Tinfoil and Sharpies

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Kiddos are back in school after a wonderful break.  I was sad to see them go, but i’m thankful for all the memories that were made.  I’m a few days late in posting this, but better late than never right?  I love the Tournament of Roses Parade!  The floats are AMAZING, there is so much detail on each one!  One day I would love to actually see it in person…well if I was to be completely honest, I secretly dream of decorating one of the floats someday.  I can’t even imagine all the work that goes into each one.  I love listening to the announcers describe all the organic matter that is used to create each detailed float.

My magical Rose Bowl Parade morning viewing went like this… just me and 8 kiddos, a cup of coffee (OK maybe 2) and a mini trampoline with lots of cheering and giggling.  It might not be front row seats in Pasadena, but we had lots of fun.

Once the parade ended we decided to make art work inspired by all the colorful floats.  I have been wanting to revisit creating art from tin foil and sharpies for a while and this seem like as good of time as any.  We made wonderful Easter eggs using this same technique a few years ago, but that was before I started this blog so no pictures sorry.

We started by digging through the recycle bin for a cereal box.  This was the base for the kids art work.  The kiddos did a quick sketch of their design.  They were really eager to work with the glue gun, so they did not spend too much time sketching.  I encouraged the kiddos to keep their designs simple since they will be tracing over the sketch with hot glue.  We choose hot glue for this step since we were excited to finish the project and did not want to wait for white glue and string to dry.  Plus the kids are always excited to use the glue gun:)

Once everything has cooled, cover the cardboard in a sheet of tinfoil.  Gently burnish the tinfoil with the back end of a paint brush.  We found that even when the kiddos were being super careful some areas of the tinfoil got holes.  We repeated the process one more time with another layer of tinfoil.  No more holes!  Fold the raw edges to the back of the cardboard and color with sharpies.

Color all the indented areas with colored sharpie and trace the raised glue gun lines with a black sharpie.  The end results are stunning!  This type of art work is often called faux stained glass.

I love how they turned out!  Now I have a sweet little reminder of the Rose Bowl Parade that I can look at all year as I wait for next years parade.

A Year In Review

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Welcome to 2012!  I hope you had a relaxing holiday season.  We are eager to see what is in store for our family this year.  My head is spinning with fun new activities and things to try as a family.  However, I wanted to revisit some of our favorite memories of 2011.   We had such a fun year, and were blessed in so many ways.  I wanted to encourage the kiddos to be thankful and reflect on memories from the past year.  
So here is our favorite memories and blessings – in no particular order. 
  1. Making a Summer Bucket list, and completing so many fun activities.
  2. The girls got their ears pierce along with their Grandma and Auntie.  
  3. Making Peppermint Patties.  A Christmas baking tradition. 
  4. Sleeping under the tree as a family Christmas Eve.
  5. Having a Garage Sale with special friends.  
  6. Having a lemonade stand.
  7. Driving up to Canada to see Grandma and Grandpa.  The kiddos are great travelers.  We view it as 21 hours of captivated family time:)
  8. Going to a Vikings football game as a family.
  9. The kids got a Science Museum membership and loved exploring.  One of the favorite spots is the Omnitheater
  10. Eating new foods.
  11. Going to the cabin.
  12. Having our baby chicks live in our dining room.  
  13. Moving the chickens to the amazing coop my hubby built.
  14. We were SO excited to gather our first egg.  
  15. Loosing teeth (all kiddos lost teeth this year, including Annika’s first tooth)
  16. Tubing behind the boat with friends 
  17. Finding out my brother and sister-in-law are going to have a baby.  
  18. Going to Glacier National Park.
  19. Bree is enjoying learning how to sew.
  20. Annika going to Kindergarten.  This is the first year all my kiddos have been in school together.
  21. Finding baby mice in the sandbox.  (Not my highlight, but the kiddos loved it!)
  22. Kaleb loved going to Yo-yo lab, and learning new tricks.
  23. Both girls enjoyed dance class.  
  24. Bree was in her first dance competition.
  25. Kaleb played tackle football for the first time.
  26. Making new friends.
  27. Play dates.
  28. Birthday Parties.
  29. Going Ice Fishing and skating.
  30. Skiing for the kids first time.
  31. Riding horses.
  32. Creating this blog.
  33. Playing Just Dance on the WII.
  34. Having an Anne of Green Gables marathon at the cabin.
  35. Building gingerbread houses.
  36. Playing with paper mache clay.
  37. Tea parties.
  38. Carrot cake pancake sandwiches at the beach.
  39. Flying Kites
  40. Rock climbing
  41. Medieval Feast.
  42. Playing croquet with Auntie Laurie.
  43. Being in the Holidazzle Parade.
  44. Winning a Halloween costume contest.
  45. Picking crab apples.
  46. Going to swimming lessons.
  47. Rotten apple baseball.
  48. Special friends visiting from out of county.
  49. Watching fireworks.
  50. Taking the chickens on a vacation to the cabin
  51. State fair.
  52. Wet and Wild days.
  53. Valley Fair rides.
  54. Paints flags on our toes.
  55. Kaleb learned how to mow the law.
  56. Painting and refurbishing furniture.
  57. Bloomington and New Hope free days.
  58. Easter party with friends.
  59. Sledding and playing in the snow.
  60. Making snow ice cream.

The list could keep just keep growing.  It was so fun hearing what the kids thought was fun and an important memory for them.  I loved listening to them remember what funny things happened or exciting moments we shared.  Love it!

Top 10 Activities of 2011

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This is my first year blogging and I have really enjoyed sharing our family adventures with you.  Since we are about to begin a new year, I thought I would share the top 10 activities of 2011.  If you are interested reading the whole post, just click on the link and that will take you to the original post.

 

 Dancing Oobleck – This was an AMAZING experiment!  If you have not seen the video, you definitely should check it out!

Dancing Oobleck

 

Ivory Soap Experiment – This was one of the kids favorite experiments.  I lost count of how many bars of soap that we exploded.

Ivory soap experiment

 

Fluffy Bathtub Paint – This is the perfect activity to use up all the exploded Ivory soap bars.

Fluffy bathtub Paint

 

Pour Painting – This fun painting was inspired from Holton Rower’s Tall Paintings.  It was fun tipping and swirling all the colors.

Pour Painting

 

Marble Painting – A mess free painting way to paint with your little one.  You can find more examples of marble painting here.

Marble Painting

 

Raised Salt Painting – Glue, salt and water colors are used to create a fun painting.

Raised Salt Painting

 

Shamrock Crystals – Borax Crystals are are so easy to make and look so pretty sparkling in the sun.  You can also find more examples of crystals we made here, and here.

Shamrock Crystals

 

Watercolor Crayon Shavings – A fun new twist on Crayon Shaving art.

Watercolor Crayon Shavings

 

Road Trip Bingo – I created a printable set of Bingo cards to help make those long car trips more exciting.

Road Trip Bingo

 

Microwave Puffy Paint – An easy paint recipe that becomes puffy when microwaved.

Microwave Puffy Paint

Thanks so much for sharing a wonderful year of adventures and learning with our family.

Christmas Morning

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We had a wonderful Christmas, a very enjoyable lazy Boxing Day and a great beginning to the kids Christmas break .  I love having the kiddos home from school and a break from our regular routine.  I thought I would give a quick post about 2 of our families favorite Christmas morning traditions before all the trees are packed away until next year.

Christmas Eve our tradition is to sleep under the tree as a family.  The kiddos are wonderful at talking Chuck into almost anything.  Something that I love about my hubby.   I know sleeping under the tree is not on the top of Chuck’s list, actually I’m not sure it is on his list at all.  But every year he drags down the mats with out complaint to snuggle under the tree with the kiddos.  I love that!  I’m a sucker for tradition too.  If it were up to me, the 2 of us would probably be still sleeping under the tree long after the kiddos are all grown.  We will have to see if I’m as good of a sweet talker as the kids are:)

 

I was sure all the kiddos would be up super early giggling and waiting to open the gifts.  However, they were complete sleepy heads and we ended up waking them up at 9:00!  What kiddos sleep that long Christmas morning, especially under the tree.  I’m not complaining, it was a beautiful Christmas gift!

When I was growing up we always had the same breakfast Christmas morning…Honeycomb cereal and fresh cinnamon buns.  It makes me smile even as I’m writing it.  Sugar cereals were not a regular part of our breakfast table, so it was super special to unwrap a box of sugary sweet Honeycomb cereal.  I’m not really sure where the tradition started, but I love it!

I love that my kiddos ask for this is breakfast as well.  However, this year we made a sugary change to the tradition.  Instead of the traditional one box of Honeycomb, I turned everyone loose in the cereal isle and let them each choose their own box of cereal.  Since we don’t eat sugar cereal normally, the kiddos could not be happier.  Kaleb loves tradition and choose Honeycomb, Bree was drawn to the colorful Fruity Pebbles and sweet Annika picked the mini boxes with 8 different flavors.  In case you were questioning the odd placement of the dining room table, it was moved here to make room for everyone to snuggle under the tree:)

After the sugar high from all the sweet cereal and warm cinnamon buns, we turned the kiddos loose on the presents.  I love Christmas morning and all the fun traditions that surround it!  What is your favorite Christmas tradition?

Merry Christmas – Willow Tree Nativity

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Willow Tree Nativity

I love my Willow Tree Nativity.  My mother-in-law started giving me pieces a few years ago for Christmas.  Thanks Suzanne for this special gift!  It is the perfect size and matches perfectly with the rest of my Christmas decor.

I have really enjoyed sharing all that makes Christmas special to our family over the last few weeks.  Hope your family has a wonderful Christmas!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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