kirstencan

The first of December

Welcome, December!  We're all so glad you've come at last!

We don't have much of our Christmas 'stuff' out yet - but the quilt and the books are out - that's almost enough for me - the most important things for the holiday.

This is probably half of the books - they migrate throughout the house, of course.  I try to add a new book each year - this year it's Olive the other Reindeer. 

Oh, and this cool Raffi songbook that I picked up earlier this year at a library sale.

Princess loves it and picked "Petit Papa Noel" to play for her piano party - of course - it's in French!  And of course she sings along.

I also downloaded a few new Christmas songs - some Beach Boys and  - Ronettes awesome.  I love having all my Christmas music on shuffle. 

Let's see - I also get to get out a Christmas dishcloth I made - nothing if not festive...

Someone's been decorating her room...

We printed off the tiny advent calendar from Alphamom and she loves that she got to draw in each of the windows - super cute.

We also got out the new Playmobil advent calendar.  

Thomas is talking about Christmas non-stop.  He is sure Santa will bring him most of what's in the Lego and Playmobil catalogs (poor kid), and yesterday kept asking for "The Playmobil box with all the things in it!"  Took me a while to figure out that he wanted the Playmobil advent calendar.  I'm not sure he knew I'd bought one for this year - but apparently he really loved last year and so I'm glad I did buy one!

And although the peaceful woodland scene is supposed to have only a tree today - it is packed with people 'having Christmas Eve!'

Oh, and Pip is back!  Seriously, my kids LOVE Pip - so excited to find him today! 

 

Amy and I will be blogging Pip and Ollie's advent adventures again this year - so stop by!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving!  We are going to be spending time with family  - enjoy your feasts!

If you haven't seen it yet, grab your kids and watch THIS!

p.s.  Turns out I have a sinus infection + bronchitis.  Lovely stuff.

Little Halloween Party

Invitations:

I only had to make four of them.

Graphics from the My Paper Crane free Halloween printable - which I'm not able to find now for some reason...

I finally got to hang up some decorations:  bats, tissue paper bat garland and spooky garland from here.  We made paper bag owls when we studied owls earlier this month.

Bunting + two Cinderella Pumpkins from our garden (we're cooking them tonight). Photos of the kids in Halloween costumes when they were toddlers (one photo is on a table). The book basket in the living room holds fall and Halloween books.

Donuts on a string was a huge hit - and hilarious.

Coloring pages from here.

Foam stickers galore.

Little treat bags - my favorite part was the little mini-coloring book (folded from one sheet of paper from here (definitely my new fave site for printables).

Not shown:  Halloween memory (from last year), pumpkin bread, popcorn, candy corn, nine costumed guests and their moms, and a showing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! which I think most kids don't watch as much as mine do, so they were surprisingly into it.  Also generally running around and playing. 

Also not shown is the super cool pumpkin bean bag toss I was going to make... yeah, that's not shown because it didn't happen.  And that's okay.

It was short, pretty low key, and just what I was going for. I had to keep the guest list super small for a couple of reasons:  space, fear of overwhelming Thomas, and my sanity (but there were a few of you out there that I really wanted to invite, too!).  Just a little Halloween themed playdate, really, for my kids - since they don't get a class party.  Hmm, I guess I'm room mom every year!

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Oh, and one more Halloween themed project - one day I had the kids go 'Ghost Hunting" - I gave them a seemingly blank sheet of white paper and their watercolor paints and told them to paint.  They didn't know that I'd drawn ghosts on the paper already with white crayons, so as they painted they found some cute happy ghosties. 

They LOVED it.  Monkey even wanted me to make him another sheet to do later.

Easy, very little prep, and materials on hand - and what a fun thing to put in their school boxes this week!  Found the idea on The Crafty Crow (scroll down).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Pumpkin Pillow

Something that's been in my sketchbook for a while:

 

A little holiday pillow.  Just a little textured black sale fabric, some orange flannel, and bits of a felted green sweater.

With a touch of embroidery - some of which isn't too visible here (it snowed all day, so the lighting hasn't been great) but I did some loopy green vines and pumpkin lines.

 

But, Oh, no!  Did we lose some features?

 

Never fear, little pumpkin!  We have a lovely assortment of eyes, noses, and mouths for you to choose from.

See, we keep them here - in an easy to access pocket.

Monkey will hook you up right.

Hmm...
 

Not your favorite face?  Don't worry, it'll be changed shortly, I'm sure!

Holiday decor + holiday activity rolled into one!  Woo!

....

So, yeah, this was my little crafting therapy this week.  It didn't take long to whip up at all.  The embroidery was done while waiting at dance.  Pillow covers go together fast.  I used velcro (scratchy side) on the pumpkin, but none on the felt - they didn't need it.  I was hoping to avoid velcro altogether, but it holds the felt pieces on better.  Also black velcro would have been better, but I used what I had on hand.

...

Oh, and thanks to Rachel of One Pretty Thing for featuring my book mobile as well!

Halloween Costumes - Harry Potter Style

Well, here are the kiddos 2009 costumes! We had to get all dressed up for the annual carnival at church on Saturday.

Here's Hermione:

Her fave accessory was her time-turner (although I think she liked having her hair crimped, too). It is pretty darn cool, I admit.  It's this that I ordered from Half.com to put away for Christmas - and when it arrived in a completely smashed box, I got refunded but got to keep it.  Which worked out pretty great for Halloween.

Ron -  he's even got the red hair for it.  He has Scabbers the rat (an IKEA toy we already had) sewn to the shoulder of his robe. Although we should probably have used the brown rat instead?

 

And a little blonde Harry, whose bangs usually cover up his lightning-bolt scar.  He kept being goofy and waving when I was trying to get a shot of him, so I ended up with one shot of him exactly blocking his face.

So here's the deal - after much deliberating they all chose these costumes independently!  I was pretty excited, because I loved the Star Wars theme year (and you know I was excited for a possible Lord of the Rings theme - but they nixed that eventually).  My mom made the Hogwarts robes - she made them up based on an angel costume pattern.  Yep, she amazes me, too, with her mad sewing skillz.  She bought the fabric with her Joann's coupon so they didn't cost much.  I think they turned out AWESOME.

I ironed on the Hogwarts logos and sewed the button + loop fasteners. I also made the scarves from fleece - which took no time at all.  We bought the ties and Harry's glasses (ironically the one kid who doesn't wear glasses needed them and the other two took their glasses off) - everything else we had around (white shirts, pants/skirts, sticks for wands - which we didn't bring to the carnival).

We even had Hedwig!  I found an official Hedwig owl at a yard sale this summer (it was free even!) and put it away for Halloween because I knew they were all considering Harry Potter characters.  We forgot to bring Crookshanks, but we had that planned, too

Thomas was less than excited about putting on a shirt and tie for the carnival.  Until he saw how awesome his sibs looked - then he didn't complain at all - and asked to put it all back on the next day!  I'd forgotten that 'church clothes' are not his fave and might cause a problem.The coolest part was just that we had all three characters, I think.  And the kids have new awesome dressups to add to their collection - and to wear whenever they watch a Harry Potter movie or read the books - so I think they'll be in use a lot!

2008 Costumes

2007 Costumes

(I got no good photos of them together in 2006!  But here's 1, 2, and 3)

Bats and Pumpkins

Thomas always had a difficult time in the fall.  Well, the last couple of years anyway.  I blame adjusting to having to wear socks, long pants and jackets, and the last two years also having a hard time adjusting to frustrating school situations and schedules. 

But on top of that, he gets easily spooked about Halloween.

He has some anxiety issues about it I think (not surprising, really) and gets 'jumpy' for the rest of the day if he sees anything scary. 

Like, for example, me taking him into the Halloween Store.  As soon as we walked in I knew that that was a stupid idea.   Because we even have to skirt the Halloween area at Target.  Stupid - I totally wasn't thinking that day.

The hard/confusing thing is that Thomas actually loves Halloween.  He loves all the non-scary parts, like dressing up, the church carnival, the pumpkin patch, and watching Charlie Brown.  So he's excited about it, but... we have to be careful.

Anyway, I did want to up the Halloween decorations this year, since it's the first year that everyone is home full-time - usually we've had a preschool party at least to go to or something.  You know, just a little more festive.  And I'm planning a (VERY small!  laid-back! not-spooky!) party for the kids and a few friends.  And I do love party planning and decorating!

I made a Halloween bunting for the living room (close-up later maybe):

And I spent an hour or two cutting out bats on Sunday.  Various sizes, shapes, and papers.  I made a tissue paper bat garland (idea from here) and hung it over a window.  Then Thomas started getting jumpy again.

By 'jumpy', I mean that he literally jumps and sometimes yells if anyone talks even slightly loud, or sneezes in his general direction.  It's not a good thing.

So, the garland got rolled up, and the other bats got stuck in an envelope before they were hung up.  I'm thinking they might come out for the party - but that's it.

Aaron suggested skipping Halloween - but that's so hard to do.  And I LOVE Halloween!  And so do the kids.  Next year we might just get out the Halloween stuff a few days before the actual day, though.  None of this month-long decorating and celebrating (when did everyone start doing that anyway?).

Really, I don't even know if we'll do the Halloween Night at the botanical garden.  We were planning on it since it's been a couple of years since we did that and it was such fun last time!  We're sticking to Charlie Brown and Max and Ruby, too - probably no Ichabod this year.

At least the kid loved the pumpkin patch.

Loved it.  And is planning a Star Trek jack'o'lantern for his pumpkin.

And the bunting and quilt are still out, but that's it.  Darn it.

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p.s. if anyone out there is room mom for Halloween this year - I posted what I did in Thomas' kindergarten class last year HERE

Our Independence Day

Wearing red, white, and blue to the movie theater (we saw 'Up' - all in all we liked it - but Thomas cried hysterically during the dog fighting parts).

Running through sprinklers in bathing suits and playing in the backyard with squirt guns.

Watching America Rock:

A classic American barbecue dinner - grilled and eaten outside - followed by root beer floats and ice cream cones.

And of course this:

The kids had more fun with the glo-necklaces (aka lightsabers) than the actual fireworks.  Next year we're just going to get a bunch of those.

All in all, a perfect fourth of July.

I hope you had a great weekend, too!

Our little post office

So we set up a little post office for the boys' valentine cards.  Princess wore our postman accessories and was the postmaster general.

On the table:  a little jar of pennies, postage stamp-sized stickers, real postage stamps, two "cancellation" stamps (one I carved - inspired by this one, and one I thrifted and had forgotten about), and inkpad.  Next to the table were sorting bags:  one for each boy's valentines to deliver, and one to go out to the 'real' mailbox.

We cleared off the top of the red bookcase and used that as our counter.  The boys put each card in an envelope, wrote the name of a friend on it (sometimes with help - it was handy to have my mom here that afternoon!) and then went to the post office to get it stamped.  Sometimes they had to wait in line - just like at the real post office!

They were told how much a stamp would cost (between 4 and 15 cents usually) and they had to count the pennies out to 'pay' for it.  Then they got to pick a stamp (real or pretend depending on method of delivery) and the postmaster would 'cancel' the pretend ones, and then sort them.

I've wanted to do this again since I was in kindergarten!  One of my best memories of that year was having a really cool Valentine post office set up.  It was such fun.

I guess I'm getting a little more into Valentine's day this year because none of the kiddos are in school.  Last year we all went to Thomas' preschool class party - and I guess I don't want them to miss out on one of the most fun Kid Holidays of the year. We usually get 'enough' valentines, too - just from family and some of their friends.

The Post Office is still set up in the playroom, and the kids have played with it a lot - even adding a teeny play mailbox that I'd forgotten about and a lot more envelopes. There are frequent mail deliveries and I am regularly called on to be a customer.  What fun!

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Also on Wednesday I helped Princess finish her valentines.  They're paint-chip bookmarks - I saw them here.

We had a nice stack of paint chips already, but I picked up a few more.  We rounded the corners, stamped, signed and punched a hole.  Then we threaded them with completely random pieces of ribbon because I forgot to pick some up and she wanted to take some to her dance class that evening.

I think I'll make some more to give to the girls in my class at church! They were very fast to make assembly line style!

More heart-y things

Tuesday:  We made beaded hearts by stringing beads on pipe cleaners.

I took some of Monday's hearts (note the jagged edges above) and sewed them all together with a few patterned paper ones (I swear I was lucky to have a pink and a red - I'm no scrapbooker!) and hung it on the mantel.

The boys made their Valentines:  I cut out lots of various colored cardstock hearts the night before so that they were ready to go.  The boys wrote their name, put on a couple of stickers and a heart stamp (more on that later - I carved a few new ones!).

Monkey tended towards robots, spaceships and monkeys (!), while Thomas chose mostly CARS and Spiderman.  They're all pretty cute, though. Princess started hers today - but we ran out of supplies, so we'll finish those tomorrow.

I can't find my wax hearts, so we might make more, and apparently I've lost a few mini-clothespins, but I hung up our ribbon Valentine holder anyway.

I think the next step is going to be the Valentine Post Office - because some of these have to get put in the mail!

Seeing Red

It starts.  I'm trying to make Valentine's Day a little more fun for the kiddos this year and last night started with the annual 'What I love about ____' event.  Princess was in charge of our family home evening and cut out five hearts and we passed them around and everyone wrote something that they love about each member of our family.  It ended with lots of hugs, as it does every year.

This morning I sent the kids on a hunt for things small and red to add to our February nature table display.

I think my favorite is the little Playmobil fire helmet.

For cutting practice today I got out a stack of pink, red and teal construction paper and the boys cut hearts with me.

Lots of hearts.

They made a couple of heart animals, too.

That's Day One of our Valentine's week.  I've got plans for a little something every day.

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And making me laugh today - Princess decided to write some poetry and she is working on some couplets... but she keeps thinking that they are pronounced 'cooPLAYS'.  She really wants to speak French that girl.