kirstencan

Getting past herself

It's been surprisingly dry around here - and it even warmed up some, so we've been out riding bikes the last couple of days.  Princess had a kind of breakthrough - she has been very timid on her bike since she took a little spill last spring.  She's avoided riding, or ridden slowly just at the end of our circle. 

But no more.  Yesterday she was very proud of herself (and I was very proud of her, too) because she went fast(er - my kid is no speed demon), and went out of her comfort zone.

And loved it.  And is now talking about riding her bike to friends' houses and her piano lessons - which she used to do last year and then wouldn't.  So that's a good thing.  She really made me smile with how proud of herself she was.

Thomas had her take Lumpy for rides.  She was happy to oblige.

The boys had a great time, too - it's been nice to get out without the mud/snow/slush!

Also hoping for Spring, we made little 2-second kites the other day.  Monkey still likes pulling his around.  Our neighbor had a kite out and so I made a few little paper ones for the boys and their friend.

And as much as I'm rooting for more snow (we need it), I'm getting those first tastes of Spring - which are delightful!

Randomness

Because none of these things deserves a whole post of its own, and yet I feel like blabbering on...

* I changed my blog banner and am not happy with it.  I have had that old one up for TWO YEARS.  Crazy, but true.  I need something new, but this is not it.  And of course there's no 'save as' feature where I was working in Typepad so my old one is toast.  I can't find the old banner graphic.  I just need a new one.

*  I made two crayon rolls this weekend, and on both of them I used a hair elastic for a tie instead of ribbons.  Mostly because I didn't have any ribbon that matched on hand but I did have new hair bands.

I made this one for the boys to keep in the church bag, and the elastic is something they can do themselves (they can't tie yet).  It's a smaller version to accommodate the small sized twistable crayons.  The fabric was sent to me by the lovely Tasha, and how cute is it?

* We let Princess stay up with us to watch Masterpiece last week (Oliver Twist) and it was pretty awesome.  I've never been a big fan of that story, but this production is just so well done and well cast.  Princess has read a shortened version of it, so she was very familiar with the storyline - much more so than I was.  We're excited to finish it tonight. *added: Holy cow, that was amazing!  Dickens sure knew how to tell a story- I already knew that, but WOW!

* Note to self:  Get to work on the Mobile Swap this week! 

* We checked out and have been enjoying all three Little Travelers DVD's this week - how great are they?  The whole family loves them.  I think the British Isles is my favorite.  I can't wait to see the next one about Iran. 

* Aaron and I have a DATE NIGHT scheduled this week!  Woo hoo!  Wish us luck on sneaking out of the house and leaving the sleeping kiddos with a babysitter.

* We've been Elizabeth Mitchell fans for a while - but Monkey just 'rediscovered' her.  Grandma has given him 'You are my little Bird' and 'You are my sunshine' for his birthday/Christmas and he LOVES them.  He'll just lay on the floor and listen.  It's great to play in the hall when the boys are falling asleep.  If you have a minute check out this other great E.M. + Lisa Loeb song.  Cute cute stuff.

* We finished reading 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today so we watched (for the trillionth time) the movie.  Man, they love that movie (and esp. the soundtrack) but I could see they watched it with new eyes after having read the book.  Thomas said he wants to be an oompa loompa for Halloween.  Oh, how I hope this idea sticks around.  Preliminary sketches are in the works.  That could be the backup in case I can't convince the boys to be hobbits.

* Princess has started on the Star Wars soundtrack piano book.  She is trying to decide which would be best to play at the June recital.  My question is not which song, but if she should wear her costume for it.  How hilarious would that be?

More Pink Paper

That dinner at church was last night, and it went really well.  It was for the Young Women (12 - 18) and their parents.  Here are the results of my pink paper forays:

Pink paper candy dishes for the tables (Martha's idea, of course).

Little table tents (double-sided) with the year's theme on them (1 Timothy 4:12).

I took photos of these at home because I knew the lighting in the church would be awful.

See? 

 

I took a couple shots of the tables while we were still setting up - we did end up changing the lighting before it started. 

The pink blossom branches (I made about 20) were in glass canning jars weighted down with tissue-paper wrapped golf balls (we have plenty of those in our back yard).

The girls really liked the decorations ("They're SO pretty!") and some took blossom branches home, so that's cool.

My house is very not pretty right now, because I've spent the week folding, cutting and gluing. Today I'll try and catch up. Um, wish me luck on that one.  And then I'd really like to sew something.  Seems like it's been a while...

I think I'm going to go back and look at the top photo again.

Aahhhhh....... pretty...........

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A few more details if anyone really wants to know: 

The candy cups are really simple - they're upside-down cootie catchers!  I made them with double-sided printed cardstock.  Martha said to use 7" paper, but I did 6" squares, because then I could get 4 out of a 12" square.  Paper does work, but the cardstock made really sturdy cups.

The candies are Wonka's pink heart runts - 50% off after Valentine's day.

The table tents were a pain - my printer didn't like my cardstock, but so easy to assemble.  They're each made from 1/2 a piece of cardstock and stapled at the bottom.  I was going to make the type myself, but found a graphic ready made and downloadable - and now I can't find the link for it - sorry!

I had extra tissue paper blossoms to scatter around the jars on the table.

No one poked their eye out on the branches - that was good.

I didn't plan on things like plates of butter pats on the table - so I just put a candy cup in the middle of the butter plate.  Not ideal, but it worked.

Each table had 2 jars of blossoms, 2 table tents, and 3 candy cups.

The whole thing only cost about $5.  Woo hoo!  I had to buy one thing of pink tissue paper, a handful of patterned cardstock (50% off) and some candy.

The dinner was for our ward's New Beginning's night.  Except we combine it with Young Women in Excellence.

Pink + Yellow

I spent the afternoon surrounded by piles of pink paper. 

Here's a sneak peek:

And another - but you've seen this idea before.

I cut, folded, and glued.

I'm in charge of table decorations for a dinner at church on Wednesday - prepare to see more pink afterwards!

I'd rather have gone to the movies.  Princess got to go see Coraline with Aaron - I'm jealous, but I think 3D is not for me.

And here's a little contribution to Erin's Yellow week:

Erin, when is Pink Week? :)

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.

Budding Talent

Yesterday I was trying to keep a pajama-clad little 3yo busy.  He was feeling under the weather.  I would hand him books from the 'school' bookshelf that he doesn't look at often and he loved it actually.  Then he wanted the geoboard + rubberbands and made this:

He was proud of it and said something about how it looks like one of the paintings he saw in a Children's art book.  Which one?

So he showed me:  Jackson Pollock.   How cool is that?

Seriously, I thought that was pretty awesome - not so much what he made (although as a mom I have to love everything my kids make, right?) but the fact that he made this connection about it.  It might just be the art ed degree talking, but it made my afternoon that he made the connection between his non-representational work and Pollock's.

Then he turned the page and saw Kandinsky - and begged to paint.

So we did.

We painted:

And splattered:

And were splattered upon (by brother).

Not a bad way to spend a sick day, I think.

Thinking on my feet

The other day we were walking home from the school (speech appointment) and a kid who lives in our circle was blowing bubbles.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and surprisingly warm for winter, and I thought that playing with bubbles sounded perfect.  We had our snack and headed back outside with our own bubbles where another neighbor boy had joined the first.  And they ... weren't so interested in playing with my boys.

That's okay.  Who needs them, right?  So we blew bubbles and popped them, my boys were having fun and I thought "I bet I could get those other boys over here."

So we started pretending that the bubbles were Bubble Droids.  Imperial Bubble Droids sent to discover the location of the Rebel Alliance.  Thomas was Anakin, and Monkey was Mace Windu.  They had stick lightsabers to help in their popping duties.  They were climbing up the snow piles and jumping and laughing and yelling (and pretending they were injured).  They were having a blast.

I made sure that some words like: Anakin, droid, rebels, and destroy were spoken loudly enough that they carried down the street.

And guess who came over soon after and started popping bubbles with a vengance?

That's right.

That's 45 minutes and 2/3 of a big bottle of bubbles well spent, I think.

Later, after we'd gone in, the neighbor boys came over to ask my boys to join in their new club.  They had to sign a paper and everything.

Just make your game sound like more fun than their game, that's all.

My point?  Being able to think on your feet and be creative are huge pluses in the Mom Business.  Huge (Also? Knowledge of Star Wars trivia is a definite bonus). 

Like today when aforementioned club meeting had to be canceled (by me) due to smoggy air and the boys were crushed - we made our own club.  Complete with sign in paper and snack.

Or this morning, when both boys were grumpy, convincing them that carrying HUGE bundles of laundry downstairs will be amazing fun and SUCH an adventure - and they went with it.  Also fun?  Watching the washer bubbles and pushing laundry into the dryer.

Or when they won't clean their room unless they're a soldier and you're a general.  Or they're in a costume of some sort.

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Now if only I could come up with a creative way to get my kid to stay in bed until a decent hour.  And NOT be opening and closing doors loudly, sneaking in his brother's room to wake him up, and turning lights on and off. 

Yeah, that would be cool.

Stamp Carving

This is one of those projects that I've been wanting to do forever - and I finally did!  I ordered a Speedball stamp carving kit (+ some extra blocks) and Princess and I set about designing and carving our own stamps on Friday.  Fun stuff!

I wanted to do linoleum block printing, but stamp carving is such a similar process and a little easier - plus you don't need special ink, a brayer, etc.  Just a stamp pad.

She made the cute flower and the hearts.  I did the robot, cake, cloud, and one that said the name of a friend who was having a birthday.  I was a teensy bit faster than she was. ;)  But she liked the process.

Since these blocks feel exactly like erasers, I picked up a pack of erasers at Target - so we'll try those next and see how they compare.  Too fun!

So for our study of printmaking we've done monoprints, gocco silkscreen prints, styrofoam stamps, and now this (actaully, I think I'm forgetting one...).  Next up is 'real' silkscreen.  Should be fun!