Boo!

HI! I'm linkin up with eighteen25's linky party!!!








Halloween weeks' art project was a ghostly one! We read Georgie's Halloween and made a scary project to go with it....

The boys cut out trees free-hand and glued them to the black background. Then they drew little faces on white dried lima beans and glued them in the spooky tree. Then they added some falling leaves and a moon...

Jack's...he didn't want too many ghosts.

Noah's...he wanted lots of ghosts!

Bed Time!!

I've been denying it for a while now, but Sophia has outgrown her crib. She's climbed out of it several times, but the last straw was last night when I went to check on her before I went to bed and couldn't open the door to her room because she had fallen asleep in front of it! She's a busy kid and I've known that since she was a 6 month old fetus, so the crib kind of offered a sort of cage-like function...and this, I liked...a lot. But it's all over now.

This old iron bed I found at an antique store this summer and Dad kindly scraped and painted it for me. The quilts are really old too...they were made by my uncle's great-grandmother, 100 years old or so!! Anyway, I'm really loving the Shabby Chic thing right now, as you can see.


Here's the princess in her new shabbed-out bed...

Night-night, Sissy! Oh, another milestone...where does the time go?

Five Minutes Peace

I'm not sure why I do this, but in so many situations, I relate back to children's stories...probably because that's my main form of literature intake. But as I was sitting here thinking about how to relay to bloggerland about my challenging day, I was so vividly reminded of this book...Five Minutes Peace.

Mom read it to me when I was little...it's about one 'challenged' mother that only wants five minutes all to herself, which was precisely my problem today. Now in the story she's trying to get into a nice bath for five minutes and I was trying for a itty bitty cap nap to cure a headache, but needless to say...we didn't get it. After telling the boys to be quiet four times and being interrupted by the phone, I decided it was a lost cause. (and so did elephant mama) But here's my beef: are moms just invisible? Are we only here to serve our families, never to ask for anything in return? Don't get me wrong, I love to be a mom and I love taking care of my home and family, but sometimes we just need a little peace! It was one of those days...the ones where you run low on patience right around breakfast time. But I know to "not grow weary in doing good." Tomorrow will be a better day...as long as I can find Five Minutes Peace ;)

PS: I did get 5 minutes after they bebes were asleep, so I took some time for a little creative therapy, which I'll share with you tomorrow....:)

Nuts About Dye!

In September and October, we've been studying fruits and nuts for nature study. One of the things we did while studying them was making dye from walnuts. It was actually a really fun project! (We've been using a unit study from Shining Dawn Books. **pictured above**) Here's what we did to make it:

We started with a handful of black walnut shells... (thank you, Gina!)

Then the boys took turns taking whacks at them till they were pretty smashed...

then we had to put the shells in an old nylon and let it soak in a pot of water for three days. After the three days were up, we had to boil it for about an hour, then leave it overnight again...(yes, this was a time-consuming project :)


After all that, we soaked some pieces of fabric in the dye for several hours....
Here's how it turned out....nuts, isn't it!! :)

Corn Shock Update

It appears we're not the only ones enjoying the corn shocks!!

Thanks for inviting the furry friends, Dad!!

Wild Art

With the new "Wild Things" movie out and all the hype about it, we thought we'd jump on board. We've loved this book forever....I think they like it because there's a naughty little boy in it :)

Anyway, here's out weekly art project, little Wild Things and King Max. They may look scary, but they're just toilet paper tubes!

Jack's...yes, I helped with Max's face...Jack was burning out on art!

Noah's project....

Good job, boys...'I'll eat you up, I love you so.'

Our Time With Henri Rousseu

Our October artist was Henri Rousseau. He was really fun to study with the kids because his paintings are really bright and colorful. He painted lots of jungle animals, which the kids loved. We studied a different painting of his each week, then the boys tried their hands at their own Rousseau. They drew their own jungle animals and added lots of leaves...
Jack's (tiger on the left and giraffe on the right)

Noah's (tiger and a lost hunter!)

Indian Corn Art

Here's our art project for the week...super fun, super easy, super fall-y!

Start with fall colored paints and a light outline of a corn cob shape on some cardstock...

Have them use their sweet little fingers to make the kernels with the paint...

Use glue dots to stick on corn husks...Iguess you can buy these at craft stores, but we just ripped some off some Indian corn we had decorating the house.

Jack's Corn...

Noah's Corn


I'm linking up with eightteen25 today!!

Creative Ping Pongs

I really didn't have a whole lot of time to do this last night, but sometimes a girl just needs to be creative!! The boys just got their ping pong pics back and I felt like sharing them with family in a fun way, so here's what I came up with.....

I started with some manila "library book pockets" and "check-out cards." (by the way, I would have killed for these as a child, as I played library all the time and had to make my own cards...mom, why didn't you buy me these??!!) OK, what else?? Scraps of super cute school-themed paper and ribbon and string and such....
I covered bottom of the pockets with the paper and used ribbon and string to embellish. Then I matted the cards with scrap paper and added the picture to the card with the kids' info written on it.

Here's the finished product....I love to scrapbook, but I haven't done much of it lately. This just seemed like a quick project that wouldn't take the next 3 months and it sure did feel good to get that pent-up creative energy out!!

The Most Gigantical Pile of Leaves Ever!!!

Noah likes to use words like "gigantical" and phrases like "this is the best {insert noun} in the entire universe." So last Friday, (before it started snowing) he wanted to rake up the biggest, most gigantical piles of leaves ever!! So he set out to work in the yard for quite a while. He's the kid that would be out there raking forever and forget to ever jump in it, so I helped with that by bringing the other two kiddos to "help" him.

Jack helped Noah by somersaulting into the gigantic pile.....
...and Sophia thought she was helping by grabbing big handfuls of leaves and throwing them :)
Noah did end up making an awesomely gigantic pile of leaves that was enjoyed by all!

Cozy Kiddos

Why do I love to homeschool? Well, for lots of reasons...but today I loved it because we got to do school in front of a warm snuggly fire in the living room. It just seemed like the right place to do it today...with big fluffy snowflakes falling down outside. (way too early for snow, by the way!!)
Here's Sophia doing her "math facts!" Doesn't she look like she's concentrating??!! :)

A Day in the Forest

Despite the chilly weather yesterday, we took our yearly trip to Sica Hollow State Park for our usual time of romping around the forest. The leaves were gorgeous yesterday, even though we have had a hard frost. I thought we might have missed a lot of the leaves and color, but not so!

The kids love it here. They brought their binoculars this year and pretended they were explorers. With the trails and trees, I'm sure for a kid it's easy to make believe!

This was Sophia's first year she could run on the trails herself. Last year, I was toting her around in my Baby Bjorn. We've come every year for about the last 5 or 6, so we've brought our kids when they were very small. Jack's first time at Sica Hollow was when he was only 2 months old.

Explorers!

Oh yes, she was also an explorer!

We spotted him on our way back to the car. Jack and Noah weren't big fans, but Sophia would have taken him home if we'd have let her!

It was a great day! Sica Hollow is one of our favorite fall traditions.

Have a great day!