Tea and the Galactic Resistance.

One of my favorite things about having kids... 
Some days you open your teapot, and find this

I didn't have the heart to disturb them.

Long live the resistance. 

oolong and obi-wan,

-shawnacy

Rainbow City ... and a funny story.

Remember the Shoebox City project I made a big deal about a while back? ... yeah... so the project is done. And the fabulous lilla a has posted the results! It looks SPECTACULAR!

isn't that the coolest looking thing EVER?!  


... now here's why we're not in it. 


##1. This has maybe been the longest week of my life. ... My grandpa's passing (his obit is HERE, if you're interested), helping with the STAR testing at the kid's schools, and a few  other big things that have been occupying my mind and heart... time has been limited. 


We did try, however. 
Which leads us to reason


##2. Annika wanted to make a castle. So we got the shoebox out and were using egg cartons to make the bumpy parts on top of the castle walls (do those things have names?). We colored in some windows and a drawbridge and portcullis... and then Anni said it needed turrets... this is where things started to go south. 


I had the genius idea to use toilet paper tubes (sounds reasonable, right?) and top them with more egg carton pieces. So we cut things out and glued them all together. I set them on the table to dry and went about doing other things. Anni came up to me a while later and said they were dry and could she color on them... Go ahead! was my enthusiastic reply. i really needed to just get the thing done, so i left her to the task of decoration.... and when i walked in again about a half an hour later, this is what i found. 

... i wont bother telling you what this looks WAY too much like. 

And so, because i wasn't really gung-ho on sending the poor unsuspecting lilla a ... THIS kind of castle, and we didn't have time to make anything else... i laughed a lot, and then made the decision to opt out this time.

yeah.

...thanks for playing folks, hope all your attempts were smashing successes, and that you weren't too offended by our... unfortunately-shaped castle turret. 

Snicker and Snort,

-shawnacy

Something Pretty, Something Smart

How is it Friday already??
I'm stunned. And also happy. Friday nights are Family Nights here at the ranch, and I have some tricks up my sleeve... 


So, without any more ado, here's this week's picks, because every week should contain:

Something Pretty,

Something Smart,

Something to Do,

and A bit of Art.

... and maybe one or two things Just for Fun. 

Something Pretty:


## i really love paintings done over text. something about the dual forms of art coexisting so beautifully.... 
and these ones from Coco de Paris are a perfect example of how that's done. 

Something Smart:


## watch this wowwing video of the milky way.


The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

## Check this post from Black Eiffel for inspiration to read more classics. (and then spend some time walking through the rest of the blog.. its tip top) love the visuals.

Something to Do:


## loving these DIY Rope Bracelets from Honestly WTF, via Poppytalk. Aren't they the nifty-est! 

## and could someone please bring me one of these Five Minute Chocolate Mug Cakes... pleeeeeaaaaseeee!!??

can that be for real? five minutes? ... seems too good to be true.


A Bit of Art:


## Hop over and read this super-cute and sweet Book called Extraordinary by Sarah Mensinga. 

## and how about this art made out of STAPLES!! Yes, thank you. 

 

Just for Fun: 


## i'm not sure if i should thank my friend Tina, or shoot her for sending me here. Awkward family photos. i'm not even remotely kidding when i confess to you that i spent way too many minutes convulsed with laughter ... i nearly gave myself a concussion, when - in one badly timed convulsion - i hit my head on the corner of the desk... you might want to consider grabbing a helmet before you open the link... don't say i didn't warn you. 

you know you just real-life laughed. :)

Frolicking Ferrets,

-shawnacy

Grow Project - Project two

So I'm horrifically late doing this thanks to a missing USB chord, and all the family stuff... but, since i did it, i thought i might as well share. 


The Project this time was to make something and give it to someone else. Totally my favorite kind of project!


I was inspired by the awesome and fun things that are always going on at Color Me Katie. 




Like This One where she wrote tiny little notes and hung them all around the city. 

or This One which is one of my all time favorites, and reminds me of a super special and dear friend of mine. Plastic ducks in rain puddles!! How great is that! 

So, mine wasn't quite as clever as either of these, but here it is, regardless:

I made a little crochet heart, and wrote out a little poem of mine (since it was supposed to be something we made ourselves), and put everything inside a jar (we all know how i feel about jars) 

and left the jar in a park. 

Thanks for the inspiration, Sarah!

Magic carpets and Muffin men,

- shawnacy

Shoebox City Craft Exhibition- Call for Entries

The always inspiring Lilla A has another amazing craft exhibition coming up. 


If you haven't seen any of the others she's hosted, take a moment and check them out. They are stunning and so amazingly creative. 


How it works: She puts out a project and specifies some parameters for photos, and you send yours in and she makes it into an unbelievable photo/collage/exhibit.


Here is the Self-portrait Exhibit:

The Christmas Exhibition:

And the Birdhouse Project

Such a fun project and a way to encourage creativity and interconnectedness around the world!


This project is going to be a shoebox city. 


So head over to lilla a for the quick instructions, and then grab those extra shoe boxes you've been squirreling away for crafty purposes, and the paint and paper and get creative!

After you've entered, be sure to post here too, so we can see what everyone's houses look like.

Happy crafting!

City blocks and Skyscrapers,

-shawnacy

Boy Craft

Sometimes it can be difficult to get boys involved in (and excited about) crafting. Especially when we insist on making 'cute' things that involve glitter and stickers and fluffy bunnies. 
But once in a while, when things go right, there are times when they totally take the craft out of your hands and run amok with it. 


These are some of those times. 


I saw This Post a few weeks ago from Last Minute Mel (don't you LOVE that blog title!... maybe the degree of my love for it is proportional to the 'last-minute-ness' of my own life...sigh) and called the boys over to see how Mel's boys had made the COOLEST Lego ski resort. 


Here's a picture of thiers: 

And I was immediately kicked off the computer so the boys could have a chance to study the above handiwork. About an hour later they called me into the bedroom to see this:

Not quite as fancy, but entirely theirs. It stayed up for about two weeks. 

*********

Then there was the embroidery day. I had been working on improving my (aka acquiring any kind of) embroidery skills, for a while making easy little handkerchiefs  (see This Post), and was completely taken aback one day when the boys declared that they wanted to make some of their own. 

So we sat down and i showed them a few things, and said, go for it. 

They went. 

 This was the result. 

Max wanted his smack in the middle of the hanky, a wonky little happy face. 

I love it to pieces. 

And how cool (and ... well done) is Owen's robot guy. 

Great job.

*******

That one day during spring break when it rained and everyone was going nuts inside the house, I gave the boys a free pass to build a fort right in the middle of the living room. 

They built this.

I was pretty impressed. It was like a mini circus tent, strung up with pulleys and held up with chairs and tables and even stitched together a little bit so there wouldn't be any gaps in the ceiling. 

*******

And who could forget the day of the cups... 

If you missed it, Here's the Link. 

When Max gave us a run-down on how to build a super-cool rocket out of plastic cups,

and Owen built the largest cup-tower ever. 

It's so much fun being mom to some seriously creative boys. And I've learned that, while instruction and step-by-step crafting is good, there are also times when you just need to provide the materials and the occasional suggestion, and let them see what they can do. 

I'm always amazed and impressed. 

What have your kids made on their own that surprised you?

Slips and Snails,

-shawnacy

Family Dinners

So. We're still without a functional camera. (*snarl) 
But, as with so many things we can't do anything about, it looks like I'm just going to have to suck it up and make the most of what I have at hand.


And I've been intending to do this post for a while anyway.






Today's topic: Family Dinners.

which, at our house are actually something more like this:

As you may have gathered from reading one or two posts, we have quite a large family. Large and kind of insanely busy. But we do the very best we can to make dinner time a family event. I sometimes wonder if it's really all that important (especially when they race through their food and ask to be excused about 14 seconds after I'm finally able to sit down...), but time and time again, I've heard from them that dinner time is the best part of their day. And so... I keep it up. Even on those days when all I have time to do is re-heat some leftovers and slap a jug of milk on the table. 


Here are some of the tricks I've crammed up my sleeve to make it both manageable and fun:


## 1. Thoughtful Preparation. 
This does not by any means imply that every meal has to be a Thanksgiving kind of spread, complete with soup course and cut-glass bowls of olives. However, I have learned that a small amount of preparation goes a LONG way. I have made a habit (by sheer force of necessity) of planning out menus a week in advance. I write down the weekly meals on a cute little chalkboard thingy we have hanging in the kitchen, and keep to it... loosely. Switching tuesdays meal to saturday if it's a better fit, or if I'm simply NOT in the mood to roast a duck. (<--- something I have yet to try)

image

(this one is much cuter and fancier than ours) Mostly, it's for my benefit, to remind me WHY in the great big world I bought three packages of frozen spinach, and not one can of tomato sauce. 
Along with the menu preparation, I also have the kids help set the table, and if time allows, create some kind of fun centerpiece. It's hilarious sometimes, the things with which they choose to 'decorate' our table.


## 2. I usually have some topics of conversation picked out.

We run the orbit of the table first, always, to find out everyone's 'high point' of the day (I honestly never cease to be shocked at how often the kids say that 'right now' is the brightest part of their day), but I've found that, sometimes after that, if there isn't some kind of stimulating conversation to ground us all, things can easily crumble into 

'stop kicking me!' 

'I'm not!'

'yes you are, I can FEEL IT!'

... and etc. ad infinitum. 

so. to avoid such algonquin round-table fare, I usually have some kind of conversation game ready at hand. Sometimes we play round-robin story, where one person starts telling a tale, and then breaks off in the middle and the next person takes up the thread. Or any of those alphabet games that start, 'i'm going on a camping trip and i'm taking with me...' 
Lately, though, we've been on a pirate joke kick. This game started with the eye-rollingly pun-ful joke, 'Did you hear about the new pirate movie?... it's rated Arrrr.' (admit it, you just giggled a little.. and THEN rolled your eyes) But this game is super easy for little kids. They just think of any word that contains the phoneme 'ar' in it, and build their own joke around it. 
some good ones from our family this past week have been: 
'what is a pirate's favorite body part? ... his ARRRm'
and, from the slightly older kids: 'what is a pirate's favorite civil war cemetary? ... ARRlington.' 
It's good silly fun, and at least a few rungs above the endless bickering. 
There are tons of products out there that you can buy - like this table topics game - or make - here are some great ideas from rex and regina - to liven up (or maybe just focus) your dinnertime discussions. 

##3. Manners.
I am attempting to instill some primitive kind of politeness in my children. Using silverware, sitting rather than standing at the table, once in a while employing a napkin... to this end, we do a few different things to encourage rudimentary manners. First, those who have managed to get through dinner with a modicum of decency will receive a manners marble (which I talked about a little bit HERE). 

Sometimes, though the thought of a little blue marble just isn't enough to motivate. These are the days we pull out the pennies. I give each person at the table 5 pennies at the beginning of dinner. When they catch someone talking with their mouth full or eating with their fingers, the offender has to pony up one of his or her pennies, giving it to the one who caught them. At the end of dinner, they get to keep however many pennies they have remaining. 


## 4. And lastly, sometimes you gotta break the rules.
Dinner can't always be a thing of white napkins and polite observations about the weather (or pirates...) 
So every once in a while I'll mix it up, and throw everyone a crazy kind of curveball. Like the other day when we played this great little camp game. 
We have 7 people around our table, so I chose seven kitchen utensils - I mean the weird ones, no 'big spoon' business. We had the beaters from the mixer, a whisk, a garlic press, and a lemon squeezer among others. 
I laid out each utensil in the center of the table and had a set of dice ready to go. Each kid got a roll, and whatever number he landed on, that was the utensil he had to use to eat his dinner. (i got the leftover. It was a pair of BBQ tongs.)
It was a mess, and a hoot, and nobody's manners were going to win any awards, but it was a fun, memorable night. And sometimes, I think that's even more important. 




What about you? How do you survive dinnertime?
Whatever your solution, make family time something special tonight.

Violas and Veggies,

-shawnacy

Something Pretty, Something Smart

Because every week should contain:

Something Pretty,

Something Smart,

Something to Do,

And a Bit of Art.

... and also one or two things just for fun. 

So then, in no particular order, i give you:


Something Pretty:


## Download some Free Desktop Wallpapers from artist Willem Pirquin.
Choose from his selection of Alphabet Letters

or any of his other lovely designs.

## Get this Free Crochet Pattern for Dainty Little Doily Rings from All Free Crochet

Something Smart:


## For all you other bloggers out there, here's a great little post from Crafterminds about How to Use Stumble-Upon to boost business.




## Have you heard about Blarter? A genius idea from A Foothill Home Companion. 

## This Silly Comic has been making the rounds lately. It gets me every time. Yay for chemistry!!

Something to Do:


## How about making a little Moss Graffiti! This looks super awesome, and not-too-difficult.

I can think of a few dull-looking corners of the yard that could use a little graffiti sprucing-up.

## Aunt Peaches has a sweet tutorial up on how to make these amazing-looking Coffee filter flower baskets. These are beautiful!

A Bit of Art:

## Look at this amazing underwater sculpture installation. 

## Can you find the man in this picture?? Totally insane Invisible Man project. 

And Just for Fun:

## Annika saw this the other day and FLIPPED. As soon as I grab some Jelly Beans, we'll be all over this Jelly Bean Bracelet from My Kids Make. 

Happy Friday everyone.

Hornets and Hoola Hoops,

-shawnacy