Sunflower Houses Giveaway!

If you love children and gardens, you will love this book, Sunflower Houses, by Sharon Lovejoy. I bought my own copy long ago, and use it often when planning my garden or looking for fun games to play in the garden during the spring and summer. It has chapters about garden games and toys made of flowers. Below, you will see the illustration for the page about how to make hollyhock dolls.


A sunflower house is a beautiful living playhouse made of morning glory and sunflowers.


Sharon Lovejoy, the author and illustrator of Sunflower Houses, interviewed many grown-ups about their favorite flowers, childhood garden memories, traditions, and how-to's. Many of my favorite ideas are from your great-grandparents' generation and before, when boys and girls made their own fun and their own toys outside with what was growing around them. You will remember or learn about grass slides, screechers, secret lemon juice notes, poppy maidens, sassafras chains, tree swings, tops made of acorns, mini trough gardens for children, living playhouses and gazebos, growing vegetables in bottles, how to make a garden "clock", keeping worms, and more.


I like the collections of poems (some of which are Sharon Lovejoy's) the flower lore, and the delicate watercolor illustrations. If your bedside table is starting to look like the picture below, than this is a good time to add Sunflower Houses to your collection. It is a wonderful book to pore over on cold nights when you are beginning to let yourself to dream a little bit about springtime. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you can start using the games and ideas right away!


I decided to have a giveaway in celebration of having collected over 100 wonderful followers. Thank you all for the encouragement, which gives me so much energy! All you have to do to participate in the giveaway is comment on this post. If you post about the giveaway on your blog, let me know about it and I'll put your name in the hat a second time. I will collect all the names I receive before 9:00 a.m. Monday, February 15th. Check back later that day for the name of the winner. Make sure there is a way for me to contact you if you win!

Guess what??! Sharon Lovejoy has a blog, too! Visit it at: http://sharonlovejoy.blogspot.com/

Tiddlywinks

My little boy and I played our own version of tiddlywinks recently using buttons. Tiddlywinks is a game in which you try to shoot "winks" into a pot. Our pot was a little can.

You can make a button shoot if you press down on it with another button. It helps to be on the carpet.



It's harder to get a button into the pot than it looks. It takes practice.

Then we tried to see how far we could shoot the buttons. They can really fly!

Tiddlywinks, a game which has a very complicated set of rules, was popular during the Victorian age. Now some people play tiddlywinks on college teams. Others write books about it. If you would like to learn more, and what squopping and a squidger are, go to The North American Tiddlywinks Association web site at:

http://www.tiddlywinks.org

Toddler Cupcakes

I saw this at my friend's house. She wanted to make some flat-topped cupcakes. She made the domed, sliced-off tops into mini cupcakes for her toddler. The icing is on the inside. It makes a nice small cupcake just the right size for a little one, with less sugar overload, and potentially, less mess.

He loved it! (And he still got covered with chocolate!)

How to Make a Toy Stick Giant

This is a stick giant. I made him in the Fall to be in some stories. He looks scary and strange, but he is friendly and kind.



When my son saw my stick giant, he wanted to make one, too. You need some promising-looking sticks, (I used gnarled sycamore sticks I found on the ground,) a pruning saw, a drill, some sandpaper, and some string or wire to fasten the stick giant together.



My son picked out a stick which seemed to have a face in it. (I can't see the face yet, but that's okay.)



I sawed the body and head segment. Let your child decide how big everything should be. You should just be the assistant. My boy wanted to make sure his stick giant was very tall, much taller than mine.



Here are the pieces: a body/head segment, and then two pieces for each arm and leg.



We drilled holes in the sticks, through the body at the shoulders, through the body at the hips, through the arms at the shoulders and elbows, and through the legs at the hips and knees.




Now sand the cuts. I like to leave the bark on the sticks if possible.



It got dark, so we went inside and my son assembled his stick giant using fine gauge copper wire. I watched. I like for him to figure out how to do things his own way. When I made my stick giant I used embroidery thread. String would also be fine.



In this picture he is threading some wire through an arm, across the body, and into the other arm.



He wanted to attach an eye hook into the top of the head so that he could control his stick giant like a puppet with a long piece of wire.




It came alive in a rather eerie and funny way once he lifted it by the wire on top.



Today we took the stick giants outside. I think I can see a face in his stick giant now!

He climbed a tree and made the stick giants do acrobatics.

This little friend of ours was mesmerized by the two stick giants.

The expression on her face in this picture makes me chuckle. She seems to be thinking, "What is this strange critter?"


If you want to read a story about stick giants, look under Beth's Stories in the column to the right.

Layla and Punkin

Layla and Punkin, one of my patchy dolls, which her Mama bought for her. No other words are necessary.

Hyacinth

What color is a hyacinth?

Let's look, really look, at this amazing beauty. Look at the different colors within each flower. There is sky blue at the very base of the outside of the flower. It's the kind of blue you would see if you tilted your head way back on a cool March day and looked deep into the sky behind your kite..... cool, crisp, beautiful blue!


The blue melts into pale violet at the top of the petals. Then deep in the recesses at the center of the petals, where only the honeybees are privileged to go, deep, mysterious violet. Imagine the smell, now. Imagine the fun of being a honeybee, crawling into violet, your head swimming with that wonderful smell. ( Can honeybees smell?)


Now look at the green. Our eyes really miss this color in the winter. And our eyes feast on this color in the spring. We can't get enough of it. We greet each little nub of green in the garden with exclamations.



Now, burgundy. Clever, clever Nature....how did you think of putting violet and burgundy together? I like this combination in the garden so much that I planted my peonies next to hyacinth. The vigorous burgundy shoots of the peony among the hyacinth flowers look gorgeous.

Mmmmmm. I just had a good color snack! How about you?

A Pirate Doll for Benjamin

This is Jessica's son, Benjamin. She wants to give him a pirate doll! I started work on his pirate a couple of days ago.



After I cut out and sewed the body, I made the inner head using tubular bandage and crochet thread. Then I sewed on his golden skin covering, and attached the head to the stuffed body. This part of doll making is like petting a porcupine for me. I frequently jab myself because of the tricky sewing in the creases of the neck.



Wool is one of the reasons waldorf dolls are so pleasant to make and so wonderful to cuddle. Because waldorf dolls are stuffed with wool, they warm up when you hold them. Some of my nieces say their dolls keep them warm at night.



Here is what the assembled doll looked like. I enjoy commissioned doll work. I like thinking about the child for whom I am making a doll.



Using a doll needle, I embroidered the face with cotton, and the hair with mohair. I was thinking about Benjamin's sweet little face while making the face of his pirate buddy. I was also thinking about Jessica, who had surgery today.



Once his hair was finished and his cheeks pinked up with non-toxic German blush, he came alive.



I suggested ears with the shape of his hair. I like to embroider the hair in a way which suggests real hair and the way it grows.

I have two sons, so I know all about cowlicks.

Here he is, ready for some clothes!

Yo, ho, ho!

I wrap my dolls in tissue paper before shipping, and tie boy dolls with hemp string and an acorn cap or two. Girl dolls get a flower.

This cheerful little pirate will be on his way to meet Benjamin tomorrow!

Jessica's blog is Foursquare Schoolhouse. Send her a word of encouragement!

http://foursquareschoolhouse.blogspot.com/