Stick Figure Family Tree Ornaments

Yesterday, my little girl told me that she wanted to make some ornaments for the Christmas tree. We didn't have a lot on hand to work with, but I knew I had a nice little stash of glitter she could have fun with, and I knew I could make salt dough. Considering what other crafting supplies I had squirreled away, these are what came to my mind. Consider them a medium difficulty level, as my six year old daughter made them with (a lot of) help from me.

Supplies:
Salt dough:
       1 cup flour
       1/2 cup salt

       Water to consistancy
Food Coloring
Size 2 jewelry wire
White craft paint
Pink Paint (I used pink glitter nail polish)
Fine point Sharpie or gel pen
White glue
Paint brushes
Assorted glitter
Clear Acrylic Spray

Step 1: 
Mix the dough and separate out enough egg-yolk sized balls to make the bodies. We have six family members, so we made six bodies. Make sure you have a good consistency. You may need to add more flour or more water, to keep the dough from being too sticky or too grainy.

Fold in food coloring and knead until the color is uniform. I didn't use gloves, as you can see, and my fingers are now pink.

Step 2:

Form the bodies into pear shapes. These do not need to be completely perfect, but try to get them symmetrical. They will puff out a little during baking.

Take plain white dough, the size of a hominy kernel, and form the head.







Step 3:
Take a one inch piece of jewelry wire, form a coil on one end and push it up into the head, to form a neck. Then push the other end into the body.

A small round tube, the size of a lolly pop stem is the perfect diameter to wrap the jewelry wire for all purposes of this project.

For the ladies, since we have curly hair, I wrapped two inch pieces of wire to form ringlets. I then pressed four of them into the top of the head.

On all ornaments, make a coil on one end of a one inch piece of jewelry wire, and press it down into the top of the head. This is for the hanger.

Step 4:
Cut two 4 inch pieces of jewelry wire to make the legs and arms.

Press these all the way through the body, near the head and at the bottom.

Step 5:
With each ornament complete with legs, arms, hair for those who have it, and hanger hooks, they are ready to bake.

Put them into the oven at 250F for four hours.

Step 6:
Although the heads of the ornaments were white before and after baking, I felt that giving them a couple of coats of white acrylic craft paint gave them a more even surface. However, it is not completely necessary.

Curl the ends of the arms and legs into circles for the hands and feet.  I used a gel pen to draw on the eyes, noses and mouths, in a Charlie Brown inspired style.

Paint a small dot of pink glitter nail polish on each cheek, to give it an antiquated blush. Plain pink paint will also work.

Step 7:
When making the bodies, I made sure that I created colors that corresponded to the glitter I had put away. Because it was likely that there would be holes in the glitter, I wanted to mask it as much as possible.

Water down the white glue to make it easier to paint onto the bodies, and be sure to use a glue that will dry clearly. You want to be careful not to saturate the salt dough, get a good coverage.

Quickly sprinkle on the glitter and try to get it as even as possible.

Use a dry paint brush to dust away any glitter from the face. Gently spray it with a couple of light coats of the clear enamel, to set the glitter and keep it from flaking off.

Place a cord through the hanger hooks, clean away any stray glitter from the faces, arms and legs, and your little stick figure ornaments are ready to hang on your tree!

My Fall Favorites! My Best Fall Posts

It's Fall! It's finally here!

I first noticed Fall one day last week when I saw a small yellow leaf on the floor of the dining room. Since then, I've been checking for more signs every day. Sure enough, the very next day, there was a sprinkling of leaves when the wind kicked up while we were playing in the backyard with our friends. Three days ago I saw the first spots of red on the slope of trees opposite my house. And today - officially, is Fall!

To celebrate, I have compiled all of my favorite Fall Posts from the last two years. My favorite Fall recipes, crafts and activities.




Fall Recipes:
Whole Wheat Cheese Raviolis with Apricot Squash Sauce
Apricot Squash Soup with Grilled Provolone Sandwiches
Vegetarian Chili With Meat Alternative
Nonfat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Nonfat Crab and Squash Chowder


Fall Festivities:
A Yard For Harvest
Seed Saving How and Why

Fall Crafts:
Harvest Wreath
Sweater Legs
Cable and Ribbed Glove Pattern
Table Centerpieces From Found Natural Materials
Embroidered Heirloom Pillows

Harvest Wreath

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of year. The outdoor temperatures become more comfortable, the insects diminish, and the colors of the landscape here in Missouri are exquisite as the fog rolling in on a cool autumn morning.

I feel peaceful and relaxed at the idea of hunkering down for the winter. Harvest season is less than a month away!

As I shared in this post last year, one of my favorite fall activities is seed collecting. Visiting parks, the woods, even walking around my neighborhood usually culminates in a rather large collection of seeds to stash away.


As I wrote in this post, another of my of my favorite things to do in the fall is to harvest my yard. Not only the edible parts, but the grasses and twigs for my fireplace, weeds and wild flowers to make centerpieces and arrangements, and my unruly, out of control wild grape vines to make wreathes and other decorations.

This prolific vine gets cut back every fall and regrows in the spring. I think it's rather pretty, even though it's a messy thing. It's worth it to me to keep it because I can make pretty wreathes out of it.

This year, I have not been enjoying the outdoors quite so much. I decided to make a new wreath, but rather than collect my decorations before hand, I have decided to hang the wreath bare with only a simple cotton print and denim bow.

This autumn, as the landscape changes, we will look for our decorations for it and collect them on our walks while we are gathering our seeds. Anytime we see something pretty or interesting, we will collect it and bring it home. I am hoping this will motivate me to get out more and enjoy the lovely temperate weather. I'll update pictures of it on my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/TheyAreAllOfMe, as it begins to fill up!

Growing A Yard For Harvest

I love to have a manicured yard. I want my yard to look good so that when I come home, I am arriving at a beautiful and uplifting place.

Growing native flowers is one way to achieve this with minimal fuss and no watering or chemicals. It's also important that I find my plants for free, and amassing my collection of native plants is something that I am always working towards. With many of my local parks growing native flowers, and no shortage of interesting flowers growing along the roadside, collecting seeds for my yard is both simple and exciting!

One thing that is just as important to me as having a nice looking yard is to have a yard that is useful. Again, growing native flowers is a useful way to garden because it benefits the local eco system and attracts beneficial insects and feeds the birds, squirrels and wild life. But native flowers are not only nice to look at and good for the environment, they make nice dried arrangements in the fall and can be used in many ways. Some wild flowers are edible like Queen Annes Lace (wild carrot) or have medicinal uses, like Echinacea.





I grow flowers with the ultimate goal of harvest. Even my ornamental rose bushes have a purpose aside from being pretty. I can make potpourri out of the blooms after they just reach their peak, and then I can blend them up to make rose beads for jewelry making.

Growing a yard for harvest naturally means growing a yard that is abundant in food. I would love some day to have a yard in which I can walk out into and pick a wide variety food to eat. I have my vegetable patch, my herb garden and my strawberry bed. I also have a hazelnut tree that I will find a mate for soon so that in a few years I will have loads of hazelnuts to snack on and cook with.

Nature offered me a blackberry bush earlier this year, that just sprouted in my yard and 75% of my vegetable garden volunteered itself, from the compost that I created from my kitchen scraps. I planted the cucumber and the bed of lettuce, but Nature decided to give me 3 squash plants, 2 pumpkin vines, 7 garlic plants and over twenty tomato plants. Yes, Nature is very, very good to me and I know how to use my bit of Earth.

One day I plan to have a small orchard, of four to six fruit trees, and I have a large currently unused area designated to grow others types of berries, apart from the blackberries I already have. But it's important to me to have a yard that is useful in many ways - not just pleasing to look at or delicious to eat, even more than a space for the children to play.

There are plants in my yard which are only grown for some sort of functional purpose.


I have an ash tree that was cut down to the stump a year ago because it was badly placed and would soon grow into the chain link fence. The sugars built up in the roots allowed it to sprout several upright branches, turning the tree into a bush. I noticed this when the shoots were small and could be snipped easily, but I quickly realized the potential in them. I allowed to shoots to grow tall, for they are straight and pliable. We have used them to roast marshmallows and hotdogs over the fire pit, and they are also useful for building natural trellises for vining plants. Cutting them down every fall will allow new shoots each spring to be used for many things throughout the next growing season. Because they are very bendy, they can be easily shaped and I am currently considering what types of things might be created from them.

I have a slope in my back yard that is a great place to allow the grass to grow in the late fall and get nice and tall. We purposely stop mowing it in early September. There are some weeds that grow in it, that once dried make nice floral arrangement along with the native wild flowers, but what I'm really after is the grass. In the late afternoon when there is no moisture on it, I will reap the grass and form it into little bundles. These are for my fire place during the winter. We also trim the trees back when the summer begins to get hot and the rapid growth of spring dies down. The limbs will then be cut into 8 inch long sections and dried out for fall, to become kindling. In the winter when I want to start my fireplace, which I tend to do daily, I grab a nifty little bundle of dried grass from the stack, and handful of the dried twigs. Getting the fireplace going is pretty easy with them, no need for fancy store-bought starter logs or supplies.

All along my chain link fence are many types of vines. But the vines I am especially interested in are the wild grapes. They are either too old to produce, or they are a naturally barren variety.
I don't grow them for the fruit, I don't even like grapes. I want the vines. These are invasive and unruly, however, I cut them down to their trunks in the fall, pull off all of the leaves and use the vines to make natural decorations, like wreathes to be decorated with fall leaves or Christmas baubles.

There is also my water garden, where I grow bulrushes and cattails. The long slender leaves of the cattail plants are great for decorating, lashing and I keep meaning to get around to weaving them into baskets or placemats. It's on my to-do list.

I do not consider myself an urban homesteader, and I have no desire to live on a farm at this point in my life. But utilizing my space in the most useful way possible just makes sense to me. Nature is very giving when you let it do it's thing.

Easy DIY Clothespin Bag

 
 
This bag was made using materials I had on hand, and took less than 20 minutes.

Materials:

1 child's ruined T-shirt, size 5 or close to.

1 metal coat hanger, or arm length piece of wire of similar gauge and width.

Needle and thread or sewing machine.

Pair of pliers.

My daughter was so sad when she ruined this T-shirt. I was too, it was the first time she wore it. We don't throw away fabric if it is in decent condition, because we know that we can always make something from it.

I've been in need of a new clothes pin holder and decided to use the shirt for that.

You can use a child's T-shirt, trim down an old pillow case, or make yourself a pouch from scratch. Whatever works for you!

I have made a few of these over the years and prefer the child's T-shirt because we usually always have one around to serve the cause - and because they are the correct width so as not to need to sew the sides or hem the opening.

It may be difficult to tell in this picture, but I flipped the T-shirt inside out and then sewed alongside the seams of the sleeves and across the top, just beneath the collar.

I straight stitched it, and then zigzagged on what would be the outside edge to prevent fraying. If you cannot zigzag, I would at least double stitch it as the bulk of the clothespins will be hard on the seam.

Trim away the sleeves and neck opening after sewing.

Using a pair of pliers, open up your coat hanger and stretch it out. You want the length of wire to be approximately 2 to 3 feet - or an arms length.

Fold the wire in half and pinch it with the pliers.

Three and a half inches from the bend, begin twisting the two sides together as you see in the photo. Give it a couple of twists.

Now take your doubled over end and shape it into a hook. Make sure your hook comes down low, and nearly meets the twist. There may be times when your bag is swaying in the wind and you don't want it to fly off of your clothesline!

You now have a bag instead of a T-shirt. The opening of your bag is already hemmed for you! On the inside of this hem, pop two little holes, about half an inch apart to feed the ends of your wires through the hem.

Make sure that you feed both wires through the hem simultaneously, and pop them out of the other side of the bag.

After you've popped the wires out of the other side of the hem, use the pliers to loop them around each other as shown.

Bend the wires as needed to form a hoop at the opening of your bag.

You may now fill the bag with clothespins and hang it on your clothesline. There, it can slide along the line with you and you won't have to bend over to pick them up!

So... you wanna make a clothesline?

I pretty much always use a clothesline in the summer. It helps me out for many reasons, and nothing as romantic as sheets that smell like honeysuckle or a fresh outdoor breeze, though.

The truth is, I quite enjoy hanging out the laundry and I can't explain to you why. It's time consuming and monotonous, but makes me feel... peaceful. I like that I can dry clothes in batches, and the laundry gets done much more quickly when I don't have to wait on the dryer. I like that I can dry larger things that won't fit in the dryer. I also like that the energy required doesn't cost me a penny.

My first clothesline at this house was made from repurposed lumber which we had leftover from an outdoor staircase we removed. I built it myself when my husband was at work and it worked really well. But I decided that the spot it was in needed a vegetable garden, so I took it down.


My second clothesline was this thing. It opens like and umbrella. We found it at a yard sale for $15. It lasted us 3 years, I believe, but this year it was done-for. The metal rods had rusted through and we couldn't repair it. It went to the scrapyard.

I have seen in my neighborhood some houses that have a long line reaching from the house itself to a tree or a post near the outside of the yard. The line is retractable and can be unhooked and coiled up to get it out of the way. I decided to make one of these. We just took the line out of the old umbrella hanger, but otherwise the cost would have only been $7 for the line and the hooks.







A couple durable steal hooks screwed into the utility post at the very edge of the back yard, and then a third bolted to the wooden brace on the corner of the house was all the installation it required.

If you don't have a utility pole, perhaps you have a shed, or a tree?

 

 

 The reason Joe staggered them was so it would be easier to wind the line around the two of them and prevent it from slipping off. We can adjust the slack as we need to.

When the line isn't being used, it can be coiled up and hung on the corner of the house, out of the way. This isn't a very tidy picture, but it can look neater than this.

 

 

For tips on properly hanging laundry, hop on over to Our Mindful Life! Kellie's got some great advice!

Around The Garden

I absolutely love to garden! I can't do much with plants indoors, though between cats and destructive forces (kids) it's not really my fault. But I do find that Nature is a far better mother when it comes to little green things than me. I don't use fertilizer or pesticides/fungicides/herbicides, I just yank the weeds and keep them watered. Most of my gardening success, however, can be attributed to planting things where they like to be and leaving them alone.

This plant is a one year old American Hazelnut. I got it for free last arbor day from a local wild-life center. It needs a mate, however, as hazelnuts need to be in pairs in order to produce nuts. You can see that empty spot behind it, just waiting. Hazelnut trees aren't hard to come by, but it hasn't been the highest order of priorities as of late. When I do get a partner for it, in a few years I'm going to have gobs of hazelnuts!

This is my watergarden. I built my first one nine years ago. It was very little, so later that year I got a larger pond liner and built it bigger. And then a friend I met on a pond forum mailed me a very large liner (twice as big as it is now) in trade for a very large painting of her pond.

Most of the plants in this little pond I have had since I first built it, eight years ago. It's been moved a couple of times. There are no fishes, save for minnows that I buy ever year to eat the mosquito larva, and no filtration or pump. It's a great little tadpole haven!

For Earth Day four years ago, my kid brought home a little twig with some dried up "hairs" stuck on the bottom and told me it was a dogwood tree. He had heard his dad say he liked dogwoods.

It's not the dogwood our son was expecting, but a quick google search told us it's a Red Osier Dogwood. I planted it, tended it lovingly and now it is getting quite large. It put out it's first set of flowers this year, even!

I am beginning to plant more native plants in my yard, and slowly getting rid of the non-native varieties. For years I have wanted a yard that was all native plants.

My daughter had other ideas, however, and insisted on planting some gladiolas. I also have some rudbekia from a trade that I botched. I feel guilty every time I look at them, but I love that they're getting ready to bloom already!

I found this and another growing along my back fence. I knew it was a native flower of some type, and a rather nice one. I put one on either side of the porch steps.

Part of the fun of finding plants like this is identifying them. I searched all over Google, but came up with nothing. I finally had to visit the Name That Plant forum at GardenWeb. They always help me out when I'm stuck!
This is in fact, Wild Petunia and I find that gleefully ironic, if you read my post about planting native!

Please excuse the plastic showing and the debris. We're going to be getting in some all natural wood chip mulch very soon!

This is a lilac, it's five years old. They are not the fastest growing plant. It is not a native plant species in my area, however they are quite commonly distributed and well established. This was a sucker (a shoot sprouted from a root of a parent) that I dug up and moved to another part of the yard. This is it's second home and I hope that we may get some flowers on her next season!

This is the mother lilac. It had been cut down to the roots when we first got the house five years ago. It is now extremely large, spanning eight feet at it's widest.
We've tried getting rid of it a couple of times, because it's just not in a very good place. It needs to be kept trimmed to be tidy, but doing so removes the flowers for the next year or two. Not trimming it, it becomes quite unruly and for the rather manicured front yard, it's not what we prefer.
It's here to stay, however, we haven't been successful trying to move it.

I am really torn about my rose bushes. I love roses! They look and smell so wonderful! As an artist, I love painting them. The reason I planted these here in the first place was so I could include them in my art.
But I'm really not into spraying and they always look so awful. Black spot sets in just a couple of weeks into spring and the roses never live up to their potential.
I do think that this fall I will give them to a neighbor and plant something native instead.

Except for this rose. I wish I had a better picture, it's so lovely!
This rose was given to me by a very dear friend for Mothers Day, just after my daughter was born. It's an heirloom rose, called Abbaye De Cluny.
This picture does not begin to do it justice, it is one of the most beautiful roses I've ever seen! I positively cherish it and I couldn't bear to lose it.

This photo is of our colossal white ash tree. It's hard to say how tall it is, though it's clearly twice as tall as our two story house. At it's base, it is easily six feet in diameter.
Last spring we had a dying juniper in our front yard that needed removing, and the tree cutter who came out remembered our house because of this tree. It's one of the largest of its kind in the city, he said, and has most certainly been around since before the house was built.

In the autumn, it puts on a beautiful display of yellow leaves, that sometimes turn a bit orange or purple at the tips. It's breathtaking!

I am very fond of this tree, though my husband talks about cutting it down. He likes his little joke. There's no way he's serious - or that I'd ever allow it!

This is a chain link fence. Every spring (except this year) I spend days cutting all of the poison ivy, wild grape vine, invasive ornamental vine, trumpet flower and honey suckle out of it.
This year I said, "screw it!" We'll work on maintaining it at fence level and hitting it with the weed whacker once a month. The honey suckle really is fragrant though. Sitting in bed in the mornings with the windows open and honey suckle air sweeping through the room is heavenly. It also makes the line dried laundry smell delicious!

This year I planted an herb garden. Sadly, most of the herbs didn't sprout. I am mostly disappointed about the lavender and the rosemary. I was looking forward to infusing oil with those herbs!
I did get a nice little crop of cilantro and parsley, however! This will do wonderfully in my home made salsa.

Ah, this little guy. This is my Mimosa Tree. I have always loved these trees, though they are not native to the united states. Unfortunately, they are also considered invasive. I planted this one on purpose and I refuse to get rid of it.

After trying to grow one from seed for two years, I was having no luck. One day, I was passing by my mothers old house. She lived only three blocks away from where I live now, but lost her home when her cancer took over and she died shortly after. Discovering upon passing that her house was on the market (ten years after she'd lived in it), I decided to investigate the property. It was very bitter sweet.  I saw her bedroom, her living room, the kitchen. So many memories, even though I myself did not live there with her. It was the first house she had ever owned and she was extremely proud of it. As I was leaving, I saw this tiny tree growing up in the most unlikely place. A small dime sized hole in the concrete driveway had this sad and desperate seedling poking out of it. I rushed to the car to find our stash of emergency napkins, doused two of them in water and oh so carefully teased this tiny tree up out of its home. I kept it in a pot on the porch at first, and now it's given a place of honor in the middle of the backyard.

My lettuce crop is thriving! I've planted eight varieties here, though one I found too unpalatable to eat and another went to seed. We've been chomping on this for a few weeks now, and will have a few weeks longer.

This is an unintended pumpkin plant. I found it growing in the compost pit, no doubt sprouted from last falls jack-o-lanterns.

I popped it in it's own little  bed so that I could tend to it, and it's very happy. I'm not sure if we'll get a good sized pumpkin out of it, but we'll see!

This is an unintended tomato plant. I didn't get a chance to buy tomato seedlings this year, however I've had over 20 volunteers crop up in random places.
I've culled many of them, but I have about 15 of them growing. I've read that fruit from volunteer plants are often tastier than ones that have been planted, as the plants themselves are hardier and easier to care for.

This looks like the pumpkin plant, but it's a cucumber. They are both from the squash family. I have probably 10 of these plants that have really shot up in size the past week.

Tomato and cucumber salad is one of my favorite summer dishes!