Trevor had a few dollars burning a hole in his pocket at a craft fair last December and he picked up a small paper Christmas ornament done with some kind of origami. He was thrilled to add an ornament that he paid for to the tree. I was intrigued by the construction. Can you believe I went 35 years without ever seeing a German bell?

Of course I had to try it for myself. I found these video instructions online and it looked super-easy. It really was.

I tried it with a full 12x12 sheet of scrapbooking paper. As with origami, bigger is easier at first. But it's simple enough to try a smaller version. I think we'll be seeing a lot of German bells around here this year.

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The coolest thing to do when you're ten years old is play with fire... specifically, a blowtorch. I think making a bead out of a stick of glass was just gravy.



I highly recommend the glassmaking classes at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. It was a long drive for us, but well worth the trip. Interestingly, my flower-pulling class cost $25, but a finished flower in the gift shop cost $35. I got the experience plus the flower for $10 less.

Note that we went in winter when we had the place to ourselves. From the number of seats surrounding the glassblowing area, as well as the computerized scheduling system, I'd imagine it gets pretty packed in there during the summer months.

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We went on a class trip to the Shelburne Museum -- the kids were asked to make prints from styrofoam sheet and printers ink. The trick was that you had to write your letters backwards so they would come out the right way on the paper.

Here is Trevor working diligently on his drawing:



And here is the finished Trevbot 2000. (Someone should let trevor know that the year 2000 has come and gone.)

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Costco scares me, but I'll walk across burning coals for 12 sheets each of 20 colors of tissue paper for $7.



I have an idea for a rack of dowels on the wall to store these babies.

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Wednesday night was our town Selectboard meeting; and though these meetings generally take quite a while, I never expected it to last four hours. One of my items was in the middle of the agenda, but the other was dead last and I wanted to be there for it.

I usually have Trevor with me, so I need to duck out around 9:30 to get him to bed, but he asked to stay home -- which helped both of us. He was able to finish his homework and do his evening chores without rushing and I was able to stay until the very end of the meeting. He had a list of rules (no cooking, no phone calls, call the neighbors if he had any questions) and I was two minutes away by car. It all went very well. I came home to completed homework, fed & happy cats and a sleeping boy.

I usually bring some little piece of hand sewing to each meeting. Besides keeping me occupied in what is otherwise a very "in the weeds" meeting (learn everything you've ever wanted to know about grading roadbeds!), the sewing helps me ignore the drone and flicker of the flourescent lighting which otherwise drives me buggy.



I started and finished this little piece last night... a holiday topiary cross stitch that I got last fall. I'm so late with finishing it that I'm now early for Christmas 2008. And I finally mastered the art of making good French knots. I tied the final knot as the Selectboard chair announced, "Meeting adjourned."

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Trevor and I gathered pinecones from under our evergreens and made pinecone bird feeders. We get a lot of birds on our island -- we'll see if any are interested in this type of seed. Trevor hated the old-bacon smell of the lard/oatmeal mixture, so I had to do that part. He rolled them in birdseed afterwards and we hung them in the trees.

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This would make a beautiful quilt -- just make each mosaic square out of a piece of fabric.

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I made this pair of little orange crepe paper flowers following instructions from Courtney at "two straight lines." I've had the post bookmarked for a while until I collected the materials.

My flowers are not as crisp or tight as hers, but I'm totally liking the clearance Christmas wrapping paper I scored from Oriental Trading Company around the bottom of the containers.

Next time I might make the crepe paper circles a touch smaller, which should result in tighter blooms. And I need more T-pins, but I've discovered they're not cheap at the local sewing store. I must be shopping in the wrong place, because I remember my Gram having a million of those things around her house.

Finally, reusing the Stonyfield Farms yogurt cups seemed like a good idea, but they're tapered, so wrapping the paper covering around the base in a tidy way became a trick in itself. Plain ol' cylindrical soup cans would work better.

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We woke up yesterday to six inches of snow and a two-hour school delay. You can't let that much snow go to waste! Our land is flat-cleared farmland, so not much chance of sledding. We made sugar-on-snow instead... just like they did in the Little House books.

We boiled the maple syrup, using a candy thermometer to ensure we got it to 235-degrees.



He looks bored, but he's actually concentrating.



We poured the boiling syrup immediately onto cold, packed snow. Clean snow only, please!



It comes off chewy... like taffy... and oh so mapley sweet.

In other snow-related news, all the white stuff fell on a day when Dave is traveling, so I got to take a crack at using the tractor plow to clear the driveway. It was much faster than shoveling, but not without pitfalls: tractors that mysteriously won't start, icy ruts that trap tires, and snow so high that the plow won't budge.

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