The Heathen Housewife

Almost the only hand knits that my darling husband truly appreciates are the felted clogs that have been famous in the knitting world for the last ten or fifteen years. I put the leather soles on them, and until this morning he was on his second pair, worn daily in the winters over the last ten years or so. That’s a petty good track record for any knit, in my opinion.

This morning I woke up to a steam of cursing and a temper tantrum worthy of the best…well I’d better not finish that sentence – he does read this sometimes. Fred had chewed a hole right through the heel of one. Time to go buy some Brown Sheep and knit a few new pairs for the whole family, I guess.

As punishment for leaving his slippers where the dog can get them and then trying to blame said  known-to-destroy dog for what happened next, I am publishing sad-face morning pictures for the world to see.

Sometimes Sophie and I share a big salad for lunch. She loves hard boiled eggs, so I chop some up warm and toss them with romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, a little balsamic vinaigrette and cheese crumbles…oh and sunflower seeds.

I used to pretend the salad was just for me, and feed her bites of the bits she likes off my fork, but these days there’s no need for subterfuge and we each attack the big bowl with our own fork. I’m cherishing these last months of lunching just the two of us while she’s in half day kindergarten.

(for the record, my other one won’t touch salad with a ten foot pole…but likes other veg just fine. You should hear her rave over kale soup.

I’m loving this holiday weekend. I feel like we’ve packed it with the most fun our family is capable of having. Friday afternoon we all went to see the new Muppet movie. I think Joe and I enjoyed it more than the girls because of all the references to the old show – but hey, we all got to eat popcorn, and the girls did enjoy themselves. This afternoon we came home from an outing, watched lunch, and then I showed the girls some more Muppet clips on YouTube. Specifically, we enjoyed the original Mahnamahna song.

In a fit of silliness, the girls and I decided to record our own version, which I have (probably foolishly) posted to YouTube, and am now sharing with you…

The outing earlier was a trip to a local park where we took a bunch of family photos in the hope of getting one for our holiday cards. I love the timer feature on my camera, which takes ten in a row each time you set the timer. It still is not easy getting four people and a doge lined up and smiling, eyes open, but we came away with something passable. Fred was quite excited and distracted by the flocks of geese living in the park, and the girls were quite grossed out by all the goose poop covering the grass and the fact that Fred considered it a gourmet snack. Joe was just unhappy about the cold, and I was grinning and bearing it all while trying to hold it all together.

This was our second choice of photos – a close call with the one we are actually using, but if you’re local, you’ll probably recognize the park in question. That’s an old beehive barbeque oven that was moved to Lilac Park over by the NordicWare factory a couple years ago – it was originally built during the depression, and was restored by a local committee after years of sitting unused next to highway 100.

Yesterday I stole some time in the afternoon to knit a bit on the sweater I’ve been wanting for myself. I feel a bit guilty starting a selfish project in the middle of the holiday madness, but the lace is a nice challenge and a perfect excuse to sit on the couch with the girls while they watched Howl’s Moving Castle.

This is going to be the back of the Dahlia Cardigan that was published in the Fall Interweave Knits. When I saw the pictures, I knew that it was time for the pile of Silk Garden yarn that had been marinating in my stash for the last five years to come out and play. I have a feeling progress on this will be a little slow, but I will squeeze in a few rows when I can and it will get done probably before spring rolls around and the weather warms up.

I should probably also mention what I was up to the morning of Thanksgiving…since I wasn’t hosting, I had time for my normal workout at the gym before preparing my two dishes and taking them over to Joe’s cousin’s house for dinner. We usually swim on Thursdays (me and the awesome group of athletes that I hang out with). We decided to have a little fun since we’d dragged ourselves in on a holiday, so we had a few races. There is a back story, but really only funny to those directly involved. Video was taken, and again, I am foolishly sharing it with the world here…

That’s me in the shark cap, and of course the first thing I notice when I look at myself in the video is the fact that I still have a giant pear-shaped tummy compared to all my lithe athlete friends. I’m okay with that (for now) – and it doesn’t hurt that I held my own in the races – the people who finished first in this IM were college swimmers and incredibly fast. The lady in the lane next to me is my awesome coach, who is an incredible athlete and although I am not all that competitive by nature (especially compared to the people in this group) it did feel good to hold my own in the pool after spending the entire summer struggling to just keep up on the runs.

There has also been a teeny amount of spinning – I pulled out some nice merino roving that’s been waiting around for my attention – I bought it with three other colors of similarly-blended wool, and am spinning them all separately in the hopes of someday knitting up a striped sweater or three. This is another stolen-moment project right now – but I needed something on hand for a moment here or there of quick spinning in between other projects in my office. The spinning wheels always look so lonely when there is nothing in progress on them!

Oh, and backing up to Tuesday, I had the chance to meet a reader from Florida. I got an e-mail a month or so ago from a nice lady named Carole who has been knitting my blankie and was planning to be in town to visit her son. She wondered if I was interested in a meet up, and I figured why not? It would be an excuse to sit in my favorite coffee shop and knit for an hour or so, right? Turns out she was fun to talk to and had lots of questions about various projects. My coach from the gym (who also knits) came and sat with us for a while, and it was very cozy.

Thanks for getting in touch, Carole! (Here she is with her blankie-in-progress and the original blankie, which I pulled out from the storage ottoman by my couch so they could meet up.)

Finally, in case anyone is dying from suspense, I did track down all the Calico Critter pieces I had in mind for Sophie’s presents, but none in the places I’d most expected. Last week I’d gone to local toy store Creative Kidstuff with a coupon for 25% off one item, where I bought the Caravan Family Camper and the Convertible Coupe along with the rabbit family. I was a little horrified by the prices, but I figured I should at least secure the items I wanted before the crazy Black Friday shopping started, and then see if I could do better. Turns out, I was able to buy the car at half off through Barnes and Noble’s website at midnight on Thursday/Friday, but they had already sold out of the camper. Which is why I got up and out the door on Friday morning to try for the camper at an actual B&N store. Unfortunately, the store that I picked has already sold out of that particular item before the big sale.

The good news is that they had a different present I wanted for Julie – a pottery wheel toy. She’s pointed that toy out many times in catalogs, and the catalog I had at the moment sold it for $57. B&N had it for regular price of $27, and I used the Black Friday deal to get it for $13. I wouldn’t have bought that one for her, but Joe’s mom gave me a check at Thanksgiving dinner and asked me to pick out gifts for the girls from the grandparents. I was happy to do that because they mean well but have no idea what the girls like.

Back to the Critters, though. Sophie will get a family and the car as her big presents for Christmas. I need to look through the other things I’ve bought and make some decisions about whether maybe grandma will give her the carrying case/house for Christmas too. We’ll save the camper and another family for her birthday in February. As I was running around shopping for these toys, I started to worry that too much of it at once would not be as much fun as spreading out the collecting over more time. Really, with these “collectable” toys, the waiting part is a good chunk of the fun.

I feel only slightly guilty about having to return the car back to the store where I picked it up last week. While I was there, I spent quite a bit of money on other stocking stuffers, and these toys are more popular than I’d realized, so they will have no trouble selling it in its still-perfect packaging.

Now, off to order Christmas cards, fix some dinner, and plan my moves for the coming week – it’s looking like another busy one!

I really don’t consider myself the Black Friday shopper type, and yet here I an sitting outside a Barnes and Noble an hour before they open so I can get my damned Calico Critter house for half off, making my five year old happy without bankrupting the family. I was at Toys r Us at 9 last night and got half of two families of the little beats as well.

At least I have a coffee and Joe’a socks to knit on.

I discovered last year that I prefer to get the bulk of my Christmas shopping done in November. I would never have tried to accomplish this feat if it hadn’t been for the vacation that took over most of our December last year, but once done it felt pretty good and gave me plenty of time to tie up loose  ends and even knit a bonus gift or two.

Which explains why I’m scouring the internet and catalogs to find the best prices and most interesting things. Julie’s big gift was easy. She asked for a globe or a telescope. I found what seems to be a quality globe with interactive features at Costco for about what I’d seen them going for online, but without the shipping. As a bonus, one of my beloved neighbors says she bought one just like it for her sons and they are happy with it. As for the telescope, well a decent quality one would be pretty expensive, we live in a major metropolitan area with a lot of light pollution, and she is only eight. Also, I have very bad memories of a Christmas when I was about that age and got a telescope a my big gift, which was accidentally broken by a well-meaning uncle before I was even able to look through it. We’ll wait a year or two for that one.

Sophie is another story. I don’t think she really has a clear idea of what she truly wants, but she has a fascination with the Calico Critters brand of toys, and plays quite a bit with the very few she has. That’s the only thing she says she wants – more Calico Critters. For little plastic toys, they are awfully expensive, sold at the fancy toy stores where we occasionally shop for birthday party gifts and where I imagine rich grandparents go to indulge their grandchildren.

I’m going to buy some critters for my little critter, but the amount of money I have budgeted will buy only the most paltry of sets. I’d like to buy a house, but am going to be pushing it with the price of a camper. Anyone have girls who no longer play with their calico critters and are ready to sell them off?

Christmas. I’ll have to do a more detailed gifts post when I’m a little closer to done playing Santa’s elf.

On to the other C word…crochet…

Really, I bet you never expected to see that one around here. But the hooks seem to have snuck
into my craft room, and the inspiration into my  hands.

I’ve had this book of crochet motifs since it came out a year or two ago, and for reasons that escape me I picked up some very thin cotton crochet thread at the craft store not too long ago. This weekend I stole a few moments here and there to play with it. The goal is to possibly make some cuff bracelets that might serve as small holiday gifts of they turn out well…or just to have fun trying. I’m thinking its going to be the latter option.

Now back to knitting a pair of boring socks for my husband.

Life moves so quickly by…we had our first few snow flurries yesterday in my neck of the woods. I feel so grateful that our fall here in Minnesota has been so warm and long (if a little dry) this year, but hunkering down for months of cold and dark is always a little painful. In summer months we have daylight till almost ten at night, but we do pay for it starting about now. As always, life has been busy and I have lots to share…

Our chocolate lab Fred is one year old today. We’ve had him since January, and is is fully embedded as a member of our family. He still likes to chew up anything left laying around, but is starting to settle down a bit, and is pretty well trained (completely potty-wise, 90% on the obedience). Here he is trying to lick peanut butter off his nose. I wonder what diabolical puppy mama would have put that there?

Going back a bit, I attended a knitting retreat the weekend before Halloween. It was just for a couple of days, but it was a much-needed get-away, and I had the chance to catch up with some dear knitting friends I hadn’t seen in a while. New this year for this particular retreat, we had the opportunity to visit an alpaca farm. Thanks to Riverside Suri Alpacas, we got to go meet some of these sweet silly animals and even hand-feed and pet some (they actually don’t really like being touched, but can be bribed with food).

I love this next picture because you can see the baby cria nursing from its mama in the background.

This retreat is one that I’ve attended several other times in the past – it’s called Minnesota Knitters’ Days and is held at a retreat center in southeast Minnesota. This year, Candace Eisner Strick was our instructor – as she has once or twice in the past – and I love that lady. She is so smart, and hilariously funny. She comes up with great ideas and is fun to listen to. Here she is with her sister and an uncommonly friendly alpaca. Candace, forgive me for putting up your photo without express permission, but you look so sweet here, and it’s not a close-up so I hope you don’t mind.

Candace has a new self-published book of socks out, and she has a novel new way of attacking heels and toes. For quite some time, I’ve been so happy with my standard short-row method that I’ve been loathe to try other “new” ones, but since I was there and since it was Candace, I gave hers a go. I actually like it! Enough, anyway, that I am willing to finish a pair this way and see how they wear before I make any further judgement, but from me that is saying a lot. Candace had asked us to work the new method as a swatch with bigger yarn, but I figured I’d be happier jumping right in, and now I have a sock almost done – this photo was taken right after I came home.

If you like knitting socks, and want to try short-row heels and toes that don’t involve the old wrap-and-turn method, Strickly Socks might just be the book for you!

On the way home from my retreat, I stopped briefly in Red Wing to shop for little souvenirs for my girls and to check out the shoe outlet, where I took a picture with the world’s largest boot. Not a great picture, but I snapped it myself with my phone as quickly as I could so as not to attract attention. It really is a huge leather boot. Red Wing’s claim to fame!

When I came home, all that I’d left behind was waiting for me and it was time to catch up. We jumped right in to Halloween (Joe got the girls started carving pumpkins and I got home just in time to help finish up and clean up the mess!) This year I had a little purple princess and a leopard. The night before Halloween, I let them try on their costumes, and the leopard had fun sneaking up on and pouncing on the princess, who did a great job pretending not to know she was about to be attacked.

Halloween itself was a magical night – the weather was relatively warm and we stayed out for hours. There were more kids than usual in the neighborhood, and it felt like a movie set or a Norman Rockwell painting. We made a pack with our close neighbors and it could not have gone better. The girls were quite pleased with their candy haul!

There goes that sneaky leopard again…

This next part really should be its own separate post, but time is short so I’m just going to get on with it. This last spring at Shepherd’s Harvest festival, I took a class on processing raw fleece into yarn, and bought three fleeces at the silent auction there. (Actually I bought four in my zeal to make sure I got “enough” but came to my senses and managed to sell one off to a classmate before leaving for the day). I’m still in the midst of processing all that wool, but am making steady progress. It is quite time consuming, and while I am learning a lot in the process and enjoying it, I’m not sure I will be so eager to do all the work myself in the future. Here are 933 yards of about worsted-weight 4-ply yarn that I spun from a Columbia fleece after washing and carding into rolags.

I’m definitely on a learning curve, and this first batch is a little on the greasy side. I didn’t understand at first just how very hot the water needed to be, and how much detergent was necessary. Also, I think I put too much wool in at once and let some of it sit too long, so the water cooled off and the grease stuck back on the wool. I realized this after most of the fleece was carded, and I was trying to spin it. Still, this yarn is just fine, if a bit rustic. I will knit myself a sweater out of it (once it has marinated in stash for a bit) and I’m sure I’ll wear it with pride It is quite lovely and squishy. There is still a good portion of that fleece waiting to be re-washed the right way – I’ve done a few batches that came out much cleaner and happier, and I’m going to spin them worsted this time for smoother, longer-wearing yarn – probably at a finer weight. Like I said, this could be its own post.

While I’m at it, I may as well show you this 441 yards of 3-ply yarn made from a shetland fleece I bought the same day. It is slightly lighter weight than the cream colored yarn above, but close enough that I could possible combine the two in a sweater (or multiple sweaters) if I wanted to do some natural colorwork. This batch was also early on the learning curve, but it makes me happy when I look at it. Really, I must do a post about the process start-to-finish at some point.

In case there is any doubt that I am a sock-a-holic, here is another toe that I started, just to make sure I had a steady supply of mindless knitting on hand…

One never can have too many socks at the ready for a sudden long car ride, meeting, or random span of waiting time. Almost right after I knit this one up, Joe said something that took me completely aback. He mentioned that he might like to start wearing hand knit socks to work. This is the man who has never been interested in wearing handknits, with the exception of the felted clogs which he wears constantly during the winter at home, and has worn out the leather soles of one pair and is well into his second. I was thrown for a surprised loop! And, silly, wonderful man, he noted that he’s probably need several pairs. I told him we’d start with one pair, but I’d happily put him in the rotation for new socks if he liked. He only wants plain dark colors, but I will cast on a pair soon and set aside the wild ones for myself till his are done.

And back to the girls…something I’ve been meaning to mention that has been taking up a lot of our time and energy – the girls have both joined the Girl Scouts this fall. Julie was invited to join an existing troop of Brownies, which meant that Sophie was very eager to join a troop too. I showed up at the organizational meeting and somehow managed to put my hand up and become her troop leader. I walked out of that meeting stunned and wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into, but at this point, I am very excited about the whole thing – it is going to be a fun adventure. Luckily, Julie’s troop leader is awesome and has been very helpful and supportive so far, plus I have a really nice co-leader who seems to fit really well with me – I like doing the behind-the-scenes organizational stuff, she is great with the kids at the meetings. Let me just say that this volunteer gig takes a LOT of time between training, troop leader meetings, actual girl scout meetings, communicating with parents, and lots of little planning and paperwork bits. Now you know what I’ve been doing with the time I would have spent blogging!

Last week, Julie’s troop had a field trip to tour the Wells Fargo bank in downtown Minneapolis. The bank has a little museum there where the kids learned about the original Wells Fargo stagecoach business in the 1800s, among other things, and then they got to go behind the teller counter and see currencies from different countries and collect a bunch of free lollipops.

I volunteered as a chaperone, so Sophie got to put on her Daisy uniform and come along for the ride. I know I’m not going to like every experience I have as a Girl Scout mom, but so far I’m all over it. I love the values, especially the all-inclusiveness – unlike the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts clearly state that they don’t discriminate on anyone for sexual orientation or religion, among other things. And yes, we’ll be selling cookies in February.

The ladies with whom I work out most week days have started our knitting group back up after a summer-long hiatus. We do a lot of talking and just a little knitting, but they are learning! Here you can get a peek of my latest finished project – it’s a beaded shawl of my own design and that I think will get its own blog post hopefully soon!

And here is a sneak peek of my next non-sock project – I’m just in the swatching stage for a sweater out of the Silky Wool yarn that’s been marinating in my stash since Julie was a toddler…it’s lovely yarn, and its time has come.

Whew! More to come….

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve put together a good knitting-content post. There have been several projects in the interim – so many that I’ve realized I have quite a bit of work to do over on Ravelry as well. Today I’m going to do some catching up on the sock projects. It’s really sad that I’ve failed so badly to update that I can’t even remember all the pairs of socks I’ve knit lately, or even all the yarn details of the pairs I can remember. I’ll do my best. Here’s the pile I dragged together earlier this week…

Let’s start with the  two oldest pairs, the two in the middle. Sophie picked out the yarn for the darker purple pair some time last Spring. We were over at the Yarnery in St. Paul, and I was planning to teach another sock class over there. These were intended to be sample socks for the store, then eventually keep Sophie’s feet warm. The class unfortunately didn’t fill, and the socks turned out a little big for Sophie’s feet. They fit Julie perfectly, though, so they’re going to her for now, and some day they will be handed down to Sophie. I think the yarn is Dream in Color Smooshie, but to be honest I can’t find the ball band so I could be totally wrong. It is lovely squishy stuff, and I loved working with it.

I’m showing them unblocked because I don’t bother to block socks when they’re going straight on to an immediate family member’s feet. It is a very small exception to my always-block-everything general rule.

Meanwhile, Julie and I ended up over at the yarn shop on a different day during the summer – before the above socks were finished. She picked out a skein of Cascade Heritage Silk, in a color strikingly similar to the one Sophie had chosen. This yarn was a finer fingering than the one Sophie had chosen, so I cast on with smaller needles (Addi Turbo 00) and more stitches – 64 around – so the stitches would be tight enough for durability. Turns out, Julie’s feet are almost as big around as mine – which are fairly skinny.  These were going to be tight on her.

I had already finished the first one when I discovered this problem, but the plan made itself pretty obvious when I had Sophie try on the socks I’d just finished for her – I was making her wait for hers till Julie’s were also done. I finished the second sock, only an inch and a half shorter to fit Sophie’s little hoof, then cut apart the first one mid-foot, ripped out and inch and a half and grafted it back together. In my mind, that was more fun than ripping and re-knitting the toe. Here, you can just barely see the line of grafted stitches, and that is without blocking or having been worn. On the foot, it is completely unnoticeable.

Here they are trying them on, supervised by our loyal Fred.

Get out of the way, Fred. We say that a lot around here.

Both girls were happy. Sophie says they make her feet hot, but it is only October. Maybe she’ll appreciate them more come February, but she does take after Joe, who tends to run warm.

I have a constant, low-level fear when it comes to knitting – I’m always afraid that I will have a desperate need for plain stockinette knitting and nothing in hand ready for such an event. You know, long car ride, boring meeting, waiting room, who knows. One of the reasons I like to knit socks from my toe-up short-row pattern is because they contain large uninterrupted stretches of plain stockinette tubes, which I can knit on without looking or really even thinking about. Usually, I try to set up a couple of just-finished toes so that I always have one to grab when whatever other project I’m working on doesn’t fit the knitting opportunity.

A while back, I bought a few balls of Schoppel Wolle Ambiete from Webs when it was on sale – I know I didn’t pay the $10 a ball they’re asking for it now because I bought the three balls necessary to knit a pair of socks for my large feet, plus another three in another colorway, which means the price must have been pretty good for me to add that much more yarn to an already overflowing stash of sock yarn. Oh yeah, conveniently enough Ravelry tells me I paid $21.48/3 balls back in January.  I especially liked the fact that this was a squishy sport weight, which knits up faster than the skinniest fingerings, yet still fits in my shoes and keeps my feet a tiny bit warmer. And I liked the colors.

So at some point between January and last week, I’d knit up a toe and had it laying around waiting for its moment. Last week, Joe and I had the opportunity to take our first tiny vacation alone since Julie was born 8 years ago. We drove to Chicago – an 8 hour drive – and back in three days. For a concert. A concert that I couldn’t have cared less about, but that Joe wanted to see and made a great excuse for me to spend a bunch of time alone with my husband, which has not happened in 8 years. Plus, 16 hours of free knitting time. W00t!1! I grabbed the as-yet-unfinished sock that turned out to be for Sophie, and the toe I just told you about. That would be plenty, right? ahem.

By about a third of the way back from Chicago, I’d finished Sophie’s sock and had gotten through the first ball of the Ambiente. Too bad I hadn’t brought a second ball along. Luckily, we were scheduled to spend a night in Madison, WI with some friends, and Joe was willing to stop at a yarn shop there for me to get my yarn fix on. Before I tell you about that adventure, let me say I really like this yarn. It is lovely to work with, I can tell I’m going to love to wear the socks, and holy buckets the colorway is fun to watch as it knits up. I don’t believe I’ve hit a striping repeat after knitting the entire first ball of yarn. Which takes the pressure off me to find the same place in the colorway when I start the second sock. I almost wish I’d bought yarn for a third pair in this yarn – the colorways are certainly appealing.

So. I pulled out my phone, dug around the internet and decided I wanted to check out the Sow’s Ear yarn shop in Madison. It is a combination cafe and yarn shop in a cute downtown area, in an old house type building. It was a nice enough shop with a high-end selection of yarn. Definitely the kind of place I would enjoy hanging out in, although the prices were – well – high-end. I went in there prepared to buy yarn and needles for another sock project, but was kind of hoping to be inspired and/or talked into some other quick project that wouldn’t involve a lot of looking at my hands (I get car sick easily). While the staff was nice, they were not chatty, so I ended up with sock yarn and called it a win.

That evening, I knit up a new toe in the Tittering of Magpies Fingering by Alisha Goes Around. It’s a lovely lilac color that both my daughters are drooling over, with a teeny bit of sparkly “Stellina” fiber spun in. Unfortunately, that first toe had a single mistake in it that I knew was going to drive me batty if I left it, so I broke off the yarn and started over. The second toe came out perfect, and by the time we arrived home in Minneapolis I’d made it well into the heel.

There she is, with the naughty toe looking on in envy. This sock is destined to eventually grace Julie’s foot (and then eventually Sophie’s) but first, it is going to be a test-knit for a pattern I wrote up at least two years ago but never actually published. It’s one that I really love – I love watching Sophie wear the original prototypes – and I hope to get it out in the next few weeks.

And those are the socks on my mind at the moment. Meanwhile, I’m also binding off the shawl I’ve been designing. I think I like it. I hope to get that pattern out in the near future as well – having a bit of free time while the girls are in school means hopefully getting some actual work done, although honestly that “free” time flows through my fingers like water as I run errands, fold laundry, prepare meals, and do a thousand other things that my family needs done. I have some big news about a new role I’ve recently taken on, but that is for another post.

Know what’s great about the blankie? My 5-year-old can barf all over it in the morning, and by dinnertime it is freshly laundered, dry amd folded. I have no qualms about putting garments knit from superwash sock yarn in the washer, and spread flat on a bed it dried in a few hours.

Sophie is much better now, just sad that she can’t go to swim team tonight.

Hi, there. So much exciting and fun stuff going on right now. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Julie’s 8th birthday. Well, we celebrated it a couple weeks before that just with our immediate family, then waited for the grandparents to come back from Europe to throw a party. In the past, I’ve almost always hosted the girls’ birthday parties outside our home. We’ve had lots of bowling alley parties, a painting party at a local shop, one or two at a giant indoor climbing structure, once in a public park – a risky prospect in Minnesota in September. It always just seemed easier not to have to worry about all the pre- and post-party cleanup, and also planning the entertainment.

This year, Julie wasn’t sure what kind of party she wanted. None of the previous ideas appealed, we weren’t willing to pay the big bucks for Pump It Up, the place where all the kids in the rich suburb just south of us seem to do their parties. Julie decided she wanted a fairy-themed party, and I decided I was finally willing to try a homestyle birthday gig. After all, I’ve been reading about Heidi Kenney’s fabulous parties she gives her kids for years, along with many other fabulous crafty blog moms. They can do it, maybe I can too.

Well, I did. It was a ton of work – before, during and even after. I was incredibly over-stimulated by the end of the day and it took me a good week to fully recover, but it was fun and I think worth it. I started with a bunch of research on the Internet. I wanted a generic garden-fairy theme rather than a Disney-fairy theme. Wholesome and sweet versus commercial and a little bit slutty, ya know? These kids are 7 and 8 – let’s hold onto the innocence as long as possible.

I found some super-cool free printable invitations from Hewlett Packard’s website – link also includes a paper flower wand, an activity guide, place cards, a paper chain, and “shrinkable sprite charms”. HP clearly wants to give you lots of creative ways to use up your printer ink you you’ll buy more. Thanks HP! I printed mine out on my Canon inkjet. Worked just fine. At least one of the moms who received the invitations commented on how great they were. One of the things I dislike about purchased invitations is that you still have to hand write the details on every single card. My handwriting isn’t all that, and writing out all the envelopes is plenty for me thankyouverymuch.

After much planning and prep, the day came and the girls arrived. Oops – and one boy-cousin who was thoroughly pre-warned that this was going to be a very girly party. Each child was offered a pair of fairy wings to wear, and we had some butterfly temporary tattoos as well – slightly less popular. We sat them down to decorate take-home bags for party prizes/favors, and to assemble flower headbands.

I found another free printable sheet of Fairy crown flowers from Disney Family.com – actually, there are instructions to go with it, and links to other fairy party ideas. Yes, they were Disney, but they were just flowers, not the fairies themselves. This flower crown fit well into my theme, although I chose to use green pipe cleaners instead of ribbon because I thought the finished product might hold together better and be easier to put on and take off – the paper flowers on the ribbon seemed very likely to slide around, twist and tangle each time someone decided they didn’t want to wear theirs – but maybe now they do – or not – and I don’t want to be responsible for fussing with ten little head bands on ten little girls while managing the rest of the party. I did buy some ribbons, and helped the girls tie lengths of it to the back of their headbands for added decoration. These projects kept them busy while the other girls arrived, and they seemed to enjoy them.

Before the party, we’d cleaned out our large basement playroom in case of foul weather, but the day turned out to be beautiful, so we headed outside for the games. First up, pixie dust relays. they had to pour the dust from Pixie Sticks into spoons and race across to dump it in a plastic cup, then hand it off to the next team member until they’d filled the bottom. This is me explaining to them how they were going to split into teams of three. Like herding cats.

Here they are during the race. OMG, it took a lot longer to get the tiny little bottom ridge of the cups. If I were to do it again, I would definitely get smaller cups! But they enjoyed it, and they worked together.

Next up, pin the star on the fairy’s wand. I drew this cheesy fairy picture. Drawing is not my talent, mmmkay? But the girls were impressed enough, and they again seemed to enjoy putting on the blindfold and taking a turn sticking a star-shape on the poster. This was way too easy – first girl got the star right in the middle of the wand.  Also, some of them got a little bored waiting their turn.

Here’s Sophie getting ready for her turn – Julie is helping me spin her around in an attempt to make it harder.

It’s funny, at the last minute before the party, I was worried that we would run out of things to do before time to do them, so I threw in a “musical fairies” game – I printed a bunch of clip-art fairy related pictures onto card stock, and found a copy of Bippidy Boppity Boo on CD somewhere, and we had our own version of musical chairs. Turns out, we ran out of time at the end, but I choose that over desperately trying to entertain a bunch of sugar-high kids empty handed. The girls liked this one, and decided on their own that they should be skipping.

One more game – drop the clothespin fairy (I used the old fashioned clothes pegs, tied ribbon wings on and drew little faces) into the flower-jar home. They liked this one too. Although – some of the girls started chanting “oops, she died!” when one of the fairies landed outside of the jar. A little morbid, but funny. Some of the other girls asked them to stop after a bit.

For prizes I’d found a very cheap craft supply place online and bought a bunch of simple needlepoint kits (not all that popular) and fuzzy sticker coloring kits (which were tacky cheap and went like hotcakes). Every child ended up getting a prize – kids who won more than one game either picked a friend who hadn’t gotten one yet, or we otherwise fudged it to work.

Everyone headed inside for cupcakes and ice cream. The grandparents arrived just in time to sing Happy Birthday. I made the cupcakes from the same chocolate cake recipe I always use – the one from the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa box. It’s no-fail and it’s delicious. Especially if you spring for the fancier cocoa powder. I usually make double the frosting recipe, so I have plenty to go around and a little left over to spread on graham crackers and shove down my cake-hole in private once the party is over. Yes, I just admitted that to the world on the internet. Oh! and the cute cupcake papers are Wilton brand. I love that they’re tall enough to keep the cupcake from spilling over and making the crusty edges that always try to stick to the muffin pan and make you want to scream.

After we sing, I always whisper in their ears to stop and think of a really good wish before they blow the candle(s) out. Julie seems to like that.

We had time to open a few of the presents, but I wanted to get the girls outside for one more activity before the parents showed up…I love how the kids always cluster around the birthday child so they can see what’s being unwrapped. I’ve never gotten a good set of present-unwrapping pictures, and I’m okay with that.

Finally, out we went to whack away at the mushroom piñata. I love piñatas. The girls loved it. Inside, there was very little candy, but lots of little trinkets like ink-stampers, fuzzy pens, note pads, fancy hair ties, little mushroom erasers and other girlie stuff. We did a round of everyone blindfolded, then a round of everyone not blindfolded. By then, all the parents were there watching and waiting for their kids. The thing just would not fall apart. I only wish I could show you a picture of me whacking the heck out of that thing, but I think Joe was too busy laughing at me and pulling kids safetly out of my way to take pictures.

And that was it! My awesome in-laws brought Korean food for dinner, and I very much appreciated that, even though I was too shell-shocked by that point to carry on a coherent conversation. Seriously, the party was a success. Julie enjoyed it, and so did her friends. I had fun too. We’ll see if I’m recovered enough to do it all again in February.

Thanks for waiting for this – I’ve got more exciting news on the way, but it’s almost time for the kids to come home and I have to load the dishwasher and move some laundry around first. Parent teacher conferences are tonight, and I’m looking forward to a little face time with the new teachers. It’s always such a mystery what goes on in their little lives when they are away from us at school, and the little glimpses we do get always surprise me.

After swimming (lots of smiles and hard work) it is time for a treat.