Archive | November 2011

Crafty Family Yet Again

With every day a crafty day we have been keeping busy, but Saturday was a SPECIAL crafting day for the boys and Ken. They went to the museum and art gallery for the drop in art program and made shapes out of Plasticine. Each of them left something for the group display, in fact, Zander left ALL of his. Makes me wish I had sent a camera with them, but I DO have a picture of the pieces that came home. We are waiting on them to dry and then some will go on the tree, some in gifts and some on dressers. 

Finished sculptures

Because the boys got to go out Trinity and I went to the store (when they got back) and got slurpees! She was a little put out that there was no pink but we managed. With a picture on the “picture bench” of course! It was around +5 (Celsius) Saturday too! So the sidewalks were a wee bit icy in patches.

Too cute

Today we got our run down on what is going on for the Sunday School Christmas pageant. This year is going to be rather simple and over by 2pm. We are having sandwiches and juice at noon and then once everyone is done eating heading upstairs to the sanctuary for a little talent show and THEN is the pageant. Gavin gets to be Joseph! The twins are doing a section of the verses… Ken is working with them on that one and the little ones get to be angels. It should be VERY cute and short! BUT I am looking forward to it. One of the superintendents stepped down from running the Sunday School very recently so it has been a scramble. After Echo is through her surgery I am looking forward to helping out more, but I do not want to commit too much and then have to cancel on a Sunday due to getting our date. We only get a 2 week notice! 

Emanuel and Trinity learning their part

That reminds me of some important and exciting mail we got this month – the geneticist has determined that Echo is negative on everything and simply is – of small stature! In other words, no syndromes, no ailments… just a bitty girl growing at her own speed! I cannot express my relief on that one! I am going to scan the paper and have multiple copies made up… this is the tail end of a 6+ month saga of trying to get through to the world that SOME babies are JUST LITTLE! 

Just little and just perfect

There is a curriculum sale at Currclick tomorrow. So be sure to check this link, there will be some freebies as well! 

Anyway… we had a family focused, crafty weekend and it was so much fun! So now I am hoping we can end November (and start December) with a continuing trend. I know I have no choice but to craft myself!  

Yup teeny tiny feet

A Bit of Everything Lately Run Down

The days absolutely fly by when you are far from finished on your crafting Christmas list I am afraid! BUT last night remedied a large portion of the time crunch problem – we had a Wrap-o-palooza at Kristen and Fydo’s to get a lovely chunk of my finished gifts out of the way! I am so happy we got what I had of the kids’ gifts and a few random others wrapped and set aside. I am so thankful for Kristen’s help AND that she let me take advantage of her massive roll of wrapping paper! I am still going to have to buy a roll myself for the rest of my presesnts but a much smaller amount than I originally needed and it will take a lot less time to get them done and out of the way! On top of that, Ken and Fydo got some gaming time and Echo got to be the center of attention at a friend’s house. We had He Chris to babysit and the big kids were asleep by the time we got home!

Echo "helping"

The two days before that we kept busy at home! One afternoon I cleared the blue table… washed everyone down, tied back Trinity’s hair and gave the kids sugar cookie dough, some flour and cookie cutters. A double batch of dough and I didn’t cut out a single cookie! They did brilliant and only a small amount of dough ended up on the floor (crumbs) and an equally small amount of flour ended up on the kids! 

Making cookies!

The next afternoon we painted our Model Magic ornaments. I have some of the Crayola glitter stuff you add to paint and gave each kid a brush, some paint and walked away! We didn’t do too badly. ALL the ornaments got painted, one shirt tossed (it had a hole in it already so the red paint just put the final nail in the coffin) and all 4 kids were rightfully proud of themselves. We had to leave them overnight to be sure the paint dried and add the final touch – a ribbon to hang them on a tree with. 

Painting

More sparkly than they look here

The twins and I battled it out BUT we finished our snowflake lapbooks… AND Gavin sat through (without crying) a re-write on a story he had misplaced. We printed off one of those sheets where there is a beginning part and then you wrote the rest. We got ours HERE

Lots of snowflake knowledge here!

I have been working on a duct tape present for a family member and made errors with a couple of my strips. I was able to salvage one for the project and the other got cut down and set aside. Emanuel claimed that one for a bracelet and I had to make Trinity her own out of the purple duct tape I have in the house. They are so proud of their new finery! All I did was fold the strip in half (lengthwise) to make it one inch and then put on velcro circles. Result – happy children for pennies! 

I have posted TWO owls to my Etsy store. Both Christmas themed and hopefully adorable to someone OTHER than me! I did a mini photo shoot in our Christmas tree for fun, of course, of both.

Christmas Owl

We have totally gotten into our Christmas themed stuff. There is a fun printouton Education.com to make little cards and envelopes. We went onto EnchantedLearning and printed off some Christmas themed early reader books and plan on hunting around for some Christmas themed math sheets. Gavin has excelled at moving up to adding two two digit numbers and dealing with results over 100. We have not broached subtracting with 100 yet but I don’t see that as being too far off. I have been told Education.com will have more Christmas themed sheets up presently but with Thanksgiving in the states being yesterday (a belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all) their focus was firmly on themed sheets for that event. 

Emanuel and some of his completed projects

Coloured cars

The focus of the boys is firmly on their remote control cars sadly. They each (the twins) sacrificed an extra week of allowance to get batteries for their cars. So now all they want to do is play with them. Not the quietest or CALMEST indoor entertainment AND they tend to sneak off when I am busy with one thinking I wouldn’t notice the inevitable car driving sounds…

Remote control cars

I have some lovely craft supplies send from a friend who was downsizing her crafting area this week! I am so blessed that other people have extras of what we need more of lately!

Thank You!

Zander also spent some time making a hand pupped to entertain Echo with! I had to help with the antlers but it was all his idea!

Rudolf

My kitchen table is officially a danger zone at this point. So much crafting supplies out and no chance to them going away any time soon. I am certain there is more I could share from the past few days but the combination of late night crafting, strong willed children and Christmas plans have completely turned my brain to mush!!! So off I go back to the crafting and hope that Trinity winds down and goes to sleep BEFORE midnight! 

Tree fairie

And Again…

Ok, lots to share… TOMORROW… but tonight – a picture! I a proud of this little owl (it is the mate of Echo’s Christmas present). He is made out of a child’s sock so is only 3 1/2 inches tall and on sale in my Etsy store HERE. I had to do a photo shoot… the tree and the owl worked so well together with the candle setting on my camera!! He is much more red than the picture and his inside on his wings a lovely dark green!!

Whoo Whoo