d land

my love/hate relationship with disneyland

mask craft, FINISHED!

the never ending mask craft

how we did it? wrap tin foil around a plastic bucket, wrap twine (the coarse garden kind worked best) around and around, pinning at the top as you cross it back and forth and back around again. one mom found paper clips worked best, the safety pins we used were hard to get back out. the point is to have a way to cross the twine on top without it sliding off. use watered down glue (i ended up taking old glue bottles and added a little water then squeezed the mixture out) to paint on the string. let dry for several days and then put more glue/water mixture on it. let dry (seriously this took a week to dry!) pop off the bucket, peel off the tin foil and decorate. we used pipe cleaners, pom poms and feathers with a minimal amount of hot glue (i was done with the white glue!)

thats it! wear it if you dare!

spooky house

our favorite neighborhood haunted house

and on our haunted house bike ride we stumbled on to this cool house, check out this fence!

Matt Whitlock book reading

we had a book reading and illustration lesson at our local children's bookstore today. this is something i have been working on for a long time and then just stumbled on to the idea of asking the owner of a bookstore if she knew any local authors, wow! what a great idea, only took me two years to think of it!

thanks so much matt! we really enjoyed ourselves!


of course this cool store had a fairy entrance.

camp fire mask, garden update (it's fall?)

our mask project is underway, i am tackling a bigger craft than usual, hoping it works out (fingers crossed) i found the idea in a thrift shop craft book, my favorite kind of resource.

at least i READ the directions before starting the craft with the kids and realized it takes days and days to dry... we will bring it back next week to finish. stay tuned... speaking of "drying" it is hot and dry here, not feeling much like fall or winter. but its time to plant the winter crop:


since i am making a green smoothie every single day (yesterday i had two!) i am in need of lots of greens. i planted several types of lettuce, mustard greens, collards and cabbage


lots of onions, i am still eating the onions i planted in the summer and they are keeping well in the garage. i planted about 4 different kinds and six of each, hoping for a never ending supply of onions


and last, sugar snap peas, about a dozen!! as usual i plant too much!


i have six tiny ailing cauliflowers planted and i spent the morning babying them, all i want is cauliflower and broccoli!!! the broccoli isnt at the garden center yet, i planted a row of seeds but seeds are hit or miss. i will check back soon for the broccoli and hoping the cauliflowers make it.

Halloween Carnival, Camp Fire style

Camp Fire has an annual Octoboer Halloween Carnival which is a throwback to the "old days" when a carnival meant cheap carnival games, crafts and a costume parade! Everyone said over and over how fun this was, how "retro" it felt which is why camp fire is so special to me. Doing things the same way year after year, making traditions, focusing on the important stuff like friends and family. 

we "halloweened" out our clown game (made for emily's last birghtday party)


kinda creepy to me! this blow up clown was for decoration only


emily and katie


lizzie wore our vintage blue bird outfit, she was pounced on by so many leaders and camp fire staff, she felt like a super star!









our favorite costume was this headless horseman (our own sean, brother of katie), unfortunately i couldnt get a decent pictue of him!

more halloween celebrating today, this is an all halloween weekend!

peer puppets

our camp fire meeting last week was about peer pressure and dealing with it (i gave an example of how the popular kids or "sosh's" as they were called sat at a "special" table when i was a kid and if you didnt have the right shoes and clothes, you werent allowed to eat there: the girls seemed genuinely interested in this!) i really enjoyed this meeting, it is a topic i want to discuss more and will probably drive the girls nuts with! being "popular" and in the "in crowd" was a big deal growing up for me, not entirely sure why i cared so much, but i guess it was important to fit in. anyways, i am on a brainwashing quest to keep my girls from putting any importance on looks, clothes, money or any other superficial way people judge each other. so that was the lesson and it went very well. we made super cool fabric puppets, my original goal was to have the girls use them to play act some "peer drama" but we just had fun with them instead.

here is the original puppet idea, i like this much better but needed a project that could be done in one hour. it was funny how the girls made their puppet "hands" pretty big and then boxed with them, oh well! stamping out peer pressure i guess!