on-site assembly and they were devoured. (recently we were out of celery and Zeke made these with carrots-even better IMO)

Anyway, COSI has a frog exhibit right now and we had great fun spotting them all in their habitats. In the space exhibit I happened to read a sign saying the sun will burn itself out in about 500 million years. Did I just store that bit of info away somewhere after 7th grade? That thought's got me right back at the corner of Fear and Hope.

Saturday- things warming up so me moved the gluey craftiness outside. Went to 1st bday at Sew to Speak and won a door prize (who, me?). It's this rockin' Lotta Jansdotter book that I've checked out of the library at least 3 times. Relevant, too because I've been thinking a lot about stamping and printing this week. In fact...the bday gift I'm working on for Sew to Speak's owner involves a new foray into fabric stamping. What luck! When we got home I was determined to make envelope covers for some of our throw pillows. The house is in such rough shape I stepped on granola and polly pocket clothes to get to my sewing machine and then made those pillow covers right at the kitchen table. I was a bit too generous with the fabric, not trusting myself to obey the seam allowance, but we're happy with them.

Thursday I forgot about the mug of coffee I brought to work until about 3 in the afternoon and instead of my usual desperation for bedtime this is what happened...

Scarlett started talking about how much she likes muffins with "granola" on top. I told her in the muffin world that's called "streusel." Then they all asked if we could make muffins with streusel (remember the coffee) I said "Yes! how about right now?"

Stella was ecstatic to show us her new dictionary skills (if you know Stella, you know these things really do make her ecstatic) and she looked up the words "muffin" and "streusel" in several baking books until she read a recipe that sounded good to all of us.  Sensing a chance to pass this off as dinner I subbed a pureed apple for 1/2 the butter, wheat germ for 1/2 cup of the flour, yogurt for the buttermilk, cut the sugar and tripled the oats in the topping. Everyone was stirring and the flour was flying. They all especially liked making little hills of flour in their palms shaped by the measuring spoons. (Yes, Stella is for real in that hat)

Finally it was time to get it in the oven, but I hated to put an end to their textural exploration so I found a bag of cheap-ass, generic, bleached flour I bought for making playdough and gave them each a new mixing bowl full of flour and spoons. Stella had the idea to add food coloring and after many drops and lots of rubbing we discovered food coloring needs a liquid to carry it. So everyone added water to their bowls. A while later I decided to dump cornstarch into each bowl to see if the texture would change-not really. Eventually Zeke was done with his gloppy mess and announced "I want to put mines out in da sun." I didn't see any sun, but his went out on the porch. I decided to dump the other 3 concoctions into a soup pot and see if I could rescue it all into a ball of playdough. I added about 1/4 cup oil and all the cream of tartar we had (about 2.5 T) and stirred and cooked over low heat and amazingly it came together into a purplish-gray glop that was fabulous to knead.

As the muffins cooled there was a chorus of "cut up all the fruit you have!" So dinner was apples and oranges and glasses of Silk with the streuseliest muffins ever! First time I got tops so nice and crunchy, the tops lift off like tasty little lids! Perfect.

While I finished the kitchen clean up the kids took a roll of painters tape and made the "basketball court" seen above.

All that and in bed with Reader's Digest (that's another story) by 8:30.

My camera is going to s**t and only takes grainy pictures with a glaring flash. Anyone know a good camera/phone combo that takes pix as good as a regular digital camera? Spent this warm and windy spring weekend learning to fly kites (my first time, but the kids had done it at school) Scarlett discovered her 6th sense for the wind's direction. We played outside most of Saturday and rounded out the evening in the garage-turned-basketball court/bike rink.