In her experience, having the chart has relieved the tension and power play which sometimes happens when you ask a child to do something.  When one of her girls completes a task, she flips the popsicle stick, which indicates that she is finished, and next time, it is the other child’s turn.  I’ve bought some pre-felt and some colored wool (from Outback Fibers)  to make one for my own home.  I’ll show you mine when it is finished!

Everything old is new again, and my children love to make them.  They are simple enough for even little ones to manage, and they turn out pretty.  You can hang them in the window, or give them to grandma, she loves them too!

For a “heart-felt” project, cut out hearts from felt, sew them with colorful beads, and string them together with more beads!  My children loved making these simple and darling valentine’s day decorations.  I found plant-dyed felt here, and the beads at my local bead store, Bead It.

Paint a simple heart using watercolors.  Then mat and frame it and voila — a lovely lasting Valentine!  (Look to the top right of the photograph of the dining room table and you will see a framed water-color heart Valentine that my seven-year-old made, he’s the one wearing the red shirt.  Click on the photograph to enlarge it).

I would love to see your Valentine’s craft projects!  Email me a photo, or write to me about your favorite Valentine craft.

Here’s a DIY story, which is oh so Slow, and teaches a lot about Green:

Consider if you will, the delightful pleasure of toast.  Not only a way to redeem stale bread, toast is also a symbol of hearth and home.

“It isn’t only fictional heroes to whom toast means home and comfort. It is related of the Duke of Wellington – I believe by Lord Ellesmere – that when he landed at Dover in 1814, after six years’ absence from England, the first order he gave at the Ship Inn was for an unlimited supply of buttered toast.”
Elizabeth David, ‘English Bread and Yeast Cookery’ (1977)

Toast:  crispy and hot with melted butter, or with cinnamon sugar, from twelve grain bread, or five or six grain, or sprouted, or simple rye, half burnt.  All good.  There’s French toast too, crisp with maple syrup.  My husband practices heresy by preferring powdered sugar on his French toast, but then again, he’s from Texas and has some strange culinary traditions (Big Red, anyone?).  And once I went to a potluck brunch where everyone oohed and awed over a French toast/ cream cheese casserole which frankly baffled me and was, to me, deeply unappealing.  My grandmother, was a creamed-chipped-beef-on-toast expert, and though that sounds terrible now (dried, shredded beef drenched in flour and milk and poured over toast) it was rather delightful at the time.

But enough about the pleasures and follies of toast itself:  imagine, for a moment, making your own toaster.   Not quite as easy as plunking down some cash at the local big box.  And, as Thomas Thwaites, the English toaster-maker found out, the massive industry and huge amount of industrial activity that goes into making a toaster for you to toast your bread is mind-boggling!

Thwaites in his own words: “So are toasters ridiculous? It depends on the scale at which you look. Looking close up, a desire (for toast) and the fulfilment of that desire is totally reasonable. Perhaps the majority of human activity can be reduced to a desire to make life more comfortable for ourselves, and has thus far led to being able to buy a toaster for £3.99 [among other achievements]. But looking at toasters in relation to global industry, at a moment in time when the effects of our industry are no longer trivial compared to the insignificant when our, they seem unreasonable. I think our position is ambiguous – the scale of industry involved in making a toaster [etc.] is ridiculous but at the same time the chain of discoveries and small technological developments that occurred along the way make it entirely reasonable.”(www.thetoasterproject.org)

It took him nine months to make, and he needed to source or find twenty-seven parts,  including Mica, a piece of which he found on a Scottish peninsula, accessible only by boat.

Of course, growing a forest, crafting an ax, cutting wood, lighting a fire, and sourcing and making a small grill and toasting some bread that way would have taken a bit of effort too.

Thomas talking about his toaster:

Click here to watch more video chronicling his journey and effort.

That said, how much do you love toast?