The Kluczinske Family’s Blog

So, why haven’t I blogged in practically two weeks? I’ve been doing some crafts, meal planning, and taking care of lil Vivian who is currently cutting her second tooth.  Poor baby can be downright miserable at times. Anyway, after my last post I had a couple of ideas for posts I wanted to make and even uploaded pictures pertinent to the topics. But slowly my needle felting supplies have been coming in and been quite distracting. Call me crazy but sometimes I just like to feel the wool. Haha, yea, Curtiss gives me weird looks when I open a package and just stroke the wool for a couple of seconds.

So here’s an outline of our week:

Last weekend we got our silks in the mail. I died them with Wilton’s cake gel dyes so they are food grade and perfectly safe. We did all the single colors and a couple of rainbow ones with varying intensity and designs.

These are the dried solid colored play silks hanging in Vivian’s play room.

Vivian playing with her new toys. “Yeah, okay, but what’s the big deal about play silks?” They’re a basic component to pretend play. Depending on the size they can be used as capes, headbands, skirts, table cloths, napkins, canopies, and so much more. Right now we use them for peek a boo, playing super baby, and just letting her explore the colors and texture of the silks.

I made this two days ago during one of Vivian’s naps. Its a little Waldorf inspired gnome for our nature table. Following the Waldorf principle of open ended toys, dolls are preferred to remain faceless in order to foster imagination. That does sound sorta creepy especially if it was applied to something like a Barbie doll but the natural fibers of this doll goes harmoniously with that simplicity.

Yesterday I made a King Winter for our nature table. There are a lot of stories about King Winter but the one I like best describes King Winter and his wife living on a mountain with their servant Jack Frost. When King Winter wants to come down from his mountain to visit the earth, his wife lays a layer of snow down so King Winter doesn’t get hurt and Jack Frost ices over the lakes and rivers. King Winter comes down and watches the kids joyfully playing in the snow until Mrs. Thaw comes with her broom and tries to sweep King Winter and all his snow back to his mountain. Okay, so I just jumbled up a bunch of Waldorf stories there, haha.

It snowed recently so I put down the white silk. There’s the little gnome climbing all over and exploring, like Vivian. The dolls turned out a lot bigger than I expected. I’ll be needle felting more for our nature table, but I really like it how it is now – mostly items from nature.

I also made her a couple of felt balls, but forgot to take pictures of those. I made them different sizes and colors so I can introduce the concept of comparison words such as “big-bigger-biggest” eventually.

I just love natural toys, especially when they’re handmade. Its really fulfilling to be able to say, “Here sweetie, I made this for you.” The simplicity of the toys allow them to be used over and over with a child’s imagination. They’re not like plastic toys where you have to push this button because it will only work one way. Sadly, the new CPSIA legislation that goes into effect in February will make it hard for work at home crafters and natural toy companies to continue to sell their products. The rigorous lead testing costs are impossible for small companies to withstand. The law also applies to Children’s books. So recently we’ve purchased a couple of items that aren’t massed produced before the law takes effect and either these items will be hard to find or at a significant price increase. While I support the intent of the new standards, they are putting so many work at home moms out of business and my heart goes out to them. Here’s some interesting lead recall statistics taken from this Etsy – love the stuff she makes!

LEAD PAINT RECALLS
* nearly 1 million Dora, 30 types of Dora-branded products recalled in 2 months, from May and August 2007
* 1.5 million Thomas & Friends products recalled from 25 different types of toys from January 2005 through June 2007
* 683,000 Barbie & Tanner sets recalled from May 2006 through August 2007
* 675,000 various Barbie accessories recalled between October 2006 through August 2007
* 7.3 million Polly Pocket play sets recalled from May 2003 to November 2006

Its nice to know that big chain stores will be carrying safer toys, but the amount of natural toys available will be severly cut down. At least we are setting aside money for educational items, which now includes power tools and supplies to make those items and toys.

The last thing I’m going to talk about in this extremely long post is meal planning. Wow, has it made life so much easier. I found a template on someone’s blog and you just list everything you want to cook that week for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner then there’s a column on the right where you write the ingredients for each thing as you fill it out. Its a word document so I organize the ingredient list by where it is located in the store. Then during the week, you have all the recipes and ingredients set aside to be able to make wholesome meals for your family. We really don’t have a need for frozen food and microwaves. We’re eating less preservatives and more vegetables. I’m learning to cook so much more. And the meal planning allows us to choose the meals together. I’m happy with it because I really want Vivian to grow up eating healthy. Speaking of food, I also made almond milk this week. It was good. Humans don’t need milk but its a nice alternative to dairy when eating cold cereal. Cow’s milk is, well, made for baby cows.  And with the term “lactose intolerant,” your body can either tolerate it or can’t. It’s not made for adult consumption. It was advertised as an easy way to get calcium and vitamins into your diet, but now research shows the the cow proteins in the milk bind to the calcium and your body doesn’t absorb it as well. Then there’s soy milk, which was recently made popular and it being a new food should make anyone cautious. Too much and estrogen levels rise causing early puberty. Its also been said to cause thyroid problems and cancer. Yowch. Enough of that, we’re sticking with good old water.

Ending this novel now before I end up sidetracked and expanding more about the dangers of cow’s milk.

Love,
Michelle, Curtiss, and Vivian