Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard

After four years of hanging out with Papaeel and myself, Littlemaneel will be starting preschool tomorrow. Of course I have some anxiety about it, but I know he is a capable little being and I am excited to see him grow socially. He is a caring and empathetic little man and I look forward to him making new friends and am eager to see him explore his identity outside of us. What makes it a lot easier for everyone is that I am employed at the school and will be in the same building as he is and have gotten to know and genuinely like his teachers over the last year. Also, the school I work for now is like no other I have worked at before. It's environments are intentionally created around the emerging interests of our students, and said students are treated with respect and as contributing participants in our learning community. The owner also has a small organic farm where most of the food served comes from, it's very eco-conscious and uses cloth diapers, composts leftovers and so on. I must admit that being at the same school will have a few downfalls, as I learned last week during one of Littlemaneel's visits. He fell and was pretty upset and I was on another playground and could see him, but was not able to comfort him. Talk about tough! As hard as it was, I know it will be necessary for him to receive comfort from others besides Papaeel and myself and was glad he was able to do so. It's hard to hand your baby over to "the world," but I am secure in the choices we've made when it's come to raising him and am hopeful for the best in this new chapter of our lives.  

We were asked to create a family board for him. Littlemaneel had a say in the photos that were used and I'm pretty sure we're representing most of his current favorite people. Here is the finished collage, it was lots of fun to make. I will be cutting out his name by hand and attaching it and the collage to a piece of scrapbook paper tonight.

Littlemaneel was also in need of some rest time essentials. We have a toddler bed sheet and blanket as that is standard preschool cot go-to's, but I decided to step it up a notch and make Littlemaneel a nice little nap mat. While the thought of biking out to one of the many fabulous new and or vintage fabric stores in town and if nothing else, just looking at fabric for inspiration came to mind, I knew what I really needed to do what look through what we already had around the house. We have really come a long way in our desire to consume less and make more and that is saying something for this mama who once had so many shoes she would've made Imelda Marcos blush (okay, that was exaggerated to make a point. I have probably never owned 1,000 pair of shoes in my life, much less at once). I came across his first duvet/play mat from when he was a babyeel and I flashed back to days long gone. Gosh, it really did come in handy back then, but really wasn't getting much use these days. Here's my then Babyeel hanging out on it back in it's high time of use. Those brows!

I knew it was the perfect thing to be upcycled into a nap mat. It was comfortable and even more so when double in half. I also had this badly warped pillow in need of repurposing and decided to throw it in the mix. At the time, I wasn't sure what I would use for the actual blanket part of this mat, but came across some blue fleece (not pictured) that I had stocked up on for cheap a few winters back.

I had everything I needed and was ready to create. Once the pillow was re-fluffed to the size of the folded in half duvet, I was ready to sew and attached it to the duvet with a zigzag stitch. I altered the duvet cover to the size of my new mat and attached my blue fleece to one side to create my built in blanket. I left a small opening at the bottom of the cover to continue to make it easy to wash. I stuffed the mat into the cover and we were ready to rest!

Funny enough, Littlemaneel was asleep by the time it was ready to go, so Big Bad Wolf had to step in and do a bit of testing/modeling for me.

He looks happy! For a final touch and convenience of transporting, I added velcro to a piece of canvas strap and wah-lah-a nap/rest time mat for our boy's journey into preschool!

Until next time,

Mamaeel

Baby Love

Babies are the best! Littlemaneel is a big fan, especially of his best friend's baby brother. He just turned one & we were excited to celebrate this big milestone with our friends. Being that this baby brother already lives in a home overflowing with toys, parents insisted that we didn't need to go out and buy baby anything. We agreed and decided to make baby a few fun toys for his first birthday instead. Baby loves music and so we agreed that a couple of jingle sticks were a must.

We know that baby is mastering the pincer grasp and that he is exploring the world around him with his hands, perfecting those fine motor skills. We figured a toy that would encourage said skills was a no-brainer. At this age, Littlemaneel loved dropping things into slots, shaking the container around and then dumping out the things just to do all over again and we are guessing this baby will too!

Until next time,

Mamaeel

Playground Love

Happy Valentine's Day! We are all sick here, so our big evening plans include eating the delicious homemade soup Papaeel made, followed by curling up in bed together with a movie. I got sick first and so while I had planned on making extravagant hand cut Valentine's with Littlemaneel, I ended up changing gears and then handing it over to Papaeel so he could work some of that digital magic that he does. Here's the finished product...

Not bad, considering our health over the last week. Luckily, we found our DSLR battery charger (yay!) and were able to use our good camera to take some photos of Littlemaneel playing his trumpet. We narrowed down the best shots, decided on one and incorporated the print that he created last weekend in the both the background and hearts. We tossed around a few ideas for the caption, but figured since most of the people receiving this year's Valentine's are 3,000 miles away, blowing our love their way worked. Here's hoping you all have whatever kind of Valentine's or Anna Howard Shaw Day you've envisioned!

Until next time,

Mamaeel

Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

We are lucky to again live in a city with a Dick Blick. While it is now one of many art supply stores in the area, I am still a fan and stop in when I have time and am in that neighborhood. On our last visit, we made one purchase and that was a 12pk of Scratch Art Scratch Foam. We are big into printmaking and have wanted to expose Littlemaneel to it. These soft boards only require a pencil or back of a paintbrush to imprint your design, so we just handed Littlemaneel a board and pencil and let him draw to his heart's content. He started off drawing a mountain with The Cat in the Hat on top and went on to add his face and so on. Once he was finished, we got out the brayer and paint and went to printmaking town! It was a fun process and he really got into it. 

Finished prints (the black one is the foam board covered in paint).

Littlemaneel designing his foam board.

He really loved rolling the brayer in paint and then onto his board.

Rolling, rolling, rolling.

Now we press his board onto a piece of colored paper we've selected.

He picked up the process quickly and was adamant on not receiving much assistance.

Pulling the board away from the paper.

First finished print!

Definitely something we will be doing again! Papaeel and I are even thinking about creating a few boards. Next time, we will make sure we are stocked up on fabric paint so Littlemaneel can print a t-shirt or two! With the freezing rain keeping us in most of today, we are thinking we'll incorporate some of the prints we made into littlemaneel's valentine's. We'll be sure to post pics of the final outcome.

*Apologies for the poor photo quality. These were all taken on the iPad as we cannot find our battery charger for our DSLR (Nooooooo!). We recently took a trip home and are hoping it's still wedged in a suitcase somewhere.

Until next time,
Mamaeel

The Fox in the Snow

It snowed here yesterday and littlemaneel could not have been happier! Coming from the Midwest, where his first birthday party had to be rescheduled due to a blizzard, he is used to playing in and loves snow. Moving to the Pacific Northwest where rain is the given type of precipitation, he has been asking about snow since we got here and will randomly go to the window, pull back the curtains and say with a sigh, "No snow yet." Happy our boy has gotten his chance to properly utilize his snow pants again this year.

Moving Right Along...

So, we decided to pack up our belongings & move across the country & we couldn't be happier! It's something we've thought about doing for awhile, but somehow, it always found a way of getting put off. At the beginning of this year, a good friend of ours got very sick out of nowhere, was hospitalized & nearly died. It was terrifying. It was sobering & enough to really put things into perspective. You can't wait till tomorrow to live the life you want because tomorrow may never come. While that is something we've always believed to be true, it isn't always something we've acted on. We had a sort of now or never moment and here we are! Of course, we miss our loved ones, but we've been in touch daily, plan on going home for a visit at Christmas & we already have a visitor coming to stay with us next month!

We covered over 2,000 miles with a 3 year old in tow via The Empire Builder, an Amtrak train. It was quite the adventure and littlemaneel really seemed to enjoy it & did exceptionally well on our 2 day journey across the country. When we weren't running up and down the cars, looking out the windows in the viewing car or cuddled up reading books, we relied on Mr. Potato Head, puzzles, drawing utensils and iPad apps such as Wee Alphas, Toca Boca & the many Dr. Seuss interactive books to pass the time.

The cracker and cheese tray was definitely our favorite option from the snack car. It complimented the fresh fruit we had brought along with us. That was a big plus with taking Amtrak, we were allowed to bring lots of things we normally wouldn't have had we flown. This was our first long distance trip via train and so while we did have Mediterranean orzo and chicken curry salad [part of a delicious spread brought to us by our lovely friends who met us at Union Station], we didn't bring anything to store it in and it all had to be eaten within the first few hours of our trip. We then relied on the dried snacks, peanut butter sandwiches and the fresh fruit we packed. When we travel back east to visit, we are definitely going to bring a cooler. That way, we can make our own cheese trays, keep our salads longer and avoid the overpriced snack car all together.

Lots of good views from the train. Neither papaeel nor I had been to Montana before and found the big sky there to be rather beautiful.

We arrived exhausted, but ever excited to have finally made it to our destination. We were ready to eat a healthy warm meal and explore on foot. This city is very bike friendly, so before moving we had decided to give up our 4 wheel way of life and embrace a body powered 2 wheeled one. We had okay cruisers back home, but decided to leave them and take our chances on craigslist upon arrival. We were successful in finding good condition commuter bikes at reasonable prices. We've had the good fortune of time to adapt to riding miles on our bicycles everyday. We are truly embracing the city life and are loving it!

[worry not, we've since acquired proper baskets for grocery lugging]

We've been lucky enough to have a whole month to get to know the city side by side as we've hunted for jobs & enrolled in school. We've so enjoyed being able to spend every single day together without any real obligations. We've made a point to take in the sites, go for long strolls in the rain, play at the park for hours, craft, make art with littlemaneel, cook & share delicious meals as we explored & have gotten acclimated to the city. Time well spent, that we are are ever grateful for.

We look forward to sharing our west coast adventures with you. There are still moments where we find we're pinching ourselves because we can't believe we are actually here. We feel that we've made the right decision and the universe must agree, because things just seem to be working out in our favor. All I can say is, if there is something you've always wanted to do in this one chance at life you get, don't put it off! The mundaneness of everyday life will trudge on & you'll find it's harder to get off the wheel. As crazy as it may seem at the time, follow your dream and good things will happen. Or better yet, in the words of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, "Don't dream it. Be it."

Until next time, mamaeel

Candy-O, I need you so...

Did you survive Halloween? We had a good time partying it up the weekend before, but I'm always left wanting more, especially when it falls on a weeknight. I love Halloween, but we are those, "weird parents" who don't really eat or give our 2 year old candy, so that pretty much leaves us with nothing to do but carve pumpkins on the holiday itself. While our community has a few cool events we go to, they are always the weekend before & the older littlemaneel gets, the more weary I grow of the confused, sometimes dirty looks we get from the dressed up attendants when we refuse the candy. Look folks, I'm sure there will come a day when our child will eat some candy, ok. All we are saying is, he's 2 & he's got the rest of his life to eat candy. If it makes you feel better, we do allow him to eat fair trade, organic dark chocolate chips from time to time. Long story short, as soon as littlemaneel is old enough, I think we'll start hosting Halloween parties on the night of Halloween (don't go thinking they'd be lame-I'm talking bonfires, bobbing for apples, hot cider, smores & more)! Here he is in his, "mom's original idea was way too involved, so at the last minute she cranked this one out" T-Rex costume. 

So Halloween has come & gone & now we're less than 2 weeks away from Thanksgiving! We're lucky enough to have gotten our goods into a great new local shop & our stuff has actually been selling rather well! With two weeks away & counting from Small Business Saturday (& Black Friday), we've been steadily building & restocking inventory. Check out our new Fancy Little Pillows...

Ok, so it hasn't all been profit based crafting. Here's a t-shirt I just had to make for littlemaneel. While it isn't for sale, I suppose it could be. 

I am being beckoned as there are lots of things that still must be sewn, cut & glued this weekend, so I must go. Until next time!