Make-your-own Earth Day shirts

Make-your-own earth day shirts to wear every darn day because they're just so cute. Check my other blog for directions HERE. Thanks!

Happy Winter Solstice!

Today at 12:47 PM, don't come knocking on our door. We'll be locked in the basement.
It's time once again for me to force nature on the kids by making them celebrate what I think should be a holiday.
Our winter solstice tradition has been, in the past, to drink hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows which is all well and good, but as usual, I am feeling like I need to bump things up a notch.
A read an article in some chicky magazine that I don't really care for about the ways that women celebrate certain things. One very wise woman celebrates the winter solstice by turning off all of the lights and having an entire evening by candlelight.
Sounds romantic. But I'll bet my bottom dollar she doesn't have 3 small kids.
So I'm putting them together, my old idea and her storybook one, and at 12:47 PM we'll be in the dark of the basement, drinking hot chocolate by candlelight.

A very happy winter solstice it will be.

Forget not our little animal friends

We have a simple Christmas book by Nancy Tafuri called "Counting To Christmas" that continues to be one of my favorites. In this very simple book, a girl counts to the big day by doing different events. Days 1, 2, and 3, she makes cards. Then she sends them. Etc.
But my favorite part of the book is that she makes outdoor animal treats as a gift to the creatures who live near her house. There are strung dried fruits and popcorn and more.

For me, it seems a no-brainer that we should be gifting something to the animals which entertain us so much all year long. Our bird feeders are in constant change-- watching the cardinals come, the blue jays scare the others away, the woodpeckers devour the suet, the goldfinches that seem to come from nowhere by the hundreds. Sometimes we just sit and watch without even knowing.

There are also the deer and the squirrels who bounce up and down on our squirrel bungee apparatus, and in the warmer months, the wave of frogs and toads that sing us to sleep and let us catch them.

So we're going to follow this little wise girl's countdown this year and make some simple gifts to give to our friends in the woods, and maybe next year we'll once again be blessed with another beautiful show to watch and enjoy.

HOMEMADE BIRD FEEDERS

Here are two things to try!

Pinecone Classic
Hook a pipe cleaner around the end of a pine cone where it attached to the tree. Coat the pinecone in either peanut butter or vegetable shortening and get it nice and gooey. Either roll it in birdseed (the easiest) or else stick on there various nuts and berries such as raisins, peanuts, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, and even Cheerios. You can then roll it in birdseed if you'd like to cover the bare spots. Hang it up nearby, and remember it might take the birds a few days to find it.

Popcorn and more strings (Animal candy necklaces!)
String, using a needle, popcorn and other such foods. Raisins, Cheerios, pieces of apple, etc. will all work great. You can do one long string or a few shorter ones. Make sure you use sturdy thread, and when you're finished, decorate low branches or shrubs with your animal candy necklace!

Saving Isabella: A wooly bear for the winter

We own a fun nature book for children (which I would credit but I loaned it to a friend and don't have the name on hand), there's a page that gives directions for keeping a wooly bear catapillar over the winter.

What fun!
So we're giving it a try.

The wooly bear is the fun fall version of the Isabella Tiger Moth which emerges in the spring. For years I've never taken the time to know this. For me, the wooly bear meant one thing: how hard of a winter we were going to have.

I remember as a kid seeng how many I could collect and making my own predictions about the winter-- long before we had the power of the internet and computer forecasters to tell us all in detail and in every form of media.

But now, they are just catapillars that we can hold. Fuzzy and non-poisonous, after reading the how-to in our book, we kept one this year.

Here's the basic how-to...

1. Find a wooly bear in the fall. That's RIGHT NOW!!

2. Store it in a plastic jar with a top that you've drilled holes in, and keep the jar outside and out of direct weather. Ours sits right out our back door under the covered part of our porch.

3. Put in a few twigs and a few blades of grass.

4. Change the grass every day, and as we've found, dump out the catapillar poo. (You'll be amazed-- trust me.)

5. Eventually the little critter will appear to die and curl up on the bottom. He's sleepng. Shhhh!

6. Wait until spring when you see some action from your awakening wooly bear. Continue to feed it fresh grass.

That's our plan. Stay tuned for updates on our little friend!

The Rock Type Blues

Some things are best learned in song. (Or rather, some people like to make fools out of themselves in public?) While volunteering at a local nature center on geology day, I just couldn't help myself. I had to write a song to help explain rock types.
I don't have the guts to sing this on video, but teachers are welcome to make up their own tunes and sing away. I'm sure this will be a hit song on the geology charts one of these days...

The Rock Type Blues
copyright 2009 Karrie McAllister

I got a collection
of all kind of rocks
There’s pink and there’s brown
There’s stripey and dots.

But it would be much better
If only I could see
What these rocks were
And how they came to be

Now I’ve got those blues,
Those low down rock type blues.
Those sedimentary, igneous
And metaphorphic rock type blues.

Now all over the world
Rock’s being eroded
Those little small pieces
Are all getting molded

And settling down
Cementing together so complimentary
You got your sandstone and your fossils and
Well, that’s sedimentary.

Now I’ve got those blues,
Those low down rock type blues.
Those sedimentary, igneous
And metaphorphic rock type blues.

Now deep underground
Waaay down I exclaim
Is the melted rock
Magma is its name.

But sometimes that rock
Is different I know
Because it’s called lava
When it shoots from a volcano.

And when the rock cools
It’s name you just can’t miss.
Whether its granite or obsidian
It’s all called igneous.

Now I’ve got those blues,
Those low down rock type blues.
Those sedimentary, igneous
And metaphorphic rock type blues.

The last type of rock
It’s a little more strange
It’s been cooked and squished
It’s gone through a change.

And shale becomes slate,
You just can not ignore it
And when granite become gneiss
We call it metamorphic.

Now I don’t have those blues,
Because I know all the rock type clues.
Goodbye to those sedimentary, igneous
And metaphorphic rock type blues.

Yes, mam, you are a bit like a zoo animal

Yes, mam, you are a bit like a zoo exhibitby Karrie McAllister
There’s something to be said for the coati. It’s not every day that we can learn so very much about ourselves when we go to the zoo and stare into an exhibit of obscure animals.
My first introduction to this magnificent mammal happened a few years ago while visiting our favorite little zoo. An enclosure full of these critters that look like a raccoon that stuck its nose into a vacuum hose completely fascinated me.
The first thing I learned that day was that “coati” is not pronounced “coat-ee” but instead “co-AH-tee,” not because the sign clarified that, but because my daughter, then age 5, corrected me and told me I should watch more animal TV shows so I can learn as much as she does.
Beyond that embarrassment, I discovered that coatis are pretty smart animals. They have, I’m assuming, over many generations, learned how to get things done and thrive as a species. They have figured out how to best increase their populations and grow in strength and numbers. They have determined how to feed and raise their young and all the while live in a happy-go-lucky (or as happy-go-lucky a coati can be) social setting.
They kicked out the guys.
Coatis live in groups consisting of only females and immature males. Once the boys hit coati puberty, they leave the group until mating season and live a solitary life like the other older men, who I’d bet sit around and watch coati football games and work on coati cars.
Female coatis take excellent care of each other and each other’s young, babysitting and even sometimes nursing each other’s babies. They are chatty animals, and spend a lot of time grooming themselves and each other.
And if I was a betting woman, I’d also guess that they get a heap of stuff done and have a great time. I’m sure there’s the occasional coati bickering session and most likely little fights over the latest kill or fruit, but all in all, I think we can learn from these girls who really know how to band together and get the job done.
I say this with such certainty only because I recently spent my very own weekend with all women. It was my annual trip to the Becoming an Ohio Outdoorswoman event hosted by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Besides a few instructors and a couple of cafeteria workers, it was all girls girls girls.
And boy oh boy, did we have a great time.
This event, held annually, provides women the opportunity to step into a so-called man’s world for a few days and try their hands at everything from candle making to muzzleloading. I personally spent my weekend laughing, dancing, and gabbing, not to mention kayaking, shooting trap, and learning to hunt ducks and geese.
I also spent a windy Saturday afternoon climbing a 50-foot wooden structure. Let me rephrase that. I monkeyed myself up a 50-foot tower, contorting myself into positions that I haven’t seen since I had to buckle an infant into the back middle seat of an SUV. Only instead of being hunched over in a car, I was dangling 40 feet off the ground, totally relying on the woman holding my safety belay rope and the cheers of the other women watching.
If it weren’t for the cheers, I would have never made it to the top. If it weren’t for the applause while sitting on the top of the tower, I would have frozen up there. And if it weren’t for the high fives and hugs, I would have never climbed it again.
There’s just something empowering about getting a big group of women together. Almost as instinctively as our dear friend the coati, something deep inside of us knows to take care of each other, to help each other and how to sweeten our days.
Women know our strength in numbers, yet to the onlooker it might seem puzzling and almost enigmatic.
Unless, of course, the onlooker is a coati, in which case she might just join in.

Check out Becoming an Ohio Outdoorswoman here!

Waxing fall leaves, 1, 2, 3

I have such memories of this as a child, collecting fall leaves at their peak color and perfection. Mom or dad would set up the wax, and we'd sit and dip until we had heaps of waxed leaves.

And yet, I can't remember what we did with all of them...

Some we waxed right onto a piece of slate from the old fallen-down barn near my uncle's farm, the autumnal colors coordinating with the dark gray slate.

The rest? A mystery. I think we just liked to wax the leaves.

Today, before the first official day of Fall had ended, playing out in the yard we spotted a few ideal leaves. Just had to dig out the double boiler and the wax.

It's really easy as 1 2 3, this method of preserving fall color.

1. Find some good lookin' leaves with nice long stems.

2. Melt wax (Paraffin works fine--don't blow your $ on beeswax) in a double boiler. Holding the stem, dip the leaf in the melted wax.

3. Let the wax harden before setting the leaf down. You can just wave it around while holding it, use clothespins, or as I discovered tonight in a pinch, just tape them from the bottomside of your kitchen cabinets.

See? 1, 2, 3. After that, it's up to you. They are preserved, so you've got plenty of time to think about something crafty. Just get it done before the Christmas decorations have to come out.