Valentines

These come with a little kaleidoscope (like the kind in the party favor section at the party store)

Jimmy thinks they are creepy - with more contemplation we decided that a lot of Valentine messages border on creepy.
I think they are cute :)

*C wrote her name on them all and glued the eyes on and picked out what color kaleidoscope each child in her class should get.*

Fabric and Paper and Pizza- Oh My!

Today Mother Nature was featuring winter, giving us one of the coldest days we've had for a while... but still not cold enough to allow our plans of sled riding to come to pass. :( So we spent the day crafting... We started with a trip to Staples to print Claire's Valentines (more on those later maybe) but they couldn't print the 6 pages today so we'll have to come back tomorrow and pick them up and finish them Monday.
Then we went home and broke out the sewing machine to complete this little project:

T-shirt Dolls

A delightful way to use up your used up Tshirts. Simply cut out a doll shape (letting C draw hers first made it even more fun). Sew around the edges. Turn it and color with fabric markers (crayola makes some that are washable till they are heat set). Then cut up the rest of the shirt you didn't use and stuff it inside the doll to fill her out.

N's on the Left- C's on the Right
TA-DA!

After that project wrapped up we cleaned the table and moved on to paper craft - VALENTINES! Claire practiced her penmanship and Nick refined his fine motor skills while we enjoyed making some lovely valentines that will ship out tomorrow for destinations all over the country, and possibly some international ones if we can find the addresses we need.

Then we made green pizza to round out the 'Most Perfect Day EVER!' ~C :)

Tomorrow is just as full of fun and we aren't even there yet. What's on your to do list this weekend?

Battle

This is what happen when I clean my kitchen. I find the makings of swords... and who can resist that?

Triumph!

Halloween

I really got into Halloween this year. I made themed food for Claire's lunch and adorable favors for her class party. I decorated with light up spiders in the window and a TON of jack-o-lanterns out front. I bought my Halloween candy a month ahead of time (and didn't eat ANY before today). I am counting Halloween a success. We still have to go trick or treating with friends tonight but how could that go wrong?

Oh that's right SNOW!? It's supposed to be all gone but it really made me think about winterizing our costumes... I'm not sure if it would have been possible.

So we'll put on our costumes and hit the streets tonight; have your candy ready!

Happy Halloween!

Pre-Halloween

This weekend we were celebrating pre-Halloween and all that is fall. We went to the farm with Grandma Mary, Jen and Joe. And paid out the nose to pet some animals (sheep, guinea pigs, llamas, chickens, bunnies and turtles). We also rode a hay ride and jumped on some hay bales. And the highlight as always was the chickens who ate half a chocolate chip cookie and a few blades of grass and were very chatty with the kids. Fun was had by all. :)

We carved pumpkins- ok I carved and the kids put together faces for the pumpkins... They are still doing it (6 hours later). I just printed out some simple jack-o-lantern patterns and then cut out the different elements and the kids could rearrange to their hearts content. They used eyebrows as facial hair, eyes as noses and one even sported a smiley hat. Then we chose the favorite faces and carved them into the cleaned out pumpkins. Claire even got into the action and stuck her hand IN a pumpkin this year!!

All in all not a bad weekend-before-the-holiday...

E is for..

Elephant!

and no Elephant is complete without a handbag to carry her peanuts.
(This elephant's name is Uncle Alex) :)

I'm really having a ton of fun with these letter animals, and Claire has been playing with them for way longer than I would have thought construction paper animals would last in this house. If I'd known I may have made them from fun foam.

D is for

Daddy and Dinosaur: Jim took some time on his day off to do the Letter of the Day with Claire. It just happened to be D like daddy. They made dinosaurs out of the letter and then played with them for quite some time while I made dinner. It was really sweet to get to listen in on their play from the kitchen. My kids are super lucky to have such a great Daddy.

Dinner: Dinner tonight was stirfry? - any vegetable that was in my crisper with some soy sauce and ginger over rice.

More Productive Procrastination

To everyone outside my world this may seem productive. But really my sink is full of breakfast and lunch dishes and if I'm totally honest there may be some dinner dishes from yesterday there too. My laundry while somewhat under control is in need of some folding. And my floors, well the hardwood that I swear I remember we have somewhere under all the mess need mopping. But -

The frames are on the wall!

There is an extra frame, *thanks for the suggestion/advice Aunt Minnie.
They are NOT above the dining table since Jim saw the previous post and went 'you are gonna put them there? Really?'
They are not level.. I know this, but I did not have time (ha ha ha) to level them. Another day perhaps.
There are some empty frames because we want to leave room for some inspiration.
(the bird-looking thing on the left is a pigeon in case you were wondering)

Salt Dough Ornaments

We made ornaments for on our tree, ones that weren't collectible, ones that weren't very breakable, ones that if they didn't last to see next year we didn't really care. We made them out of salt dough. (recipe here)  We mixed them up, rolled them flat and cut them out.

 The recipe said you could speed the hardening process by 'baking' them at 200 degrees for about 20 min. Ours 'baked' for about 2 1/2 hours, then sat out all night and were still not really hard the whole way through the next day... I wonder what we did wrong?

 

Regardless of their soft middles we painted them the next day... 

ok - Nick ate one. (pre-paint) I didn't think he'd like it.

He ate the whole thing.

Jesus Shines

Jesus Shines night and day to show us the way.

"...And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was." Matthew 2:9b

Please continue to remember that Jesus goes before you, preparing the way and knows what there is to come. He will never take you down a road you couldn't handle.