The amazing generosity of crafters

Our school's foundation holds an auction every year to raise money to help pay for our librarian, after school sports, band and other programs that have otherwise been slashed from our dwindling budgets.

You may know that I have a store on etsy.  As a vendor, I was recently contacted by a local mom who was soliciting for donations for her own school's auction. I'm very happy to send her some cards to help with her efforts and, after thinking and consulting with our own auction coordinators, I contacted some of the etsy sellers whose work I most admire (looking first to local vendors but not limiting myself by geography) and gave them a really low-key pitch (I know that you can't contribute to every cause that comes along).

The response has been wonderful and gratifying! The etsy community of crafters is such a generous and supportive group.

So far, I have contributions coming from these wonderful people:

• D's Chic Boutique (a bag, matching cosmetic bag and wallet)
  
• Barking Bird Art
  
• LittlePutBooks (she generously allowed me to select whatever I wanted from her store. I chose a set of forest blocks, pictured above)
• Cat Ludwig Studio (a 5x7 matted print and notecards)
  
• oh fransson! (a quilt)
  
• Karrie Welborn Photography (notecards)
  
• Happy Goat Soap (soap gift package)
  
• Broken Teepee Design (jewelry)
  
• TieDyeTodd's (tie-dyed shirt)
  
• Piddix (royalty-free art)
  
• Rose City Soap Supply (soap)
  
• Chaucer's Chewy Chirashi (cookie/egg roll/2-piece sushi combos cat toys)
  
• Galinblack (two pop-up cards)
  
• mollylee (pop-up cards) (okay, this is me and I would have done this anyway)
• oola (children's clothing and cards)
• TCWitchFactory  (cards and giftcard holders)
• TreAnelli (stackable rings)
• BlueDogCreative (jewelry)
• LushPDX (girl's capelet and hat set)
• LuciousNaturals (natural beauty products)
• Treehouse28 (arm warmers)
• LuckyFrog
• Christym113 (Twilight pendant and cards)
• DaogreerEarthworks 
• aandvdesigns (bag)
• SewnNatural (quilt)
• berkleyillustration (pair of prints)
• Caelista 
• johnwgolden
• LittleMamasDesigns 
• AutumnComfort

I'll keep this list updated if I hear from any more people. I'm just so pleased with the response I've gotten already. oh franssom! is actually making a quilt for us! (she attended a Portland public school and her mother was a school librarian, so she was very supportive)

Please, check out the wonderful stores of these generous donors by clicking on the links above!

Tiny Bubbles

So, after a hard-working mommy gets her second child going in the tub and sneaks off to do a little papercrafting on her own (and completely loses track of time), what does she NOT want to hear?

Her husband, wandering into the bathroom, exclaiming: "Oh, my....! Does your mom know what you're doing????? MOLLY!!!! I think you want to get the camera!"

Pedicure

I know this sounds weird, but the boys REALLY love giving us pedicures. They are especially fond of rubbing callouses off and trimming toe nails.

Tad's also gotten them trained to fix him coffee (which he never really managed to get me to do). 

Next up: we're getting them training in the art of shiatsu massage.

Chinese Thanksgiving

 

Okay, this isn't really Chinese Thanksgiving, but we used to always celebrate my uncles birthday (November 11) by making gow-doos, a traditional chinese dumpling so the two holidays became linked in my mind. I think gow-doos might be traditional, but I've never seen anything much like it at any asian restaurant, store or cookbook. (It took me years to discover that my mom's "traditional" coconut bao were filled with a variation of German Chocolate cake filling that my Aunt Phyllis showed her once, so the gow-doo might possibly be an entirely made-up Lee family delectable.)

This process of squishing dough into rounds and making each gow-doo by hand is a mainstay of many Lee family gatherings. Traditionally, the youngest child is in charge of the dough squishing. In this case, it's young Nora who's very ably taken this on. 

Sister-in-law Carol and her daughter (my niece and Nora's mom) help fill, along with my mom, the family matriarch and keeper of the gow-doo secrets (despite pleadings, she seems unable to actually make the savory filling in front of anyone, preferring to do her chopping and cooking of mystery ingredients in unlikely early morning hours (4am)).

Later on, dozens of these little dumplings will be consumed, seasoned with soy sauce and washed down with hot tea.

Good times!

Lee Family Thanksgiving

Typically, the family spends Thanksgiving with the extended Lee clan. This year, the family was almost complete, was you can see in this video clip.

This extended tracking shot required many takes, as you can imagine, to simulate Lee clan life so realistically.

Careful! Your face will freeze that way!

Taffy pull

To celebrate the first apartment in college in which I lived on my very own, I threw a housewarming party. I designed the invitations (printed on my state-of-the-art dot matrix printer) and planned the refreshments and party activities.

Always the party planner, I wanted to go beyond the typical tipsy gathering that characterized college social life.

In retrospect, combining frozen daiquiris with a taffy pull might not have been one of my more brilliant ideas...

Last week, I pulled out that same recipe (from ever-reliable Betty Crocker) and shared the fun with the boys. 

Clearly this illustrates that the same activity in different settings can have wildly different results (Making taffy with little boys = fun for all, very rewarding. Making taffy with drunken college kids = kind of a mess).

Good times.