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!

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!

Leather Medallions

A while back I saw this leather patch tutorial on Design Mom. I was intrigued, but it took me a while to break out my wood burner and try it for myself. I used leather scraps you can buy by the bag at Hobby Lobby and other such craft stores. It must be thicker than what the Blairs used, because I had no problem with buckling. Stencils outlined the shapes, and then I just filled in with the burning tool free-hand. Or the opposite in the case of the key-chain and key shapes.

There are so many applications for this! Wouldn't it be cool to put your phone number on the back of this little key and put it on your chain in case you misplaced you keys? How about luggage tags? I made ID medallions to put on the girls' tote bags. Bracelets, necklaces, anklets, headbands. This leather just loves being doodled on!

The only problem with being this inspired is that my tool broke. Again. I use it a lot, so maybe it's time to invest in a real pyrography tool. 

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!

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!

Wood Burned Checkerboards

Do you prefer vintage or modern style Christmas? Kitsch or polish? I definitely fall for kitsch. Daniel gags over colored lights on a tree, while I think they add a special something. I love felt ornaments and glass balls. Tinsel isn't really my thing, but maybe that's because I don't enjoy vacuuming so much. I absolutely don't love Hallmark -style Christmas decor. I was thrilled to find a big box of tacky-tacky Christmas ornaments in the barn. I feel the same way about gifts. To me, your birthday is when you get a to-drool-for present. I want my gifts to be old-fashioned too.
Our gift theme this year is something along the lines of Reindeer Games. Given that none of my family read this (as far as I know), I feel free to post some of the things we've made. These are some checkerboards, and I have to say I think I want one too!

The sewing elf motif just came to me, and I drew it on. This is a rarity for me: I usually agonize, erase, change my mind, etc., but these guys were easygoing. I did all of it with a cheapo wood-burning kit from a hobby store. The colors are India ink because I wanted translucence. These other photos are of our tree trimming. My brother and his wife spent the night and we induced the holiday spirit in our hearts with cocoa, carols, and the sweet, sweet smell of pine.