It's A Kid Thing

 There have been so many times in the last week that I have watched my kids do things that are just classic kids things.  I can hardly stand it, I think it so adorable.  Things like swinging in the backyard on their stomachs, eating popsicles or hunting for bugs in the yard.  Talking to their baby dolls, blowing bubbles or dancing their little hearts out to our stereo.  I love it.  I love watching them be little girls.  I love how innocent and sweet they are.  I love that New Fish discovered the word "wonderful" this week. Everything is wonderful. Last night she took my face in her hands, looked deep into my eyes and said: "You are a WONDERFUL Mom."  I almost cried.

Red Fish made this caterpillar in preschool but her newfound love of insects has inspired her to make several more at home.  Pipe cleaners, egg cartons and paint.

Funny Faces

As most of you know, my girls are obsessed with collages and they especially love decorating foam cutouts like our valentines, shamrocks and Easter eggs.)  I had bought a pack of flowers for this month but when I got home from the store I realized that a sneaky little girl had slipped a pack of heads into our basket and I bought them without noticing.  So... I cut out a bunch of body parts from magazines and they started their face collages today with my sister in law.  We have a whole pack of heads and a big bag of body parts cut out so I see a lot of these in our near future.  I think they are pretty hilarious.

Yellow

This project is taking forever, which is a good thing because I don't have to think of anything better to do.New Fish/Red Fish

Red

New Fish is interested in her colors so we are doing a series of color pieces to help her learn them. Just like I did with Red Fish a couple years ago. It's fun. Yesterday, they did collages with my sil "Lee lee" and today Red Fish did a mixed media creation.

Red Fish- felt, sequins, popsicle sticks, foam, pompoms, feathers and pipe cleaners.

NNew Fish- felt, sequins, popsicle sticks, foam, pompoms, feathers and pipe cleaners.

eRed Fish- markers, crayons, foam stickers, junk mail, paper, and paint.
The only problem with doing a red piece is that when my child got a paper cut and started bleeding, I thought it was marker!

Upcycle

I'm really starting to crack myself up because I used to be such a sewing/crafting snob. I frowned upon it and considered myself a "real artist." Now I can't stop. I'm totally a closet crafter. Yes, I still do a ton of graphic design but I don't feel like blogging about that much. I wish I could make time to paint and sculpt but for now I feel like that part of me is dedicated to my kids right now.

I love clothes and would love to have a new wardrobe for every season. I'm also a cheapskate and could never justify the cost even if I could afford it. A few months ago, my husband and I were walking through Anthropologie. I loved everything. But it got me thinking about how maybe I could alter some clothing and make it look Anthropologized. I may still be pretty off the mark but I decided to try anyway. I like one of a kind things anyway. So I went through my closet and made a stack of worn out, seldom worn or slightly boring clothes. Here is my first attempt at making them exciting for me again. This was a simple sweater before that I liked but haven't worn a lot. I took a maternity shirt that was worn out and cut it up to make ruffles and flowers.

I know it looks especially fab over my jammies.

I'm more than slightly obsessed with making fabric flowers right now. It's getting ridiculous. I've made 25 this week. Most of them were simple ones from felt that I'm making into Christmas gifts.

Collage Baby

I'm in love with watching my girls make artwork. It is even better with Red Fish teaching New Fish how to do things. New Fish wants to be exactly like her big sister so here she is making a collage. I dipped some things in glue and let her stick them on the paper.

New Fish's artwork

Red Fish's artwork

Sometimes things don't work out like I plan

In between sessions of the LDS General conference, I had this grand idea to rolls balls through paint to experiment with color mixing with the girls. I had this carboard box so that the balls would stay inside and not make too much of a mess. Unfortunately, the textured balls didn't roll well in the paint and they were too light to move the paint far. After about thirty seconds of trying to get the paint to move, both girls dove right into the box. It became more of a paint slip and slide. They were sliding across the box on their bellies and skating around in bare feet. It was hysterical. I'm just glad the weather is still warm enough to use the hose for cleanup and that washable paint really does wash out. I wanted to get pictures of their painted faces and bodies after we were done but the camera battery died and I was too busy running away from them while they chased me with their blue and red hands. I love that my reaction was to laugh and Two Fish's reaction was to get the video camera. I guess we will never be accused of not letting our kids get dirty. It turned into a great lesson in color mixing by the way.

Account Balance

I'm starting to get to that place when everything feels out of control. My house is messy and I'm running to stay caught up at work. I spent a good part of the week trying to get Red Fish into three year old speech programs because they are through the school district and the ones for age two and under are through the health department. So everything has to be reapplied and tested for. There are always hoops to jump through but I think we might actually have a plan. When I get stressed and overwhelmed I have to keep careful track of my account balances.

I try to think of the treatment of my family members as a love account. I can make deposits or withdrawals and I'm in a constant battle between the two extremes. Every time I have a great moment with my kids or teach them something or spend some quality time with my husband, I make a deposit. Every time I am cranky or rush them through childhood or snap at them, I make a withdrawal. I have my own inner account to manage and I need to find ways of filling it up as well. Lately, the best way for me to feel like I'm balanced and secure is to create. I create almost constantly. I've been crafting (which is funny because I never thought of myself as crafty until recently) writing, doing design work and working on projects like a mad woman. I've also been doing a lot of projects with my kids and it has given me some great moments with them. The summer was kind of crazy and didn't leave time for the normal rhythm of our house and I feel like we got some of it back. Our house doesn't look like we are back on track but at least our love accounts have had more deposits than withdrawals this week. Hopefully that is what we will all remember.
I got these awesome scissors because I needed a cheap item to complete a free shipping order. We LOVE them. Red Fish has been learning to cut things with my help and then making a ton of collages. She has been drawing and trying to write bunch as well. She has broken out her cheap watercolors to add to her drawings. I think some of the best moments where I feel most complete and connected to my kids is when I'm teaching them things.
We've also been painting outside quite a bit. I'm going to be sad when it's too cold to hose them off in the backyard. It has been perfect weather lately.

Art and creativity fill up our love accounts even when everything else has gone crazy. Even when the blue paint explodes and my husband arrives home to find three blue smurfs and blue dog in the backyard. We were all laughing our heads off. Winter is going to be hard unless I can think of enough creative endeavors for us to do inside. I should start preparing a list.

Spraypaint

So I've developed a deep love for spray paint suddenly. I've been thrifting and spray painting like crazy. (And no- the love is not because I'm inhaling it!)

This is our old kitchen table (a hand me down) and chairs (thrifted) that I painted for my brother and his new wife. I think they look really cute.
I have all but stopped wearing jewelry for the last few years. Partly because I don't like having it pulled and partly because I'm too lazy to dig through the mess of stuff I have. I needed some new way to store my jewelry and also keep it untangled, out of reach for tiny hands, and easy to pick through. So I bought three frames from a thrift store ($2.50 total- YES) and spray painted them with my new love (Rustoleum Universal Metallic Stain Nickel.) Then I cut pieces of hardware cloth and glued it into the frames. I'm really happy with the result.
The girls helped me go through my jewelry and handed each thing to me to hang up. They were very impressed with the end result. New Fish kept clapping and Red Fish just kept saying Woooooow!
I also painted this mirror (again from a thrift store) red because I wanted a big mirror and couldn't find one I loved that wasn't really expensive.

Collage

Red Fish has been making a lot of collages with contact paper or glue sticks. We especially like using the Anthropologie catalog because it offers plenty of colors and textures.

Bubble Wrap Prints

We had some used padded envelopes I cut up and let Red Fish paint the pieces. She pressed them on paper to make a print. She was totally wowed by the polka dot pattern it left. She really loved this project. We need to invest in an ink brayer so we can do more print making projects. I think she would like rolling the ink on and it would be easier. I am going to start saving up more bits so we can do this again.

She took a fork and drew lines on one of her prints.

Here is one Red Fish made today with her Aunt A.

Orange

Orange paint, orange markers, orange pastels, orange pencils, orange paper, orange junk mail, orange stamp pad, orange stickers

The wall in the playroom.

Green

3 Green papers, green ads, green stickers, green stamp pad, green slick stick, green oil pastels, green pencils, green markers, and green paint.

Weekend

Two Fish and I went to see another play on Friday. Our date night for this month. (Although we went skiing on the 1st as well so dates are going well for this month.) We saw the world premiere of Touched. It's about a woman trying to care for her schizophrenic sister. Her dumb boyfriend takes the sister off her meds and thinks he has cured her. I'm not a fan. It was a little boring and tried to be racy but was just kind of strange. It wasn't terrible though. It was fun to be out with my hubby. I really needed that this week.

We experimented with color mixing in an egg carton. She started out with just red, blue, and green and I tried to show her how they could combine to make different colors. She was more interested this time but mostly she just liked painting the egg carton (and the table.)

There was more napping in strange places.

Dinner with Grandma. She knows all of these fun finger plays and songs that she put in a book for Red Fish for Christmas. She showed us all of the motions to the songs. We have been using the whole book pretty much everyday because Red Fish is totally obsessed with it so now we know some fun things to do with it.

Purple and Chunky

When I showed Red Fish that red and blue paint make purple she was just furious I ruined her red and blue paint. She is in this phase where she likes to paint her hands with the brush and then put a 1000 finger prints on the page. It makes me crazy because I hate scrubbing it off her and she got finger prints on my favorite pajamas but I need to relax about it. A purple fingerprint on polka dot pajamas isn't the end of the world.
New Fish is going to be four months old tomorrow. I can't believe how fast it is going. The saddest part of having a little baby in the winter is that all of their cute parts stay covered up all day. She is starting to get these fabulous chunky legs and I wish I could leave them out all day. I love all of the creases in her rolls. Chunky baby legs are my favorite.

Sticky and Red

Today I had planned to do Red with Red Fish but when we looked at yesterday's junk mail and ads to find red things to cut out she went wild. First she wanted me to cut out animals and food for her and then she just started tearing things out at random and gluing them onto papers with a glue stick. She spent a good hour and half filling sheets and sheets of paper and then newspapers with little pictures out of the ads. It was cute to see how hard she worked on it. She really really loves the glue stick. I wish I had bought more during the back to school sales.
The Red Fish returned to the red supplies. Red paper, red stickers, red markers, red pens, red stamps, and red paint. It was a lot of art today.
Little New Fish is becoming a Daddy's girl just like her big sister. As soon as Two Fish comes through that door both girls demand to be held. New Fish goes on Mommy strike around dinner time and wants to be held on Daddy's shoulder just like this. She likes to ram her face into his shoulder and go to sleep.
Red Fish has been up to all sorts of mischief. Today I went out to get something out of the mailbox (without my coat) and I came back to find the front door locked. I wasn't aware she could reach the deadbolt. It took nearly 45 minutes for her to figure out how to unlock it and let me in. She even tried using a little set of plastic keys. She was very upset she couldn't let me in. I thought I was going to have to use a neighbor's phone to call a locksmith or track down Two Fish. Luckily Red Fish finally got the lock turned.

Yesterday during her nap, Red Fish put diapers on all of her stuffed animals. It was hilarious. Then last night in the middle of the night I heard her talking to "Bubba" and found her in the baby's room saying hi. Little stinker.