crafting with kids

Spring Breaking

| poppypeach

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We all had a lovely spring break the kids and I. It all started with completing my paper for Uni, and once that was done I had a bit of a breather with hanging out with the kids. Monday I drove them to the farm to do the chicken chores. It was such a beautiful day to be hanging with the chickens, they loved the outside sunshine and snacks with the humans. This Buff Orphington chook is one big lady, she is all feathers and such a sweetie! You can see Snowflake the white chicken on the ground, she was adopted by one of the kids in the 4H chicken project as someone left her at the farm?! She is another lovely lady. While we were hanging with the kids and the chickens in the spring sunshine, we even had our friends from San Jose visit and drop off my son after a sleepover.

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After an intense study period, I like to craft and as I had not switched out my entryway decorations since the last holiday I wanted to bring in something fun to my new garden bell addition. I made pom poms after I found this cool neon yarn and I added it to an embroidery hoop without its buddy so here is the undersea background for the whale. I am now crocheting a blanket which is a lot of fun as I have not crocheted in ages. It all started with a granny square YouTube video when I was kicked out of the lounge room as Missy was playing the Switch and watching Netflix (a cooking show!) with her friends for a girls sleepover.

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Thursday I went in search of a mysterious flat white coffee as an Aussie friend of mine told me about a place downtown Mountain View that had decent coffee. You see, I stopped drinking coffee 12 years ago when I moved here as the only well-made coffee I could find was at Dana Street Cafe (an Aussie barista made a kick-ass flat white). It was inconsistent as she was not always working plus I was not hanging out at the coffee shop with a baby. So after a while, it was no more coffee for me which turned out to be a good thing as I became a kombucha fan down the track…. but that is another story! Anyway, this coffee shop downtown is called 1oz coffee, and it was a super cool cafe to hang out sans the nerds! Actually, there is one in the background! Well, it seems to me that this is a place to come and drink coffee and snack out with friends (delicious pastries from Alexanders down the road, plus Rx date bars and big cookies) rather than sit on your machine all day with that one cup of coffee.

After the coffee (see the super cute flat white) I took the kids to look at the caterpillars outside the Mountain View Library. These caterpillars were everywhere, they will one day become the Tussock Moth when they transform. They were all over the sculptures outside the library, and the kids really enjoyed finding them in bunches all going somewhere? The library is always the best place to hang out over break even though there is a remodel happening and the kid’s book selection is minimal. The kids will still come out with a bag full of books especially when they have been banned from the computer for the break! It worked out well as we would have family game time playing Mario Cart and the kids could track my progress and give me high 5s whenever I was in the top 10 – yay!

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The bonus of being off all week was that pretty much every day we would go to the park and hang out with our neighbours! The kids would climb the trees and look for critters and even bring them home to live in a shoebox. The adults would knit on the blanket and drink wine, not long till summer and we can do that all the time!!

I also had the opportunity to deep clean my house to get rid of 3 boxes of books, clean out the kitchen and kids room to sell at the upcoming citywide garage (yard) sale on the 5th May weekend. And after that it will be time to donate everything, it will feel so good to get rid of stuff though we still need to move some more stuff if we have another year or so it is hard for me to donate all the yarn! I did give a local maker space lots of craft materials, and that felt good. Most of my little yarn balls are going to my big granny square blanket that will tell the story of the many pieces I made in the time I have been knitting which is around 12 years that is since I was pregnant with Ash, man time flies when you are having fun!

Home sweet home

| poppypeach

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The big news that made me so happy last week was the approval of my hubby working remotely in Australia. Now with all the plans moving along it was a hard decision to up and leave a job but now with this in the pipeline and a presentation from our architect in Melbourne shortly I am getting excited to be back in Australia. This illustration was found at the park after I took the kids for a walk as I could not sit still after my hubby gave me the news. Day by day I am patiently waiting for the green light that says now start packing and selling everything it is time to go. But until then I am enjoying myself here and having fun carving out my future career in education.

I was still on a balanced nutrition diet last week had me caving and wanting extra flavour in my food with sriracha and miso mayo. Tacos have carbohydrates that I do not want to be eating in the evening, so I turned Taco Tuesday into a bowl minus the taco of salad, avocado salsa and beer battered fish. I know my diet of no bad stuff, but hey it fitted into my macro plan for the day! The bowl on the right is smoked salmon on a kale salad with miso mayo and spring onions. I am finding with eating fish is helping me reach my protein limit to build muscle, fingers crossed I am doing this thing right! I love food too much to eat bland food all the time…

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At Ventana School where I work we made some pipe cleaner dolls for the dollhouse the kids built, and here they are all ready to be sold at the auction.

Speaking of the auction my hubby and I had a lovely night out on Saturday night at the adults-only event with cocktails, wine and a delicious catered dinner by Opa! It was a game theme, so my outfit was my own interpretation of a Candy Land princess :D. It was a bit wacky but anyway it gave me the opportunity to wear the lovely raw silk vintage beaded jacket (from my fave vintage store in Mountain View, which is now gone!) with a dress I made out of FabMo silk pieces.

The quilt that is pictured was created with help by the 1st-grade class I help teach. A grandma of the students (who is a star quilter) designed and made the quilt, and it is incredible. It was won by the parents of the class and will be shared by the parents to travel with this cohort of children at the school. It is an absolute treasure and captures the spirit of the community at the school.

My daughter came with me to work today, and we had a fun time in the classroom together. She was a bit tired by the end of the day, so she did some reading when I was working with the kindergarten kids. She had a fun time with the 1st grade and enjoyed the tinkering with the kids at lunchtime and ate and played with them all which was so good!

After work, we went to visit the lovely ladies AKA the chickens at the ranch, and they have a new addition an Easter Egger whom we call chicken cheeks which is just beautiful and tiny. Apparently, these ladies lay different coloured eggs which are how they get their name. I cannot wait until she starts laying. I was so happy to spend time with the chickens where at one point I turned around, and the whole flock of standard hens had followed me out into the grass, I am so looking forward to having chickens of our own one day!! At the coop we now have 13 bantams and 10 standard chickens so that is quite a flock and they are all very entertaining, I am sure they remember the people they interact with and most especially whoever gives them the best treats like strawberry tops and kombucha!

Farewell Arts Focus for another year!

| poppypeach

Last week it was our final week of Arts Focus with some very talented sewers from our school. I was really impressed with this owl fleece hat – I think this student has set the bar high for the next session! The quilt we made was given to our school principal as a gift for her baby, here is a detail of it – embroidered by one of the students.

This 2017-2018 session we brought in some new projects such as the yarn octopus and felt emoji. For the second session, we introduced the button tree to fill in some time as we had a lot of older grade kids (5th grade choose what class they would like to do as their final class). My co-lead also made the kids get fancy with their pillow making which is always a plus to see the kids stretch their creativity. The pipe cleaner doll and embroidery on the bottom left was made by a kinder girl who sewed such beautiful stitches. A favourite of mine is the platypus embroidery sewn by one of the 5th-grade girls in the class.

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At the school where I work the students have been busy making a dollhouse for the auction coming up this weekend. The kids started with making little dolls of themselves and in true Reggio fashion, it evolved into something magical – this dollhouse. With some help from their science and art specialists, this all came together. I am helping them with pipe cleaner dolls this week to give away with the house when it goes up for auction this Saturday evening. Tomorrow we will wrap the yarn around the pipe cleaners and define the bodies of all these dolls lazing around in the playroom of the house 😀

It was back to University over the weekend and what better way to get the brain going on this clean eating diet I am currently on is to have grilled sardines over sauteed kale and roasted garlic topped with watermelon radish and tomato – very tasty with a dash of sriracha.

The annual Holi celebration my friend celebrates each year was a lot of fun on Sunday. We were very lucky to have the sunshine and warm weather after our all out splash of colour followed by buckets of water.

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To add to this weeks collection of food I am looking at lentils as a high protein food so I needed to discover new recipes to eat them and this came to mind after enjoying lentils in Melbourne last year.

Black Lentils with Grilled Asparagus topped with watercress and goat cheese salad

1 cup black lentils (cooked)
1 small onion (cut finely)
Olive oil
1 cup diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon Smoked paprika
1 tablespoon miso mixed in a small amount of stock (a thick consistency)
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Bunch of watercress
Tomato
Goat cheese (as much as you would like!)

Method

  1. While waiting for the lentils put the asparagus in some oil on the grill.
  2. Simmer onion on a skillet in a little oil until transparent, add lentils.
  3. Mix onions and lentils and add diced tomatoes.
  4. Mix through miso and stock through the lentils and add salt and pepper to taste.
  5. Finish with watercress, tomato and goat cheese.

Relaxation at last

| poppypeach

It is no wonder my lack of sleep is catching up with me now – it all started with staying up each night finalising my Case Study for my final assignment for the teaching period. Now that I am done this week it is such a weight lifted and I feel free for a month and I can catch up on other things that I have left behind!

The fun last week was the Super Blue Blood Moon which we woke up for at 5:30am on Wednesday morning – it was very early but so worth it just to see the red moon – incredible! I have pictures from the NASA Live coverage plus a couple of pictures I took with my phone camera and you can see the tiny dot in a sea of black!

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Thursday we had week 3 of Arts Focus and it was embroidery and fleece pillows with a button and as our class has been working so well and completing their projects, my co-lead came up with the button tree blankie so the kids can have practice sewing buttons!

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I was back at work on Friday morning and the kids found a freshly hatched monarch butterfly drying in the sunshine, it was just beautiful to experience – you can see the cocoon just above in the bush.

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Come Friday the opening of the Community School of Music and Art School show was on display and work by Miss H was there so I dashed in to take a pic of it. This is her second piece on display with the CSMA over the last year and hopefully, we get her peacock pastel drawing back from the school soon.

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Saturday was a Ride with Lenny the Mountain View Mayor and Safe Mountain View and Great Streets were there to help out on the day and I found peeps who love Public bikes and here is mine in red, Janet’s in white and Tracy’s in Green – looking very Italian! We are all bike advocacy folks who enjoy our commuter bikes 😀

Sunday we finally had a family day of relaxation at the beach and enjoyed a small amount of time at the beach with a walk and a dip in the icy cold Pacific Ocean, it felt so good to be burying my feet in the sand and grounding with the earth.

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The kids were hungry so we wandered to downtown Santa Cruz and it was so quiet and lovely – maybe because the Superball/bowl was on and everyone was partying with their big screen TVs and dip? Anyway, we were out and about and found this brunch place right at the end of the main drag with these delicious poached eggs on a couple of muffins with avocado and hollandaise sauce with a pot of Japanese green tea – now that is what I like and thank you, Santa Cruz, for being so cool!

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Lulu Carpenter’s was a very lovely cafe with outdoor seating both on the main drag and out the back in a courtyard with a bunch of tables in the middle with students working away on their computers – I was glad not to be one this weekend! The range of teas was just divine and I really enjoy a good cup of tea I even had a decent cup rather than a mug to drink my tea which is refreshing for a cafe in America.

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And for our next visit to Santa Cruz, the Museum of Art and History looks like fun – we missed an event on yarn bombing, these guys are speaking my language!!

Adaptations

| poppypeach

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Last week was a big one with beginning the week preparing for my last week in Arts Focus for the first session. Switching gears from a chaotic classroom and driving to work in the afternoon has been quite intense, bringing with it lots of excitement to the day and by Friday I am beat! We even ended up last week with a night out with the ladies to a Thai restaurant at 8pm, I was ready to be on the couch by then but I made it out till after 10pm and had a lovely time catching up with friends.

We did pipe cleaner dolls with the kids on Thursday at school and they loved them and I have a few for the art show come January next year at Mountain View City Hall.

I was always fascinated with this picture of this caterpillar when I was a kid and I found it again in a bugs book in the 1st grade class I help teach. I loved the detail in the colours and the body on this guy and always wondered about that massive enlarged face of the caterpillar, it still fascinates me to this day – maybe it is the colours of this guy?

As it turns out my work has asked me to stay until school is out for the summer so I am very excited about this wonderful opportunity to work with an incredible cohort of teachers and gain so much experience in this education journey. I will be covering a maternity position and be working with the kinder and 1st grade kids. Time to be a bit more organised and balance all the work with my study that I am a bit behind on 😦 This is the last week of school before the holidays which I am looking forward to as we are going to the Joshua Tree National Park!