Christmas Tree 2012

The drama of finding a Christmas tree.

You must go out on the coldest day of the year.  (2 days after Thanksgiving)

 Drag the whole family through SEVERAL fields of trees, and across little bridges in valleys.

 Carry a little one on your back and try to keep him as warm as possible.

 Finally pick a few trees that will be "good enough"

 Make children stand next to the few trees we like to mark their spot se we can compare them.
Letting one child curl up on the ground under a tree in an attempt to stay warm.

 Then cut, drag, load, unload and finally DECORATE...

Not too bad in the end.

Just Because I'm cute

 

Princess' Native American Project

School projects get more challenging as the kids get older.  Princess had a Native American project before Thanksgiving and she had to do a long report on the Iriquois, and then build a long house with people. 

This is the project that taught her how to use spray paint and  a glue gun.  It was all made from stuff we had in the house. Leather, sticks, stones, paper, beads, PlayMobile people, paper bags, cardboard, felt, paint, markers and tape.  She got a good grade and loved her project.  FYI.. the people in the following picture are holding her version of a lacrosse stick. Apparently the Iriquios were the first to play lacrosse.

Craft Fail-Felt Christmas Tree

I usually like most of the stuff I create, but once in a while it just doesn't work out.  I saw a cute felt Christmas tree on Pinterest, but it didn't have a tutorial or any sort of directions, but I thought, I could easily make it on my own.

Well I made it, but it just didn't turn out like I planned.  My version just didn't have the right dimensions and didn't work out.  I saved it, but now I don't know what to do with it.  All the ornaments are felt pieces from an old toy. So I just had to add string to them.  It needs a star, but I still don't like it.  After all the time I spent on it I don't want to just trash it. 

Thanksgiving cuteness

Sometimes the kids programs at school are pretty boring, sometimes they are great.  The Thanksgiving program was great.  Munchkins was a cute Pilgrim and her preschool class sang.  Princess' class sang and Buddy's class recited a Bible verse.  Of course I didn't get good pictures, the only one of Princess is really blurry.   Buddy is not smiling in his picture, but he is the one with no hair 3rd from left.

 

 

 

New Year of 2013

It has been a busy end of 2012 and we got lots of things done and lots of stuff just didn't happen. For those that ususally get Christmas cards, I appologize.  Merry Christmas!!

Christmas cards were never even bought or mailed. Maybe we will attempt Valentines day cards.  I will slowly update the blog with our events, but it is really for me to remember and take some time to write down all the fun stuff we have been doing.

Be prepared for breaks again though. My blogging time is normally interrupted like just now by a little boy needing his diaper changed and a little girl wanting a snack.  Or little boys getting into tight spots like this one.

Archery

We (Daddy and I) have liked to shoot Archery for a while.  Daddy has had his own bow since he was 16.  We bought one for me about 9 years ago.  My dad gave us 2 old bows he had a few years ago and we love to shoot.

 The challenge we have had is finding a place to go shoot, there aren't a lot of ranges around.   We found one here and the whole family can go shoot outdoors, or in bad weather they even have an indoor range.  It is even pretty cheap for a membership to the club. 

Once again we can go on a fairly regular basis.  The kids even get involved. Buddy wants his own bow, arrows, quiver, finger guard and arm guard for Christmas.  Here he is using my bow.

 Daddy, Buddy and even Scout.

The girls shoot too, but for some reason I don't have a picture of that. Munchkin can't pull the bow on her own, so she requires a lot of help, but she is learning.

Cardboard box

I have had a cardboard box in my dining room for 3 weeks.  It is a house, drum, hiding spot, coloring page, and anything else your mind can imagine.   I love watching creativity and play.

Ice Skating

It feels like the kids haven't had any school this month.  They had 2 days off for teacher work days, the next week they had 3 days off due to a hurricane, the next week they had 2 days off for Parent teacher conferences and now they have one full week of school before Thanksgiving. It is a little crazy. 

I am working hard to keep them entertained.  Last week was ice skating.  The rink here opened already and I packed them up and took them on a Friday morning.  Friday mornings are typically dubbed "homeschool" days.  They open at 10 AM and when we went it was empty, Other than a few people who showed up and skated for about 30 minutes.  We had the rink to ourselves, plus the skate guard was bored and spent a lot of time helping my kids since I was rink-side with Scout. It was in the 50's so a great temperature to play outside. 

Off to the rink - it takes a long time for one parent to lace of 3 sets of skates and try to keep a toddler from running away.

 Snow pants keep you dry and are a little padding when you fall.

 They even had walkers for the little ones to practice.

 Then they fall.

 And stop moving.

 This one on the sidelines never stopped moving.

 Except to sit down and have a snack.

 Notice the skate guard helping Munchkin.  He was great.

Raking leaves

There is something about fall that makes my kids love to play in the piles of leaves.  Since Hurricane Sandy, we have lots of leaves.  There is only one tree on out lot, but the nighbors have lots more.  So we picked up 8 big bags one day and then 16 bags 2 days later. 

 

Too bad there are still more leaves that haven't fallen yet. 

Halloween 2012

Since I have posted here about 3 of the costumes, there is only one left.  Buddy decided to be a storm trooper.  He already had the helmet and My wonderful sister sent me the costume to go with it.  He had some problems seeing out of his helmet, so he took it off when he wasn't at a door. 

 The whole crew already to go get some candy!

 The crew of pumpkins we carved.

 The parent left home had the joy of sitting in the front yard with the fire handing out candy and roasting marshmallows.  It was a good night.

Princess Jelly Bean

Princess was looking at costumes with me on Pinterest.  Out of all the costumes, she picked a bag of Jelly beans.  By far one of the easiest costumes.  The biggest challenge was finding 5" balloons and then blowing them all up.  We spent a good portion of Halloween morning realizing the balloons we had were too small and then running to the store to get more balloons.

We reinforced the top and bottom of a large garbage bag with clear packing tape, cut some leg holes and then cut slits around the top to thread a ribbon.  Tied the ribbon over her shoulders and filled it with balloons.  She loved it but she had some challenges walking and was a little bit cold by the end of the night.  We did end up using clear tape to cinch up the sides so it wasn't so long.  Everyone loved her costume.

Cute little Red Dinosaur

I threw together a super quick costume for Scout on Halloween.  I think it took all of 20 minutes on Halloween afternoon.  I took the tail I made munchin here and then added some spikes to a a red hooded sweatshirt, inspired by this project here.  He was the cutest little dinosaur, though the kids liked to call him a dragon.  (Ignore the mess on the floor behind him, its just some shoes, a jacket, a bag of library books, a belt.....)

Even without the tail, you can't help but love a dinosaur with his blanket sucking his thumb.

His walk was awesome too, that little tail just wagged with every step.

Plus it was a great costume to wear while going trick or treating on Daddy's shoulders.

Quilt #9 Pineapple Table Runner

I think this is the favorite quilt I have made so far.  Even if it is not a typical quilt, but a table runner.  It has 6 paper pieced pineapples and a big expanse of red in the middle.  I actually quilted a pattern in that big expanse.

 It fits great on my new dining room table too.  Though I am not looking forward to the inevitable  food spills.

 My favorite part of this is the quilting.  I finally hand quilted something that has an actual pattern to it.  My stitches are not even, but I did something other than straight lines.  It challenged me.  Ignore the pulling around the binding, I have no idea how that happened, but I am not ripping it out to fix it. There is no such thing as a perfect quilt.

 I like it on the counter best, the light colored counter is a good contrast.

 This is the detail of the pineapples  and each one of those has 28 pieces, so it was a little bit of a challenge to put together.   The result is good though.