Campy

 When we lived here:

And looked like this:

 

 

We had this:

And used to do this:

And this:

With friends like these:

 

Then we went all corporate and suburban, put the tent in storage, and hunkered down into our 30's.  But this year, we said enough is enough.  It's time to go camping again.  

In September our church had a campout, so it was a perfect opportunity to update our gear - a family tent, a few more sleeping bags, an LED lantern.

 We still froze our butts off but it was a good first run.

A few weeks later we went car camping at a regional park about an hour away.  Ed scoffed it as not-real-camping but I asked him what he expects when he's a slave to The Man and can't take a day off work to go real camping.  We gotta take what we can get and really, the whole point (at least for me) is to give the kids memories.  And they don't care if we're in a regional park, not a national one.  We got pizza for dinner on the way down.

 It had a playground.

Poppy loved the headlamp...

 And sleeping in this, in this.

I loved staying cozy in my new sleeping bag and waking up to this canopy:

Ed loved making biscuits in the dutch oven, and hot chocolate on the camping stove:

And the kids, as we'd hoped, just loved it all:

Art Tuesday: Clothespin Dolls

 This project wasn't with our usual Art Tuesday friends, but I'm categorizing it under that anyway, because it was ADORABLE.  We got invited to a Friday afternoon tea party, and as if that wasn't cute enough, they had this craft for us to do after! 

If you genuinely want to do this, I will direct you to this tutorial on GoingSewCrazy.  And instead of repeating exactly what she says, I will just show you my pictures. 

You can get everything you need at a craft store like Michael's.  And note: there is absolutely NO SEWING involved.  For the dress you just cut a circle out of fabric, cut head and arm holes, and tie it around the middle with ribbon.

 

 

 

 

 

My girls played with them the rest of the afternoon and all weekend.  Nothing like making your own doll.

Art Tuesday: Monochromatic Collages

 I had this cool idea to have the kids cut monochromatic pictures out of magazines (all the same color), and have them glue them make a graded collage, ordering the pictures from lightest to darkest.  Turned out that concept was a bit advanced, but the cutting and gluing was totally popular.  And some of the kids have favorite colors so they stuck with them.

Black & White

Red (Ginger's)

Brown (mine) - I just went through my new King Arthur Flour catalog and cut out all shades of yummy.  I tried to grade mine - do you like it?

Monochromatic Collages

What you need:

Kid scissors
Glue or glue stick
Magazines
Posterboard, cardstock, or something sturdy for the background; we used scrapbook paper

What to do:

Have the kids choose one or two favorite colors and find pictures of that color in the magazines.  Cut them out.  Glue them to the background paper.  Optional: Put them in order from light to dark, or big to small.

Variations:

Collages are extremely versatile projects.  My girls love making collages of food pictures (since we have a lot of food mags at our house.)  If you have the pictures, you can do any theme or color.  Older kids love to cut out letters from their name and make their name lots of ways.  Or choose a letter or sound and find pictures that start with that letter.  Lots of fun to be had when making collages!

Breakfast, Lunch and Other Stuff

 I can't find the email now, but someone asked me to do a post about school lunches, so this is really a year-later follow-up to this post. 

Breakfast - The old chart lost its charm toward the spring, and we winged it (wung it?) through the summer.  But with fall returned the need to be efficient and predictable in the mornings, so here's our new breakfast chart, taped to the inside of the cupboard.  "Mom's Choice" is a nice new addition, so we can have cereal or whatever is kind of left over from the week, no complaining (in my dreamworld.) 

 

Lunch -Towards the end of last year we got Hazel making her own lunch.  She and I made this matrix as a guide and put it on the fridge - she packs one item from each category.  Sometimes we have other things she can take but this is a pretty good representation of stuff we usually have.  This year we went back to the matrix and it works well, but I found she was bringing home one, two, sometimes three items in her lunch uneaten.  She said they make the kids hurry so there isn't enough time to eat it all.  I suspect it's a combination of timing and chatting, knowing Hazel.  So we pared it down to three items - a protein, a veggie, a fruit, and only occasionally something sweet or snacky.  Ginger also takes lunch to preschool this year, two days a week, so she is learning to make her lunch as well.  By next year she'll be a trained expert.

 

Morning Routine - Hazel is a monumental dinker-around.  Space cadet, la-la land, whatever you call it, that's her.  This year we've added showering in the morning a few times a week to her routine, and we found that she takes so long to shower (play) and get dressed (play) that she is frantically rushed once she comes downstairs.  I take it back - Ed and I are frantically rushed yelling at her and riding her case to get ready on time.  She's too busy playing to feel frantic.  "D.Y.J." - Do Your Job - is heard many times each morning at our house.   So I finally made her a schedule, which she illustrated, and now instead of bombarding her with directives, "Hazel!  Have you brushed your teeth?  Where are your shoes?  Is your lunch in your backpack?"  We just redirect to the checklist and she is moving closer to morning independence.  And as with lunches, Ginger is getting trained at the same time. 

 

I like the idea of clean refrigerator facade.  But between the lunch matrix, morning checklist, and Wii charts, it is admittedly cluttered.  So what's one more item?  This is a card Hazel made for me on a...difficult day.  It melts my heart and, depending on the day, brings tears to my eyes, whenever I look at it. 

 And not to leave out Poppy, here is her favorite eating position.  The highchair strap isn't that good so sometimes I don't bother.  And this is what I get.  So I'm getting more diligent at buckling and tightening.

 

And hey, while I'm posting other pictures, here are the girls playing a game Saturday morning on the very computer I'm typing on right now.  I generally hog it, so getting a game is a special treat.  As you can see from the zombie expressions.

 

 

 

Art Tuesday: Messy Media

 Well for this Art Tuesday we definitely wore our old clothes, because it was messy, messy, but messy is so fun!  First we talked about "doodling", that it is drawing without a plan, just letting your hands and mind go.  We used gorgeous (but messy!) charcoal for this - dust was flying, but so was creativity!

 Next up was painting pots.  We got out acrylic paints and terra cotta pots and painted them with natural sponges.

 We came home with our creations, then after lunch Ginger and Poppy climbed into a big empty box with a case of crayons and happily colored for at least a half hour.  I know I've said it before, but Art Tuesdays truly are the BEST.