Pepper Paints

Let’s Celebrate, its Post # 100!!!

I made it! I am really liking this blogging thing! I wanted this to serve as motivation to do more projects with my kids as well as some documentation, But I am so blown away by the connections I have made and the comments from all the readers. It is so fun and just the sort of paycheck I think I needed to boost my own creativity. I am completely obsessed with taking pictures and photography in general! More on that later but now on to the celebration……………..I wanted to give out a party favor to a lucky reader! So if you want a chance to win this:  (And you know you do)

Jan Brett’s The Umbrella and 3 pots of finger-paint, leave a comment on this post before midnight (Eastern Standard time) on Thursday June 12 and you will be entered. Winner (randomly picked out of a bowl by one of my kids) will be announced on Lucky Friday the 13th!!!

Thanks for all your visits and comments!! Keepem’ comin’!!

Love (and not so much like to the confused and wrong and mean, Nasty Neighbor commenter),

Kristen

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

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!

Felting

Today as Molly pulled out the bag of felting goodies, I heaved a heavy sigh as my plan was to do some cleaning and not pulling more stuff out or making more of a mess. But of course I begrudgingly consented, sure that I was going to have to be involved in the project.

As far as supplies you will need some roving (wool), a comb-preferably small toothed, 2 bowls, both with HOT water and one with soap, towel,a piece of foam, felting needle

First you need to comb out a small bit of the wool into a fluffy ball, Dip ball into hot soapy water and roll-think meatballs or earth balls.

Dunk the ball in the clean water or rinse under running water squeezing out the suds and water squeeze in towel and let dry. Ginger made about 3 balls and was done. As I was putting her down for her nap Molly continued to work on her needle felted project. She didn’t want me to look until she was finished so I don’t have pictures of her process and actually I have not had the pleasure of needle felting so Molly is the expert here. According to her she wet felted some green wool into a pile not a ball.

And then poked the needle in to it quickly, over and over again on the piece of foam. She took several more pieces of combed wool and needle felted that on to the green.

When she was finished she had a purse for her American Girl Doll!

This is a picture of necklaces Molly and I made at a class we took. After we made several wet felted balls we strung them on some ribbon and made these. The loose balls are Gingers that she made today.

All in all there was very little mess and clean up was quick. There are tons of books on felting at the library and book stores and many great projects. Warning-rolling the balls and poking the wool is very therapeutic and relaxing!!

We have a very busy weekend ahead with soccer games and food co-op pick up, a few parties and a concert. Here is a nice start to the weekend:

Ahhh Pictures

I was able to get up and out early this morning to take some photos. Unfortunately the photo of the pink pumps some how got lost in the transfer. Maybe another time.

Have a nice weekend!

Under Our Big Top

We have been looking at pictures of Calder’s CIRCUS, but today we found this

How cool is that! We were so inspired we decided to make our own circus.

We decided to make our performers out of foil wrapped in masking tape so that we could paint them. and make outfits for them.
I am frightened by the size of this project. Lucky summer is coming so we can move out to the garage if we need to.
I am hoping this project will be ongoing.

Kid Pix Contest

Yesterday the girls and I went for a walk, all with our cameras at the ready. We had a blast. Ginger was so excited to photograph everything along with a running commentary of her work! She just snapped away picture after picture. I don’t think the smile left her face the whole 2 hours we were out. We ended up downloading over 200 of her photos! The only instructions I gave her were how to turn the camera off and on and how to press the button to take the picture. I did remind her to keep her hand from the front of the lens a few times.

Molly, on the other hand,quietly waited for just the shot she wanted and then reviewed each one on the screen before taking another. She was much more particular, and critical. She ended up downloading only 40 some pictures.

I was so impressed not only with the photos they ended up with but mostly how different the approach was for each of them. For Ginger it was pure process. It was new and exciting and empowering to have free reign of the camera. Molly of course is more mature and she was using her own camera that she has used lots of times, but this was the first time she went out looking for pictures to take that were not posed. She wasn’t just snapping but really trying to take a good picture. Moving around and checking the light and noticing shadows and spaces and bits and pieces of things as opposed to the whole. In Gingers case this division process happened by chance , but became apparent when we looked at the photos-pictures of the tip of her shoe, our dog’s nose, rungs of the chair. They enjoyed critiqueing there work too. This was blurry, this is too dark, I really like the gooses neck in this one etc…

They both had a really great time and want to do this again soon. This was a wonderful opportunity to talk about how we each see things and what we each notice and what photos we liked best.
There photos were great too! So I thought a kids photo contest would be a great motivator for you all to let your kids use your cameras and share this great experience with them.

So here are the details:
Have YOUR KIDS take some pictures.
No photo shopping please!
To enter in the contest leave me a link to your childs photo in the comments below
Include your childs age-I will divide the contest in two 6 yrs old and under and 7yrs old and over
You can post as many photos as you want between now and Monday March 31st
Winners will be announced Tuesday April 1.
There will be prizes-not 1 million dollars but prizes!

To vote:
Check out the photos people link to, if there is one you like email me at pepperpa@box397.bluehost.com
Please vote for each photo only once per day.

I let each of my kids pick two of their favorite photos they took and here they are–Have fun!!
Molly’s Kid Pix


Ginger’s Kid Pix


She said, “I put the lens in my face and took a picture of me.” Her first self-portrait!