Crafts – Page 3 – Lisa Holcomb

It’s been….TWO WEEKS!

Now I have that song stuck in my head.

*goes around dancing and singing for a while*

*****

Ok, I’m back now. Oh, it has been so crazy around here. The last time I posted I thought I was on my way to work, but NO, I had a small child feeling all explody in the belly, so we stayed home and snuggled and did laundry, which was good because it was really the last time I did a whole lot of laundry at once and we are now starting to feel that lack.

So the day after that was Teacher Appreciation. We had soup catered, but we had to set up and make and put out desserts and make the room pretty and keep the food going. It went really well, but it felt like a super long day.

We love our faculty & staff! :) — We love our faculty & staff! 🙂

The next night we had an early Valentine’s Day celebration with my family at their house here in town. Greg spent the night there, which he has longed to do for months and months now.

Early Valentine's Dinner with my family — Early Valentine’s Dinner with my family

Saturday we spent time gaming with my parents (yay Carcassone!) and then went off to church. We ended up having our Pre-teen meeting twice since only a few people showed up at the time we’d intended to do it and then the rest showed up later and were miffed that we hadn’t waited for them so we did it all over again. We stayed late for Open Gym Night and the kids ran around like mad things while Nick and I taught a new guy how to play Settlers of Catan.

Gaga Ball has nothing to do with Lady Gaga, I promise. One of the church elders taught it to the kids, having learnt it at another location. The kids LOVE it!

I totally can’t remember Sunday at all. I think we hung out with my parents, then cleaned house. Whee!

Mrs. A. put together a whole crime scene for the kids to explore bits from. It was very educational.

Monday was the start of Book Fair Week, which is extra crazy here. I spent the day at home resting up for the craziness to follow, then after school we went down to the library to participate in a Crime Scene Investigation with one of the teachers. It was super fun!

Tuesday I spent finishing up projects and then went up to set up for the school’s Fine Arts Night. PTA was serving a BBQ dinner and the book fair moved into the cafeteria for the night while the kids had all sorts of performances and things to do.

There was a segment in another room as well, but it was in the dark doing static experiments.

Wednesday I volunteered down in the book fair for 4 hours. I love talking to kids about books and helping them out. I went straight from there to the middle school to help work FLEX day. Wednesday after school was Mad Science with the Mysterious Master Morrow. That was a lot of fun, too!

Thursday I spent another 4 hours in the library helping with book fair, then headed off for a doctor’s appointment and to deliver Valentine’s to a few friends. I had an adventure with the van not starting and my friend E rescuing me. Later, the younger kids had ALL THE CANDY after school, but we managed to share some with David as well. Nick made me special Fried Pickles for dinner.

We started our day with cards and heart shaped French toast. :) — We started our day with cards and heart-shaped French toast. 🙂

Friday morning we got up and got ready for the Storybook Character Parade. I’d missed the note that came home saying the kindergarteners were not participating, so Greg was the only one that walked in the parade.

Greg went as Bob the Builder and Ben went as Jack from Magic Treehouse. Most of the rest of the kids went as Nerds.

After the parade was over, I headed downstairs to kindergarten, then onto the bus to chaperon their trip to the planetarium. We had a good time there. Well, most of us. I sat next to a kid who really thought the sun was going to burn him & started freaking out.

The museum had an exhibit on bivalves, a bone statue of the smallest T-Rex ever, a giant 3000 year old Mayan mask, and a bunch of blocks leftover from an Egyptian exhibit. It was quite trippy.

We also got to tour the museum and see a real moon rock.

Friday was also the start of the church’s regional weekend. There was a hymn sign that Nick and the kids went to. I was exhausted, so I spent the evening blissfully alone.

Saturday we had church early and our choir sang “Down By The River To Pray.” I think we did pretty well. Then there was a potluck. Nick taught Sabbath school while I helped the kids find verses. Then I led the kids in crafts while Nick helped. That night there was more dinner and then a variety show and dancing. I danced up a storm with my little nieces. 🙂 I hope someone posts photos later!

On Sunday there were sports for teens and adults. Nick lead the pre-teens in sports while I lead the ones that didn’t want to play in craft time. It was a really good weekend, but oh so busy!

These are all the photos I took this weekend. Yes: ALL. *sigh*

Around the House, Crafts, My Own Personal Weirdness, Saving Money

Stop Pinning, Start Creating!

My friend Godiva and I are participating in Pin -Free February this month. We’re each doing it differently, though. She’s not going to Pinterest at all, but is still pinning things from her Pin It button. I, on the other hand, am not pinning new things, but am going to my own boards in Pinterest and am either reading-and-deleting pins or making-then-moving-them-to-finished. Some people are going all out and just eschewing the site altogether. Ha!

This morning I made two things from quotes I’d liked on Pinterest. One was this one:

…(I don’t know if you can read it. It says: “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”. -Audrey Hepburn). which lives on my front patio, and then inspired me to tidy my front patio area. (I want to get some flowers out there and for it to be sunnier before my big reveal.)

Then I made this sign for my dining room, using the frame that matches the outdoor one, but had no glass. I also used bits of paper from Matt & Heather’s wedding favors.

After that I ran off for my infusion & I wrote out some cards that are waaaaay past due, then read-and-deleted for an hour. Deleting pins is even more fun than pinning them! Who knew?!

So what craftiness are you getting up to this month?

Around the House, Crafts, My Own Personal Weirdness

Pinterest Addiction

I fully admit to it: I am addicted to Pinterest. I haven’t posted much craft-like since I really started looking around there, I know, so here’s my round-up of what I’ve done inspired by things I saw on there.

I saw some baby pacifier moustaches and made those (pictured in the previous baby shower post), then adapted them for big boys as well. They’ve been quite the hit.

I posted this one to Facebook, but this was the T-shirt scarf I made. I’ve since made it in two other colors. I have to say: 1) it looks so much better with a new t-shirt rather than an old faded one and 2) make sure your fabric is absolutely regular t-shirt material. I did one that had extremely subtle ribs in the fabric which I didn’t notice until I did the stretching. It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t as cute, in my opinion. I also tried the other one linked here where it’s manymany stretched bits of cut shirt, but it was not cute at all, so I took no pictures.

I got the idea for placing the poster board on the TV screen and tracing my cartoon character to make a poster off pinterest. (Yes, you’ve seen this before on the birthday party post, but I didn’t give pinterest the credit.) I didn’t keep the link or I’d post it here.

I made a reading nook for the kids (& their friends) behind Greg’s bed using the edge of the shelf and the edge of the nearby dresser for the curtain to spring-rod into. The curtain is kid height, so parents can look straight in, but they are curtained off from brothers. 🙂

I had this old cork board that has lived various places in our house for years. It was never quite big enough for hanging regular sized pieces of paper on, but it’s perfect as a board for notes on who we’re praying extra for this week. 🙂

Used my Pinterest-enhanced spray painting skills to paint this TV tray so it can go with my living room in my new reading nook. 🙂

Ok, so you can’t see it too clearly, but I had never thought about hanging extra seasonal stuff from my chandelier before Pinterest. Sad, but true. I don’t have a link to go with this. I’ll post another photo later of it decked out for winter.

I did my hair differently for Thanksgiving, using a suggestion I found on Pinterest. I think it turned out cute. 🙂

I thought these signs were so cute, so I made one of my own. I used an old project (the scrapbook-paper covered cookie sheet with clothespins I made in MOPS a couple years ago, but never used for anything) and made it new with a little sign and socks. Sadly, these were the cutest socks to be found in our household. Also sadly I still have a whole basket of mismatched socks in my bedroom.

I saw lots and lots of glitter painted branches on Pinterest. I thought I’d grabbed a can of silver glitter, but alas it was red inside. It’s a really subtle look, very hard to see or photograph. The branches are sitting in the broken-topped compost bin. (Nick bought a new one already that’s bigger and easier to clean.)

I know most of you see something like this every day, but I’ve lived in this house 8 years and never had a vehicle that fit into our ridiculously short garage. (I’d hoped to get this done after the garage sale in August, but the garage was still too full.) I read an article through Pinterest on just getting over yourself and getting the work done. So I did. 🙂

You might have seen this in one of the other photos, but I found this image on Pinterest. The link itself lead to nothing (sometimes they do that), but the image was cute, printed out okay, and looks nice matted & framed in my hallway. (Sorry for the bad photo.)

We discovered on Pinterest that you could use regular metal cookie cutters as pancake shapers. We used a moose cutout for this one, but the legs fell off as we took it out. I say “we” but really it was Ben poking the moose out. 😉 He was a great helper! 🙂

I made these t-shirt pom-pom necklaces for friends this year. (Sorry if you’re seeing this before being gifted. We had a random extra mom at playgroup this week and it felt awkward to gift the old friends without gifting the new one. ) They were a wonderful use of the extra bits of shirts leftover from the scarf making.

I made these from another one of the dead-end posts on Pinterest. I saw the pattern, but there were no instructions, so I made it up as I went along, adding leaves, beads, & pins on the back. The first couple were made out of tail ends of other projects, but the rest were made to purpose. They’re for teachers gifts this year (well, all except one teacher. David reminded me that a man probably wouldn’t appreciate these. *sigh* )

Another kind of dead-end post activity. This one was linked to a blog in another language. I think this may have been something she purchased. In any case, no instructions there. I made mine out of a cardboard box that was destined for the recyclers, some silver paint from another project, recycled ribbon from a gift bag, other ribbon that I never could find a use for due to it’s weird color, and a photocopy of the Sugar Plum Fairy music for easy piano, one of my favorite childhood pieces.

We made these shrinky dinks from #6 plastic, the kind you generally find pastries in at the grocery store. It can’t be recycled in our area, so up til now we’ve been tossing these on the rare occasions that we buy pastries. (My parents buy them more often, so I’ve been dumpster diving over there. I’m not ashamed to admit it.) Anyways, the kids have LOVED this activity, so we’ll be on the lookout for bigger pieces so we don’t have to use the crinky edges again (those weird looking ones in the middle.)

This last one was probably the least successful of my Pinterest inspired things. The instructions said to use a protractor, and I’m fairly certain we didn’t have one. That’s not what bugged me about it, actually. What bugged me was the super fine glitter I used. It went everywhere, stuck to everything BUT the snowflake. Then the leftovers didn’t want to go back into the jar. So, the moral of the story, don’t buy cheapo Wal-Mart glitter. (Also, I need a better way to hang it from the brick.)

So there it is. You’d wondered where I’d been: Pinterest. Looks pretty good, yes?

Around the House, Crafts, I Really Do Cook, Saving Money

The beginning of the insanity

So after the Boring Post of Boringness, things finally got interesting.

Thursday morning I kept Ben home from school because he had to go in and have a pulpectomy, which is basically a smaller version of a root canal. His little tooth was mildly infected, so they drilled it and put a silver cap on it. He said “it was terrible” and promises to floss more now. Here he is with the funny mask they put on him for the nitrous oxide:

We were going to go straight home for him to rest, but he was antsy so we went to the mall and looked for a present for his grandparents while we waited for him to stop being drooly and start being able to eat. Once he’d regained feeling, I fed him lunch (his lunch time is really early and he wasn’t done being numb by then)and took him back to school. I took no pictures of his drooliness by his request. Then I headed off for my piano lessons and the rest of the day.

Friday morning I got a text from my long lost friend Monaca asking us to go out for coffee, so we headed out to Einstein’s bagels. (If you sign up for their e-club they’ll send you a coupon for a free bagel with schmear with any drink purchase. I also have a refill cup there, so my refill only cost $1, which wasn’t quite as good as the promised 50c refills, but better than $2+ for coffee. No, I’m not being reimbursed by them to say this. I also signed up with Panera Bread for their card and got a free pastry coupon from them, too.) Greg got an “everything” bagel with strawberry cream cheese on it. It was pretty gross. My whole wheat with onion spread was delicious. From there we left for our regular Friday playgroup. This time we met at Pollard Park, which we’ve been going to since before Ben was born. It’s gotten pretty run down in its wooden seating areas, but the playground itself is in great condition, so the kids love it there. It was much cooler at the park than it was at my house. I’m surprised Greg didn’t freeze to death (he had a jacket and refused to wear it). I ended up wearing someone else’s blanket as a shawl the whole time we were there.

My parents came into town again, so we hung out with them after school (though not that night, as Nick was making chili and I was baking cookies) and the next morning helped them put up lights outside. The kids, naturally, ran around and tried to drown each other in leaves.

That night was the Chili-Cook-off and Sing-Along at church. Nick made a super yummy, super spicy chili for the event. He won 2nd place!

We all had a great time singing along and enjoying the entertainment afterwards as well. I love live music, so it was a super fun event for me.

I admit to not taking any of these photos. I was too busy enjoying the event. They were either taken by Lupe Gonzales or Laura Moody or maybe even both. I am so fortunate to have facebook friends who take event photos and let me mooch off of them. The kids sitting in front of us (I don’t know their names, as they’re not from our immediate church,but were visiting from nearby) were hysterical. They danced and danced. Our kids actually got up on stage and sung with the whole group at some point as well.

Sunday my mom, dad, and I left the boys at home with Nick and went off to do our Christmas shopping. It was CRAZY out there. I hate shopping near the holidays. Afterward we came home and the kids and I cleaned up the house while Nick cooked. Then my parents came over for our special birthday dinner for my dad.

I love this next photo because my dad figured out that if you time it just right, it seems like you’re blowing out the light-up candles on this bag. He’d press the button, let the song play, then say “Blow them out!” and Greg would blow on the bag and the lights would stop. It was so cute!

Here’s a little preview of our winter décor (another post on that another day, I promise):

Monday was another day with A. It was, of course, raining, so we had to figure out some indoor things to do.

I was beginning to realize at this point that I was having an RA flare, so I convinced everyone to go to scouts all together in one car at one time that night instead of me coming up and bringing someone halfway through the evening and taking someone else home. It was so very nice not to drag myself out of the house again. Oh so nice. Incidentally, the kids got all their reading done this week. Haha. Evil mommy plan worked.

Tuesday I spent getting my stuff ready for gifting. I did all the purchasing and cutting for crafts I planned on gluing on Thursday. I did not take pictures of this process. Aren’t you surprised? Teehee. Afterwards I went to the library for volunteering and took a picture of my favorite literary tree:

Tuesday night was a joint performance between our school and one other’s 2nd & 3rd graders of a program called “Flakes.” Ben was sad he didn’t get a speaking part, but he’ll have other chances.

Ben before with friends (they were supposed to be dressed for cold weather):

Ben during (see why it’s a good thing I took a before picture – my camera couldn’t handle the lighting differences and distance):

Nick and Greg watching the program (I thought I took one of David and the friends we sat with during the program, but can no longer find that photo. I wonder if he deleted it. He was cranky that night.):

I was going to post a video of the program, but I’ll be honest here: you can’t see my Ben (or the kids next to him, for that matter) at all. The kid in front of him was a) taller than him and b) wearing a huge hat (which they’d said they wouldn’t let kids wear, but with 300 kids up there, no one was paying attention to that). It was ridiculous, but there’s nothing I could do about it. The program was cute enough, but you don’t want to spend 20 minutes watching a shaky video where you don’t see Ben, right? Right. Moving on.

Yesterday was another day with A. It was freezing cold, literally, as evidenced by this ice we found in the back yard flower pots:

We were supposed to go to the library again, but it was Circus Day and A. professed a fear of clowns, so we stayed home and played inside and sprayed ourselves with colored hairspray. And told each other silly secrets. That was important. And silly.

This morning we got up and, inspired by a friends pictures on facebook, made fancy pancakes.

We also made heart shaped ones and a reindeer. Ben helped me with a lot of the process: measuring, mixing, pouring batter into the pan, and keeping the already made pancakes warm while I made more.

And now I must run off and finish my gift crafting or no one will be getting presents for Christmas. 😉

Crafts

BabyCon 2011

One of my best friends is having a baby next month and I got to throw her a baby shower. I say “I” but really it was a committee planned event. Way back in August our sci-fi/fantasy group from college got together and had a “family” reunion. We were sitting around chatting about the forthcoming baby and the subject of a shower came up. “Oh, my friend S is throwing one” said the baby mama. A group of us looked at her in horror. “WHO?!” “My friend that I eat lunch with once a week.” None of us knew her, and no offense to her, if WE didn’t know her, then she would not be throwing OUR shower. And so the committee was formed. I was asked to wrangle the group, as we live all over the place and we all have loads of obligations, but I at least don’t have a paying daytime gig, so I got to be the wrangler. Whee!

So what do we sci-fi/fantasy/horror people do for fun? We go to Cons (conventions for you Mundanes). We decided that nothing would do better for our former Art Show Director than a mini-con baby shower. We spent days and weeks discussing what our con would have and this, my friends, is what we ended up with.

Our con had an Art Show, Dealers Room (the room with the giant gift table), Panels (about babies & child raising), Name Badges (random silliness), & Con Suite. I made themed signs to show guests what each room was for (what’s a con without room signs?).

Panels included: Naming Your Geek Baby, Steampunk Your Baby, and Name that Celebrity Baby.
We listed our favorite weird names (best name “Awesome Danger”) aloud during the Naming Your Geek Baby game. The people that got the most laughs from the GoH won. Winners of both that game and the Celebrity Baby game got to take home the frames from the celebrity game. We also spent quite a bit of time just talking about our baby & kid raising experiences. The Steampunk game was mostly just something to do while the other panels were going on. I’m going to make a little activity book out of the pieces of the steampunk game for the baby once he arrives.

Art Show had both an Amateur Track (art by me and my kids) and a Professional Track (art by our incredibly talented friend Kay). We were going to have a silent auction and even put out bid sheets, but ended up doing a live auction with Monopoly money. One of the kids that was there was really stiff competition. He got most of my art. He’s three. *sigh*

Con Suite had PB&J sushi rolls, several kinds of candy, cheese, crackers, Yoda Soda, and a giant Delta Psi Phi onesie cake & Converse booties.

Later, of course, there was time for gifts. Some of the favorites were ones I made: Baby’s First CosPlay Villain Mustache Pacifiers (idea from here)

and Baby’s First Con Shirt:

The Guest of Honor and her U.F.O. had a great time. “Thank you, everyone! I was not expecting a complete, elaborate con. That was amazing and SUCH fun!” 🙂

Books, Crafts

Kindle cover

I don’t think I posted about this, but I got a 2nd generation Kindle for my birthday, slightly used, but in great condition (and very inexpensive, as well). I’m so excited about it! I had books downloaded and was reading (and fending off children who wanted to borrow it) within an hour of getting it.

The only problem with it? No cover. Just the Kindle and the cord came in the mail. With three kids and my propensity to just shove things in my bag and move on, the poor Kindle doesn’t stand much of a chance in it’s nakedness.

The answer? Well, I made a cover. I started with a little bag a friend had made me years ago that just happened to be nearly the right size for the Kindle. I also had a couple flat pieces of styrofoam from one of David’s gifts, a piece of super-soft cashmere fleece leftover from baby blanket making(it was $20/yard, long story there), a bit of velcro leftover from another project, a lost button, and some ribbon off a gift. Total cost: $0 My favorite kind of project.

So after a bit of time with my handy-dandy scissors and some liquid stitch, here it is:

The inside:

The outside:

All laced up and ready to go:

I do have a “real” case on order from ebay…the kind that makes the Kindle feel like a book with a booklight attached. I’m sure it’ll be nice, but it won’t arrive for a week or more and this case is just sooo soft.

Around the House, Books, Computers and Internet, Crafts, Everywhere But Home, Family Time, Friend Time, Parenting, What I Love

Spring Break

This last week was our spring break from school. I’ve already told you about Monday and Tuesday, so I’ll start today’s story with Wednesday. We didn’t make any big plans for Wednesday, since that was the day that we were swapping out D for B at Nana & Pa’s house, but it turned out to be a big day anyway. My parents came up to town and told us that they’d decided not to make us wait for a month to get our new van (which is their old one), they were going to sign it over to us right now. 🙂 And so we began our day long journey to get the car retitled, re-registered, and in all ways made our own. We ended up visiting the registry twice, once with just me and my dad and once with both of us, my mom, and two of the kids as well. By the end of the day we’d gotten it done. G and I spent the rest of the afternoon emptying out our old van, then vacuuming it out, scrubbing it down inside and out, then cleaning all the windows we could reach, all so Nick could start driving it as soon as he came home. (D spent the afternoon catching up on three days worth of Animal Crossing.)

Thursday morning we visited with my parents a bit, then went home very quickly for D’s early playdate with his best friend C. They had a great time playing video games, riding bikes & skates, and wrestling on the trampoline.

While the kids were playing, I once again worked on some jewelry (a post on all of that coming soon). That afternoon my mom watched the kids so my dad and I could also go out and check out a netbook at Best Buy, which they did not have in stock, and to buy a camera, which they did have. We spent some time updating his regular laptop and getting it set up with the camera software and then learning the new cameras ways before going home for the evening.

B came home just before dinner, bearing sundaes from McDonald’s. My in-laws got a tour of the new van and all it’s shininess before they left.

Friday morning B’s friend A came over for a playdate. I made some more jewelry. They spent quite a bit of time playing the Wii, but we also had a picnic in the backyard, since the weather was beautiful for it. We experimented with playing baseball/tee ball in the yard.

After he went home, Nick and the kids and I went out to the bookstore to get the kids their celebration books for having great report cards (and we may have picked up a couple things for ourselves as well. maybe. possibly. what? we never ever do! Leviathon & Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld and Good Eats: the Middle Years.). D got the second Percy Jackson book, B got three Magic Treehouse books (#20, #21, and a research guide about Knights and Castles), and G got two Barbie books (one 3 Musketeers and one Fairies) and an audio book about the movie Toy Story. Then we headed out to tour the big new exciting store in town: our local markets version of Whole Foods.

It’s called “Fresh” and wow, was it packed with people. It’s a beautiful store, filled with lots of things our regular stores don’t carry: lots of organic, whole grain products and a huge array of cheeses, meats, and ready-to-eat foods (for which there is a balcony seating area outside).

We amazingly managed not to lose any children, nor to knock down any displays, though we did pick up a lot of stuff that was knocked down by the little old lady near us, as she had a large purse and was trying not to hit my kids with it, and since we were behind her in the herd (seriously, it was so packed that you pretty much followed the same people all through the store) we did the picking up. We eventually made it back home and Nick and the kids tidied up there while I went over to help my dad with his new netbook, which he’d picked up that morning. I did all my computer magic over the course of a couple hours and got him hooked up with all his software and file needs and headed back home to start reading my book. Bwahaha. Nick went over and spent the evening hanging out with my dad.

Saturday we hung out with my parents again in the morning before we left for church. The kids climbed ropes and played on the swings. Nick and D and Dad played chess. It was a good morning. We went to church, listened to our new pastor (who was a fabulous speaker, lots of discussion of Greek words, loved it), and then kids had snacks while my m-i-l and I practiced our duet on the big piano (which has keys that are very hard to press compared to my piano at home). We headed home, I changed clothes, and headed out for Girls Night Out. Nick and the kids stayed home and did whatever boys do when their mama is away (hung from the ceiling? shot themselves out into space in rockets? who knows! It was Boys Night In!). I had a lovely time with my lady friends and this time we managed to get a photo of all of us together (something we’ve never managed in the two years we’ve been meeting).

Came home and couldn’t sleep, as I am always excited after a night out, so I stayed up late finishing the book I was reading (the second Percy Jackson book; trying to keep up with D), never realizing that the clocks hadn’t already been set ahead for daylights savings time.

Yesterday we all got up unreasonably early. The day turned out to be one of those ones were everything goes wrong. G ran into my room yelling that D was throwing up from atop his bunk bed, B was asleep below, mercifully, or there’d have been extra mess. I got up, cleaned up the mess, got the boy into the bathroom, then looked at the clock: 5:45am. My husband, who was mysteriously in the kitchen and not at work (he’s been working a lot of overtime lately), hugged me and told me he’d reset all the clocks already so I didn’t have to. I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t since I had a snuggly, wiggly boy (G) in there with me. So we all got up, ate breakfast, then sat around reading until it was time to leave for the last basketball practice of the season. David and I stayed home because of his icky tummy. He played more Wii and I wandered here and there doing chores and trying to finish up another necklace. The laundry that I thought was clean was mysteriously dirty, the necklace that I “finished” I turned out to have left a bead out of.

After the other kids came back home, we tried to go to the zoo and got verbally assaulted by the director of said zoo for bringing in a check that wasn’t signed by me — it was a gift membership from my in-laws, which I had filled out paperwork for and brought in with me, but he refused to listen one word I said, no matter how polite I was. It was a disaster all around, so I decided to take my children elsewhere. We got to the frozen custard place and discovered that my two-for-one coupons had been left in the hallway when we were swapping stuff around between the vans earlier in the week, but by then I decided to just make the best of it and we paid full price. The custard was perfect and by the time I’d finished venting to my husband, my best friend, and finally to my mother-in-law (who is going up to talk to the zoo about their communication skills today) I was feeling much better. We had a movie night with the kids, watching an old Valerie Bertinelli movie about a robot dog, which they loved. The movie ran late, so the kids ran late getting into baths and storytime, so it was nearly 9:45pm before they went to bed. I made their lunches last night and set out clothes for them so they could sleep in this morning and it’s just now time to get them up so that’s the end of this post.

Around the House, Books, Crafts, Family Time, Lifelong learning, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy President’s Day

We’ve had quite a day here. My eldest son hit a golf ball with a baseball bat and it went straight through the kids bedroom window. The glass company said they’d be here in less than 2 hours, but it took many phone calls and 7 hours for them to get here. Delightful, really. I made a list of good things about all this in my head all day long, to counteract the screaming, hysterical woman in my head. Such fun.

So anyways, since it was President’s Day and I’m a theme-loving kind of gal, we had a whole day of fun planned.

First we played Animal Crossing. We like taking care of our little town and I think it’s good that this game teaches them to take care of the environment with the recycling center and to pull all the weeds and take care of planting all around and not just in their own little places. It’s fun!

Then, for second breakfast, we had what I like to call “The Color of Money Muffins” which were green muffins with multicolored sprinkles inside to mimic the dollars that Presidents adorn. They were chocolate orange flavored. Yumm.

The kids played outside, which is when the glass thing happened.

After cleaning up all the glass and moving around furniture and cleaning up all the toys we found under said furniture, we made George Washington-style hats to wear around the rest of the day and also made cherry trees out of craft paper and yet more of the little red pom-poms leftover from Christmas.

Another thing we did was a game called “Ask the Kids.” The first question: If you could be president for a day what would you do?
D: make some laws, like going green and saving animal habitats.
B: wanted to save the animals, too, by checking if they were okay. for people, he wanted to have floating chairs for all the elderly people, the kind that don’t have to be pushed by anyone and that float high enough that it would be easy for them to get in and out of cars easily.
G: didn’t want to be president. he wanted to be a robber and steal peoples clothes (?!?!?!) or, even BETTER, to be a Jedi and battle the droids.

The second question: What do you think the President of the USA does all day?
D: He stays in his office and works on paper and passes the laws.
B: WORK! He works all day!
G: I don’t know. Maybe he writes to his friends every day.

The third question: Why do we have a president?
D: So we can stay free from other countries. In the beginning people wanted George Washington to be King, but he said “No, I want to be President.”
B: He’s here so we don’t get robbed or anything. He makes laws to help us.
G: (ran off & had to be dragged back) Because someone needs to do some work.

The kids left for a while after all this to hang out with my parents while the glass man came…or didn’t come, as happened for several hours. I crawled around their room with a light, checking for glass in unexpected places (it was still everywhere, despite vacuuming, because we have Berber carpet in that room), and did laundry, and entertained B when he came back because the Lord of the Rings cartoon was too scary.

We were also going to make cherry tarts today, but since we didn’t make it to the grocery, that has to wait until tomorrow, I guess. For storytime tonight we read some of our President books: “Arthur Meets the President” by Marc Brown, “Stand Tall, Abe Lincoln” by Judith St. George & illustrated by Matt Faulkner, and “Sesame Street: I Want to be President” by Michaela Muntean and illustrated by Tom Brannon. We really recommend the Sesame Street one, as it explained the best what a president actually does. The Abe Lincoln one is really good, too, but we’re not done with it yet, as it’s a very long one. The Arthur one is mainly Arthur-ish, but still good.

Anyway, hope everyone else had a great President’s Day! 🙂

Crafts

A few crafty things

I haven’t been posting about the crafty things we’ve been doing around the house lately because there simply wasn’t time to post about them with the whole organizing thing going on. I say “we” because I usually manage to talk one of the boys into crafting with me.

Here’s our own little spin on the Valentine’s Subway Art that’s so popular right now:

Greg helped me stamp the extra bits and add the colorful tape.

Here we made some of those Apothecary Jar Candlesticks:

DSCN0833 — Apothecary Style Jar with springs of sparklies

This one has Valentine’s Bunting wrapped around it (we made that last year for a different candle holder, but it works better here)

DSCN0835 — Apothecary Style jar with Valentine Bunting that Ben helped me make last year

Here’s our Valentine’s Mobile (remade a bit from last years to work with the new light fixture):

DSCN0832 — Our "new" light fixture with a Valentine's Mobile from last year that the big kids helped make

Here’s the flower arrangement the big boy helped me make by mixing flowers we already had with some more of those fun sparkle sprigs (it’s beautiful to me because my eldest never wants to craft with me):

Flowers David helped me arrange & photograph

Speaking of flowers, Ben helped me make these little beauties (which hang above my computer):

We made these out of scraps of paper leftover from another project. His is the big red one, mine is the little lavender one

Last we have the Snowflake Valentine that Greg helped me cut out and then helped me stamp the background paper (silver, which is pretty in the house, but not so easy to photograph) for:

Greg learned about making snowflakes at the library and wanted to try making a snowflake heart! 🙂

Sorry about some of the bad photos today, guys. We managed to leave our battery charger somewhere and I haven’t been able to charge the good camera (and since I’d just charged it during Christmas I didn’t notice the charger was gone until now).

Edited to add: I linked this up to A Glimpse Inside’s Catch a Glimpse Link Party and to Polly Want A Crafter?: Link Party 18.

Crafts, My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing

ABFoL Organizing Challenge, Day 20

Day 20 was to organize our photos. Mine were mostly organized already, since I’m a scrapbooker. The other day I tackled the Drawer of Doom, which was the place that I put photos from events already scrapped. I re-integrated those back into the main storage units, but didn’t take photos of any of it.

Here’s where my digital photos live:

(I have my parents photos scanned in, so it goes back to the year they got married)

…and in each folder, it looks like this:

Here’s where my non-digital files live:

Inside

This is my Creative Memories storage box. I got it way back when I worked as a consultant. They don’t give you enough little white tabs per bin (only two and I need about 4). So I use my own labels. Could use some tidying up, I guess, but it’s fully functional the way it is and I”m the only one that uses it, so it’ll stay this way for now.

The other boxes look something like this inside. These are all mismatched boxes that I’ve painted purple so they match. I made tabs for all the months inside (this one is relatively empty because it was the year my first son was born and that year has been scrapped to death. In the back are all the negatives in their sleeves, all labeled according to event. The photo place I used back then labeled the back of each picture with it’s photo ID, so all I really have to do is look at that to find the right negative. A very nice system.

The big white box holds all my big wedding photos, the ones that aren’t in the wedding scrapbook. The little clear blue box holds the weird little negative boxes that some of my older film came trapped in. The negatives are still in there. I hope to one day soon have them all converted to digital so I can stop worrying about not being able to get those negatives out again. (That top purple striped box is empty currently. My middle son would like to use it for his scrapbooking box – he just learned to scrapbook last night at cub scouts and he’s all excited about it. I am, too!)

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