Clay Bust for Father's Day

Today I'm visiting a friend's 5th grade classroom to teach the kids how to make a clay bust. They have each brought a picture of their dad to class...the goal will be to make a model of their dad for FATHERS DAY! As I was making my own clay bust as a sample to show the kids I realized what an incredibly challenging project this was going to be and decided to make a step-by-step picture tutorial for them to use as a guide. I hope this will allow more of them to be successful. Wish me luck!

Here's the tutorial I put together. Click on each picture to enlarge.

Keep it Simple!

I good friend was over the other day and noticed my huge stack of unsewn cloth baby wipes (see previous post) and commented, "when my kids were in cloth diapers I just used washclothes for wipes". Now come to think of it, that's what my family used to and I just didn't remember it. (I was 10 and 12 when my little brothers were born and have changed my share of cloth diapers already.)

So here I am spending all this time on fancy homemade cloth wipes when all I really needed was a cheap pack of Costco washclothes. Now don't I feel silly.

Cloth Diaper Wipes

So, we've decided to make the big switch to cloth diapers. I've been doing a lot of research about the whole process and have discovered there are far more options than I ever imagined. 

One thing I realized is that if I'm washing diapers I might as well be washing my own reusable wipes too.  I could buy them for $10 a dozen OR I could use material I already have around the house and make my own. I'm really excited about this project!

I'll be using a few of Lyla's receiving blankets and an old towel. You can use whatever soft washable fabric you choose...I like the idea of double-sided texture wipes.

I'm cutting my wipes into 5 x 8 rectangles...this size will still fit in the wipe box, although I probably won't use it anymore. I started by cutting a piece of cardboard as a template and traced it onto the back of a receiving blanket.

Then cut a coordinating terrycloth piece.

Here's a lovely stack of unsewn wipes.

I don't have a Serger, but my sewing machine does this cool zigzag binding stitch. Is this standard on all machines? If not I'm sure a regular zigzag would do the trick.

Front vs Back...which is which?

VOILA!

The websites I've been reading recommend about 3 dozen wipes. What a picture that will be!!! I'll post as soon as I'm finished.

Baby Chick Update

14 Days Old

Notice how much their feathers have come in!

Now fast forward to today...26 Days old (just 3 1/2 weeks!)

A few of them appear to be fully feathered.

So many feathers!

They still live in the laundry room in their rubber tub with the heat lamp overtop. In a few more weeks they can go out to their chicken coop. The coop is not ready quite yet. We've been waiting for dry weather to finish painting it, but we've had A LOT of wet days lately. I'm excited to show you the finished product...hopefully soon!

PS. A HUGE thank you to the Jarrets for babysitting the chicks for the weekend while we were away.

My Baby Chicks

Here's my little flock of chicks. They are less than a week old and everyday it seems as though they have gotten bigger overnight. So far it has been a breeze to care for them. We keep them in a large rubbermaid tub in the laundry room and change their water and add more food a couple times a day. Today I dumped the shaving in the compost and gave them fresh stuff, that's why they are playing in the grass in these pictures.  They are great little pets and come to my hand when I put it down among them. Lyla loves to visit them too and we practice being "gentle!" when she helps hold them. We are looking forward to watching them grow! 

Check out the feathers that are already growing in on their wings!

CHICKENS!!!

I'm so excited that I just have to shout it from the rooftops that "TOMORROW IS BABY CHICK DAY!!!" I've done a lot of research and decided that Buff Orpington Chickens would be a great breed for our needs...super mellow, good egg layers, don't mind small spaces, don't fly...perfect. So, tomorrow the baby chicks arrive just-hatched at the co-op and I'll run over first thing to pick up a few of them. The Great Backyard Chicken Project is about to begin!
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This is what they will look like when they are grown...I'll post pics of my own little chicks after I have them moved into their box in the laundry room tomorrow.

Compost Maintenance

If you aren't composting, you should seriously consider starting. All your kitchen scraps break down into great soil for your garden, and then you're not filling up the landfills with unnecessary material. It's as easy as setting up a holding space with cheap chicken wire. Several people have complained that they don't want a smelly compost bin in their yard, but our bin doesn't smell a bit! It's not surrounded by flies or crawling with critters either. The trick is to make sure to add plenty of dry yard clippings...the rule of thumb is 1 part kitchen stuff to 4 parts dried leaves, grass clippings, or other yard waste.

My "soil circle" has been doing a great job composting our kitchen scraps and yard clippings. Last fall we collected several bags of dried leaves that have provided a lot of the necessary dry material. I decided it was time to expand the soil circle and turn all the material (turning the material every once in a while will help it break down faster, it's not necessary though) Check out how dirt-like the material at the bottom of the heap is!

Here's Nick expanding the tube for me. It is now a couple more feet across.

True confessions: I'm not always good about running the kitchen scraps out to the bin...you would be shocked how quickly this stuff accumulates. I had no idea how much food scrap we produced until we started to compost it...what a waste to just throw it away...go get your compost bin today!

Pillow-Soft Dinner Rolls

These are the softest, melt-in-your mouth, die-happy-and-fat rolls I've had in a long long time.


I'm always so impressed what yeast can do.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water

1/2 cup warm milk

1 egg

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp salt

3 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 pkg active dry yeast

butter for top after baking

Directions:

Combine water and yeast and a sprinkle of the sugar, let set.

Add everything else...except only one cup of flour. Keep adding flour until dough pulls away from the bowl.

Knead until satiny and smooth.

Let rise until double.

Divide into rolls, place in greased dish.

Let rise until double again.

Divide into 12 small balls and arrange in a glass 9 x 13 casserole dish as pictured above.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes (my oven = 12 minutes).

You know they are done when they sound hollow if you tap them.

Spread tops with butter to keep them soft and moist. Let rolls sit in the pan to cool a bit...until they aren't so fragile, then you can flip the whole pan out onto the counter. I think the taste and texture are much better when they have cooled all the way.

See this link for the original recipe.

The recipe directs you to roll out the dough into a big flat circle, cut it into slices like a pizza and then roll those triangles into crescent rolls. As you can see, I just cut the dough blob into 12 pieces and arranged them in a glass dish...much faster and just as delicious. (Nick says they get "complete husband approval"...he just ate 3.)

Starting Garden Seeds

I recently received my order of home-grown, home-harvested seeds from a friend of a friend. I think his seed packaging is especially aesthetic...very appealing to me.


So, this year I plan to harvest my own seeds from my garden, so I am making sure all my seeds are "open-pollinated", which means that they were not pollinated under artificially controlled conditions, aka "hybrids". Hybrids are deliberately bred for specific traits, and their future generations will not necessarily carry on those traits...so your have unreliable and unpredictable results your following season. You can assume that if your seed packages are hybrids unless they specifically say "open-pollinated" or "heirloom".

Although I am planning a full garden of lettuce, spinach, onion, garlic, carrots, potatoes, beans, peas and squash, I am going to put a lot of work into my tomatoes. I'm planning on about a dozen varieties and want to do a lot of experimenting with canning sauces and harvesting seeds. I'm also looking forward to learning everything I can about how they grow, and plan to have a porchful of container pots and hanging baskets all along our south-facing wall.

Planting my first seeds!

I'll keep you in the loop as my "Great Tomato Project" continues...

Rag Doll Project - Part II, Mary Janes

My rag doll project is coming together little by little. As I mentioned before, I want to develop my own patterns for everything...doll, clothes, shoes, and other accessories. Here's a quick tutorial for my Mary Jane shoe pattern:

Begin by cutting shoe pieces from felt.


Align the back of the sole with the center of the main shoe piece.


Start stitching pieces together...I just use a whipstitch.


Once I've stitched around to the front of the shoe, I start from the back again on the other side. I found that sewing the pieces from back to front in two steps kept the pieces aligned the best.

Stitch up the front seam.

I do not turn the shoe in-side-out to hide the stitching at this point. I like the ridge along the sole that is visible when the stitches are on the outside.

Position the strap while it is on the doll foot to get the right angle and sew.

Voila!

Grinding Wheat Flour

My mom has a wheat grinder so in the spirit of trying to eat more healthy food (mentioned in my organic produce post) I thought I'd grind some wheat into flour and bake homemade whole wheat bread.

The grinder is amazing. So fast and such fine flour!

I thought the bread turned out pretty well, although it took about 5 hours to rise and the dough was WAY to tough for my Kitchen Aid. I felt like I was trying to knead a ball of rubber. It tasted just fine in the end though. See the recipe I used here.