Easy Craft Project

Well, I know I got to the blog that gave me the pattern to this project via Heather's blog, but can I find the specific post on Heather's blog that inspired it? Nope. Can't. I am thwarted. Anyhow, this little owl and his pattern is available free here. Hers are a good deal tidier than mine, and they feature cool textured felt that I didn't happen to have in my scrap bag, but I like this little Scrap Heap of Felt. He has such deep pools of purple thread, err, eye fluid. He'll make someone a lovely gift tag in a day or two...

Darth Vader Opens Wall Street!

Shock troopers! Storm troopers! Clone troopers! It's all good, right? Let's just hope they are investing their money wisely...

Solstice

Taking Pictures

Last year we were supposed to go on a tour of a well-known historical house, one that a famous local family occupied for many years, but the snow was so bad the buses stopped running and I couldn't get our teeny tiny car out of the driveway, so I bailed. Well, I think everyone bailed, actually. It was one of those We Might Get Over There But Do We Want To Walk Back From Town? decisions that day. The sort of decision I tend to cave almost instantly to. Because it was snowy. Really snowy. Really really snowy. And the bus system, because of all that incredible snowiness, was erratic enough for me to know that if I were to drag my charming but not very long suffering enfants out I might have to endure many hours of "Why did you think this was a good idea?" comments all the way home should we have to walk. And you know, to be perfectly honest, I'm not all that long suffering myself. Note: if you live on the prairies or somewhere further north of here, please don't remind me of how much it could snow before you'd get stuck. I realize I am a Snow Wimp. I'm okay with that.

Anyhow, this year they had the same Shockingly Affordable Homeschool Festive Season Tour, so off we went, the kids and I. It was raining this time round: a gentle misty rain that curled our hair and made FDPG's eyelashes sparkle. Lovely weather, considering, says Sheila the Snow Wimp. We whizzed over to the posh part of town, and up the posh winding hill to the top of Super Posh Hill, me keeping the heat in the car off should it melt the white chocolate snowflake lollipops we'd made for some friends, and the kids wilting with Snowflake Lollipop-Induced Hunger.

Fortunately I am a heartless mother. I might cave at snow, but I do not quail at the pleas of my children. The lollipops made it to their intended targets.




Our tour guide was a charming Brit, who may or may not have been named Christopher, in costume as a butler in 1881. I know this because FDPG told me later. I was outside getting the camera when he first introduced himself. After watching all the other parents and their cameras, click click clicking, I felt a wave of lemming-like behaviour come over me and before I knew it I was back out in the rain again digging around for my own camera. So I had to rely on FDPG and her apres-commentary, which was, in its own way, a little more amusing ("He sounded like just your friend Elizabeth! Do you think they are related? He kind of looked like her.").
Christopher kept in his role the entire time, whether he was singing The Boar's Head Carol or asking the kids if they knew what a dance card was. And he had such a fabulous English accent that the kids were all completely riveted, even the twitchy fiddly ones. He asked them if they had a boar's head for their Christmas dinner, and seemed genuinely taken aback at their groans and looks of horror, which caused the boys an awful lot of glee.

It was quite the fun time, us and Christopher. We saw glass cases with giant wreaths of twisted hair, marvelled at how small and short all the ladies were (their gowns were on mannequins in each of the rooms), giggled at his dry but goofy jokes, and trailed willingly around after him for about an hour.

Click: Leda and the swan.


He led us around the house, all 97 steps and 14 bedrooms, me dutifully click click clicking away with all the other parents, mentally filing away all the fabulously gossipy yet historical information (how young some of them were when they died! this one went mad! that basket is made out of an ARMADILLO!), but when it came to reviewing the pictures with the kids, I was a little taken aback to note that I had not one single shot of my charming offspring.





I had 2 of Christopher. I had a few Festive Christmas Display shots. And that was about it. Well, other than the 18 shots of the stained glass windows, the 11 shots of the interesting architecture, the 6 shots of the wild tiled floors, and 1 of the really amazing room where we could hear our echo if we whispered.



Click. Hmm. Where are those children?

Waiter?

There's a fly in my....

Ornamentalism 200

I've written before about some of the ornaments we've made during the Christmas season. These snowflakes are something I'm extremely fond of, mostly because they are so easy and they look so incredibly beautiful. We got the patterns from the 2002 Martha Stewart Kids magazine, but I see they've since graduated to the MS website. We like to add glitter to ours - it makes them look quite ethereal when they're suspended from the ceiling.

These are salt bread dough ornaments, a little Henry the Tank Engine in there from the days when Max was mad for trains (I don't see any deleterious effects from all our fraternizations with Thomas, either, PHEW, I was worried). You can find any salt dough recipe on the web, so I won't include one here, but I will give you one tip: use those little jars of Ceramcoat acrylic paint and coat them with spray urethane and they will last for a long time. These ones are 10 years old.

Here's a new one we're trying. I quite like the look of it. You lay a picture on a table, we've used something in the stained glass vein, then tape a piece of saran wrap over it. Colour the picture (on the saran wrap) with felt pens. Caution: we've tried a LOT of felt pens and have only been successful using Sharpies. Then take a same-sized piece of foil, crumple it a bit, then smooth it out (sounds idiotic but bear with me) and place it under the saran wrap (which you will have by now removed from its taped position on the table). Glue the saran wrap to the foil. Then cover with a black paper border.
Another one, this time a Christmas tree. They catch the light very nicely.










This is 4 tinsel pipe cleaners, glued together. You fold them up accordion-style, using 2 pipe cleaners to make two separate 4 pointed stars (does that make sense? it doesn't sound right). Then glue one over top of the other. I used hot glue - it's faster than regular craft glue. I made them in white, gold, and silver and strung them up on the ceiling of the dining room.




This is our latest project. I don't know if you've seen these Coke bottles everywhere (like I have), but my mum bought them for the kids, as she was unable to resist their bauble allure. The kids were unable to resist their sugar-in-a-bottle allure (me being the horrible Pop Denying Mother that I am). I was unable to resist their craft potential allure.

First we tried stuffing them with tinsel pipe cleaners but that didn't look right. Next we poured thinned red and gold paint into them and swirled them around but that didn't look right either. I washed it out, under the faintly damning glare of FDPG, whose bottle I was guinea-pigging with. "That's not going to be RUINED, is it?" she said, worriedly. "That's MY bottle, you know." "I know," I said, feeling slightly desperate as I watched the red paint NOT wash off. "It'll come out, trust me."

Fortunately for both FDPG and myself, it DID come clean.

Then I had a brain wave: I drew a stained-glass style picture with a black Sharpie, then had FDPG colour it in with yet more Sharpies. Then we filled the container with that plastic snow stuff you see in dollar stores everywhere this time of year. Then I drilled a hole in the lid, painted it gold, and slid some rickrack through so it looks like an ornament. I like this version best. It's a bit heavy for the tree with all that fake snow in it, so I am tempted to try using thinned white paint for the inside with the others. It's quite the attractive object, though, don't you think? I might have to get this baby on the MS website.

Going To The Movies: 2012

Yes, I must confess that I took my kids to see this Big Fat Hollywood Wallet Grab. We were all (bar Richard the Impassive) wildly excited by the Quicktime trailers, showing monks hitting bells at the top of world while giant waves bear down on them, or even bigger ocean cruise ships toppling around and around in giant waves, or giant waves crumbling anything and everything in their path with little concern for life or limb. And those giant waves were really, err, giant. Call me really shallow, but I'm a sucker for a giant wave. It might be because I cut my teeth on wheezy cheesy great aunts of this genre: The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Cheesy action movies are in my blood. They made my imagination what it is today.

It might be that I am just a sucker for a giant wave, of course.

Luckily the kids are old enough not to find this sort of movie smacking of realism in any way shape or form. Nevertheless, Richard shook his head when I expressed an interest in taking the kids to see it, and would only say "FDPG'll have nightmares for years!"

So I did some research on our way into the theatre. When I presented our passes, I asked the Ticket Girl if she'd seen it. "Nope," she said, looking dubiously at the twins, "I haven't."

When we were getting our Kid Packs (oily popcorn, a Kinder Egg, and liquid sugar-in-a-cup, part of the Costco Theatre Pass) I asked the Snack Girl if she'd seen it. "Certainly not," she said, "I think those end of the world movies are SO manipulative. I don't think ANYONE should see them. It's scare-mongering." We both glanced at the twins, who were jiggling excitedly beside me. "Are you guys going to The Fantastic Mr Fox?" she asked them smilingly. "Um," I interrupted, shoving the kids along a bit, "come on, we're going to be late! Let's go!"

I thought about the results of my research during the Car Racing Through Yellowstone Fireballs scene, and glanced over at FDPG, who I had seated next to me, just in case, and whispered "Are you okay?" to her. "This is AWESOME!" she whispered back, "Just the kind of movie I LOVE."

Yeah, right, FDPG, I thought. Remember Disney's The Little Mermaid? You have yet to sit through that one. In fact, I gave up a year ago because you couldn't take the Witch (even though she has a KILLER song in that version). Heck, you even quake at that silly fake Banshee (as opposed to a Ban-hee) in Darby O'Gill & The Little People...why am I even telling you all this, Gentle Reader? Now you'll probably agree with Richard and think I am a terrible mother for taking FDPG to this film.

Anyhow, I gave up feeling like I was contributing to a Development of Eventual Nightmares For FDPG episode and concentrated on the film, which was, as the trailers promised, really exciting. Heart-pounding, in fact. It was so exciting and heart-pounding I worried a bit that I might have a heart attack. I felt slightly ill, even. Excited, but vaguely nauseous.

But not the kids. When the film had ended and we were leaving, they were all dizzy with delight. We passed a few kindly adults that said things like "Did you just see The Fantastic Mr Fox? Wasn't it lovely?" but I was too embarrassed to admit that no, we'd actually been in 2012, so I just smiled and mumbled something that no one understood, even the kids.

"What did you say to that lady," FDPG demanded. "Why didn't you just say that we were in THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR?"

"Because," I muttered, "then they'd think I was an awful mother, taking you guys to violent end of the world films."

"Oh MUM!" they all said, clustering around me, hugging me hard, "you are the BEST mother for taking us to see that movie!"

It would have been rather poignant if the theatre manager hadn't passed us just then. "Did you guys just see The Fantastic Mr Fox?" he beamed. "NO!" the twins both said. "We just saw 2012! It's SO GOOD!"

"Oh," he said, blinking at me. "Uh, how - uh - fun." He had pretty much the same expression Richard'd had when we told him we might go see it. It look said "Gosh, you didn't really take those impressionable young children to see a violent end of the world movie what could you have been thinking don't you read reviews this movie is a bit over the top for such young minds oh my my my."

We smiled at each other; him sternly, me fatuously. Then I walked away, gripped by the devotedly adoring (and slightly oily) hands of the twins.

Sigh.

Anyhow, I meant to tell you about this cool picture we found when we got home. There are not only giant waves in this movie - there is a giant plane as well. I told Richard about it, who said "It's probably a Hercules." So we googled HERCULES but it was not the same plane. Even though I'd been mostly occupied with snitching bits of FDPG's popcorn and ogling the handsome Russian pilot flying the plane, I could vaguely remember something different about the wings. Then I had a brainwave (thanks to the wonders of Google). I typed in "What was the plane in the movie 2012?" And, along with the usual Wikipedia entry, the above picture came up. It's a comparison of the various types of Giant Planes. There is the Spruce Goose, the Airbus, a Boing 747, and the 2012 plane - the Antonov AN-225. It was all too cool. Giant waves, giant planes, giant action...

And nary a nightmare in sight.