Pepper Paints

Selling, Donating, Swapping and Shopping (a sad but true statement about my life!)

Well the garage sale is now just a memory! Saturday it rained until early afternoon. As soon as the skies cleared I ran outside to set up, when RockToWindAStringAround showed up to shop but ended up shuffling my goods from the living room floor to the front door step so I could feed the hungry shoppers! Sadly most of the goodies she eyed drove away with a starved shopper who left the buffet overstuffed and with a dogie bag!!! Thank goodness that guy bought as much as he did because about 1 hour later the skies opened up once more. So we tried again today and ended up selling a good bit of stuff. My pockets are full and my house clutter a bit lighter. We took all the leftovers to the thrift store drop box immediately after the sale so all’s well that ends well!! Here is the sun setting through the wet palstic tarps that were covering our treasures.

But because I am such a pack rat I got up at O too early hundred hour to shop at a Swap. We scored a Video Now player complete with a Sponge Bob movie! A bit of yarn, a couple of vases, some art books and a nice set of wooden bowls for our nature table. I love stuff!! Especially free stuff!!

After the sale was all cleaned up we were able to grant Ginger’s earlier this week wish for a bike ride. She is now big enough for the tandem and is loving it! While out in the park we saw a group of people dressing up and playing instruments. They were definitely a photo op!! After retrieving our cameras Molly and I combed the park looking for them but didn’t catch up with them until they were packed up and headed to their cars. But a few of them were nice enough to pose for a sorry old lady for a couple of shots.

Molly and I continued to trek around and take lots of photos.

And roll down hills!!

This is Birthday week at our house. Both Jake and Ginger have special days that are fast approaching. Must shop soon!!! Ugg, it’s a vicious cycle!

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Posted on May 5th, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Music, Outside, photography | 4 Comments »

Pretty Papers

As I worked furiously today I sent the girls outside to Marbleize some paper. I have not tried to to this with paint, but this chalk method works well, and is really easy.

Materials you will need: Colored chalks, the brighter the better, craft stick or 2, white paper that does not have a shiny surface-we used construction paper, wash tub or tubbie big enough to comfortably fit the paper (or cut paper in half).

Fill tub 2 to 3 inches with water. Scrape chalk with craft stick so that the chalk dust falls onto the surface of the water.

Try not to shake tubbie, the dust may sink. After scraping several colors, gently lay paper onto water surface and gently swirl the paper so that it stays on the surface.

Gently peel paper out of the water. You may want to weight edges as the wet paper tends to curl as it dries.

Molly actually made a book out of all her pretty papers! If you drop the chalk into the water wait until you swirl your paper before you dive in after it. And you may want to spray your pages with hairspray to keep the chalk from rubbing off. I didn’t have any so we skipped this part. Warning–this is sort of an addicting activity. The combinations are endless!

Now as far as the cleaning and the pending garage sale…….

It better not rain all day as this pile doubled in size after this photo was taken!!!

Clean dinning room and fresh picked flowers!! Can’t show pictures of the rest of the house yet!

This is going to be our new nature table. I will be taking some ideas from A CHILD’S SEASONAL TREASUREY and THE NATURE CORNER.

And a few photos from our trip to the skate park

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Posted on May 3rd, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Activities, Crafts, photography | 5 Comments »

How About a Quickie?!

Just a quick update: The garage sale pile is growing!! I am decluttering and cleaning like a mad woman-well at least as productive as I can be while keeping up with the laundry, dishes, the weekly activities, a morning walk for my sanity, the meals and fires that seem to erupt with 3 kids that just want to make messes!

Molly’s art class worked with real egg tempra this week-yolk separated by hand and laid on paper towels, then mixed with safe pigments and a linseed oil mixture. Oh the smell-brought me back to art school! Painted on 300lb weight watercolor paper.

They compared the egg tempra with acrylics on a gesso board. All agreed the acrylics were easier to work with.

I did manage to take some photos this week while out walking.

And I managed to catch this Baltimore Oriole

Today is promising blue skies and 70 degrees. We are off to a skate park for the afternoon. I will need to kick this into high gear tonight and tomorrow if I want to sort through the basement of toys and storage by garage sale time!! Hopefully clear skies for Saturday.

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Posted on May 1st, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Paint, photography | 4 Comments »

Building, Blocks

OK, pulling these out of my archives!! As this is cleaning my house week. Jake took these pictures a few years ago after he built this.

When Jake was younger he spent a good part of his day building. We had and still have many types of blocks. The large cardboard bricks-which are great for younger kids. They are light weight and you can build pretty large structures and knock them down with out too much noise or pain! I highly recommend a set or two of these-in this case more really is better! Or if you are like my in-laws and use lots of kleenex, you can use empty kleenex boxes! Or cereal boxes covered in contact paper.

We also have many wooden blocks. Now if you have the money or you have rich relatives these are wonderful!! We have a large assortment of non splintering hard wood blocks. I can’t remember where we bought ours, maybe a school catalouge. Again more is better, more shapes, more sizes even better!!

Adding props to block play is a great addition. Here Jake used army guys, but the possibilities are endless.

Adding smaller blocks, or colored blocks, “guys”,animals, cars, signs, shredded paper, popcorn….You get it, just about any thing will enhance block play. Imaginations will run wild turning rocks into animals or the structure becomes a quarry.

We also have an enormous amount of legos, K-nex, tinker toys, lincoln logs, magz and I am sure several others.

Two books I recommend are THE BLOCK BOOK by Elisabeth S. Hirsch and by far my favorite book Steven Caney’s ULTIMATE BUILDING BOOK. This is a great addition to any home library. Tons of building ideas using all kinds of stuff you already have around the house; newspaper, toothpicks…Great for some summer activities.

One more thing-sometimes kids want to save their structures and it may not be possible; clean up time or some other reason. We have a binder with plastic sleeves that holds photos of the my kids creations with a few words jotted down about the structure. A good way to document and revisit their work too. Sometimes they try to rebuild or add on to the idea.

And this is for my husband-virtual flowers and a new car, because he ordered me a new laundry umbrella, (because ours snapped), and he finished installing a new faucet and reverse osmosis water system for us last night! Thanks husband!

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Posted on April 29th, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: 3-D, Activities, Sculpture | 4 Comments »

Rock On

Sorry again for the lack of updating. I feel like I am running in place lately. So much to do, so little time. I am planing to do a huge Spring cleaning this week with a garage sale planned for Saturday as motivation to clear this place out. So this weeks posts may be unexciting as well, but you never know. I am sure my creative kids will come up with a few ideas on their own. Which I am really looking to as the weather warms.

Throwing them in the back yard with odds and ends of junk and paint is really a favorite activity. Wet sand and body art, making forts and loads of pretend play. Once my house is clean I can focus on other things!!

I sort of work like that. I do best when I can put all my energy to one place-this week it will be cleaning and decluttering. Next will be gardening and then on to summer activities!! I can only be good at one thing at at time. Be it cooking, cleaning, researching something. My son is just like me. I try to remember that when I think he is having as educational dry spell. He will always find his way to a focus. Although the older he gets the lull in between is longer and longer. Nerve racking!! But that is another long post.

Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words on showing my photos but it didn’t happen. I arrived at the barren space with 20 minutes to hang my stuff. Looking around at the empty walls I assumed the show was canceled. After checking with several tenants the sad truth was confirmed-No SPARK this month. Well I am ready for next month or June. I also talked to Renee at the gallery where Molly has her class and I am going to put some stuff there. I am glad to have some finished pieces. I am usually running at the last minute as I was Sturday but now I am ahead!

Ginger spent some time rockin’ out yesterday. I would like to say she was singing something classic but I am sure it was Hannah Montanna .

I had plans to do the watercolor tutorial from Camp Creek last week. I bought some watercolors in the tube as well as a multi-color tray from Marc’s last week-($2.48!!). The girls found them and tried them out yesterday.

And Yes the photo from the last post was a train and Railroad crossing. I really wanted to get out of the car to shoot it but my girls were freaking out so I slid out of the passenger window.

This weekends Macro Challange Photo entries

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Posted on April 28th, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Activities, Paint, photography | 2 Comments »

Hurl

Sorry for the lag-the mundane has taken over. My husband is out of town which adds to the load a bit.

Thursday after preschool and gym classes we went to a climbing class. Molly loves to climb, so this was a real treat for her. She is already planning a trip back with with her Dad and a friend.

Last night we met friends at Gallery 202 for Chair is Art exhibit

Molly’s art class worked on a few chairs that were in the show.

Unfortunately Abby’s family came with out her, because she is so sick. I am feeling a little guilty that Molly probably spewed and coughed her nasty sick germs over the at their house. If you have a line on Peach Hi-C let me know. It may help to ease my guilt.

Virtual $10 to anyone who can tell me what this is a photo of:

Well not really-but just play along with me, will ya?

Sorry for the ADHD post but I am a little crazy because I am going to hang some of my photographs here tonight. No the website hasn’t been updated for April. And No there hasn’t been much advertising for this months show. And yes I know there is a good chance that only 10 people may come. And they may not even look at my stuff. But this is my first time showing any of my work and I am filled with vomit . More so because my husband is gone and the kids want to go to friends that live waaayyy across town and then I have to get back and with my own hammer and nails to hang my own work-that I had to sort through and pick out with only the trusted opinions of my 3 kids and the really nice guy at the camera shop. And because of the pack rat sort of person that I am I have about 12 things to bring tonight-which is too many. Sorry honey, I will never take you for granted again! Be sure to bring me wine and a barf bag when you get in this evening!

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Posted on April 26th, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Activities, Field Trips, photography | 8 Comments »

Creativity

Creativity is is a force within us. For children it is their way of life. Their way to explore, to learn, to express. We often lose that free expression with age. Unfortunately, for so many reasons. Unschooling gives my children time. It allows my family time. Free time, freedom. To do what we want, to explore, to learn to express.

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Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: photography | 4 Comments »

Chicken and Biscuits

Happy Earth Day! We packed a picnic lunch and headed to a local park after Circus class today to enjoy all the Earth Day festivities that were happening. Live music, booths, food, the usual fare. Only we couldn’t seem to find any of the excitement. So we played with friends and ate our food and scratched our heads wondering where all the Earth Day fun was. Until I got home and checked and found we were a few days early. Festivities are slated for Saturday. Depending on the weather we may take the bus down and try again then.

I thought ahead this morning and put a chicken in the crock-pot. I love when I do that!!! When we got home this after noon we read SODY SALLYRATUS BY Teri Sloat

I love story books with recipes or activities in them. Ginger and I made the biscuits from the book.

We had them for dinner as did our dog Rudy. Because Ginger couldn’t quite rap her head around the fact that people eat biscuits, not just dogs. So she broke off tiny crumbs and made a trail around the kitchen while singing a song to him. Her faithful companion followed close behind! As usual.

Todays 30 day Macro challenge entries:

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Posted on April 23rd, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: Activities, Nature, Outside, photography, recipes | 3 Comments »

Invasive Pesto and Butterflies

Over the weekend I noticed the invasive weed, garlic-mustard in my yard was at its peak Spring form. While on my daily walk I noticed that several other non-American forgers must have noticed this too. The edges of the woods were spotted with Asian people with very large plastic bags filled with green park property . I approached an older women and asked her what she was picking and what she was going to do with her mother load. It turns out these pickers are from Cambodia and are also picking garlic mustard and will pickle it. The woman said something to the man that I presumed to be her husband and he gave me the recipe in a bit less broken English. He told me the “pickle last long, year” Really?? I gathered from our give and take and mostly my hand motions that there is a fermenting process where you put something heavy on top, maybe. Anyways there is always Google! Or this recipe I found. I made pesto with my weeds, and it was tasty!

PESTO

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup pine nuts or walnuts (I threw in a few raw pumpkin seeds too)

1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese (I used nutritional yeast to make it dairy-free)

4 cups garlic mustrd leaves (washed well)

I added a couple of cloves of garlic and salt too.

Put nuts and garlic and leaves in food processor, then add oil and cheeses and process more.

Serve with pasta or rice. I added mine to hummus and used as a dip and a salad dressing.

When harvesting garlic-mustard: take out by the roots before it flowers. Young leaves are the tastiest for pesto, eaten raw or lightly steamed. Remove roots from area or they will continue to grow.

Ginger came home with these cute little butterflies she made at school.

We had all the supplies so today the girls worked on tie-dying some coffee filters. We didn’t have the same clothes pins but if you are going to have to buy some for this craft, I like the way the rounded top, non-spring ones look best. We used some nifty new liquid watercolors diluted in a bit of water but by the results I think food coloring would work just as well.

We used q-tips to drip the colors onto coffee filters. Molly ended up making a mobile with her finished butterflies.

I had great photographic results with the watch I lent Ginger, that my husband then ran over with the car in the drive way , that I just couldn’t decide which photos to use for todays entry in the 30 day Macro Challenge!

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Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by Kristen
Filed under: 3-D, Crafts, Messy, Nature, Outside, photography, recipes | 5 Comments »

Weekend Update

This weekend was full of the usual business. Soccer for Jake. Molly’s team had a bye this week.

Saturday night we went to Agora.

It was a feast of art! From woodworking to glass etching to paintings to music to performance artists and even my crazy circus kids walking on stilts and showing off their trapeze abilities.