And the broken feather fan? That was a saved triumph as well.

We had Rose, David, Jasper, Marlyn, and Maggie at the house yesterday. And Maggie's mom, Deirdre too. The kids played some outdoor fighting game for the first hour, but then they needed their energies redirected, so I went into my Miss Hannegan act (the orphanage director in Annie of course.) I had them all clean off the front porch siding. This involved creating vinegar and baking soda explosions to pour down it, lots of buckets of water, and a little scrubbing. Much fun.

Then, after snack, Deirdre and I pulled out the art boxes, the aforementioned random pieces of junk I had been carefully saving, and a book about Thanksgiving crafts which I had picked up at the library.

The red and white nightgown, complete with white frill collars, made perfect pilgram clothes. The toilet paper rolls were the pilgrims. I'm embarrassed to say that the kids turned to the page on "Indian" headdresses. So we cut them strips out of Diet Vanilla Coke boxes. They glued on bright green and yellow feathers, and they look, frankly, fabulous. We'll have to have a long talk about cultural appropriation and the Disneyfiaction of real human lives. But we had fun.