Miss Hazel Mae is three years old today – until I ask her to walk up the porch steps because my arms are full of work stuff and shed outer layers and chinese takeout (her bday dinner request).

E: “Come on, you’re THREE! You can definitely walk up these steps.”
H: “NO! HOLD me! I’m TWO!”

Photos of yesterday’s festivities forthcoming – there were several talented cameras floating around her party, so I took about seven pictures. BUT… this evening I did photograph all of the fun handmades for her dollhouse. It’s kind of a problem, the making of these Tiny Little Things. Jamie, Sarah and I went to town on the itty-bitty.

Jamie and Sarah created an amazing array: dining room hutch with Fiestaware and other goodies, craft cabinet, YARN STASH and knitting needles, a cabinet filled with (scrabble tile!) books with actual tiny covers of books that H has memorized, a clothesline (swoon) and crocheted basket of tiny clothespins, a pot of flowers, a trunk, and afghans. Whew. I knitted a tiny blanket, made various sizes of flower pots, a toybox with blocks, balls, and a tiny train (I didn’t make this – scavenged it from tiny xmas decorations!), Peanuts comic strip wall art, interchangable on velcro backing, and tiny paper bunting. We’re all brimming with ideas for more, more, more tiny things.

Happy Birthday, Hazel Mae!

…I have to show off this scrumptious Andrea-made cowl that was just delivered to my front door! Perfect color, perfectly cozy merino wool… maybe I will take it off in May. Maybe.

What can I say? The woman is a skilled knitter. And my grandpa is a skilled thrifter – he found the brooch several years ago :)

…Hazel is still singing ”aaaaaa BERFDAY to BEN!! a BERFDAY to BEN!!!” whenever she pauses to ponder the bliss that is birthday cake. Which is almost every single day. We talk about birthday cake A LOT right now. We sing. We count cand-oos. We wish for chocolate. This helps tremendously to satisfy the craving. At least for the one who is… two. Pretend birthday cake doesn’t really do much for Mama.

This little gal… seriously awesome. And a little bit afraid of her birthday cand-oos.

Hazel pushed aside her “I don’t totally enjoy getting my hands dirty” attitude to make you some art :)

My cousin Rachel has been known to say this about the awesome cloth diapers and covers that she makes, often from recycling clothing and linens and baby blankets that have worn out their first incarnation in her family’s life. She could easily open an Etsy shop and sell them I always tell her, and she always tells me that she doesn’t have the time to keep up with an Etsy shop… she just learned how to make them because she needs to diaper babies and couldn’t afford to / didn’t want to buy disposables all the time.

Sadly, I don’t know very many people who make the things that they need, and definitely not in my age group. I am totally guilty of this, coming from a generation where making your own salad dressing or baking your family’s bread is an admirable feat, and where you just buy whatever you need because everything is so cheaply mass produced. It’s even worse because I know I am completely capable of making so many of our family’s needs – especially food – and I don’t always do it because I’d rather spend my time making wants or Etsy-wares, or because I insist that I cannot possibly can food or bake a week’s worth of bread or this or that in our tiny closet-sized kitchen.

I know that Hazel’s generation is going to be so much “worse” in this respect, so I think that my top fears for her little life are:

1.) that she will die of a freak accident, or get cancer, or become an addict, or any of those awful things
2.) that she won’t be a happy person
3.) that she won’t be able to stand me as she gets older and we’ll end up in one of those bad mother-daughter relationships that are totally foreign to me
4.) that she will have no desire to make things

I know that even though she will be molded by Mikey and I to WANT to make things, that’s no guarantee. Luckily I’ve got these – and other – amazing backups:

Bag of fabric balls sewn by Maggie.

Andrea-knit sweater (her FIRST – still trying to wrap my brain around this can be her first non-rectangle knitting project) and Kelly-sewn pants, which are a birth gift that this skinny gal JUST grew into.

Kelly-sewn art apron, made from a leg of her dad’s old jeans (Ella has an apron made from the other leg:)

Wee Rachel-made owl (downstairs Rachel, not cousin-in-law Rachel).

She also got an awesome piece of wall-art made by Emmalee, which is currently being enjoyed by my parents, because I knew if I brought it back here it would immediately get packed in a box with the last of our decorative odds & ends. I will take a photo when Hazel’s little space is set up at Not Our House in a month.

Those birthday gifts are just a drop in the bucket of the talent that exists among Hazel’s friends and family. Once Mikey and I tried to figure out if we could build a house from the ground up, including all electricity, plumbing, drywall, etc. with just the help of our friends, and we decided that we definitely could. We also know people who could build all of our furniture, lay flooring, make all of our mugs and dishes, build our kitchen cabinets and bookcases, make art for the walls, clothing for our closets, quilts for our beds, curtains for our windows, food for our kitchen, make stained glass lamps for our tables, toys for Hazel’s toybox, and a couple of people who could make new banjos for Mikey’s music room. And I think I could definitely manage to make some braided rugs – I read a tutorial awhile ago and have been wanting to give it a go with some recycled clothing and fabric… fantasy house would be the perfect excuse.

We would also, of course, fill fantasy house with the very best creation of our friends…

Listening: Dire Straits
Hazel is Reading: I Love You Through and Through
Working on: huge batch of pendants half way to completion after working all through Lost in Translation last night. I love you, Bill Murray.
Packing progress: two boxes this morning

Hazel’s birthday week is officially over, wrapped up yesterday by celebrating with ten kids (no fights, no blood, no epipens needed), their familes, and a few other friends. After the party she had a nice long nap to regroup, and then we headed out in the evening to Chris’s CD release show at the Sixth, where we kept her out listening to our friends play music until midnight (she spent much of that time fast asleep in her Ergo). She made it through the whole day without a meltdown – such a happy girl :)

I am taking a break from my packing to share photos…

I agonized about what to put in loot bags for the kiddos, wanting to send them away with a little something from Hazel. I wanted it to be practical, but toddlers are, by nature, impractical, so I was at a loss. I was ready to steal Andrea’s idea of a prettily-wrapped bottle of bubble bath for everyone, then I spied these goodies in the Target dollar bins: sweet basil seed and soil kits, two-packs of pots, and tiny spades. Ten little urban farmers instead of ten little kids hopped up on sugar and the excitement of cheap plastic toys? Yes please. Although for the record the beloved dollar bins also contained cheap WOODEN toys – all sorts of vehicles and the little puzzles where you have to get all the ball-bearings settles into the little holes. The paper bags and glittery foam letter stickers and pipe cleaners are all from the dollarama :)

The birthday project I’ve been alluding to for awhile – a sewn birthday banner that I plan to use for all of our family birthdays. As Maryellen put it, “you know this is going to mess her up the first time she has a birthday as an adult and doesn’t have the banner for the first time in her eighteen years or whatever” – which I’d already thought of, because she is MY kid and I would totally be messed up about something like that… but hopefully it won’t cause trauma. Maybe I can mold her against her genes to not freak out when the silverware gets put in a new drawer. Leo asked if I made it and when I told him that I did, he said “I KNEW it! I knew you made it because you’re a good knitter.” Well shucks…

Colored bandana prints – leftovers from a pack of Martha Stewart dishtowels bought for a summer 2006 wallet project. I’d used all of the green one so Maggie kindly donated hers to the cause :)
Yellow bandana print – $2.00 a yard on the clearance shelf
Green bias tape – $1.something a pack
Yellow recycled pop-bottle felt – fifty cents a sheet

Big and little friends

The birth buddies – Hazel, Maddy, and a very tired Oscar.

They always sing her to sleep.

Release show for Chris’s new album, Old Dog… which is reeeeeeeally awesome.

By the way, thank you to everyone for making and/or getting Hazel wonderful gifts that, miraculously, will probably fit in two totally normal-sized boxes. I was worried we’d need to upgrade our U-Haul size after two first-birthday-parties. You have made our lives easier. Mikey has also made my life easier today by washing a HUGE, and I mean huge, pile of dishes. And to Fuzzibunz, who so artfully contained every single bit of the most explosive diaper-filling of Hazel’s life this morning. It could have started off as a very bad day, but it is a good day.

Now, back to packing. Packing, packing, packing.

Listening: Hazel Dickens
Hazel is reading: M is for Maple, and Mama is book-fasting if you remember… I even packed up every single “to-read” book in the house this morning so I’m not tempted
Working on: craft show stuff
Packing progress: five boxes so far today

Hazel gets to spend her birthday eve eve at Luca’s first birthday party, her birthday eve as a spectator at her ten year old cousin’s pre-birthday-slumber-party-fashion-show, her actual birthday at a halloween carnival for which her Grannie Anne has been meticulously constructing an alien, the day after her birthday having a party with her family at her Ma Ruth & Pa’s party house, and the day after the day after her birthday at a tiny Beany-hosted gathering (of two adults and three children) at Nazareth Farm.

She is going to be so sick of celebrations by the time we get back to Toronto that Mikey and I let her open her gifts today. She could be a professional present-unwrapper. Note to self: always save books for last or she will not be interested in the rest of the packages.

Tiny family. Banjo from daddy.

Horses & books. All good things.

Dear Hazel,
You already love books. The first thing you do every day is pull your books off the shelf. Mommy and I know you will someday come to love this book too. It’s one of our favorites.

Happy first birthday. We could not be more thankful for you.

Love,
Daddy and Mama

If we had hinges on our heads
There wouldn’t be no sin
‘Cause we could take the bad stuff out
And leave the good stuff in.
-Shel Silverstein