Skills, Talents, and Volunteer Experiences

Creative Skills and Endeavors

I have a firm foundation in the visual arts including ceramics, two and three dimensional design, jewelry, paper making, book binding, a wee bit of glassblowing, and a love for fiber arts in particular. I crochet, knit (a little), sew, dye wool, felt, upcycle felted wool sweaters, and love all things crafty. I have also made several Waldorf dolls, finger puppets, and felted and sewn wool animals. I can design just about any type of Halloween costume a child can dream up and love making creative contributions to class parties. I can create cakes in virtually any theme, with a sensitivity toward whole-foods and low sugar content baking.

Volunteer Work

Sustainable Food Center of Austin (current / pending)

Attending volunteer orientation with plans to undergo their School Garden Mentor training in September. This training will enable me to help school gardens in the Austin area with planting, maintenance, organization, and educational instruction on organic gardening methods.

Austin Transition Town (current)

Helping to found an Austin Transition Town initiative to address the dual problems of peak oil and global climate change through finding community based solutions on a local level.

Austin Ecoschool (current)

Assisting with the relocation of the school to their new location and preparation for its opening on September 8th. Assist with painting, installing flooring, cleaning, procuring donations, and connecting with like-minded groups and organizations through community networking.

Sahuaro Ranch Elementary School Garden (2008-2009)

Single handedly took responsibility for creating a 10' x 20' vegetable garden with the special education children I worked with at Sahuaro Ranch Elementary School. Procured over $300 worth of donated seeds, seedlings, soil amendments, worm castings, and biodynamic compost tea. The children were involved in all aspects of the process, including choosing the types of vegetables to grow, measuring the dimensions of the space, plotting the garden plan on paper, tilling and amending the soil, and of course planting seedlings and seeds. Our tomatoes, garbanzo beans, fava beans, calendula, marigold, peas, lettuces, Japanese eggplant, and radishes were all producing before the end of the school year, and the children were as happy as could be when they were able to literally take home the fruits of their labor to their families!

Phoenix Permaculture Guild (2008-2009)

I am a former member of the Phoenix Permaculture Guild and received my Permaculture Design Certification on April 19th, 2009. I was awarded a partial scholarship through the Guild in order to be able to attain my certification. I also attended a 4-week Vegetable Garden Design Series class and was a member of their "School and Community Gardens" group.

I fulfilled many volunteer functions, including teaching a Seed Ball Making class for children at the Glendale Public Library's annual Green Fest. I propagated heirloom seeds for a fundraiser for the Guild and donated 60 of the plants to Arizona Homegrown Solutions to be distributed to low-income community gardens. I also had over 15 hands on hours learning to raise baby chicks and took a class on raising and keeping chickens. In the future, I l plan to focus on learning more about rain water harvesting for the benefit of local school and community gardens as well as individuals.

Desert Marigold Waldorf School (2003-2007)

I assisted with costume making for my daughter's school play in Tina DeSaussure's first grade class. The next year, I coordinating the costume making efforts for 19 children for the second grade play, largely making the costumes on my own. I also made 17 pairs of hand sewn, leather-soled, felted wool slippers while working with John Arnold's kindergarten class. I coordinated the Autumn picnic for my son’s preschool class and had multi-colored Autumn leaves express mailed from a friend in WA state in order for the children to make leaf-crowns (see photo stream). One of my other specialties was helping with preparations for festivals, such as cracking walnuts perfectly in half, filling them with tiny, hand-made necklaces, and gluing them back together for St. Nicholas Day. I was known as the “go-to” parent when my children’s teachers needed help with projects of a creative nature.