Chica Schmica

A few days ago the girls were *begging* to paint, but I just frankly wasn’t up for a big mess late in the day. So…I let them paint with water.

It was perfect. They painted their little hearts out all over the driveway and my car until they had their fill, then jumped around in the water puddle left by the spilled water bucket.

They were then able to move on to things like examining a spider (it’s small, but it’s there)…

and jumping off anything higher than two inches off the ground.

We’ve been spending alot of time outside as of late, so I’ll be sharing some of our outdoorsy fun with you in the coming days. See you soon!

If you’re anywhere else in the country and are thinking about coming down to Florida for a break from all the biting cold, don’t come this week! We’re getting ready to get hit with some VERY cold temps…reaching down into the 30s! Cold, indeed.

Now, on to the snowflakes!

The trick to painting a white snowflake is to paint the negative space so that snowflake comes out white. Very intuitive, for sure, but I only know this because I saw it someplace else first (if this looks familiar to you please let me know so that I can properly link).

I used watercolor paper and backed a foam snowflake with poster putty so that I wouldn’t have to worry about rippage when removing said snowflake.

This was such a great art project for the kids. For one thing it tied in very well with some of the winter books we’ve been reading. In addition, it’s one of those things that’s just really hard to screw up.

Both of them went at the paper with brushes and two shades of blue watercolor paint. I had to help get in to some of the crevices, but this was otherwise painted entirely by my two toddlers. And, maybe I’m just being a proud mama, but I think it turned out pretty darn good! 

Y’ all stay warm out there, ‘kay?

Wanted: A DIY t-shirt with an image in Santa’s likeness on it.

Solution: One upside-down handprint!

These shirts are so easy and so much fun to make. I traced the body with a pencil then filled in with fabric paint. For Santa, I stitched the face, but I could have just as easily used the same paint that I used to outline him. The outline was painted using a toothpick. And those cotton-ball-looking-thingies are different sized white pom-poms that you can pick up at any craft store…attached with hot glue.

To make Mr. Reindeer,  I used one foot and two hands.

For this guy’s extra parts, I went with buttons…also attached with hot glue. 

Now that the girls have some holiday threads we’re all set to go pick out our tree this weekend. I know. It’s almost Christmas and we’ll probably be taking it down in less than two weeks. But, it’s been in the 80s here all week and I’m determined to get into some Christmas spirit before the big day actually gets here! Actually, this isn’t the first time we’ve gotten our tree late. A few years ago we went out and picked up a tree on Christmas Eve…got a great deal on it, too!

Anybody else wait ’til the last minute to put their holiday decorations up?

Thank you all for your congratulations and ideas of things to do while in New York. There were some great suggestions that definitely came in handy.

We had a blast, hitting most of the points of interest that we had hoped to. The City is such a spectacle I was in awe during most of my visit.

I have never had so many different, delicious foods consecutively in all my life. Everywhere we ate was absolutely perfect. My two favorite places were B. Smith’s and Kashkaval.

I also found some artwork at the Met that I’d like to recreate in our playroom:

Something about the bold colors and mix of shapes and symbols just seems perfect for a kids’ playroom to me.

But, I’d have to say that this was the highlight of my trip:

Cory surprised me with the tickets the night before we left.

L.O.V.E.D it!

I could seriously gush all night about this show, but I really think you ought to just go out and buy the soundtrack. Listen to it. Dance to it. Find yourself in the characters. And sing as loud as you possibly can with it!  It really is an awesome show and if you ever get a chance to see it grab it!

We also saw Spamalot (starring Clay Aiken of all people). It was a good show, too. 

We spent most of our time enjoying ourselves and rarely broke out the camera. Or perhaps that had more to do with the 30 degree weather and the fact that we were freezing our little Floridian heinies off? Either way, we ended up simply taking in most of our experiences in New York rather than capturing them.

This was the first picture I took:

I’m using their camera and Cory is photographing me. Actually, I noticed these fellas taking pictures and eyeing me, so I offered a welcoming glance, expecting them to ask me to get a picture of them together. The next thing I knew I was having my picture taken with a complete stranger. It completely threw me off. I still offered to take their picture, though, and they seemed grateful. Such is life.

By the end of our trip I had only taken one photo…with somebody else’s camera. The pictures above were all taken by Cory. After all, it is his camera…I just hog it most of the time. I’m realizing this while we’re on our way back to the hotel to grab our luggage and head off to the airport.  So, about a block away from our hotel it’s finally hitting me that we’re leaving and I have yet to take any of my own photos of this fantastic city. At this point, I went ahead and grabbed the camera and snapped about 3 shots.

Frankly, they weren’t very good. I’m ok with this, though, because taking pictures is a new hobby of mine and I only expect about 10% of my pics to come out half-way decent.

Here is one from that set of 3.

There’s nothing spectacular about the shot…just a flashy corner on Broadway. But I love the colors, and for that I have to give credit where credit is due. Pioneer Woman has offered up some of her Photoshop actions for free and, by golly, these actions are the coolest things ever.

Just to give you an idea, here is the before (SOOC):

I used two actions, her Boost and the "Define and Sharpen" action from the first set. I was so blown away by the difference the first time I saw it. Mostly because I’m a lazy blogger and I ordinarily wouldn’t have even touched the SOOC shot. I tend to keep things the way they are if they are at least "good enough." But, since I only had a couple shots in my bag, I really wanted to make the most of them.  Anyways, these actions are tons of fun to play with so I wanted to share the links with anyone who is interested. Here is the link for the second set.

Enjoy!

I know that potato stamping is traditionally a child’s craft, but I’ve also seen some pretty impressive potato stamps out there. With that in mind, I thought that creating a potato stamp for some homemade Christmas cards could be a cheap resourceful and creatively satisfying project.

In case you can’t see it, this is supposed to a star shining over Baby Jesus. After carving it, I envisioned a stack of carefully stamped and thoughtfully composed Christmas cards that would be sent out to our family and closest friends. Upon stamping, however, it became obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. It came out looking terribly gloppy and, well let’s just say Baby Jesus wasn’t exactly looking his best.

What did I do wrong? First, I think I didn’t dry the potato enough before stamping. Second, I didn’t take any precautions to keep the paint on the just the image. I recently saw this video of Martha Stewart making skull potato stamps. In the video, she used a paint applicator which I think would have really helped to keep the print a little cleaner looking. I think my final mistake was not having really clean lines between Jesus and his cradle, so it really just looked like a big blob.

Take 2

My second attempt went much more smoothly. I used a real ink pad instead of paint and carved deep into the potato…probably a good 1/4 inch. I think that made all the difference in the world.

You can see how much cleaner the lines are on my second attempt:

especially when you look at the image.

Potato stamping, and stamping in general, has so many possibilities. I could definitely see myself getting into this more if I had the time to experiment with it in more depth.

If you ever find yourself with a potato in hand and a few moments to spare, go ahead and take a knife to it. It’s more fun than you might think. And, if you’ve read this post (as opposed to just looking at the pictures and moving on) then you should be all set to do it right the first time!

One of the things I love most about visiting other blogs is seeing what everyone else is doing. I find myself endlessly inspired by other people’s ideas. Lately I’ve been enjoying this blog…big surprise…she does crafts with her kids!

A couple weeks ago her girls made a Christmas tree out of their hands. It was very cute and my immediate thought was, “Me, too! Me, too!”  However, I seem to be accumulating alot of crafts made of paper, and I really wanted something that would last a little longer.  So, we used paint and those cheap, flat, canvas boards to make a handprint Christmas tree…using ALL of our hands!

We started with the big hands (my husband’s and mine):

Then added the girls’ hands:

We couldn’t get a picture of Charlotte making her handprint because it took both of us to get hers on there! Hers is the star at the top.

Now, I wish we had used the good canvas so it would be ready to hang…as soon as I get a frame for this keepsake it will go right on our wall!

We’ve been doing so much running around lately there hasn’t been much time for anything at home. I’ve had a few chances to peak over at The Crafty Crow and, my goodness, all of those Thanksgiving crafts are just making my head spin! Turkeys everywhere! So, with turkeys on the brain and straw painting on my never-ending list of things to do, we set forth to paint some turkeys!

I dropped the first small dollop of brown paint on the paper and demonstrated to Annabelle the proper straw-blowing technique. The hardest part for her in the beginning was not getting close enough with the straw.

I’ve had to hold off on doing this activity with her until I knew should could blow out through the straw and not suck in. As it turned out, she proved to me just how big of a girl she is getting to be. Not satisfied with simply picking out her own colors, she insisted on opening and pouring them herself. It blows my mind every time I see just how independent she can be.

I forgot to thin out our tempura paint, which made it a little harder to distribute the paint around, but I like the results. Although, it would be interesting to see how the turkey would come out with a runnier consistency. Let me know if you try it!

Added: I should have known better than to post something when I still had some lingering curiosity about it’s potential. So, I added some water to our paints and tried it again. Here are the results. I actually think I like this one better. I’m going to try it again with Annabelle and see how she does with it, but I wanted to go ahead and get this image up to show you the difference and let you decide which way you prefer.

Just to recap, all you do is drip some paint onto the paper, then point your straw at the paint and blow!