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how to rag your hair
Rag curls always remind me of A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In the movie I used to watch as a girl, Sara has her hair tied up in rags when she finds out her father is dead and she is to work as a servant girl at Miss Minchin’s school for girls. I had always wanted to try ragging my daughter’s hair, and a few months ago, I decided to search it on youtube. I was not disappointed. There were dozens of how-to videos, and within a week, I got the process down pretty well.
Of the videos I saw, however, I didn’t see many that focused very well on the actual rolling-up process, which is why I decided to make my own.
Hold on to your hats, kids. This is the very first video I have ever posted on sophistimom. I am neither a talented film maker, nor do I know how to use iMovie—I didn’t add any music or text, so what you see is what you get.
Maybe one of these days I’ll sit down with my kids so they can show me how to edit a movie, but until then, I can at least show you how to make some rag curls. They’re a lot of fun, cheap, and perfect for the holidays.
mummy brains
Some of my kids’ other ideas for naming this were “yucky goo,” “slime chunks,” “goblin guts,” and my favorite: “ghost barf.”
I think it was my brother who came home and showed me this trick when I was a kid, and once, when I homeschooled my oldest son (for all of about five minutes), we tried it making it at home. It was once included in a Martha Stewart Kids magazine (September/October 2004), and was called “Cornstarch Quicksand”. Oh, how I miss that publication. That’s where my kids saw it this week and begged me to make it.
For about 20 cents, this stuff will keep my kids occupied for a good hour. I imagine it’s a fantastic stress reliever for grownups, too. All you need is some cornstarch and water, and you end up with a strange substance that oozes when you handle it slowly, and tough and resistant when you try to force it quickly.
being flexible.
sidewalk paint
Are your kids getting bored yet? I don’t know how many more episodes of Phineas and Ferb we can all take. A few weeks ago, I found this recipe for sidewalk paint on the internet. It amazes me how clever some of these mommy crafters are. All it is is a mixture of water, cornstarch, and food coloring. It was so simple, we had to try it.
introducing a contest with avery
Be curious, and be inspired.
A short time ago, the people at Avery* mailed me an assortment of labels to try out with different craft projects. You know me and food, so the natural thing for me to make was some sort of treat with a label to go with it.
The labels that stuck out at me first were these tags (label number 22802). How perfectly they went with my bottles filled with homemade lavender lemonade!
Next, these square labels (number 22805) were perfect for some edible thank you notes I was making.
lemonade stand for the first day of summer
Every summer when I was a kid, the neighborhood girls—which consisted of Caitlin, Amy, and myself—were always scheming up some sort of business. One year there was a magic show, which starred my brother Josh, his buddy Seamus, and me and the girls wearing leotards cast off from Amy’s former dance recitals. What nice neighbors and parents we all had—that they would actually come and sit on the yard to the side of my house and watch our last minute production. Oh, and pay us for it, too.
Though I can’t remember any particular lemonade stands, I’m sure we had many. And I just want to thank everyone who bought something from us.
I think anyone who buys crappy lemonade from a sticky nine-year-old will get a wing added to their mansion in heaven. If anyone thinks this country has lost its humanity, then I say, look around at all the lemonade stands. How many people, solely for the purpose of doing a good deed, plunk down their money, stare into little eager faces, shove any germaphobic tendencies aside, and gulp down a paper cup full of lukewarm Kool-Aid?
That, my friends, is altruism.
My kids have wanted to have their own lemonade stand since . . . oh, since they were born. But I was always a chicken about it. We either didn’t know our neighbors well, or the street was too busy, or who knows what else? There were always excuses. Apparently, the phrase “err on the side of caution” is tattooed on my prefrontal cortex. I just can’t over the idea that life isn’t as safe as it was for me and the neighborhood girls when we were peddling Girl Scout cookies. So I always hesitate.
a mother’s day update
I’m still finding chocolate fingerprints around the house. My three lovelies (what I affectionately call my kids on the best of days) came into my room—not too early—on Mother’s Day morning with this for breakfast: a grapefruit, warm water with honey and lemon, and strawberries with chocolate ganache. We added the bananas later when the strawberries started to run out. How’s that for kids that know their mommy? They’ve learned that my favorite breakfasts are ones that are less like breakfast and more like dessert.
I was then flooded with a series of drawings, pop-up cards, and poems, along with these potted gerbera daisies, which were provided by my mother-in-law. I don’t like saying “ex-mother-in-law”—it sounds too harsh. For two years now, she had taken the kids for an evening, the week before Mother’s Day, to give me the night off, and lead my kids in creating some sort of extravaganza for me.
wheat grass-filled easter baskets
In high school, I spent many an afternoon at my friend Colby’s house. In a bright corner of her home, her mom used to grow grass in a shallow pot perched on a beautiful pedestal every spring. Colby said it was for their Easter baskets. At that very moment, I decided I would always use real grass in my own kids’ (yet to be born) Easter baskets.
Well, through years of living in apartments with not-so-sunny windows, and then three years in a house where I learned that I couldn’t grow a dandelion if I tried, and then back to an apartment with no sun at all, my well-intentioned hope chest dreams have turned into plastic strands of pink and purple easter grass, choked up in swirling vacuums.
Still, every year, in the back of my head, I think, Darn, why didn’t I grow real grass for their baskets this year? To which I respond, Oh, yeah, my apartment has no sun/I kill plants/my apartment still has no sunlight.
This year, though, I had a breakthrough. I discovered our health food store sells wheat grass for juicing. Now, I probably noticed it years ago, but it wasn’t until this year that I remembered I could use it for something other than a power shake.
a day at the children’s museum
It was an Exedrin kind of day.
But 3:00 is my point of no return, and if I don’t pop a few by then, I’m on my own.
I was on my own today. With three kids. At a children’s museum.
I must have been temporarily insane. When I am in my right mind, I don’t volunteer to go to children’s museums—especially not on national holidays.
Of course, a day like today wasn’t about me. It was about the kids, and they did have a good time once we got through the line at the entrance.
nature walk
I’ve never been on a nature walk with my kids. At least, not near where we live.
If I had to give a reason, the best I could tell you is that here in the west, I don’t feel at home. I miss the beaches of New England. I miss the woods I grew up in, with ponds and skipping rocks. I miss drinking in the smell of earth and burning pine until I think my lungs will pop. I miss the leaves. I miss the ocean.
The desert and mountains in Utah are beautiful, but it’s not the same thing. Nature here makes me homesick.
But on Monday, after I dropped my kids off at school, my four-year-old and I got out of the car, and a perfect fall day was about to swallow us in one cool breeze. The sun was shining, while storm clouds lazily collected in pockets of sky. I could not take him inside to sit at home and watch Sesame Street while I worked. And so I decided to take a nature walk with him—here in the Rocky Mountains.
