More Dollhouse Progress

At last. I have three down with fevers which you might think would impact my time in a bad way. Not so much. Feverish kids are sleepy kids. Rowdy actually asked for a nap. No joke. "Mama, I go sleep?" Yes, oh yes heaven be praised yes!

On to more pre-assembly. For whatever reason, the openings for doors and windows are rounded and must be squared. The manual said something about why the window and door openings were rounded, how the tools that cut them were blah blah blah. Whatever. I used a file which would also work on toenails - of a tyrannosaurus.

If the door doesn't quite fit, take off a bit more. There are a surprising lot of openings to file. Why is this necessary again? Oh, blah blah blah. Right.

Glue! We're finally using glue!!!! We're assembling the chimney here - attaching the cap to the something.

And using lots of tape to hold the cap and something together while the glue dries.

And using more tape to hold the chimney to the cap and something as more glue dries.

Then the front steps. I used waaaaaay more glue that what's shown below. Seriously, that is nowhere near enough glue.

Don't you love action shots?

Now this is not in the instructions, but if you don't want to use tape, find a bottle of 1980s AquaMate to hold the pieces together. It must be 1980s AquaMate or it will. not. work. properly. I am not kidding. 1990s AquaMate won't work. 1970s AquaMate won't work. 1980s. Preferably 1985 because how else can you reclaim your childhood except by making use of the exact bottle of carpet cleaning formula that survived untouched since your very childhood? That bottle just screams Cyndi Lauper, doesn't it? Banana clips and leg warmers and big bangs?

And there we have it! Next up, window bays! For the rest of our dollhouse construction posts, see the Reclamation Project category in the cloud or below.

Shingles and Corners and Chimneys, oh my!

On to the next step in building the Victoria's Farmhouse: pre-assembly. Like staining shingles and finally, finally getting out the bottle of glue.

First: I bought shingle dye from Hobby Lobby (they always have a 40% off coupon, fyi). And the instruction booklet had some involved shingle-dying trick involving a milk carton cut in half. It looked truly absurdly over-complicated and messy. The sort of technique a male would use because it involves tools and funnels and, well, over complicating something that should be simple. So I ignored the instructions. I did, however, use the rubber glove that came with the dye. Very glad for that glove.

Primary step involved mixing up the dye with two cups water. I used an old litter pan that I also use for lanolizing wool, soaking stained clothes, etc. 

Then Pie and I sprinkled the shingles in one handful at a time. After a good layer was in the dye, I shook them around then moved them off to the side. For the final few handfuls I had to hold the pan at an angle. The shingles soak up a lot of dye. 

Finally, I swished them around quite a lot. 

Then I spread handful after handful on a sheet of plastic. I didn't worry about separating clumps. 

By morning they were mostly dry. I shuffled them around a bit and by evening they seemed dry. I let them sit another night just to be sure. Then into a gallon Ziplock they went. All done, no mess, no weird milk jug contraptions, easy peasy. 

Shingles, check! But a certain Rowdy toddler is driving me to distraction so sharing progress on stairs and such will have to wait. 

Speaking of Rowdy... Here she is. 

and so the story begins

Here I am signing my first for-real-not-kidding coming in 2017 publishing contract! The road to this point has been ... I want to say, "Oh, I always knew this day would come!" But that statement is so incredibly far from the truth. In many ways the path to this moment has been long, grueling, painful. More than a decade, hundreds of rejection letters (all of which I've kept including a bizarre one that said something about the success of Sponge Bob depending on a lack of irony), an MFA. The journey has not been what I expected. At all ...

For more check out my website.

Vomit Tsunami

The beginning is always the same. Middle of the night, a child cries, I listen and hope. Perhaps sleep will return. A fool's hope, I know.

Then comes the sound. Every parent knows it. Like a cough but guttural, wet, productive. The sound that sends me bolt upright, out of bed, scrambling for the door with an even more futile hope: that the sound I heard was something innocuous like, say, the cat. Not what I know it was. Not that awful splash of stomach acid and bits of pizza, half-digested gummy bears, banana, raisins. 

I put my hand down, feel the telltale chunks in the dark. Sheets, magic blanket, pajamas all end up in a pile in the bathroom.

Every hour for the rest of night I'm up to replace pajamas and the towel. Dr. D, who has little experience with vomit, feeds the child in the morning. Mistake. By evening, Rowdy is keeping down pedialyte, but Mud Pie has a bellyache. By morning Pie and St. Nick both lay listless in the family room, bowls beside them. By noon Dr. D lays in bed with chills and stomach cramps. That night my own gut churns in a way I can't ignore. 1am, I'm hit. 5am, my head pounds and my breasts are hot from un-drunk milk. I'm suddenly awake and certain something is very wrong with the baby, so I crawl from the sofa in the family room, up the stairs, and find Baby sleeping soundly. I feed him, and he violently spits up enough to soak my pajamas. I'm too sick to care. I crawl back to the sofa. The next morning we were supposed to load the truck and drive to Milwaukee, but in crazy faith we decide to postpone. A day.

We sit in the living room all the next day. Baby continues to throw up every feeding. Rowdy and Pie and St. Nick move on to intestinal "vomiting." Fish joins them. We think he may miss the puking part of the illness and we're relieved. And since none of us has much capacity for rational thought remaining, we decide to load up the next morning and take our trip, dammit, because Dr. D can't cancel his meeting and I'm not going to be stuck home with five sick kids. Driving through Chicago with five sick kids sounds so much better somehow.

So the next morning Fish wakes with a stomach ache. St. Nick is still weak, Dr. D can barely stand. Pie and Rowdy seem perky, however, so I help them pack (and pack for everyone else) and by 9:30 we're on the road. Amazingly, Baby does not throw up again, and Fish and the rest quickly fall asleep. It's the shortest 6-hour drive in the history of our family. Plus the sleep does us well. Could it be we're free from this illness? We swim (rather halfheartedly), eat dinner (quite cautiously), and tuck in for the night.

Fish making use of the hotel floor.

3am. The sound. Again. Rowdy. Again. I thank whatever force of the universe compelled me to bring extra pajamas. The next day, a miracle! Rowdy is eating! Pie and Nick and Fish are eating! Everyone is well! We drive home giddy with relief. We watch a show, go to bed and rest blissfully.

Until St. Nick wakes me at 1am. "Mom, Mom. Fish just Superpuked."

It's So Logical: Why and How We Turn Dollhouse MFD Floors into Gorgeous Hardwood

So check out our homeschool lesson for today: logical syllogisms. There are NO fallacies in the following. None. I swear.
P1 Dollhouse floors - all dollhouse pieces, actually - come out of the box as bare, manufactured wood.
P2 Real houses have real floors.
P3 Really awesome houses have hardwood floors.
C1 If we want a really awesome dollhouse then it must have hardwood floors and not dumb manufactured wood floors.

It might seem odd to be thinking of finished floors before the dollhouse assembly is begun, but trust me, once walls are in, the technique below would not be possible. And since the result is so thoroughly awesome, well, it's worth the delayed gratification. Incidentally, I found this technique on YouTube and buried in links on the Victoria's Dollhouse website. Since the video is longish and the process is so involved, I'll share my tutorial below. Yes, I'm thoughtful like that. You're welcome.

1. Make a template on card stock or paper. The video suggested random-width flooring between 1/4 inch and 3/4 inch. At first I thought, "But floors aren't random width!" and then I thought, "Any little irregularity will be so obvious," so I decided, "Yes, random width it is!" I kept mine, for the main floor, closer to 1/2 inch, give or take.

2. Transfer marks to the floor. DO NOT FORGET the access bay floor! Wouldn't it suck to spend all this time making the floor awesome only to open the access bay and see ... blech, manufactured wood. Puke. I'd have to drag all my paints out again and halt production just for those tiny strips of wood. Which would suck. So DON'T FORGET! Seriously. Don't.

3. Now's the fun part. Connect the dots. Use a straight-edge that is long enough to span the entire floor. Hold it down really really really tightly, and/or put double-sided tape on the back to help it stay put. I didn't bother with tape because I am just that strong, baby. Use the side of a flathead screwdriver, or an awl. But be careful because awls are awlfully dangerous. Hahaha.

See here, I'm dragging the awl across the board against the straight edge (a level, in my case). Do one pass somewhat lightly, but don't be afraid to really lean into it after that. Give it power. Muscle. Make those spaghetti arms burn! The groove should be deep enough to guide a folded sheet of sandpaper. I found six heavy passes did great. A stronger, burlier person might do fine with four.

4. Sand the whole thing with 60-80 grit sandpaper. In the direction of the grain (the boards, since MFD has no grain. Duh.). Again, don't forget that pesky access bay floor!!! The goal here is to smooth out the surface and rough it up a bit to give the finished floor more texture.

5. With a finer-grit sandpaper that's folded, sand the grooves. This is painstakingly slow, tedious, boring, but is one of the most important steps. 

6. Here you see Mud Pie cleaning out the grooves with a stiff kitchen brush. Not shown is me doing it again and then vacuuming up the dust. Because there's quite a lot of dust. Tip: Keep the door to your workroom closed or you will find dusty cat prints all over your house.

7 maybe? I forget. Gather acrylic paints as desired. Use just one color, cream for a more subtle base, or yellow for warmth. I added a bit of red for variation because I dig variation, and heaven forbid I ever follow instructions exactly. I was a little worried I'd screw it up, but kept that thought to myself. Mud Pie, however, was more than a little skeptical. She's seen enough of my projects, however, to know she can trust me (or so she said. She later confessed that she was knotted up with worry that it would look awful. So was I.).

8. Working very fast, brush on the paint, working in sections if it's a large area, and wipe almost all the paint off with a paper towel. Or several paper towels.

9. Before the paint is fully dry, clean out the grooves with the awl.

10. Once dry, sand with coarse sandpaper once more. If needed, run a piece of sandpaper down the grooves again.

11. And clean thoroughly again. Notice the variations from cream to pink to yellow. At this point I'm wondering if I made a very large mistake.

12. And now the fun part. Or the *next* fun part since I already had a fun part. Squirt your Minwax Express (find it online or at Home Depot) non-penetrating stain on your clean, sanded, painted floor and spread it around quickly, making sure to flood the grooves. I did not work in sections, but I wish I had because this stuff dries fairly fast. Using a paper towel, wipe in the direction of the grain, back and forth, in large, sweeping motions. Try not to wipe at an angle. P.s. Wearing a mismatched sweater/tunic combo is an essential element. I don't know why it wasn't mentioned in the video.

At first you'll be removing a lot of the stain, which is ok. Continue as the surface dries. Back and forth, back and forth, touching the surface more lightly each time.

The variation is quite pretty, and startlingly authentic. Here it is still wet as I'm wiping, wiping wiping. Keep at it until it dries (about 10 minutes). 

Finally: Allow to dry for at least three hours, then coat with Minwax polycrylic (a non-yellowing alternative to polyurethane). And enjoy the payoff! A stunning hardwood floor that will run through your yet-to-be-built dollhouse. We can still lay tile in kitchens or baths, install carpet, or do whatever we'd like. But we won't have to for the dollhouse to look awesome. Who knows, maybe all Mud Pie will want to do is throw down some rugs? 

For the rest of my posts about creating Victoria's Dollhouse, click on the Childhood Reclamation Project label below this post.

it's official!

The Publisher's Weekly announcement came out today for Halloween Goodnight (to be illustrated by amazing Norwegian artist, Ella Okstad). Now this is how I like to ring in a new year! It feels more real, less "oh-my-word-what-if-I-dreamed-it-all?" unbelievable. In fact, at first it felt so unbelievable, I didn't make any announcements until now. Despite receiving the offer on Halloween - of last year!

Run over to my website to check it out!

Homeschool Indecisions: or Tapestry of Angst

For several years we sort-of-happily used Tapestry of Grace as our main humanities curriculum. Until the sort-of became not-very and slid into not-at-all. What is Tapestry (TOG) and why did we use it/discontinue using it? So glad you asked.

TOG is, in a nutshell, all the humanities at once (hist, soc studies, geog, writing, reading, lit, art, music) - or it CAN be, if you put the time in. And for a time, we loved it. Because ... it's great for schooling a bunch of kids at once. Much/most teaching is done all together, but on different levels. The oldest might be reading different books than the youngest, but they'll both be learning about the same time period. Plus the depth of content quite simply cannot be matched. It's truly astounding. Which leads to the problems that drove us all batty (and the reasons we're not using it now).

There is just too much. Not options or activities. Too much prep for me - I was spending easily 5-hrs/week just on prep. Like finding books, printing maps and sheets, finding youtube videos (not part of TOG but my kids love them and I love the break!), determining which resources to use. Because I discovered that once we moved beyond the fabulous picture books in the grammar levels, the uppper level books were hit or miss. Some were awesome. Some mind-numbingly boring. TOG uses a lot of very very old books that are virtually impossible to find at the library and are not really ones you'd want in your permanent home library because "Old" does not equate with "Better." Many were free or nearly free for the Kindle, but I don't enjoy using a device for reading and found it impossible to keep track of which child was at what point in the book. You can't stick sticky notes in a Kindle. 

Anyhow, back to hit-or-miss, the Dialectic books made me want to cry at the thought of having to read them (snoreville!), and made St. Nick do more than want to cry. So I ended up sticking with the grammar level books, even for middle school, because it just wasn't worth the battle. I also spent a lot of time finding more contemporary books that might be more engaging or AVAILABLE than the older ones. The curriculum would call for Pride and Prejudice, for example, so after laughing at the thought of my young teen reading Pride and Prejudice, I would find a graphic novel version. (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is NOT an adaptation. Just FYI.)

Likewise the weeks themselves were hit-or-miss. Egypt was fabulous, fascinating, fun. Abraham/some of the stuff between Egypt and Rome was tedious. The war of 1812 and Napoleon were interesting and there were ample movies and books to supplement our studies. Simon Bolivar, on the other hand, made me want to stage a rebellion. And YouTube videos on him, what few I found, were largely in Spanish.

The final and most important irritation that drove me away from TOG is that I found the digital edition and layout/organization to both royally suck. First, why the digital edition? If I want a physical copy, then why not buy the print version? I learned from experience: It's huge. Four gigantic, unwieldy binders. Four phone-books, most of which I'd never get a chance to look at. It seemed like a tragic waste of resources and an unnecessary expense. Plus the digital edition would be continually updated as the already-hard-to-find books went out of print and were replaced.

So, on to the the DE (digital edition). TOG uses a program called Lock Lizard for the digital edition. It's quirky, works only half the time, and doesn't work at all on an ipad (they released some sort of fix for that, for a fee, but I never got it to work. I did not, however, ever get the $$ back). I had hoped to have a PDF, something I could take onto my iPad and import into one of my note-taking programs where I could mark the margins, check things off, record books I wanted to add or subtract, etc. Nope. TOG staff takes copyright very, very, insanely over-the-top-our-documents-are-worthy-of-CIA-level-clearance seriously. In short, they're paranoid. Yes, if your digital product is not on severe lock-down, people WILL pirate it. Yes, homeschoolers are sometimes prone to bending the "rules" to save a buck, to share with friends, to pass down resources from generation to generation, to burn "Archival backups" of DVD's borrowed from the library. Wait, that last was my brother and lawd knows he'd never homeschool. Anyway, the creators are rightfully trying to protect their content. But the means by which they protected it made it virtually unusable. Pages didn't print correctly, whole week-plans would mysteriously disappear, I had no way of taking notes, or pulling out the pages I wanted to use, or anything else that would make it not a severe headache that left me comatose on the floor after planning-day. 

And now, not related exclusively to the digital edition: for a curriculum that prides itself on being ultra-complete and richly deep (which it is), the organization was truly and appallingly awful. Like a PC when you're used to a Mac - no grace, no elegance, nothing was intuitive, every week's planning forced me to re-learn their moronic organizational method anew. The way the week plans were laid out required me to flip to ten or twelve different pages to get the info that I needed. All without the help of sticky notes or bookmarks or the ability to copy-and-paste the parts I needed to a word document (I tried. Lock Lizard was not happy). Each week-plan was at least 20-30 pages long with background info, discussion questions, activity sheets, answers to activities and whatnot. But half the items were burried in the page-after-page of single-spaced small print "teacher notes." I killed a small forest printing a few week plans because the answers to the Upper Grammar Literature sheet might be on Teacher's Note page 10, while the answers to the Geography sheet wouldn't show up until page 22. The Upper Grammar craft instructions might be on page 543, for all I knew, if I hadn't given up on finding them by then. Why, oh why is it necessary to have a reading list (two pages), alternate reading list (another page), activity list (another couple pages), group activity list (another page) etc. all on separate pages. Some items would repeat from one list to another, others wouldn't, and I could NEVER remember which items were on which list. Some might fault my memory in this case. I spent a year faulting my memory. And then I gave up.

It's like the baby monitor we owned for a week, the one designed by some childless man with a pocket-protector in a cubicle. The designer who never considered how annoying it would be to navigate through eight menus to switch cameras or adjust the damn volume at 1am. In the end, it didn't matter how clear the picture was or how perfect the reception. The monitor went back to the store. And likewise, TOG is no longer a part of our homeschool life. It still saddens me, but not enough to mess with eight levels of menus at 1am.

Victoria's dollhouse the Real Step 1: inventory

Well, well, well. The instructions were VERY correct in suggesting that we go through the box piece by piece and sort, number, label, and cross off every item. Of course to do this we need a dedicated place to work. Unlike, say, the dining room table. That's where what little progress that happened on my childhood dollhouse actually happened. Ah, that old dining room with the teal indoor-outdoor carpeting (later replaced by brown shag). One would think the basement would be a better place to work. That's where my rock tumbler was. Where there was a paper cutter and tables and desks. Where I rode my tricycle when I was probably three years old. But the basement wasn't an option. By the time I got the dollhouse, the basement was, ahem, full.

But my basement isn't full! Hence two sawhorses, a big hunk-o-wood, and the laundry room. What's most fun is Mud Pie helped me set up this little workstation long before she opened her Christmas present. Did she suspect a thing? Nope. She thought it was a gift-wrapping station. Turns out, it made a splendid place to wrap gifts!

Here we are with the instructions open, baby monitor monitoring, sticky notes, tape, tacky glue. We're ready to rock.

And here a box, labeled by the number given in the instructions. Small pieces in bags (so the cat doesn't run off with them), large pieces on a card table, grouped by number.

So organized! Isn't it pretty?

Here the one item with a missing piece. A missing piece, I say! A single slice of trim, a lonely little check mark I can't yet put on the materials list.

I emailed and was told that they'd ship missing parts for free only once, i.e., make sure I counted everything, which I did. Except shingles and dowels. And window panes. Maybe I should get to counting... Sigh. And here I thought I was done.

For more on the project, click on the Childhood Reclamation Project label below.