Yeah, I'll admit it...

We LOVE Angry Birds around here.  I mean, we really love it.  I haven't bought any merchandise or anything, but I will play.  A LOT!  And the girls love it too.  I don't mind them playing, but they will veg out in front of the computer forever if I'd let them.  Now I'm not a huge fan of them having tremendous amounts of screen time, so they don't get to play very much.  So, to satisfy their need for destroying questionably stable structures inhabited by pigs, I decided to make them a table top (or floor) version.  Actually, they started building their own Angry Birds games using blocks and dinosaurs and dollhouse people.  So, technically this was their idea.  I just spruced it up for them a little bit.  The pigs are just some little wooden balls that I had in our craft bin and the birds are rubber balls from the dollar store (they came three in a bag).  Total cost for this project?  $1 (plus tax) and about an hour total of painting.   I will post pictures of them playing when the sun comes up.  It's too dark in our house right now for my little point and shoot to get a good picture.  But they are playing happily, I assure you.

And completely off topic, I have been having trouble posting comments to my own blog (probably me doing something wrong), but I always want to respond when you all comment.  Know that I do read and appreciate whenever I get comments!

Bijou's Dinosaur Tea Party

Bijou is five years old today.  I know I say it every time a birthday rolls around, but I can hardly believe that she's five already!  She has had such a big year.  She learned to ride a two wheeler, tie her shoes, got glasses and learned to read.  So what better way to celebrate such a big year than to have cinnamon pancakes, scrambled eggs and hot chocolate for breakfast and then a dinosaur tea party? And that's just what we did.  The party is over and Bijou and her friends had a great time.  I'm tired and glad it's over.  Here are some lovely pictures for you to enjoy!

I made fossil shortbread cookies.  The cookies kind of puffed for some reason while they were baking, so the fossils weren't as defined as I would have liked.  I dusted them with a patina of cinnamon to make the edges stand out a little better.

Dinosaur birthday cake (white cake with raspberry lemon buttercream frosting) surrounded by chocolate rocks.

Thanks to our local Goodwill, we are now the proud owners of a bajillion tea cups.  I am sure they will be put to good use.

Dinosaur garland...

The entire spread.  There were cheese sandwiches, jam sandwiches, fossil cookies, chocolate rocks, peppermint tea, pink lemonade and birthday cake.  Oh and of course a multitude of prehistoric table dwellers.

The birthday girl.  We had a Cosby Show moment before getting dressed for her party.  Remember the episode where Rudy wants to wear the summer dress to the fall party and her mother wouldn't let her?  That was us this morning.  But just like the Cosby Show, it all worked out in the end and she looked perfectly cute in her sweater dress.

Last, but not least, I thought I would share the gift that I made for her.  She'd been bugging me forever to make her a wooden camera.  So I gathered a few blocks from her room, some other random wooden bits and some paint.  Voila, homemade camera.  Nothing like a present that doesn't cost me a dime.

More homemade Montessori

So, on occasion the little girls come spend the day with me at work.  They love visiting the school and getting to use the materials.  I try to watch and see what things they enjoy and figure out if I can recreate them at home for little or no money.  Last weekend I made a decanomial.  It's made from craft foam (cheap, $5, and easy to cut).  Ashni (who HATES math) said, as soon as a demonstrated it for her, "Oh, it like multiplication."  I think the universe must have opened up and rained down joy on me!!!  It's like this method is what she has needed (particularly for math) for the last couple of years. 

Tonight I made some insets for Zion and Bijou.  They both love the metal insets at the school, so I decided to make a set from mat board to have here at home.  I traced the set at work to use as templates and the knobs are just wooden beads that are hot glued on.  Total cost of this project $0.

Bijou loves the object boxes at work.  She likes being able to read the words and match them to their object.  I could not imagine having additional tiny objects in the house, so I printed some pictures of objects and labels for her match. 

I will be back...I promise

It seems that I have been put into some sort of communication bubble. My communication with anyone outside of my immediate four walls has become nil. I will regain the ability to communicate with the outside world soon. It feels like my connections to the outside world have gotten shakier and shakier over the last year, until is has faded away to nothing. But I promise I will be back.

For now, a tiny update. We are half way through our 3rd and 4th grade school year (WOO HOO). Next year I hope to be working, so that was add an entirely new dynamic to the whole home schooling thing. Jena is participating in a dance workshop this week. She will spend 8 hours a day immersed in dance. She has also asked to play soccer this year. Team sports are a new addition to our household. Ashni has decided that she wants to take Taikwondo and will hopefully be taking part in a theater workshop. All the girls are taking swim lessons again this summer. Jena is the only official swimmer, though. On the "making stuff" front, I took the little kids' cardboard playhouse that I made last summer and cut it down so that it can be assembled and disassembled in their room (pictures to be posted at a later date).

A Quick and Easy Kid's Gift

A friend of mine has a son who turned six over the weekend and she decided to throw him a little impromptu party at the playground. I, having had four daughters, have absolutely no idea what to get a six year old boy for his birthday. So, I figured I could probably whip something up on the fly before the party. Here's what I came up with.

It was super simple (and free) to make. I just used a Sharpie pen to draw the heads, noses and mouths onto white card stock. I laminated them with some clear contact paper that I had in the craft room. I also cut some mustaches from black craft foam. Then I stuck some magnets (the kind with adhesive on them) to the back of each facial feature (notice the big googly eyes, too). And Voila! Funny face refrigerator magnets! Just tape to head to the fridge and make as many silly faces as you want. Apparently he (and his brothers) are having a grand time making silly faces at home.

Finally...

So finally, I can post pictures! PICTURES!!! Yay. Okay, be prepared for picture overload while I chart the last few weeks. It always looks like we've done so much when I look back over the pictures, but it never seems like we get anything done day to day.

Anyway, Jena tended her first garden this spring/summer. I do NOT have a green thumb (or even pinkie), so this was pretty much all Jena. This is her last tomato of the summer. She really didn't have a huge tomato harvest (maybe 10 tomatoes), but she was very proud of them and they were pretty tasty.

Bijou started ballet this fall. She's very excited to be involved in the same thing as her sisters. She just looks so grown up in this picture.

I had the grand idea to make finger paint for the little girls. They had a really good time and they both know that now that food coloring will stain your hands (and face and clothes and patio...)

We discussed crystal formation for science and decided to grow some of our crystals. So we made a super saturated salt solution and dropped a piece of yarn into it. This was the crystal growth after a couple of weeks. The girls thought this was the greatest thing ever. They both kept big chucks of salt crystal (and every now and then pull them out to observe.)

Regular old table salt on the left and super-ginormous amazing salt crystals on the right. Pretty cool, huh?

Oh yeah, I mentioned in my last post about the girls having a lemonade stand a while back. They really enjoyed it. They made fresh squeezed lemonade (yes, REAL lemons) and sold cups for $.25. They made almost $15, which is big money in kid terms. We'll probably let them do it again next summer.

Jena, my crafty child, spent a weekend making clothes for her doll (which is now Ashni's doll since the purchase of Jena's new one). This was the very first dress that she made.

Notice the fancy buttons down the back and the fabulous hairstyle!

I had to have a gratuitous potty picture. I'm pretty proud of my little monkey and her potty training success. Look how happy she is!

We're studying the middle ages in history, so the girls designed their own coat of arms. They had to choose colors and symbols based on their meanings. They also learned what some of the lines and divisions mean.

Jena was invited to her first drop off birthday party. It's hard to believe how big she has become and how mature she is. She was so excited to get to hang out with her friends and not have any little sisters tagging along. Her little sisters on the other hand where not so thrilled.

I've probably mentioned Jena's love of unnecessarily complicated puzzles. She'd been working on the Empire State Building for weeks. She's finally put it all together. Now what are we supposed to do with it?
Zion, as cute as she is, does not seem to grow hair anywhere but down the center and on the left side of her head. Now if anyone can pull of that hairstyle, it's Zion, but I really couldn't do anything with it. So I decided to cut it off. This is the very first "first haircut" picture I have ever taken. It is also the first first haircut. I have to say that I didn't think that she could get any cuter...I was WRONG!

We made egg tempera paint for art. Just crushed, colored chalk and egg yolk. The chalk crushing was an experience and I think we all have great upper body strength now.

On the crafty front, I found this little doll cradle at Goodwill for $4 (actually it was marked $8, but when the lady heard me say that that was too much, she marked it down to $4!). It was cute, but a little to "country" for my taste. So I decided it needed a little make over.

A can of lime green spray paint and some leftover fabric and we have a much more appealing cradle. It works in their room very well.

My sister gave the girls a very cute Cat in the Hat clock when we visited this summer and the girls were very happy to have a clock in their room. Unfortunately the background on the clock was mostly black and the hands were black. We could never see what time it was. So I took it apart and replace the Cat in the Hat with a little color block pattern that I made with paint chips from the hardware store. I stamped the 12, 3, 6 and nine with some stamps a had on hand and the little pink jewels are some scrapbook accessories that the kids had. I spray painted the frame with the same green as the doll cradle. Next time I will remember to use the spray paint made specifically for plastic, because it's scratched already. Fortunately it's high on the wall, so it's barely noticeable.

Zion has an obsession with cell phones. She will swipe them as soon as you look away. I figured she must need her own, but letting her have an old, dead phone of ours didn't seem like a good idea. So i whipped up this one in about 30 minutes. It's just a piece of scrap wood (from a defunct Home Depot kids project) painted black. I cut a small picture from a magazine for the screen and used a couple of grey paint chips for the buttons. The OK button is one of those clear, bubble stickers for scrapbook pages. I covered the entire thing in Mod Podge to protect it from drool. Thirty minutes of my time, zero dollars and she has endless fun with it.

I try to come up with Halloween costumes for the girls that will work together, so this year they were the four seasons. Ashni was spring, Jena was summer, Bijou was winter and Zion was fall. Gotta love the dollar store and all of it dollary goodness because our costumes are ALWAYS created from dollar materials!

This is An! The girls took about 40 pictures of him the day we got him. They stop by and talk to him every now and then and Zion can be heard saying "Hi Fish!" several times a day.

Blue marker + unsupervised toddler = this.

I bought this bag for a dollar at Salvation Army. It's a very "me" bag (grey and wool), but it needed a little something...

...so I made this drawing from the picture of Zion on the toilet. At some point soon I will post pictures of how these two came together. Their meeting is now my favorite bag ever!