Green Options

Even more than a celebration of our nation’s birth (which I could take or leave, frankly), in our town, at least Independence Day is a celebration of our community culture. Between the fish fry, the farmer’s market, the Fourth of July parade, and the fireworks, I’ve got plenty of opportunities to show off my craftiness as well as my festive spirit.

The best crafts, in my opinion, are thematically appropriate (red, white, and blue, you know) without being too slavish (the flag isn’t for wearing, my friends) or too country (denim is best if it’s ironic).

And, of course, the best project has to be eco-friendly–what’s up with craft foam, anyway? It’s like wool felt for anti-environmentalists(not that I’m automatically a fan of wool felt, mind you–it comes from sheep).

Anyway, here are five 4th of July projects that satisfy my own discerning tastes AND are quite able to be completed by the big day. Fireworks away!

Whether you homeschool, are actively seeking summer bridge activities, or just want something to do with the kids every now and then, math is something that can be really nice to do together as a family. Especially if you’re not that into math yourself.

We all know the many benefits, for parents and children, of family-centered activities. But family-centered activities that are also learning-centered have additional benefits–they model good learning habits, and they make learning fun. They can also, if you, yourself, are a little dicey about a certain subject, go a long way towards NOT passing down that same leeriness in your children (It took my partner and I several minutes, and a paper and pencil, to figure out the per-comic price in a Classifieds ad in which a guy was selling 1400 comic books for $99–we do NOT want our daughters to grow up that fundamentally math-stupid).

Here are some of my favorite books that present fun math activities for young and old, for math novices and math experts:

This place is not your grandma’s pottery painting studio, I’ll tell you that much.

In Wisconsin for Matt’s grandma’s garage sale, the family and I took a couple of days to recover up in Door County. Along with cheese curds, beaches, and dairy farms, we spent half a day at the Hands on Art Studio in Fish Creek.

Holy cow.

For a lady who loves to dabble in anything DIY, who hates cookie cutter crafting, and who plans to move everyone out to a farm before the eldest baby is more than a decade old (I’m speaking of myself, here), the Hands On Art Studio? Was awesome.

A good thrift store is an asset to a community equal to that of a mom-and-pop hardware store, a locally-famous ice cream/snowcone/frenchie stand, and a rockin’ adult co-rec softball team: in other words, it’s crucial.
In my hometown, we’re lucky not only to have all of the above and a library that stocks just released feature film DVDs, but several excellent thrift stores—thrift stores small and quirky, thrift stores large and conglomerate, thrift stores frequented largely by the college students, thrift stores frequented mostly by the townies. As an avid crafter whose Crafting Manifesto dictates that I work primarily with recycled materials, I have throughout several years’ worth of projects figured out a way to use pretty much any kind of thrift store junk to make awesome stuff. Here are some of the possibilities:

I don’t have a natural affinity for interior design, so it’s taken years of work to keep finally coming closer and closer to a craft fair display that is pleasing, unique, manageable, and effective.

Two long tables with all my stuff piled on? Nobody could see anything from outside my booth, and thus didn’t bother to enter. Two big hinged display boards for vertical display? People could see them, but they were hugely heavy to haul and couldn’t actually hold much. Store-bought displays? I don’t buy new things, and I don’t pull enough profit to spend that kind of money, anyway.

And thus, over time, I’ve come to my trifecta of craft fair display requirements: 1) It must be made primarily of recycled, salvaged, or scavenged materials (just like the items I sell). 2) It must be a VERY effective display, ideally taking up little space and able to display more than one item. 3) It must be AWESOME.

My littlest monkey is at her very first day camp this morning with her big sister (Singing! Snacks! Nature hikes!), which means that, rarer than a blue moon, I. Am. Alone.

When I’m chilling alone and also have a craft fair coming up, I often like to whip out one of my most favorite but also rarely used (it’s fairly child-unfriendly) toys: the Dremel.

Now, this isn’t a commercial, so if you have any kind of hand-held rotary tool, whether or not it’s the same brand as mine, you’ll be able to follow along with the latest craft creation I’m making for my fair this weekend: vinyl record album pendants.

Sometimes you gotta shop online. Maybe you live somewhere a little bit country, like I do, or maybe you have two little kids who would rip apart a bead store in the time it took you to pick out a single package of 3mm crimp beads, like I do, or maybe you have a favorite independent craft shop that you discovered on a vacation a couple of years ago and every now and then you have to have a fix, like I do.

Whatever your reasons, there’s no reason to necessarily shop at a big-box store’s web site; not only are there tons of sites for Fabulous Fabrics and Yearn-Worthy Yarns, there are loads of awesome craft stores, some selling supplies and some selling handmade goods, who would looooove to have your business:

I am currently a Midwesterner. I stand in line for sweet corn every Saturday at the farmer’s market. Every April, I cheer on my students who ride in the Little 500. Heck, John Cougar Mellancamp lives in my town–is that Midwest enough for you?

As an indie crafter, I’m always bummed that the majority of awesome indie fairs–Maker Faire, most of the Bazaar Bizzare locations, three-fourths of the Renegades–choose to operate on the peripheries of the continental U.S. (it’d probably suck even more if I lived in Hawaii, but I’m willing to bet there are compensations to make up for the inconvenience of living in Hawaii).

So I’m always extra stoked when there are good, national-level indie craft fairs that operate right here in the heartland (occasionally known as the “armpit of America”). Here are two good ones, and how to get involved:

Since homeschooling isn’t the norm by far, and especially because our entire culture is immersed in a school-as-institution mentality, homeschooling can seem completely incomprehensible.

Whether you’re contemplating homeschooling, know some homeschoolers, or just want to understand more about schooling options, books about homeschooling are, in my opinion, absolute must-reads.

Without reading about the huge variety of homeschooling experiences of other families, I might never have understood that my daughters writing “rainbow words” with markers while sitting at the table as I drink my morning coffee is just as legitimate (not to mention fun, and basically no work for me) as sending them to school to learn to write. Without reading about how other families homeschool, the infinity of methods (and non-methods) that they use, I might have never learned that I, too, would be capable of this.

Here are five good resources that got me started thinking about homeschooling:

The best thing about making stuffies and soft dolls is how eco-friendly the craft can be. You can make stuffed toys and animals and dolls from recycled materials, such as felted wool or the fleece that is made from plastic bottles; from natural materials, such as hemp or organic cotton or peace silk; from any of your stash fabrics or the tiniest bits of pieces leftover from other projects. You can stuff them with buckwheat hulls, cotton, eco-friendly fiberfill, crystalline silica-free play sand–anything!

Even if you’re an experienced sewer, however, three-dimensional design can be hard. I sew well, for instance, but when my daughter asks me to sew her a stuffed dinosaur toy or I want to sew a stuffed turtle for the child of my partner in a Craftster swap, it’s many (silent) swear-words later before I can come up with something half-decent.

So unless I’m trying to create something really weird, I often check out from the library the crafting books that have the best patterns for stuffies, and I’ll make or modify those. Here are five of my favorites: