Little Cooks in the Kitchen

This week is all about the kitchen. On the creative side, I have been wood burning kitchen wares like crazy. Some of it is special order, and some is on my newly revived Etsy site.

 
    If you see anything you like that's not on my site, you can shoot me an Etsy message to inquire about special orders. (I love special orders!) What is really keeping us in the kitchen is that the girls just discovered that cookbooks can fill their weekly library requirement of non-fiction books.
We have done a lot of eating from this Disney cookbook. I was fully prepared for it to be horrid as so many cookbooks are, especially licensed ones, but it is actually fairly healthy and delicious because you can't mess up Creole cooking and soul food that much!

    The cookbook pictured below is Fairy Tale Breakfasts, from the Fairy Tale Cookbook series by Jane Yolen. The stories are great, because it's Jane Yolen, and it inspired the girls to try their hands at cooking "Eggs in the cradle" by themselves. I just turn on the stove for them.

    This, in turn, sparked a conversation in our church community group. Do you let your kids cook? At what age? My mother and grandmother had me sitting on the counter from the time I was tiny, measuring and stirring. I didn't think twice about having the girls help as soon as they could hold things. They have never cut or burned themselves, they have always been careful. I can fully see why some kids are safest outside the kitchen, but for us it's a precious daily ritual. I let them start cutting soft things like mushrooms when they were younger, in addition to stirring and licking. They have graduated to pancake flipping, measuring, and spreading peanut butter and butter– a surprisingly tricky business.
    They never stir things like soup that have hot steam, and they stay away from the oven. Knives are with supervision only.

    What are your kitchen rules? Do you handle kids in the kitchen the same way you grew up, or have you tweaked things?

 

Wood Burned Oars

Done! I intended to hang them in the hall, but I really love them propped in a corner. They make good props for maritime adventures involving cardboard box boats on rug-ged seas. Someone asked me why I made these... 

The only reason is that they exist and they should be beautiful. Happily, beauty finds its reason in God and needs no other! 

Sticking My Oar In: Maritime Pyrography

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were lovely. Our Christmas break was a whirlwind of interrupted projects and plans. With the exception of Christmas Eve, every time we started a project either my husband had to go back to work unexpectedly, or we couldn’t find the supplies we needed. I can't say it was restful, but it was encouraging to make progress on things even if we didn't check them off the list.
 Daniel went back to work this morning officially, so today feels like a regular day. I love the novelty and fun of Christmas, and I also love sliding back into the flow of life.
One of my goals for the year is to make some art for the house, so I got a start here. We had some wooden oars I've had my eye on burning.

I was so tempted to over-plan myself out of it, but I took my own advice and just started drawing. My influences here are water because of the oars, a swirling early Eritrean pattern I found years ago, and haiku: Specifically how haiku has a natural theme and is supposed to transform the way you view something by making a shift or juxtaposition.
The oars are still in process, but I am excited to get them done. I both enjoy and am maddened by how much pyrography is not only drawing, but a measure of time. It is not as quick as making a mark on paper!

Free advice: When using an indelible marking tool do not stray from the plans you made in pencil. After all these years I should know that!

Help me find a name for this wreath alternative!

Maybe Martha Stewart thinks about wreaths every month.
Five or six times a year might be reasonable, but in my world –let's be realistic– wreaths come up only about three times a year. Fall, Christmas, and Spring/Summer.
I was trying to come up with an alternative to the leaf thing. I like the leaf thing, but it's not really my thing. Cute messages and chalkboards kind of paralyze me because there is really no soundbite I want to tell my neighborhood so badly that I could commit to hang it on my door for months on end, so those were out.

This is what I came up with: Sticks and driftwood wrapped with yarn, tassels on hand-twisted cord, and fishing line strung with a hodgepodge of glass beads and camel bells. The stars are some kind of wood craft that my sister in law sent from the Philippines, but I think felt shapes would sub in nicely.

What would you call this? It's kind of a mobile. It would be cool as a mobile, but you don't really hang a mobile on a door. "Hanging" sounds generic, "kinetic" sounds pretentious. Ideas?

In the process I realized that a) my front door is not very photogenic because we have a storm door, and b) this color combination is charming in person, but using a range of reds, pinks, and greens whacks out the white balance on a camera. If you would like to make these to sell I would recommend doing a little photo test with your balls of yarn first to check how salable your photos will be. Does that make sense?

Post Script: The readers have spoken! If we were in India we would call these bandanwaar or toran. In America we will call it an entry ornament.

Found: Wood Hangers

For your consideration, the lowly hanger. 

The vast majority of the hangers in my childhood closet were the wire kind that come from dry cleaners, though we rarely if ever used a dry cleaner. How did they appear in our closets? 

The few exceptions to the ubiquitous wire work horse came as accidents from the closets of cousins and friends-of-friends in black plastic bags of hand me downs, and I guarded them fondly. I was interested in clothes, which meant I was interested in closets, and every magazine article book chapter on closet organization tells you on no uncertain terms that your hangers should match, and they should not be the wire kind. Those are only good for wreath crafts and fishing goop out of the bathroom drain. So I treasured the mismatched plastic hangers. If they couldn't match at least they could be plastic. 

Now I am an adult and my hangers have matched for at least 15 years, but I have an itch to change that. I am sad about how many wood hangers I have passed on, because I wish all my clothes were dangling from cellulose. 

Wood hangers are sculpture at its functional best. The history intrigues me. 

Who decided on the essential message passed to clients via text on hangers? How was the type chosen, and whether to notch the ends or not? I love the wood grain, the weathering, the dents and dings. I find them in yard sales, junk shops, and the Goodwill Outlet. 
Give me interesting over matching any day.   

Wood Burned Wooden Spoons

With spoons this pretty the meal must taste better!

 Happy Friday!

I'm working on a whole bunch of things to restock my empty Etsy store. I'll let you know when...

Have you seen this technique of taking soft focus pictures through dirty mirrors? It's called Instagram! Haha. Just teasing all you crazy Instagrammers... you know who you are!

Another simpler version of my supremely popular afterthought, the henna owl. Have a great weekend!

Vintage Feather-Craft Folk Art Makeover

When were these Mexican feather craft pictures popular? They used to turn up every so often in estate auctions when I used to work for an auction company. This pair has been knocking around my house ever since they came to me from a great grandmother's estate. I liked the quirkiness of them, but not they weren't in the best condition. We revamped them this week to hang in the nursery, and here's how 

we did it:

 

Here are the originals in their carved cedar frames. I generally hold that it is recklessness in the first degree to paint over nice wood, (don't get me started about "distressing") but these needed a little jazzing up. Obviously they aren't a matched pair, were a bit dinged up, and pretty faded.

  

The first step was to cut them carefully out of the frames.

 

Then I pulled out the backing nails and cleaned the glass.

 

I carefully dusted off the pasteboard backing with a soft brush. 

 

The original condition doesn't look too bad in the photo, but the purple and blue were especially faded. I touched up all the colors with India ink and a medium bristle square acrylic brush. You can see in the after picture at the very top that I actually made this guy acid green instead of grey.

 

I could not be out there when my husband painted the frames, so there are no pictures, but you know how to use spray paint without my instruction!

We used Rustoleum spray paint in gold, a light dusting of copper, and a very very very light dust of aqua. I can't say I am all that thrilled with the color. If someone knows of a more mellow butterscotchy gold, please share! This gold looked like a high school prop to me at first. 

Then my husband reassembled the whole kit and caboodle. Done. Bright and cheerful for babies who like birds!

Sorry these aren't perfect photos. I am relaxing my standards to survival mode until further notice! 

Just Beat It

A pinata, that is!

This time of year parks and backyards are mobbed with children beating the stuffing out of their favorite cartoon characters at birthday parties. Even as a kid I wondered why Cinderella or Batman? Why not the wicked step mother or the Joker if we must decimate something for the candy contents?

This particular pinata stick was made at my mother's behest for family parties. It is just a dowel from the hardware store which I Dremmeled at the handle for a better grip. For some reason almost everything I make ends up having birds on it. If I like birds, why wring this one around the neck while using it to knock my hero senseless? Another mystery. I do not know.

I do know it looks cool, and it is a very fast project, because pine dowels burn about like balsa wood. This is a great beginner project!

Armoire Transformation

The seed for this armoire came when I was looking at a book of Eliot Porter photographs. The horses were painted in white onto a pair of doors. The closets Daniel built make an armoire superfluous, so it was time to move this piece along, as much as I adore the hinges.

I started by wood burning the horses, and then it became a commission for a girl's room. It struck me as more of a living room piece at that point, too old for a teen. The horses almost reminded me of Scandinavian dala horses, which may have germinated the idea for flowers.

I wanted a folk art feel, a pattern and texture to make the piece more youthful. I didn't want it to be strictly symmetrical, so I devised a few flowers to fill the space in harmony without symmetry.

I used vine charcoal to lightly sketch on the flowers, using the knots in the wood as some of the floral centers. The advantage of vine charcoal over many other utensils is that it erases with a swipe of the hand and has a loose freedom to it. If I were going for precision, I would trace with graphite or wax paper as I did on the horses.

For texture, I burned the flowers in so deeply you could take a rubbing from them. I followed the burning with a good cleaning with wood oil soap and a swipe with lemon oil. The lemon oil removed any last traces of charcoal and graphite as well as leaving the wood rich and healthy.
This took about 3 months to complete, mostly because Thacia had to be napping before I could burn, and I was so tired because of pregnancy that I needed to nap at the same time!

Virtual Home Tour: Bathroom

The last room I will show is the bathroom. The baby room is not that extraordinary at this point, and you don't want to see the mess in the teeny-tiny provisional studio. Really you don't!



Because this isn't really in any of the rooms I am just including this picture to show the original cedar beam, the very thick hand quarried limestone walls, and the custom stained hardwood floor. I am not proud of them or anything!



And let's get a close-up of that cutie!



Okay. The bathroom. I've already shown you the linen closet here and the bird hooks here. We had to rip it apart pretty thoroughly including tile and drywall. The tile we replaced with river rock from the Guadalupe. As I've said, you pay for nice things in cash or time. This project was time intensive, but so worthwhile! I painted over the posts in the corners, which I wouldn't have done if I'd known we were going to sell it later. In such a small space I wanted it all one color. Others may have different opinions. I also covered up the linen shelving with a bamboo shade that picks up the warm brown of the floor, and we added a wicker laundry hamper that looks similar.



Chinoiserie continues from the bedroom to the bathroom in the form of a printed shade. You can sort of see in the next picture (especially if you click on it to enlarge) that the bottom of the shade is another stick.





The rock floors weren't difficult per say, just time consuming. I learned you want very very flat skipping stones about the size of a half dollar. I troweled on white tile cement and laid the rocks evenly, working in small sections. After that dried, Daniel filled the gaps with white tile mortar, wiping off the tops of the rocks with a sponge. After that dried, he used a super cheap natural bristle brush to brush a light coat of garage floor epoxy over the top to seal it. Watch out for fumes!



As in the rest of the rooms I used a pinkish white paint, but I will never use a flat finish again. It looks fantastic until someone touches it or squashes a bug. It's totally impossible to clean, even with a magic sponge! The wall texture in this and the other rooms we dry-walled is reminiscent of linen book bindings. We mixed up a soupy texture, rolled it on in small sections, and went over it with the same Ralph Lauren brush and check roller you would use for his linen look wall glazes. A pain? Yes. So worth it not to have the exact same spattered wall texture as everyone else? You be the judge. I think so!

Long Winter's Nap

Loving
The new armchair that arrived for me yesterday



The sparkle of brass at Christmas



My house with the white picket fence
Is it time to read yet?

Horse Mad

Every girl is supposed to go through a horse obsessed phase, so go ahead and count this as mine. I first saw these Spanish style horses from a gate in New Mexico here.
Between trying to file recipes and mopping I guiltily squeezed in a little time to wood burn one of our armoires to sell. Guilt, I say, because I have 150 bazillion gifts to be making!

Also loving Gabrielle's mugs and Gabriela's quirky slippers!

Eliot Porter's Southwest

Barn Door. Cundiyo, New Mexico, 1961 by Eliot Porter

Door. Georgia O'Keeffe's House, Abiquiu, New Mexico 1949 by Eliot Porter

I love how Eliot Porter sometimes called doors portals.

Window and Ladder. Truchas, New Mexico, 1961 by Eliot Porter

I've been reading Eliot Porter's Southwest, which says that the American southwest he photographed is gone. Obviously the publisher hasn't been to Questa, New Mexico lately.

Window of Adobe House. La Bajada, New Mexico, 1961 by Eliot Porter

It's all there. You should go and photograph it yourself.

Window of Rock House. Bulverde, Texas 2009 by Lydia Konstanski