Baby turkeys and tiny frogs

The days are getting longer, the afternoons are getting hotter, and the neighborhood is alive with the noise of children all day long. With the final day of school last week, our early morning bus stop ritual came to an end and, almost as if on cue, our newly minted pre-teen started sleeping in. Maybe it was the extra digit, maybe it was the loss of the rowdy bus stop crew, maybe it was the excessive consumption of sugar over the birthday weekend, or maybe it was a combination of all three, but whatever the cause, late mornings, grouchy days, and contrite evenings have been the norm all week.

That would be a terrible way to start the summer, but it's even worse as a way to finish up a school year, and though the rest of the district is no longer in their desks, we find ourselves wrapping things up a week later after taking two weeks off around the busy spring theater schedule. So through all this we've still been attending the kitchen table school, trying to tie things up in one final week. Gah.

By Thursday the lure pull of that something savage, and free, and totally summer was too strong a force to resist, and we gladly left our business to join friends, also released just that morning from the confinement of school, at the botanical garden. Not even the heavy, wet, almost chilly day could keep us down. There are inside gardens, too, with cacti and enormous, almost Jurassic fish. And when we finally did get outside, the wet weather had drawn the tiniest toads out into the open in such great numbers that the ground practically errupted in jumping toads with every step we took. Then, surrounded by lush, brilliant gardens, the kids spent an hour playing in the building scraps pile, constructing and deconstructing again and again. Refreshed by laughter and friendship, we are now ready for the upcoming week of choir camp and school planning.

Plus, baby turkeys (look hard—they are hiding in the grass behind their mama).

A very Harry (Potter) birthday party (affordably)

Potions class, Herbology, Quidditch, and a trip down Diagon Alley is how we do ten years old around here. The minute we settled on an at-home birthday party this year (something I was pretty sure I'd never do), Calvin requested a Potter party. The series is a favorite amongst his homeschooling cohort; they play Hogwarts make-believe whenever the chance arises, rehash the stories in drawn out discussion on a regular basis, and are lobbying for the play to be their production this fall. Having just finished the series myself (yes, for the first time!), the subject was fresh in my own mind and the party seemed like a great idea.

There are innumerable ideas for Harry Potter parties on Pinterest, and they vary widely in cost, time expenditure, and required talents. Of course Calvin had lots of pie in the sky dreams for his ideal party, so we took his big list of ideas and narrowed it down to what was affordable and doable in the time and space we had. Making wands and jelly bean boxes got the green light, but creating a Whomping Willow in our front room got crossed right off, as did the making of scarves and robes for all the guests. The resulting party required some work, but was fun both in preparation and in realization.

Activities: a Quidditch tryout session in the backyard, Mandrake planting in Herbology, sundae making in Potions class, a Have You Seen This Wizard photo op, and a showing of the first movie. 

Take homes: Wands, monster books, feather pens, and Bertie Botts Beans, a "mandrake" if they potted one, and a Wanted Wizard sign if they took the photo op.

And now, here's some how-to.

The wands: 

The wands were by far the main stage attraction at the party, and they were cheap and easy, but time consuming. My only purchase for this was a bag of chopsticks, the rest of the materials I already had on hand.

I made the wands based on this tutorial. I purchased long cooking choptsicks from Amazon and used the high setting on my hot glue gun to make the handles. This involved a lot of rolling the chopstick in one hand while managing the gun with the other. Once the initial handle cooled completely, I used the low setting on the hot glue gun to add raised detail.  

I used three colors of Acrylic paint that I already had on hand. I started with a base coat in the darkest color. When that was dry I lightly added brush strokes in the lighter color to give it more depth. I finished by painting the raised detail in gold. I painted the entire wand but finished the handle completely first, then went back to paint the wand part.

I finished the wands with a coating of glossy Modge Podge followed by a coat of Fixatif.

The monster books:

The monster books were my own design, and they were easy and far less time consuming a project than the wands. I purchased packages of small notebooks at the dollar store and a package of pens from Amazon, while the remaining materials I already had on hand.

The monster books are actually monster book jackets made using gray felt cut to the the size of the open notebook plus 1.5 inches on each side and .25 inches each top and bottom. I folded the side edges over and hot glued them along the top and bottom edge to create pockets for the cover of the notebook, similar to a standard book jacket cover only more enclosed (they were not glued to the notebook so that they could be reused).

Once the felt jacket cover was made to fit a notebook, the rest was decoration. I cut teeth out of white felt and hot glued them the to the right edge of the "cover", then I cut fur to the size of the open book and glued it to the outside of the jack cover, overlapping the teeth. Lastly I glued eyes to the top right edge of the fur, near the teeth.

Bertie Botts (NOT) Every Flavor Beans

The Every Flavor Beans are available for purchase on Amazon, but they're pricey, the box is not authentic, and who really wants to stumble across a vomit flavored bean? Instead, we bought Jelly Bellies in bulk at our local grocery store and and printed off the template from this page to make our own authentic looking bean boxes. 

We printed the boxes on cardstock, and cut out the windows with a craft knife and the box itself with regular scissors. I did cut all the tabs a little larger than they are drawn on the template. I also added a tongue tab to the square bottom and cut a slit for it in the opposing tab so it could be opened and closed instead of just glued shut. That being said, when we put the beans in baggies and placed them inside the boxes, they were too heavy for the unglued bottoms, so we had to use a small piece of tape on each to keep them closed. If I had it to do over again I think I would glue the bottoms but figure out how to make the top work like an accordion so that it would be reusable from there.

Owl Bags

We placed the goodies in snowy owl bags, which was another of my own creations and made entirely from items I already had on hand: white craft (lunch) bags, white and black cardstock, a black Sharpie, and adhesives. 

I sketched an owl "mask" on white cardstock to use as a template. After cutting out all the masks, I used craft glue to add eyes and a beaks cut from black cardstock. I used Zots to attach the face upside down to the very top of the bag, and used a black Sharpie to draw wings, feathers, and clawed feet on the opposite side.

When the bag was filled and the top folded over, this created a snowy owl.

Herbology Mandrake potting

Pots from the dollar store and a single packet of miniature zinnia seeds from the local hardware store, plus dirt we had leftover from our potting this spring. We put the seeds in a jar which we labeled as Mandrake Seeds, and I added food coloring to water in another jar to make the dove's blood that Mandrakes all need (or so I've been told).

Decorations and such

We purchased a brick wall from Amazon to make our front door into the Station 9 3/4 entrance post. There was plenty of wall, so we also hung a portion of it inside to use as a backdrop for our Wanted Wizard photos (which we took using our Instax camera).

We printed signs for various locations in Diagon Alley and Hogwarts, as well as labels for potions and the Mandrake seeds, our Wanted Wizard mini posters, and an image of Moaning Myrtle for the bathroom. You can easily purchase these in bundles of printables on Etsy, but with a little more effort we found good stuff for free online (a simple Google search worked wonders), or made on our own. 

I decorated our Great Hall (dining room) with stars and glowsticks (candles) hanging from the ceiling. We got a red plastic table cloth to use as a runner on the table and gold plates, bowls, cups, and utensils to round out the Gryffindor color scheme.

Lastly, I used duct tape to join two old mop handles together and hang a hula hoop from one end, then tied the contraption to the deck railing with rope. This resulted in a hilariously serviceable Quidditch goal. We used ping pong balls for the team tryouts activiity.

Summer is here

Celebrate

We were looking at photos a few days ago and Jon commented to me that we have "more pictures of that kid in pajamas than anything else." So it is not at all surprising to that while all our friends and acquaintances flooding Facebook with lovely pictures of their families from the weekend in new spring dress clothes, our kid was decorating eggs in . . . can you guess? His pajamas. With bed head to boot. Evidence that we are comfortable and joyous dissidents.

The first day of spring, better known as the spring equinox, was fully a week ago, but mother nature could not have provided a more beautiful sign of the lengthening days than we were graced with yesterday. Brilliant sun and warming temperatures brightened our crafting, decorating, and cooking as we prepared to celebrate with family. Weekends like this are a vital part of recovering from winter. They are the promise that entices us all from quasi-hibernation. I swear I have seen more neighbors in the past week than through all the past three months combined. 

And while much of the nation is also celebrating the end of a marked period of waiting, our own season of patience is just getting started—the bird migration is upon us. Our local friends, the ones that don't abandon us for warmer climes but still disappear mostly from hearing for the darkest months of the year, are starting to rejoin us in a tentative morning symphony. It will swell over the next few months as they become increasingly urgent in their communications, and as they are joined by summer-weathered friends. And the visitors that pass through for the briefest of moments will be on their way in just a few weeks. We actually saw our first Sandhill Cranes on February 28, sparking an impatience for early morning bird hikes.

But today was still a pajama day. A craft rabbits, decorate eggs, and eat chocolates day. A ring in spring with friends and family day.

 

Cinderella in Detroit

If I haven't mentioned it before, and I'm pretty sure that I have, our family has a great love for the stage. Shortly before Calvin was born I made an acquaintance who was very involved in children's theater and went to a performance of Charlotte's Web in order to see her perform. At the time she had a three month old waiting for her backstage, and my infant was about three months from making his own debut, but I was already sold on the idea of great children's theater. Calvin went to his first real show just a few years later and sat in rapt attention through the entire performance of fairy tales and legends done by Wild Swan, our award winning local children's theater group. He loved it, and we got season tickets for years after.

Even today we still go see some of Wild Swan's shows for older kids, but children's theater was really just a gateway drug. When Calvin was only five we went with friends to see the traveling Broadway performance of Mary Poppins. That went so well that we tried him out on Pirates of Penzance at the Stratford Festival that same fall.  A few shows in he started performing himself, first with his homeschooling group, then in camps, then, coming full circle, in a children's chorus for a Wild Swan show itself. It's a true love affair, not due necessarily to any strong aptitude, but to a great depth of enjoyment. 

I mention all this for two reasons. First, because a few weeks ago Calvin decided to audition for a coveted spot in a local children's performing troupe for the production of the musical Tarzan, and he won a place in the mid level chorus. The process required a full resume with head shot to be turned in at the audition where he was interviewed and put to the test for recitation, vocals, and dance choreography. I was nervous for him. I think it was the resume with head shot that made it clear how next level up this really was. Calvin was pretty easy about the whole thing, which might have been his saving grace. We'll never know. But the next few months in our house will be all Tarzan all the time.

The second reason I mention all this stagey stuff is because this weekend we went with our close friends (also known as our camping friends) to see the Broadway travelling performance of Cinderella in Detroit, almost four years to the day after we went with them to see Mary Poppins. It was a great show—a really surprisingly fresh and hilariously updated show with amazing costumes and perfect one-liners. It was a great show, plus it was a nice break from Tarzan.