A Few Projects

Last week, K spent most of her time with her friends. She is an only child and the farm is in a pretty rural area. There aren't any neighbors nearby that have kids, so it's awesome that she has such a close group of friends to regularly hang out with. Just like I did, K gets to develop a small group of really close friends--perfect kind of social interaction for those of us who are more introverted. These few families with kids so close in age are who will make up the preschool cooperative I am collaborating on. I am so excited to be involved with the design of and preparation for this farm-based school community.

My Inspiration from Pinterest

So while K was out being social, I tried out a few new craft projects. Most of my work on the farm is spent with K, but the rest of it I get to spend working on projects for the upcoming preschool cooperative, hoping to start up this fall. So Monday K and I did our usual adventure to the play-set, tour of the main garden, mini-session of yoga, and drew some mountains and letters on the chalkboard table. We also read a few stories and stewed up a delicious dinner of purple potato and apple soup on K's play-stove. It was a pretty typical Monday, ending a but early so K and her mom, H, could go to the meet-up at the beach they do every week. I made pretty good use of my extra project this time and decided to finally try out some felt food projects I had been storing up on Pinterest for a while now.

There are so many wonderful project ideas and inspiration on Pinterest, perfect for a DIY junkie like me. I am so excited to have project time now to devote to creating resources and researching ideas for the school. Not only did I get to make felt food all week, but I also got to start working on the real nuts and bolts of the co-op curriculum! I might be letting my ultra-nerdy side show here but I love designing curricula. I love it. Writing the Parent Handbook for Bella Mente, and really fleshing out our school's philosophy and approach was one of my favorite experiences there and to be able to take what I learned and apply it to a program at the ground level is the coolest thing I have ever done for "work." All of my research, my Pinteresting, and writing now get to be put to use. This is the highlight of my teaching career right here.

More on the curriculum design project later, right now let me show you some of my craft projects:

This was my first attempt at hand-stitching, not too shabby...

K loves purple sweet potatoes, she requests them almost every day and I can hardly blame her, they are delicious. Seriously, they are like natures candy, sweet and smooth and starchy and wonderful. Anyway, K not only loves to eat these delicious veggies, she also loves to cook them for me and her parents and everyone on the farm on her play stove. So the first piece of felt food I thought to make was a purple potato slice. This was the easiest one so I ended up making a few, plus you never eat only one slice of purple sweet potato. K also loves eggs, we feed the chickens together and collect their eggs often, so this is another food regularly featured in her life. It made sense to me to make K play versions of all her favorites so she could practice "cooking" with them on her own. The other one up there is a tangerine, which I made because I happened to have a few of them in my fruit basket and they caught my eye. I think K thinks this one is a tomato though. Oh well, the more uses the better!

K loved the first batch when I brought them over so feeling a bit more confident in my stitching skills I set out to make a few more. Last week K was introduced to asparagus for the first time and it was a hit. She carried around a spear of it all afternoon after she picked some in the garden with her dad. So I figured a felt asparagus spear with be the perfect addition to her collection. This way, she could start learning to cook as she learns different ways to eat it. I also threw in another egg because, well, in my opinion you can never have too many eggs, especially over easy, the way K and I both prefer to eat it.

The asparagus was a huge hit and K immediately added it to the stir-fry she had going on her play stove. I should take a picture of her working at her stove, mental note for tomorrow. Anyway, I really liked how the asparagus turned out too, and I wanted to do more in a similar style so I decided on a carrot, since we just planted a whole bed of them a few weeks ago and they are growing pretty fast now. I made another asparagus and another purple potato to add to K's collection. The carrot and the asparagus were pretty time consuming, but I made them while watching a few TEDTalks and some episodes of Bones on Netflix, so I hardly noticed the time. The Cauliflower was hard. I tried it a few ways before settling on this look, but I still don't love it. This design is going to need some more work but I think I have an idea, I'll add a picture once I get if figured out, so check back again soon!

K thought the cauliflower was a mushroom :)

The extra embroidery makes such a difference in these, i love it!