Urban Organica

Jamaican Grill @ the Farm

Recently we headed to our local farm for a little Calypso music & Jamaican Grill Night.  There's a single library book that we check out for 6 months at a time, often incurring a bunch of fees that make me feel both guilty & proud to be supporting the cause: Little Farm By the Sea.  Oh, how I love, love that sweet book.  It carries you through  each season in the gentlest way, & I always know the kids are drifting to sleep with lucid pictures of a vibrant farmstand, hoop houses & hills of produce beyond the livestock.  Unlike the farms we know, this dream place quiets down for snow, & there are hills all around.  The first hour here I just kept exclaiming, "This is it!  This is the Little Farm By the Sea!"  It is. Only better, because they open their doors for hot meals.    

I wish I had pictures of the beautiful Jamaican smiles behind the grill & gorgeous vegetarian spread that went with the Jerk Chicken, pulled pork & calypso music, but I was nursing, oohing over the braised greens & organizing the boy's plates while it got dark.   It's not really our farm, obviously, but if you belong to one community food space, then you kinda belong to them all. And this is a community farm - although privately owned, they've built a huge & beautiful pavilion for feeding folks, hosting weddings & events.  It's a project I would so get behind if I lived here.  So I had to share the vision.

Coonamessett's a special place on the Cape, with 20 acres housing a Montesorri Middle School, the Little Sprout's Kid's Summer Garden Program & quite a few other programs.  Not to mention a blueberry field that blew D's mind.  I'm gonna have to get that man an orchard one of these days.  He can then live out his days blissed-out amongst all the fruit he so covets.  We were surprised to see how diverse the clientele was here, until we realized we were outside of Boston, after all.  There's nothing like a good mix of intellectual, economic & cultural diversity to make me feel safe in the world.  But more than that it was inspiring, to see the farm store with cafe, the ice cream booth, school & wind turbine.  Happiness for visiting families, & such a great example of right livelihood.

     

 

huckleberry flotilla

let's go.  row.  2 miles.  for huckleberries.  like blueberries.  but sweeter.  crunchy.  wild.  bear food.  let's go.  row.  to a secret cove with a sugar-sand bottom.    everyone, now.  2 years-old - to ?  3 families with boys.  1 family of girls.  2 families with 3 kids.  2 families with 2 kids.  one swimmer.   find paddles, pedals.  find boats, kayaks, sails, large metal tubs.  share, borrow, steal for a time.  let's go.  row.  

 

 

 

 

 
   

 

 

 

 

inquiry, uncertainty & magic found here...

hey there...

i just want to pop in & let you all know that i'm going on a retreat, in my own life, in my own home.  a retreat into the hearts of my small band of men, into the depths of my pantry, the lengths of waiting fabric & into the blank pages of my sketchbooks.  they need me, & i need to be be present for them.  their preferences, which i have alluded to in past posts, range deep & wide.  i am living in the magical tension between unschooling, a waldorf school, & a fancy college-prep where 80% of both parents have PhD's.  between a life with no goals & my former life, where i played with activists, ceo's & nobel nominees on creative expression.  between a dream life in the woods, a return to life with really nice things, or a simple life, with, hopefully, a goat & some chickens.  in any case, a renewed vegetable garden & some baby rabbits look inviting.  

i am mourning some change, as certain hopes & dreams have been realized & my way of life isn't really appropriate anymore.  there's space now for new challenges & new opportunities to make a difference.  there may be space for me to learn the ukulele, finally.  i am having a predictably hard time watching my little ones get big.  i've always told myself not to pull out the video camera, which, unlike film, separates me from my family.  in the past i've been comforted by the fact that i've been there, with them, through all of it.  but now i'm wishing for a little more views of their younger selves.  in any case, i'm here for this latest series of transitions, but my own personal center is between here, maui & new hampshire.  again, a retreat is needed.  because that doesn't really sound very centered, now does it?

i have so many people to thank in this space.  most recently molly, for feeding me so much over the last year & most recently last week, with an insanely tasty meal of potato-corn tamales, beans & fresh salsa.  you are just so damn fun.  love you.  and tricia, for your smiles, which i can hear even over the phone lines.  your friendship & the experience you bring is so precious to me.  one day after our call, & my boy loved writing again.  i ordered a boatload of his made-up candy & his lettering went from boring & dreaded to curvy & colorful.  thanks for reminding me to step off his learning.  some real structure will come into play, but it will be under the broader unschooling umbrella.  even if it means school.  i am seeing how that's possible.

and those sites i mentioned at the turn of the year.  i hope to come back & really introduce you all.  when i can come back full.  thank you.

for those that were wondering, granny (my boy's great-grandmother & my beloved mentor & friend) was whisked out of Haiti this past week safely.  a doctor she works with took it upon himself to take her in an ambulance.  after several days in the u.n. tent, he flew her out, along with his wife, their child, a Haitian man needing his legs amputated & a badly-burned infant.  i didn't have the chance to post an article in the boston globe last month, where she was front-page news.  i am so proud of her.  president clinton's office called to make sure she had gotten out okay, & she has, but only to return again to her beloved Haitian family at some point.  when i do return to this space, it will be with a number of items from Haiti.  they are the best crafters, at the end of the day.  (samuelle is also okay)

i'll be back, but don't know when.  i'll be hanging with my loved ones...

fire dancers + my wee capoeista

 
 i had to post this for my dad & brothers... look at our middle guys in the roja with his uncle dalmacio!  i love this.  i have to get them doing capoeira for real - i can't imagine a better choice for their p.e. with where they are all at right now.  totally competitive, playful, utterly dependent on each other, needy yet longing for independence, performance-oriented, boundary-challenging & musical.  i love, love, love how capoeira is a loving game where you must pay very careful attention to your adversary, as the goal is to pretend to strike them while also honoring them as your friend & training partner.  they will learn to defend themselves while also learning to control their movements & their responses.   i also love that it is established enough in the us to have excellent instructors, but new enough that the culture, language, rules & etiquette of the movement are still fully intact.

my cousins rock.    even though their names are lady lava & doctor magma, please do not be scared of them!  keep in mind that they are artists who perform in the heart of los angeles, & they are the top of their art form...that said, they are sunday church-going, organic-eating, home-birthing, baby-wearing, dairy-free parents that say i love you all day long.  check out their fire dancing video below.  dalmacio begins with some fire-warrior-action while she gives a spoken-word piece,  they do a chinese dragon bit, he starts breathing fire, then she moves into her really, truly, i-am-not-biased gorgeous, sexy, graceful  firedancing.  they are so very good.  if you are a dancer or homeschooler, then this will be inspiring...

on a side note - i've never seen a better support structure for a healthy marriage than the way they work together when fire dancing.  the total trust, real responsibility & complete permission they bring when spotting each other is so beautiful, it's actual heart-melting. enjoy!

 
 

 

**tutorial galore**

 

More HUGE Thank You's to these two wonderlands of craft ideas for including Urban Organica in their tutorials last year. Everything Your Mama Made has mad lists of tutorial links, from nursing needs to boy's clothes - please do check it out!  Meet Me at a Mikes is a delicious Aussie site full of vintage & handmade deliciousness.  Oh, I just used "delicious" twice without even trying.  It must be that good...Again, I'll be sharing my favorite bits from their sites over the next couple of weeks.  

I'm floating around here in a mass of blankets, pillows & little people while D is in Buffalo, where it is blowing snow.  I have never in my life seen blowing snow, but it's now on my wishlist.  He was invited to grab his thickest sweats & spend a few evenings cuddling on the couch with his baby brother's family.  Their kids have the best names - Harrison Paul & Briar Elizabeth.  And they are even cuter than that!

Lola & Poppy come today to give a little support - I'm so very lucky to live (somewhat- 2 hours) near family.  But in the meantime we're in a bliss-full mess of oatmeal, forts, firewood, trains, bananagrams, workbooks, handmade willy wonka wrappers & reports.  Oh!! Just got handed the sweetest basket of scrabble letters.  Which means, although I am wanting to embroider a liner for a giant old picnic case found in my Auntie Mary's basement, I must go to the co-op now to get more diaper liners.  We use Gdiapers by the way.  Yes, we use cloth, but we also use G's, which act like disposables, but you flush them down the whirly-pool...Okay.  Gotta get this little basket & my three precious munchkins oompaloompas.

I have lots of things to share that have been made over the last few months, by us & others.  Soon!  

**It IS a Happy New Year, isn't it?**

Everything Your Mama Made :: 78+ Kid's Tutorials

 

Meet Me At Mike's! :: 25 Things to Sew for a Much Cuter Lunchtime

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

** thank you, blogville **

It's such a wonderful thing when we can sit in our own living rooms with our loved ones, press a couple of buttons & come up with the perfect recipe or project for the afternoon, or instructions for doing that outrageous idea our kids just came up with.  I love my fellow craft-mama-lifelearning bloggers & I'm  so very grateful that you all choose to share some bits of what you all do.  Thank you.  And thank you to these sites I love, for showcasing Urban Organica, & sending me some of the sweetest emails with pictures of folks in places I've never been, doing what we've shared here.  It's always a surprise, & always a delight for us.  Thank you, thank you.  Over the next few weeks I'll share a few of my favorite things from each of your sites.  Happy New Year, Everybody!  xoxo Maya

The Handmade Experiment: Must Make Monday Toys!!

10marifet.org: Drum + Shakers

The Crafty Crow: Literature Projects

The Crafty Crow: Music

 

In the Fish Bowl: Life as an artist. Online

 

Onc Crafty Place: Music 

One Crafty Place: Kid's Work

The Long Thread: 50 Summer Crafts for Kids

Marvelous Kiddo

 

 

Craft Gossip: Stretchy Spaghetti Straps

 

 

 

 

pilipino star lanterns

I so want to give you all a nice tutorial with easily-found materials, but time is quite full right now...but this is a "real-deal," as Free likes to say, "just how we do it at Lola's house" kinda tutorial.  We use bamboo kits, that I promise I'll make available, just not yet...You can make these with thin dowels from the hard ware store, or long strips of balsa if you keep the lanterns small.  Regular old branches make the sweetest ones of all.  Okee...  For each one you need 20 sticks, 5 short sticks of equal length, bitty rubberbands, a glue gun, twisty ties,white glue + something to cover it, like tissue, cellophane, plastic or fabric. 

Using the rubberbands, wrap the long sticks in pairs on one side, leaving 4 single.

 

Lay out 2 pairs like this.

Angle them to make a "v-heart," weaving the sticks like this.

 

Add a single stick across, also weaving it & secureends with rubberbands.  "See!"

Secure crossings ("railroad crossings, as Free says...notice his Raiders shirt.  I never thought I'd have a Raiders fan...but there he is, sweet as can be) with twisty ties.  We used silver, to reflect the light.

 

Put two stars together & adjust them so everything lines up.  Attach the points of both stars with rubberbands.

Use a glue gun to put in cross bars at the crossings.  Make sure to make a mess.

 

Look at that beautiful photo of my mom's hand.  Something for my wall, I think...

Now go elementary-school-style with the white glue & brushes.  We just let them do whatever they want here...

I put a little "bridge" of popsicle sticks in so I could lay an LED tea light, & left the back open. 

 

They cover long branches with wired garlands & hand them with monofilament.  In the Philippines, people use all manner of things to light these up, from string lights to projectors.  We tend to just make them really shimmery...  And finish it all up with a night parade in the city...

Here they are.  The boys love nothing more than to swing these things around to see if I can possibly - impossibly - catch a picture.  But here they are.  Love made visible.

woodworking :: mt washington

A couple of weeks ago True & I were having a midnight mom-&-boy serious talk about our Christmas Village.  You know, how it was going to go, how the train was going to go around the entire yard & we'd cut holes in the walls & tracks up into the trees & all that.  How we'd have goats & chickens by then & how the railroad would go around the animals, upsetting them with all those good train noises.  And it would pass by our homeschooling & studio yurts on the way into the house, where it would eventually make it's way up onto our train table, because, that's where train tracks go.

Oh, it's sooo hard to hold back my instinct to shut down those ideas with a few "warnings" that we wouldn't be able to make it exactly like all that.  Or really, anything like that, actually.  I just don't want to disappoint him when he sees what we end up with.  But I did my best, & managed to throw in my own fantastical ideas - like the yurts, for example.  (We will have those. We will.)  I was feeling very proud of myself as his picture became clearer & clearer, & could actually feel his trust in me building, to hold his idea fully.  As a whole idea, not a chopped-up, mama-modified one.  Yes.  I was feeling quite proud of myself.

Then he sat bolt upright, looked at me & clapped his hands together.  "Okay, Mom, now we have to do it this time.  You always say we're going to do this kinda thing & we always don't get to it.  WE REALLY GOTTA GET OUR BUTTS IN GEAR!" 

Okay.  Gulp.  First he calls me on that thing.  That thing all moms hope their kids don't notice - all the things we say we're going to do, but "don't get to."  Then he cracks me up with that.  That declaration.  Inspiring.  Like a little army general or something.  Then I realize he means it. 

"Well okay-then.  Let's talk about it in the morning."  

 

The next day we drew it all out & it became clear Luckily his plan required some serious handy-business, so there was that very important cushion to help out.  We had ordered a bunch of real child-sized wood-working materials through his public homeschooling charter.  Other moms with toddlers are somehow able to do everything under the sun.  And there is just no possible way I could find time to show him how to use those things safely, let alone make the time to really build with him.  We called his GranPops, the firefighter & electrician to set up a woodworking date.  

So I sent him off to make the beginnings of his Christmas Village - maybe a little shed or something.  And what came home?  The Mount Washington.  In our family, happiness is the Mount Washington.  For the last 6 years, the island neighbors shared that top one up there.  Then 2 years ago the one above appeared two cabins down.  And now.  He has one to share, too.  

Pretty much a perfect Christmas, already.

 

 

field trip :: sugar pine railroad

Once a homeschooler, always a homeschooler.  History is moving to me.  Awe-ing.  This was all done, before us, nothing to do with us.  How can we not be grateful?

At 2 and-a-half-feet-long, it's the world's largest pine cone.  (No, you can't take any home.  But you can buy them.)  It was once the largest lumber supplier in the States.  There was a water run that zoomed 55mph, for 65 miles, transporting cut wood.  And mill workers into town for a drink.  Can you imagine, the fun, the danger of that ride?  Chinese laborers built the actual railroad, for 10 cents an hour, & I wonder at their longings, oh-so-many years ago, & look for signs of them in the trees.  (There is none.  No old canteen, no bits of lantern, of course, no worn photo frames holding some lovely maiden.)  Everywhere is industry, gears, signs of work I just know I've seen a million times, in the form of far-off banisters, pianos, hand-scraped flooring.  The little penny cars are old model Fords, made into open-bench trains for the mill workers & now offering conductor views for boys willing to ask.  

People often say to me, "Oh, I wanted to homeschool.  But I don't have a degree."  Or, "I really wanted to do that, but I don't have the time."

I don't know what it will take for each family to reach it's "educational goals," so I can't offer any advice.  But thanks, Mom, Dad & El, for loving to learn so damn much.  It's contagious, it's inspiring.  We all hope to introduce our children to something that might capture their imagination, that might move them to take their own initiative & run with it.  To motivate them to seek out their own mentors, their own resources, their own support structures to go all-out & squeeze every bit of information & experience out of a topic.  I had so many of those things.  Thank you for removing the period-bells, so I could keep thinking, keep dancing & stay engaged until I was done figuring things out.  Thank you for letting me know those period bells would always be there, so that when I needed that structure, -  when I chose that support for myself, I could step into it.  Thank you.

 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 

fall fairy skirt + scarf tutorials

 

sometimes it's thanksgiving & a few days before, we hold a sewing workshop. maybe a mama comes over, having been at the e.r. the night before, & gets my whole family totally sick.  sometimes.  and so, sometimes everyone gets better, 'cept me & the wee, & we send them all off for a holiday at grandma's.  and we spend a blissful/brutal 2 1/2 days clearing out rooms, puddling around, & making stuff, in between episodes of sick stuff.  sometimes.  and we all live happily ever after.  

this post is dedicated to my sweetheart, who i am so very grateful for.

These projects can be done by any 10 year-old who knows their way around a sewing machine, in under an hour, for FREE.  Yup.  Free.  You just have to have some elastic thread on hand, & be willing to cut up your clothes.  If not, you can pick up sweaters, tweed pants & pretty dresses at any thrift store for under $5 each.  The fairy skirt doesn't require a machine. 

Autumn Fairy Skirt Tutorial

Gather:

1 dress or shirt in Fall colors, fabric shears, elastic thread, embroidery needle, safety pin

Do:

1.) Cut off the bottom 12"-15" of a dress or shirt.  Linen, cotton, jersey, double gauze.  It all works here.

2.) Take that tube & flip it's hem upside-down, so that it's on top.  Notice that you'll use the hem as a "casing" for elastic thread.

3.) Cut out a bunch of free-form oak leaves in different sizes, making sure to leave at least 1" of hem-casing at the top of each leaf.

4.) Double thread the elastic through an embroidery needle.  Knot the ends around a safety pin to prevent the elastic from slipping through.  Thread together your oak leaves, squishing them together as you go.  For a larger child or more interesting skirt, use different fabrics.  The one above uses a woven-cotton dress, it's lining, & 2 leaves from a thin corduroy dress.  

5.) Fit to child by wrapping the strung leaves around waist.  Make sure there's both enough leaves to get that ruched top & enough "give" to pull off & on.  Remove safety pin & knot elastic ends closed.  Trim of extra elastic & pull knot through casing to hide.  Don't wash! 

 

 

Tweeds + Stripes Scarf

Gather:

1 wool or cotton sweater (felting not required), 1 pair tweed pants, fabric shears, sewing machine

Do:

1.) Cut out a 7"-wide tube from the body of sweater.  Set aside bottom ribbing & rest of sweater for another project.  Cut across the width of tube on one side, so that it becomes a long strip.

2.) Cut out a 7"-wide, leg-long strip from the pants.  

3.) Lay out tweed strip, right-side up.  Lay sweater strip over it, right-side down.  Trim both to match lengths.  

4.) Starting at one end, sew together around outside, using a straight-stitch & 1/4" seam allowance.  Sweater may stretch a bit, so just sew other end where the two fabrics meet & trim afterwards.   Leave starting end open.  Turn right-side-out.

5.) Tuck in end.  Stitch around edge of entire scarf.  It will look cleaner if you sew with the tweed-side up.  There you go...Cozy!

my lil' friend enzo flossing his winter gear