Earth's Bounty

We have been in our current home for about a year and a half. Last year we didn't get a very
good start on a garden because of my being pregnant. So this year we tried our best at being farmers on our little piece of heaven....less than an acre. We planted about four different kinds of tomatoes this year. As you can see the tomatoes are thriving. We aren't having such good luck with the other vegetables. The slugs around here are relentless and devour everything. We are trying to go the organic route but we are on a serious learning curve. We haven't had much luck killing the slugs with beer and I'm not sure what else to try. The pepper plants are puny...we have only gotten 3 jalapeno peppers out of the whole lot. The cucumbers are doing ok but they are growing funny cucumber balls most of the time instead of long cucumbers??? The deer ate all of our first crop of green beans down to the ground, our sunflowers too. I put the strawberries in pots last winter and apparently they didn't like that . They bore little fruit and the slugs got to all of that. We might have gotten six edible strawberries all season. The blueberry bushes aren't producing fruit this year...only three blueberries??? We have planted more green beans and some watermelon, canteloupe and squash.The weather here on the coast is nice enough to plant a second round of most. Hope all goes well with this second round. Cammy has been helping with keeping a harvest chart so that we can compare this years crop with future years to see how we are doing. So far we have filled up both sides of a strip of brown paper grocery bag. There were a few surprises along the way....blackberries line the ditch by the neighbors house and some potatoes grew up out of the compost. I know that it will only get better.

Fairy Fortress

Cammy being the fierce defender of fairy territory has set up fairy camp headquarters by the edge of the driveway. Don't you just love the sweet little fairy door she made for them. She keeps adding to it. Today she left them a speckle glazed clay egg that I made back at Easter. Earlier this week she added her precious rocks that she had collected over the two weeks that she spent with her Nana this summer. She feeds them well giving them seeds and flowers and the occasional goldfish or cheerios. She leaves them water filled pots after the rain from the edge of the studio as well. Cammy has quite a fierce spirit and gets mad at my husband Mark when he cuts the grass, saying that he is destroying their homes. Hopefully they will like this new territory she has staked out for them.

Sewing and Centering

I was feeling quite overwhelmed last night after a long day in the hot studio trying to get my pottery orders under control, so I got out the sewing basket. I sew a lot in the wintertime when it is too cold to go out to the studio without turning on the heat. Sewing is very relaxing to me because it is such a focused activity. This winter I started making the girls a set of alphabet bean bags....filling them with different kinds of beans: lentils, garbanzo, limas, black, pintos, black eyed peas, split peas and so on so that they will have a different feel with each one....some even have rice, barley or pasta. My goal is to have the entire alphabet done by christmas. I was going to keep them secret but I couldn't wait, they are happily playing games with them already.

I am also making Cammy a set of number bean bags. Each bean bag has an even and an odd number. For now my goal is to get all the numbers up to 20 made by the time we officially start our school year in August. I have a lot of fun ideas about how to use them with our math work. One of the things I like most about Waldorf is the way that they teach through movement to ingrain the knowledge deeply into the whole child...mind , spirit and body.

fairy mural

I have finished part of Cammy's bedroom mural. I didn't get as much finished while she was gone as I had dreamed. She loved it and has grand plans for the rest of the mural. Cammy said that she wanted to paint a cowgirl fairy with cowgirl boots, a cowgirl hat and some cowgirl clothes riding an ant with a mane,a tail and a saddle.

Geography Resources We Are Using

We are using a wide variety of books to learn more about geography and mapping. These are just a few of our favorites.
This book is a great all around first look at the subject with simple illustrations and an easy to understand text.


We got this book used so it was missing the stickers and stamps but we are having tons of fun with the games and other activities listed in the book. My daughter loves the odd facts element and will spout them out to friends and adults everywhere....the grocery store, church, the neighbors.





We were gifted several levels of this Steck-Vaughn series, slightly used from a Church in Charlotte....literally manna from heaven! I'm not always a big fan of workbooks but we are using some of the material to work on basic skills to keep up with some semblance of "real school" work.




This is a really fun book to introduce the concept of mapping.

We are reading through this one slowly to find out more about North Carolina, the state that we live in.

As we have sales around the world we are reading these enchanting folk tales from different countries.

Just for fun because we have our own special secret shortcut in the neighborhood.

We literally are jumping all over the world with our mapping activities and this book has lots of stories and creative activities from cooking to arts and crafts. LOVE IT!

There is only one thing Cammy loves more than paper dolls and it is mazes or puzzles. This book is a challenging mix of beautiful picture puzzles with hidden clues and a map.

When we have sales in the USA we look up the states in this book to get to know them a little better. It has the basic facts and a few interesting trivia facts for each state.

These are some of the resources we already had collected at home....I can't wait until we can get to the library to check out some more books. Cammy is now old enough to be her own card carrying member. Yeah!!!

Mapping the world with Etsy

We are embarking on our homeschool journey this year and one of our ongoing projects is to map all of our Etsy sales on a large world map in the dining room. We started earlier this summer...I wish I had thought of it sooner because we had a lot of overseas sales last year....but I'm sure there will be more to come. So far we have been able to mark sales in several different countries around the world such as India, Spain, Italy, Finland, Canada, the United States and Great Britain. I must admit it has been educational for me as well. My geography skills were weaker than I thought.
It has become a ritual each week when we get sales together to ship we always mark the map with a tiny shiny sticker. My husband jokes that it's a map of our world domination. I have to say it is rewarding to see all those shiny stickers gleaming even if we aren't really planning to take over the world. At least now I can say that I'm an internationally known artist...ha! ha!
Cammy seems to really enjoy trying to find the new countries, but finding the states frustrates her because the world map doesn't divide them. We got a smaller poster of the United States of America and are marking the sales in the USA on that as well and it seems to be helping.

Fundraiser

Muddymuse is happy to help raise funds for First In Families

A big happy hello from the Muddy Muse and Artwasteland family. We hope everyone is doing great. We wanted to let you all know about some big things that are happening this month and beyond. First and foremost we are happy to announce we are donating 15% of ALL of our online sales through March 15th to First in Families a wonderful statewide organization which does amazing work in funding and supporting folks with disabilities and their families. Please visit www.fifnc.org find out more a about t… Continue

Added by muddymuse on February 18, 2009 at 8:35am — No Comments

2 weeks with Nanna

My oldest daughter Cammy is spending two weeks with her Nana this summer in the Appalachian mountains. This is the first time she has ever been away from me for so long and a week and a half in I am missing her very badly. I have her baby sister Karma here to keep me busy not to mention a backlog of orders. I am busy at night painting a fairy mural in her room as a surprise for when she gets back. I can't wait till she is filling the house and the neighborhood with noise.