Hopi House and Garden

(this is for a report in school)

The Hopi knew how to live in the desert. They traveled a long way to get wood for their ladders. They made their houses out of adobe blocks, using sand and clay from the desert. It was really hot in the morning and in the night it was really cold. The thick walls made it not too cold or hot inside. The doors were up high, to keep out the animals. They used ladders instead of stairs, so the animals couldn't get up. They ate corn, melons, squash, and beans. They don't need much water to grow.

How I made it:

I got three boxes, taped them together, and then I got sculpey to put on and then I covered it with salt dough. I mixed equal amounts of flour and salt, then added water. And then I wanted it brown so we tried to mix food coloring together to make brown. And it didn't work, so we had to get some real soil. And then I spread it on the three boxes.
The next day, I spread on another coat.
We made plants out of toothpicks, floral tape, leaves from a pretend flower, green wire, tissue paper, and clay. My sister helped me "plant" the garden. We used clay for the soil.
They planted squash, melons, corn, and beans. So did I, but I wouldn't eat them! Of course I wouldn't, because they're just made out of materials, not real food. I like beans and corn for real, but only sometimes I like corn.

I spread thin clay (slip) on the cardboard. I got the stones from the beach last weekend on my vacation.

disco high heels

I wanted to decorate them because I like fancy high heels and I have other things to say but I am going to say them after the big big big report.

My old dress up shoes were blue but they didn't fit me for some reason. I wanted new ones so I decorated big high heels that didn't fit me so after I decorated them I put them in the basement. Do not ask me why. My mom made me [that's where the dress-ups get put away in our house! vfg].
I got my sister's old high heels and I cut the straps off so I could use them for slip-ons. And then I got some nice decorating stuff and I glued, glued, sticked, sticked, glued, glued, sticked, sticked, glued, glued... They are so so fancy. So I said this was a disco high heels. I put on disco pants and then I did some disco moves that were so SO SO SO fabulous.

Flower bush

This is me making my pinataaaaaaaaaaaa. [Back space 3 a's. there.] I was going to make a flower bush pinata. To decorate it, we took strips of paper, took a paintbrush, and dipped the paintbrush in some glue, put it on the strips of paper, and put it on the shell.


We also did tissue paper flowers. The yellow flowers are the tissue paper flowers. The other flowers are glassine flowers. That's all. See ya later!

Still here

My favorite freckles: this semi-circle on Marian's left hand.

We've been cleaning and hiding and enjoying summer. Not blogging. But I thought I'd add a couple of photos for Marian's friends.

Resting and working on a penguin (from the lovely Hillary Lang's Peppermint Fairy Stitchette set) for her baby brother's bound-to-be-oh-so-embellished wardrobe.Sleeping after a long morning walk in our well-used jogger that included work with Mama in the pottery studio (see the clay on her dress), play with sister at the weeping willow on campus (see the leaf), and some see-the-flowers detours (the yucca blossom).Marian is doing quite well, health-wise, except for today. White blood cell counts and platelet counts even on the high end of normal, and hemoglobin just a touch low. Nasty itchy rash all over, swollen eyes, slight fever. Not yet driving to Philly or even the local ER, but I have to keep my exhausted self awake (hence finally posting!) to monitor the fever. We're currently in a wait-and-see mode, but we think it's an allergic reaction to an old medication that was recently restarted. New immune system, new allergies. Daddy, away for a stage race in MA this weekend, has been waking up with high fevers during the night, so we're a bit virus-wary. Weary.

Real time blogging

What are we doing RIGHT NOW?
The Vivonex boxes in our room have all been called for. Marian has caught the recycling fever.
In the foreground, the emerging circus train.
In the background, a little townhouse for the tiny doll I wrote about yesterday.
More dollhouse work:

baby carriage

I spent the week home with Audrey, and I'm afraid my computer time got devoted to a little cloth diaper obsession I have going right now (and I know a lot of you--particularly my most beloveds--are rolling your eyes at me, but I'm encouraged with innovations...).

I have rather a backlog of great Marian craft artist photos, but have decided to stay current rather than try to play catch-up right away (a problem I used to have with my junior high journaling: I'd want to write, have a little guilt trip about not writing for 5 months, and fill pages with a dry little logbook items instead of passing on the passion that brought me to the little book in the first place).

Marian is dying over all things baby right now, filled with daily angst that she can't "hold that cute little baby right now." The main Marian-driven project of the weekend was making a baby carriage for her favorite stuffies (today it held Lambie, Bunny, and Achoo). When Audrey & I arrived Friday night, we were greeted with this sketch:I love how she's using sketch lines for some of her drawings when she wants to be careful of her dimensions. I hope she keeps the clear-lined drawings in her repertoire, too, though: they have a lot more spontaneity and character. When she sketches, sometimes she gets hung up on accuracy and loses a bit of charm. I'm sure I'll see plenty of changes in her style (age 6 & all), and I'm sure I'll stay nostalgic.... The pig on the side was her original decorating plan: lots of wee piggies and apples. Each side got just one in the end.

We decided to use a Vivonex box (her formula comes in packets that come 6 to a box, 6 of which are in another box, which is then shipped in another box. It drives me crazy.) for the base to start with a bit of stability (the box lines on the sketch above are mine), and add cardstock sides. She chose to make the wheels from one of the cardboard hospital meal trays I saved for crafting purposes because "I really like the texture" and the handle from a stick that's been floating around our room since I brought it home from a hospital walk (I hadn't been outside for awhile, and I kept it next to my bed for 3 weeks).She was delighted with the result, and decorated it with ephemera gleaned from postcard artist ads in the goody bags we scored at the Art Star Craft Bazaar on Saturday. After an overnight drying, we loaded it with stuffies this morning. I'm afraid she ended up a bit disappointed, though: "I thought it was going to be big enough for me to push it standing up!" She hasn't given it the time of day since. Tomorrow I'll try to put in a good word for it ;).

Working hard

Two things I loved about Marian today:
*Working on a recycling craft project..."Mom, do you have an empty plastic bottle and some tin foil?" Why, yes! Yes I do...
(okay, this photo is from yesterday, but she worked on it today, too. That's her craft desk in the background. Serious work done there.)

*"Will you get me your wallet? [emptying...] Don't worry [confidential laugh], you know I put all of this back. I'm not one of those c-ray-zee kids who make a mess. It just I want to play store." Which evolved into writing out little money math problems for herself on the bottom of her medication schedule and this, after I wandered off doing my own whatever: "Mom, you want to see the stairs I made?" Yup, and take a picture!

A little bit of lightheartedness

All photos in the last couple of days, that show Marian's cheery little spirit is still there, even if she is also tired and grumpy, too.

First, goofy grins for her ice. Ice from the machine, even though it's that cool easy-to-bite kind, is not sterile enough, so I make her custom ice chips by freezing 1/3 bottle of fresh water (meaning it hasn't been opened longer than 1 minute...that's hyperbole, we're allowed 4 hours before is is suddenly unclean), then smashing the bottle on the floor until it is crushed enough to shake out chips. Then into a clean new cup to be eaten with an individually-wrapped plastic spoon. She loves it.
Bathtime karaoke. When we were readying for her bath Wednesday, she caught up the end of her feeding extension (just used for medicines right now because she is all IV--TPN--nutrition) and started singing. So I had to grab the camera and make her do it again.A bit of energy for crafting yesterday, so I pulled out the bin and let her choose (my choices get a lot of "NO!"s lately). She stickered a tin. We've a rich sticker library these days from packages and her trips to Michaels with the $ she earned via project superstar. She had me decorate the bottom with some bits of colorful twine sent to us by my sister's coolio mother-in-law. And did a weird pose with them...

the window

The children's rooms at CHOP all have large windows along one side, overlooking the central atrium, outside or, if you're very lucky like us, the emergency room. It spawns a lot of thought that I hope I'll write about...For many, especially in the oncology ward where long stays are standard, window decorating is big. I wouldn't say ours is an artistic triumph, but is organically growing, and Marian heartily approves.
Audrey's panel is on the left. She's getting quite adept at backwards writing.
The center is mine, I guess. Our What a Wonderful World silk scarf and Mare's name.
I'm documenting the making of the right panel below. Coffee filter watercolor flowers and painted-by-Marian vinyl window clings. Both new-to-us projects that you should try, too.
Art therapist Jennifer introduced us to coffee filter flowers. I think they might be a hospital standard, since we know another charming 6-year-old getting a bone marrow transplant in Minnesota who wrote about them on her Caring Bridge site. I know I've seen coffee filters in craft applications before, but I've never indulged, probably since I'm not a coffee drinker, so they weren't handy. I thought their allure was "hey, here's a round circle of white paper that you already have". But more impressive is their durability when wet, awesome for wet painting with young 'uns (look at how wet this paper is!), and (I know, surprising) filter quality: color travels on them in cool ways, even separating into its components. A very tie-dye effect. Materials:

Washable surface. Your painting turns out two-sided, which is awesome for windows, but also means bleed on the bottom. So make sure you can easily clean what you're working on. A paper towel or another filter underneath works, too (plus, cool effects).

Coffee filters. The grande size is great, if you can find it, but everything works. Since they have distinct ridges, crumpling up the filter first helps you to flatten it out before you start. Just go ahead and embrace it, like nice crumply linen pants :)

Watercolor paints. I have to admit this project was twice as cool because Jen brought us amazing metallic watercolors. They cover everything with great bitty mica-like bits of sparkle and I cannot believe I, with an eye out for all things new and kids'-art-related, didn't find them myself. One (there aren't many) upside of being in sterile isolation is that everything has to be new. So the watercolors are now ours!!! Prang brand metallic watercolors. You must find them.

Brushes & water. Oooo, guess why? Bigger brushes are better because you want to splash on a lot of color.

Process: Use plenty of water to work up a generous amount of paint, and let the colors run together.

another option: washable markers. The same water base that makes them wash up nicely also makes water a great solvent for these markers. I think this is a good technique for children whom you don't really trust with paint, but want to give them a chance to play with color--call it pre-painting :). Draw a line design or just scribble, then use a big brush to spread water around. Once you get the filter paper wet, the color will slowly spread by itself. Or brush vigorously (I love that word), and accelerate the process.

If you were holding these in your hands, you would get to enjoy all of the good shimmer :).

Seriously, get yourself some Prang metallic watercolors. Who loved this project most of all? My mom and I. Giddy.

Plenty long, this post. So vinyl clings later.

more crafts I did in the hospital

My friend Ella gave me some glow-in-the-dark fairies that I could have in the hospital and we made stuff for the glow-in-the-dark fairies. For the beading we use skinny wires to make different stuff and you put on tiny glass beads, and then you make it into something new! We made wands for them. We made a butterfly for them. We made a mama snake and a baby snake for them. I had a new IV so they put it up on my arm so could still use my hand and I liked how they did that. When I go back I'm not going to have an IV. I'm gonna have this tube connecting to my heart and out of my body there's going to be two tubes hanging out but the one that's connected to my heart is just one tube. And it's called a Broviac. And that will be nice because I will be able to use my hands for CRA-AFTS!!
I got some supplies from the TV lady. And I got instruction paper [construction!]. I got foamie stickers, I got Blendy markers. The play lady made a beach for me and I made a machine. And I made that bunny all by myself, with a tiny bit help. I will post the pictures about that later.
My IV was kind of hurting this day so I used my foot to hold the paper. And I have a tricky foot, you see! And the foot helped me cut. Bye bye! See you later!

And I have Vanderbilt scrubs on. I got my Vanderbilt scrubs from my dad 'cause he comed back from Vanderbilt. That's where I used to go to the hospital.

hamsters & hedgehogs

I like making crafts. There was a snowstorm so we got to work on some new projects for project superstar.

soaps

[Anne-Marie at Bramble Berry graciously donated a rather massive amount of melt-and-pour soap to the project superstar effort (in the shop starting tomorrow!), and Marian and I had great fun with our first batch. I didn't like the soap molds I found, but did find a star candy mold, and found that our IKEA silicone ice cube trays worked so slick. And then pushed back bedtime for a second! (and third, but that makes me irresponsible, not "fun". sigh.)]

Unicorn Magical

I love my unicorn so much! I watched the movie called The Last Unicorn, and I wanted my own white unicorn. And I had a white horse, so I decided to make that to a white unicorn. And I like my white unicorn so much that I can't believe it's magical in the world of white trees and white flowers. [Marian liked this picture with the flash because it is glowing "magical".]

I wanted curly hair so I used some silk, real silk that's so soft. I got it from Sara and Jeff when we were visiting them [at a great Asheville craft supply] and it's the magical unicorn.

I separated the silk into pieces that were the right size and my mom sewed them on. My mom said what should we do for a horn and we decided to make it out of felt. I said "cut a fat triangle" and my mom cut it out of paper. We tried it on the unicorn to try if it looked good to me and we tried it again and again and again and again and it turned out so good at the the end. I stuffed it with stuffing. We did a spiral and we got some silver thread and put it around it so it looks like it's a spiral. I'm done.