My first quilt

25+ years ago, I was tired of sewing dresses & skirts, jumpers & other things for myself, and I wanted to do a quilt.  The cluttery look of a home full of homemade calico & ruffles all over everything, table-skirts and cutesy home made pillows with lace & ruffles... it was my grandma's aesthetic, not mine.  I wanted something more sleek & modern for my home, but I couldn't afford to BUY the modern, sleek, contemporary look, or rather, what I could afford of it, would be hopelessly cheap and low quality.  I needed a way to do it for myself.

Surely there as a way to DIY something that would not look calico, ruffled, shabby/country chic and old-fashioned... I thought a bedspread would be a good start. 

Remember, this was before the internet.  FInding a pattern required a trip to the library or bookstore.  And I knew of no quilting groups for younger women (as I was at the time).  I just knew I wanted something different from the old-fashioned, Americana type quilt that would be at home in a country cozy house.  I wanted urban... or beachy... not farmhouse.  So I stumbled upon the tumbling blocks pattern and realized that it could be altered to give a little modern twist.  Use some brighter fabrics.  In this case, a range from cobalt, to teal to purple...

I honestly don't remember how I did the quilt top.  People I've met recently ask if I had trouble with all the Y seams... apparently, that's not something that quilters look forward to... I don't remember it being a big problem for me.  The problem was putting it together into a useful object.  So I put it aside.

And then, about 25 years later, my Mom died.  My Dad spent a few lonely years, and I really, really needed to do something special for him for his next birthday.  So last year in late August, I pulled the old quilt top out.  It did not have a border, just a bunch of diamond shapes sticking out... in some areas, it was so skee-jawed (mom's term, I think the modern quilting term would be "wonky"), that I didn't think it could be made into a square/rectangular quilt shape.  But I powered through it.  I pieced a few yards of dark blue, and spray-based it to a fluffy-lofted filling, and then spray basted the top to it.  It had (and still has) giant folds and wrinkles in it.  But that was the only way to get it semi-straight.  I rolled the diamond sides over to the back side, so if you look at the back, it's got a strange, rolled hem with a pattern to it... well, "pattern" would be a misnomer... variegated colors.  I didn't cut off any diamond tips, just folded them under.  Probably a mistake, but it made for a kind of undulating and VERY home-made-y finish to it.  Then I stitched in the ditch. 

With my home sewing machine, this was a challenge... a fluffy lofted quilt pushing through the normal sized arm... SOOOO... I chose to start in kind of a spiral, stitching all the ditches that were outside and easy to reach, turning as I found a corner...

That did pretty good.  It got me through about 1/3 of the quilt on each side, and a little from the top & bottom... the middle 1/3 of the quilt was the only part that was tough to quilt.  But Dad's October 6th, 85th birthday was looming and I had a deadline.  On October 3, 2012, I finished the quilt! 

more than 25 years in the making.  I started it just after graduate school, between 1983 and 1985... and now it was done.

My Dad, who was has become my idea of the best type of "cool", now has it.  He's slowed down, so he needs the extra warmth.  But the modern style fits his style.  Although he grew up in a very rural community and had not a lot of family money, he worked hard and got himself through medical school.  He went to Korea at about the time period referenced in M*A*S*H, and worked in an Evac unit.  He returned to Ft. Meade and met my mother, who was working as head of the secretarial pool in the Department of the Navy at the Pentagon (the part of the pentagon that was victim of the 9-11 attacks 40+ years after she left it).  They married and moved to live in New York.  Mom worked for the CIA and Dad was a resident in pathology at the hospital across the street.  They lived in a very urban way, living in a building that everyone who was there knew was condemned, and as soon as all the residents could be ousted, it would be demolished.  They were the picture of the first "yuppies"... hosting martini parties and living the best young-adult life available to a dual income professional couple.  When they had me, they chose the most modern way of child-birth, the natural method... Dad, the newly minted pathologist working in a research hospital, was aware of all the newest research, and he decided that all the epidurals and such were probably not a good idea. 

After I arrived, they moved to "the country", a gated community in Rockaway beach.  We lived on the beach across from our church.  I probably made sandcastles with some of the boys who, 40 years later, were victim of the 9-11 attacks on the WTC.  That very Catholic, very Irish neighborhood was hard hit, considering the number of them who had chosen careers in law enforcement and firefighting.  But 50 years ago, before our country lost it's innocence, my Daddy was still a smoker.  Mom, with her black hair and bright blue eyes looked like a young Liz Taylor... and Dad looked like... well, there's one photo of him leaning against his car at the beach.  I'm playing in the sand at his feet, and he has a cigarette pack rolled up in his t-shirt.  He looked like the picture of James Dean, a Rebel without a cause.... the ultimate of "cool".  Given that they maintained their own moral compasses and did not do the heavy drinking, drugging, and cheating that the hipster generation might have done, they really were "cool".  Doing the part of the hip stuff that we look at old movies and long for... the super-cool martini parties, the fondue parties, etc... but missing the part of that generation's behavior that caused many of them to get old before their times.

These days, he feels cold more often than he exudes cool... so the quilt is a good fit. 

I held it in the back of my mind that this quilt was not good enough for him, but better to give it than to hold it back and wait.  We don't have time to wait, these days.  But I still worried.  And then the miracle of modern technology came to my rescue.  I was browsing and found a quilter's guild.  Actually, I found LOTS of quilters' guilds.  So I found one that fit my schedule and went, and then joined.  And I talked to people, heard their stories, saw how perfect their quilts were, and asked some questions... And I explained how intensely IMPERFECT this first quilt was.  And they helped me let go of it.  THe imperfections...

I guess the quilters who finish their projects are the ones who don't get mired in worry about the imperfections.  Maybe I'll tell that to my artistic niece, who seems to have a hard time finishing her projects... that finishing it is more important than perfecting it.  What a great lesson to learn.... 

... lesson learned... 25+ years later

my first art quilt: The secret heart of my niece

OK, it's time to start posting about my projects.  The most recently finished was one for my niece.  She's a recent immigrant from Thailand.  And at age 16, having been taken from her friends and brought to this country where she's not so comfortable with the language, she's not too happy.  She's homesick, and she wants her freedom. 

She is also an artist, which at age 16, means to her that she feels deep, artistic thoughts.  She feels very dark, and feels like she has to keep her feelings inside.  She goes to school and smiles, but there are things she's not too happy about.  Sometimes, she just wants to hide, or have everything go back to the way it was.  But it can't be, so she just feels... sad.

And she's also got everything else about being a mid-year teen going on.  So it's tough. 

I wanted to do something for her to help her understand how to open herself up to this experience, how it could end up being a great thing for her if she lets it be... so I thought of this quilt I once saw... it was an artistic quilt, where flaps had been sliced into the quilt so that it flapped outside of the frame.  It was pretty cool, and it would work for what I wanted.

I asked her for her favorite colors... the answer:  Grey, blue, orange... those colors work REALLY well for what I wanted to do. 

I asked my brother to please spell some words for me in Thai characters:  Niece, Pretty, Smart, Artistic, and Loving.  He sent them to me in a word document, so I was able to enlarge them to see them pretty well.

I essentially made 6 quilts.  Five of them have progressively smaller windows/flaps.  The top quilt, when all the windows are closed, is dark gray.  The bottom quilt, when all the windows are open, is bright orange.  In the middle, are various shades of blue.  darker as they get closer to the orange, so it would pop out. 

The orange window opened to a heart quilted into the fabric.  I followed the line around and allowed it to get progressively less heart-like, until by the time it hit the uppermost quilt, it was just an oval over the top of it. 

Each window... when closed, at the bottom of the window, has a word... the top quilt's word is "niece".  The more important words come as you start opening up the layers.  You can barely read it, because it's my nieces "SECRET" heart, not her OPEN heart, you know?  It's our secret, that we know it's there (shhhh, only those who are in the know, know).  On the inside of the window, only legible when you open it up, is the quilted word, the English translation of the Thai word on the outside of that same window.  These are printed at the bottom of the window so that when all the flaps are open, you can see all of the English words, one on top of the other.  And when you finally open all of the windows for my niece, you see her beautiful, bright heart.

It's made to hang, and it's made to generally keep the windows open all the time...

Two days before I was scheduled to drive to see her and I was going to bring this to her, she was frustrated about something and posted on her facebook page, "I never SAID I was PERFECT!!!"  Perfect, 16 year old frustration, right?  Well, this was perfect for me, because this little quilt was my first on this style, and it's WAY not perfect.  The words were tough to write, my first attempt at that, and the laywers were each made with a single piece of cloth as the topper... with the window made as a buttonhole stitch through that quilt, and then opened up just the way a buttonhole would open.  I didn't want to bind those edges, I wanted them to fall easily rather than stiffly, and I did not want a contrast in the closed window.  I wanted the most minimal line to indicate it opening, and a buttonhole stitch seemed the best way.  But buttonholes have little threads that you don't see when it's on the button.  the edging doesn't necessarily make a clean cut.  And my measurements were WAY from perfect... I made some adjustments to the size of the windows as I went along, so that the lowest window, the heart, would be big enough.  And adjusting the holes as I went meant the slivers of fabric you'd see of each later (other than the window) would be not as uniform as they could have been.  This whole quilt is a little wonky. 

It's not perfect.  But, as I answered to my niece on the night that she posted that frustrated cry... "sometimes the most beautiful things are not perfect.  it's the imperfections that make them beautiful."

Thank God for that, right?

 

lip gloss

A few months ago I saw a Pinterest on lip gloss.  I looked it up and saw that several people have used the same recipe.  Problem is, the recipe as written, results in gritty lip gloss.  More appropriate for a lip scrub.  And while lip scrub of that sort is wonderful to help reduce dry flakes, it is not the type of gloss that you'd love to wear and would feel... well... KISS-able. 

The basic recipe is to take drink mix like crystal lite or Koolaid, and stir it into petroleum jelly (such as Vaseline).  One of the recipes announced that you just have to stir it longer, but I tried it, and it does not work. 

One of my biggest complaints about recipes in some networks (and on some internet sources, and in some books) have not been tested.  I had wondered about this for years, and then I saw "Julie, Julia", where they mentioned that a specific cookbook of Julia Child's era had not been tested.  The recipes were made up by what sounded good, but without regard to the chemistry of the process.  For example, there may have been no explanation that the reason pasta water needs salt is that this is the only opportunity to season the pasta from the inside, where it needs it.  And when you boil the pasta in salt and it gives off its gluten, it makes a liquid that is perfect for the task of giving sauces the proper texture.  Save some of the pasta water and you've got the perfect additive to cheese to form the perfect alfredo, for example. 

Watching that movie made me realize that the problem with many of the ideas out there that people have, for food as well as home improvement projects, as well as smaller craft projects such as I am describing here, is that they were created without regard to whether or not they really work. 

Which is why I found myself wondering whether I could figure out how to mix a watery drink mix with the crystals dissolved, into a hard oil like Vaseline.  I decided to try it out.  I took some drink mix, put just enough water in to dissolve the crystals.  But it was clearly not going to mix up properly.  It didn't work.  So I left it on the counter, overnight, rather than washing out the little dish.  I was thinking on it.

Miraculously, the next day, the water had mostly evaporated, leaving a sticky, nasty mess in the little dish.  A mess that would have been a pain to wash... like syrup, not like a drink.  BUT... WAIT... it's no longer watery.  Maybe...

I tried mixing in a little Vaseline.  Wow.  Magic.  LIP GLOSS.  No crystals, no strange problems with water refusing to mix with oil...

So, here's the formula.  Get a small dish, put drink crystals in it that are colored in the palette you choose (pink lemonade may yield pink... pomegranate may yield darker rose, cherry will be red, etc.)  Put a few drops of water in until it's all dissolved, and then let it wait.  Once the mixture is sticky and no longer watery, mix it with Vaseline.  Then fill a lip gloss pot (available at craft stores, or in kits for air travel liquid containers), and enjoy.  The flavor is more enjoyable than most lip glosses, so be careful, you will be tempted to re-apply more frequently through the day. 

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil instead of Vaseline.  The difference is that coconut oil is an opaque white color when room temperature, more the texture of a lipstick, and may hold the color better.  It will be less like gloss and more like lipstick.  IF this works. 

Stay tuned, I'll let you know the results of that experiment when I do it.  But first, I need to finish using my wonderful new lip gloss! 

Oh, and P.S.  This is a great project to do with your teen girls.  It tastes great, and supplies just a tiny bit of color to the lips, just like the glosses that are made for tweens, but much, MUCH less expensive and much more fun!

how to help your kids

I just heard the most astute saying EVER, about raising kids to be a success. 

If you want to help your kids, give them nothing.  If you want to ruin your kids, give them everything. 

It should go without saying, but too many people of my generation have flipped their priorities, and have ruined the kids.  There are lots of excuses... such as feeling guilt for not spending as much time with the kids, or wanting to give the kids everything that Mom & Dad didn't have while growing up... perfectly noble causes, despite being misguided.  Parents with those excuses (or similar ones) can be helped.  If they think about this, recognize their errors, and work at it, they can change. 

It's not easy, you've got to live with some whining from children who are used to getting everything, who have been taught to have self-esteem without achievement, to have pride without having worked for anything to be proud of... and that everyone gets a trophy, whether they win or lose.  There have been no "losers" in their teams, schools or clubs, so the introduction to the rejection of the adult world will be harder on them.  If you can, introduce them early, to the fact that you don't ALWAYS get a trophy, that you don't ALWAYS get what you want, that unconditional love does not mean unlimited spending.  If you have bought into the theory that everyone should be a winner and "learning to lose" involves getting a crown at the end of the tournament even though you did not make as many points as the winner, then it's going to be hard to pull back and help your kids learn these harder lessons, but you must.  If they do not learn how to acknowledge a mistake and learn from it, rather than ignore it and be proud of themselves for simply being themselves, then they will not succeed in our world.  If you raise your children to take whatever is given without ever having to work for it, or to give back, then you are raising future welfare mothers.

But if you understand this principle, then you can succeed at being a parent.  Do for yourself, what you need to help them learn to do.  Acknowledge that you may have made a mistake, that you need to change, and that it will not be easy.  Then set some limits and guidelines for yourself and work at it.  It might be hard work, and it's not fair that you have to work this hard, to endure your children's cries of "unfair", when you have just come home from a 9 hour workday and 2 hours of commute time... you're exhausted, barely had time to shop for dinner, and now have kids with homework and a preference for plopping in front of the TV and cellphone rather than finishing the homework... they want you to pick up McDonald's rather than cook a balanced meal.  It's very easy to let them do as they want, and then find ways to excuse it... look for loopholes for turning in the homework late, or do it for them, or ... well, whatever... rather than listen to their complaints.  But that is the job you took on when you decided to become a parent, and it's not supposed to be easy. 

Luckily, the rewards for a job well done will be plentiful, when the time comes. 

With children, you need to learn the value of deferred gratification.  And to the extent that you have learned it, you must also teach it.  It is well worth the effort. 

There is a different kind of parent, the type whose excuse for giving everything to the kids is less about the kids and more about themselves, more particularly, about their battle with their co-parent.  The type of giving that is about bribing the kids to like you more than your co-parent.  For parents who are busily telling the kids, "life would be better with me because I can afford more fun for you", or, "your other parent WOULD pay for you to have fun if they loved you enough... but since they don't, I will pay for it... it may put me in the poorhouse, but I'll give you EVERYTHING" (and believe me, as a divorce lawyer, I'm sorry to say I learned that this is not as rare as it should be)... they are not only messing up the kids' relationships with the other parent, they are messing up the kid's relationship with money, and the kids' understanding of what it takes to work to get something. 

Those parents, with that excuse for giving everything to the kids, are probably never going to really understand the depth of how big a mess they are making.  The infamous problem of children of divorce is undoubtedly in large part caused by parents who are continuing their personal battles by raising the children like this. 

This type of parent, unfortunately, does not have the instinct that tells them how to protect the kids from their own inappropriate feelings.  With luck, they have simply been in too much pain to recognize this.  With luck, for the sake of their kids, they will be able to open up their minds to the possibility that maybe they have made a mistake, and then be able to correct it.   For many, it will take therapy. 

This type of parenting, the RIGHT type of parenting, that will give your kids the tools they need to work, is humble.  It's less about the price of being a mother, the motherly instinct, and mother's day,... it's less about being a martyr... less about being a soccer mom, less about being praised for being motherly, and more about being a traditional, self-sacrificing mother.  The type of mother who supports the child and is willing to let them fall so they will learn better to walk.  Who endures their kids' claims that they are not cool, that they are mean... because Mom knows that being mean and un-cool is what it takes to get the homework done and keep the inappropriate media options away from the kids' eyes.  The RIGHT type of parenting is learning how to maintain the connection between your co-parent and the child, even if you are estranged from the co-parent.  And if you are the parent who does not get to have the child overnight at least half the time, it's about learning how to maintain the connection without resorting to tricks like giving the kids expensive gifts.

When you are separated as co-parents, learning how to give your child "nothing", (and thereby, giving the child the experience they need to get themselves EVERYTHING), involves learning how to be a cooperative co-parent rather than a competitive co-parent.  Because in a competition, the co-parent who wins will be the one who spends more.  And that, ultimately, is what spoils the child. 

Spoil your child with attention, with closeness, with letting them work side-by-side with you in the yard or kitchen.  Spoil your child with your time.  Spoil the child with your emotional toughness.  Be impervious to their begging for random stuff.  But don't spoil them with the stuff.  PLEASE.  The best thing you can do for your home economy, is to exercise extreme caution when it comes to spending on the children. 

homemade lip gloss and lip scrub

In an effort to cut costs, going with cheap make-up is one option.  But sometimes the cheap stuff has odd ingredients, changes color, aggravates allergies, etc.  And of course, for a girly girl who likes to play with make-up, it's not as much FUN.  Flavored lipsticks are less intense if they're the cheap variety, and then there's the whole feeling of "I'm cheapening up on myself", which never feels good.

But what MIGHT feel good is knowing you've got a homemade, (green), healthy, CUSTOM-mixed option. 

In the past, I have made my own custom face masques, hair rinses, hair conditioners, and cheek blushers.  Those, I will offer later.  Today, I present my homemade lip gloss and scrub.  All over the internet, I found recipes for a lip gloss.  The result was ALWAYS gritty.  Some of the recipes even admitted that they were gritty.  One offered a remedy to smooth it out... "stir longer".  I tried.  That does not work.

You see, the recipe generally goes like this.  You take petroleum oil such as Vaseline, add a drink powder such as Crystal Light or KoolAid, and voila... lip gloss. 

When I made it, it was a lip scrub, and no amount of stirring will fix that.  It's as though the people who made up the recipe and passed it around did not bother to test it out, or maybe they were willing to settle for less than the best they could do.   I had to take it a step further. 

Here's the fix for getting rid of the grit in homemade lip gloss:  The night before, put your powder in a small dish.  Drop just enough water into it to dissolve the grit.  The result should be a little too liquid to even envision mixing with Vaseline.  So let it sit overnight.  The next morning, you'll find the stuff in the dish has turned gummy.  PERFECT.  NOW put in a little Vaseline and mix it up.  You'll find no need to stir & stir & stir... the granules are already dissolved, the grit is gone, and as long as it has not crystallized again, it will now mix up perfectly. 

The taste is yummy.  The tint is very faint.  Perfect for younger women who might crave the chance to use make up but who you might be a little worried about them taking that step just yet.  And, if you use more drink mix powder, you get a stronger color.  Less is a fainter color.  AND, of course, if your lips are cracked or chapped, and need a little treatment... skip the step where you dissolve the granules. 

Clean lip gloss pots can be bought in packs with travel-sized containers, or you can take an old one of your own and clean it out REALLY well.  There is nothing more fun than using a lip gloss that you made on your own.

My next experiment will be to use coconut oil.  At room temperature, coconut oil is hard, more like lipstick, and white... so maybe it will leave more color on the lips when used?  Or less?  I know it has nutrients that are good for the skin and lips, so it's worth the try.  I'll write another post when I do that.  Stay tuned. 

What foster kids miss

In many states, children whose parents are unable to care for them, are allowed to make the decision on whether to continue to be wards of the state, or allow the foster care social workers to find an adoptive family match for them.  Some get discouraged by previous attempts to find a placement, in what we would think of as the traditional "Li'l Orphan Annie" style... where all the orphans clamour for the opportunity for a new home. 

In more situations, the children choose to remain without a permanent family for much more complex emotional reasons.  Perhaps they cannot contemplate breaking the connection between themselves and their birth parents.  And then there is the typical teen belief that adults are a mere inconvenience.  Teens in a normal nuclear family that is not falling apart, want to find ways to separate.  They want to ignore us.  We are an embarrassment, old fashioned, stupid.  After all, we think texting is unnecessary and that the posting of too much personal information on Facebook is a bad idea.  We are holding them back.  In a few short years they'll be allowed to drive, then vote, then drink.  They will be on their own and supporting themselves soon.  So we are excess baggage that they have to figure out how to work around until they can push their way forward into adulthood. 

Like baby chicks working furiously to crack the egg and burst out on the scene, they wish we'd just get up, release them from the incubator, and let them get on with life. 

In an intact family, however, the parents work hard to hold the kids back.  The kids are not allowed to say "no" to family time, they are forced to sit through family meals and watch their favorite TV shows with Mom & Dad.  They are given chores and not allowed to use Mom & Dad's money to buy too many treats for themselves.  It does not matter how much Mom & Dad have given to them, the moment when the gravy train stops, they try to angle to get more.  It's their job.  To see how much they can get from us without working too hard for it.  If they were offered the opportunity to live with minimal supervision, with no adult holding them back, or the promise of quicker entry into adulthood, many would choose it. 

It is a shame that our government allows children in it's care to make these choices.  Most competent parents do not allow their kids to have this opportunity.  Our government is being negligent in allowing this. 

What do the foster kids miss, when they shove aside that opportunity for permanency? 

Most obviously, they lose the soft place to land when they become adults.  They lose the home that they will boomerang back to when jobs are hard to find or marriages fail.  They lose the connection and tradition to come home for during the holidays.  The lines from the songs, "I'll be HOME for Christmas", and "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go"... and similar sweet, holiday memories... they become meaningless for a young adult who has no home base.

But then there are the subtle things.  Things that are much more important to the young person's eventual success or failure as an adult.  The Friday evenings watching "Say Yes to the Dress" and "Bridezilla" with Mom making comments about the wastefulness and budget issues brought up in those TV shows.  The weekends spent renovating the rec room with Dad, where he shows the importance of maintaining safety in using tools.  The dinners where Mom & Dad discuss maintaining a balance between work and home, choosing vacation destinations for that year's time off, and budgeting appropriately.  The moments when either parent is chauffeuring the kids to their various events, coaching them about how to approach the event, how to be a good loser and a humble winner.  There is something that a kid gets, almost by osmosis, from watching and listening to their parents talking about how to conduct their lives.  Some people might not present the most perfect example of decisionmaking, but the fact that they are presenting SOME example is important.  The effects of a complete absence of that opportunity is clear. 

Foster kids who age out of the foster system are more likely to lose opportunities for post-secondary education, to become homeless, or to go to jail, than children who found a "forever home".  Children from intact two parent families, are the most likely to go to college, have a career, stay out of jail.  And the infamous "single family home", where the parents are estranged from each other, whether or not the co-parent has tried to remain in the picture, puts out children who fall, statistically, somewhere in the middle. 

Whoever in our system has decided that foster children should be allowed to decline to be adopted, needs to be held accountable for the results.  It's nice, in theory, to say that teens should not be forced to do something they don't want to do, but in NORMAL families, that happens all the time.  Teens from intact families are not allowed to skip the visit to grandma, they are required to go to church with the family, they must negotiate their relationships with friends and romances, with their parents' supervision.  They may rebel against it, but the teachable moments that arise every day, where teens learn the most basic skills that will guide their success in life, are necessary.  Our system should not allow the children who are in the system, to succeed in avoiding these moments where other teens would not be permitted to avoid them.  Our system has been negligent. 

To that end, if we are going to allow kids to choose whether or not to have parents, then we need to figure out how to give them the information necessary to make an informed decision on that issue.  We need to find a way to explain to them what they will miss.  Not some statistic-filled boring lecture, but a real, visceral understanding... We need our foster kids to be a little more like the orphans of yester-year... clamouring to find parents, not rejecting them. 

Any ideas would be welcome!

PIZZA

OK, so if you find things to cook at home that are easier than going out, and taste at least as good (if not better), then you'll cook at home more often.  A few years ago, we found how to cook pizza so that it's better than what we can get from a restaurant, takeout-or home delivery.  I'm not kidding, we've had foster kids who declared it to be the best they'd ever had.

Of course, for the foster kids, helping make their own meal added to the flavor.  It's always so much more satisfying when you do something on your own that turns out to be GREAT, right?

So we start with pizza stones.  We went to Home Depot and got a couple of stone tiles to use.  You don't want a glazed stone for this, the glazing will ruin this.  If you can get an unglazed clay tile, like saltillo, then great, but any unglazed stone will do.  Get it BIG, you want your whole pizza to fit on it.  We got two 12 inch tiles, and they aren't exactly large enough for one 12 inch pizza.  We cut the second tile to fit across our oven. 

The trick with pizza stones, which I forgot last night, is to get them VERY hot before you put the pizza in to cook.  If they are hot, the bottom of your pizza will cook fast, making it crispier.  Not having a hot stone in the oven means the bottom of your pizza cooks last.  Your toppings may be great, but your crust will be limp or soggy, cooked last (if at all).  Having the stone hot is the most important trick to a tasty, firm crust at the center bottom of the pizza! 

We use Mamma Mary's thin & crispy 12 inch pizza crusts.  One is about the right size for a pizza for 2 adults.  Teens, you probably need more than half a thin crust pizza... children, there will be leftovers (cooking leftover pizza in a minute).  You start by putting a very thin layer of oil on top of the cold crust, seal it JUST a little from sauce soaking in and making it soggy.  And now I'll put in a tiny word for  Mamma Mary's crusts.  We discovered them a few years ago.  This company makes crusts that are reasonably priced, comes with the thin & crispy style we like, do not have excess dough or stray flavors cooked in, so that we can make it what we want.  AND they keep on the pantry shelf for MONTHS, till we're ready to use them.  They come two (or more) to a package and the package contains a separate baggie to put your leftover into so you can keep it in the fridge for the next time you use it.   

We made tomato sauce from our garden last summer, but sometimes it's not as thick as we want.  I mix some of the homemade tomato sauce with tomato paste to thicken it up.  The alternative is to use canned tomato sauce (keep a tupperware container available for leftovers).  Add some basil or oregano, and little bits of garlic or garlic powder, to give it a little oomph, if you've used canned tomatoes.  If you make your own tomato sauce with your own spices, whatever you choose to put in your basic sauce is fine for pizzas.  The only problem seems to be the texture.  Thin is fine for pasta, but for pizza, you want a tomato sauce with a little body to it! 

Slices of tomato are fun, too... and can be really cool if you're doing a specialty pizza like one that has feta or ricotta, apples or pears, walnuts... all those cute toppings that you find at a chic and adult pizza place... but today we're looking for reasons not to get take-out, so we're going to work with the usual take-out toppings... not the pears & ricotta...

Cheese is always an issue.  We put the tomato sauce on first, then any veggies... we saute the veggies a little to soften them up and pull out any sweetness we can get from them, and put them on the 'za before we put on the cheese.  We use part skim cheese or full fat.  Anything less fat than "part skim", and it does not melt or bubble up properly. 

The biggest mistake people make with cheese on pizza is that they put on too much.  It really does not require a lot of cheese to make a pizza great.  Too much and the pizza will not crisp up right, it will melt but not get those wonderful little brown bubbles, the toppings will be smothered.  EVERY time I think I've not got enough cheese left to make a pizza, and I put one together anyways and hope for the best, it turns out to have been the PERFECT amount of cheese, creating a bubbly, thin layer that browns up nicely. 

And with meat... if you're using sausage or burger, please, PLEASE brown it first in a pan, sweating out as much of the fat as you can, before you put it on top of all that cheese.  If you're using pepperoni, it seems to not leave as many little puddles of fat on a pizza cooked the way we do (with the stones, and not too much cheese), but sausage can REALLY produce too many puddles of boiling oil on your pizza if you don't take off some of the fat first by giving it a little swirl in the browning pan.  Interestingly, people make a mistake of putting on too much cheese, they make a mistake of putting on too LITTLE toppings.  Remember that if you have a slice of pepperoni that's about an inch & a half around when you put it on, it will shrink during cooking.  If you put the pepperonis on so they look like you want the pizza to look when you're finished, it'll be clearly too few pieces.  Generally, it works best if you put the pepperonis in an overlapping pattern... start from the center and just overlap as they go out.  Same goes for thin slices of ham or any other type of meat that will shrink up as it cooks. 

Let the meat be on top, so it cooks fully and crisps up nicely.  Assuming you've not overloaded the pizza with toppings, and pre-heated the stones till they're super-hot, the cooking time is about 10-15 minutes... depending upon how crisp you want it.  Around here, we like it a little crunchy at the edges. 

For the thin crust pizza, take the toppings ALL the way out to the edge.  For a chewier crust, choose the thicker crust, which has a slightly larger edge.  EVEN if you're used to ordering the chewier crust from your take-out place, TRY the thin crust for the DIY pizza.  I suspect you'll like it better than anything you can buy in a restaurant or take-out.  When you're making a pizza for home, and do it right, and the toppings are on properly and the taste is good, suddenly you're less interested in wasting perfectly good crust by not putting toppings on it!  If you want something to dip, make a bread stick, you know? 

And most importantly, this one is great for the kiddos to get involved.  They love getting their hands oily by putting a tablespoon worth of oil on the crust and spreading it around... they like stealing random pieces of pepperoni.  They learn to appreciate veggies like Onions and bell peppers if they help in sauteing and putting them on the tomato sauce.  And maybe more importantly, they learn that too much cheese is not only high fat and unhealthy, but messes up the pizza by making it harder to get that good, crispy crunch that everyone seems to like so well...

In our house, except during Lent, Friday night is Pizza night... and it's a dinner that EVERYONE looks forward to... a great punctuation for a good workweek, and a great start to the weekend!