Fishing

From the book Creative Play for your toddler, I got the idea to make a fishing pole and fish for Atticus. I made six fish, 4 of them from felt which is the better of the two materials I chose because it does not fray, and 2 from cotton/poly blend which I did not hem. On each fish, I sewed two eyes using different buttons, just for fun. I also sewed a small washer to the area where the mouth would be that will stick to the magnet on the fishing pole.

For the pole, I could have purchased a dowel from a hardware store, but I found a branch in someone's yard that was just the right shape for a fishing pole and used that instead. I attached some yarn to the stick for the line and attached a round magnet with a hole in it to the yarn for the "hook".

Atticus like the fishing pole, perhaps not as much as I'd like him to, but hey, he's 3. He needs to move on.

In a rut

We have not been creative lately. Not one bit.

I hope to have something interesting to report this week. Check back after Christmas!

Just like Jackson Pollock

Well....not quite, but still pretty cool!

Atticus has been painting the last few days. I broke out the 10-year old poster paint and let him have at it! Here's what he painted:

Ornaments on a rainy day

Will and I went to Disneyland for my birthday on Monday 12/7. Will's mom Joyce stayed with Atticus and Meredith for two nights. While she was here, it rained all day. Stuck in the house with two very active kiddos, here's what they did!

Acrylic paint and glass

Above: Meredith and Lila chowing down...

That's what we painted on Tuesday with our friends Tina and kiddos Devon and Lila, as well as Elena and her kiddos, Eva and Paloma. The big kids - all of 3 years - poured acrylic paint into glass ornaments and shook them as hard as they could. We ended up with four beautiful ornaments that are now hanging high, high above Atticus and Meredith's heads in the living room - safety first!

Atticus the serious: showing off his ornament

Cookies, with rosemary??

Yes, that's what we did this afternoon, Atticus and I. We made shortbread cookies with rosemary, fresh picked from our gigantic rosemary bush. They were yummy!

Will hinted about a hundred times during the day that he wanted me to bake some cookies from the new Sunset magazine issue. I thought he was joking, and maybe he thought he was too. When we loaded up the kiddos in the bike trailer and headed to the grocery store to buy the necessary supplies instead of heading to the park, I knew he was serious.

Sunflower seeds come from sunflowers!

Atticus helped me do some gardening today. Until recently, I couldn't really take him in the front yard with me unless I intended to keep my eye on him every second. Today we were very productive. He helped put weeds in the waste container and even practiced using the pruning shears with my careful supervision.

A while back we planted some sunflower seeds. A LONG while back. Well, they finally germinated about 2 months ago, and have since died. One was still standing, leaning over from the weight of it's head, brown and dead. I saw that the seeds were right there on the surface and ready to be shaken out, so I showed Atticus and he was excited! I suggested he dig a little hole and plant the seeds. I ended up digging the hole, but he did plant them, cover the back up and water them. It was fun to watch him learning :)

PlayDough...Seriously??

I used the Martha Stewart recipe to make this. Not sure what I did wrong, but it just wasn't right! Atticus was mildly interested - more interested though in eating salt and asking for sugar. "No Atticus, there's no sugar in this recipe so we aren't going to eat any right now".

One photo is the stuff itself...in the pan, after cooking. It was really, really sticky. Maybe I didn't cook it long enough? The other photo shows my two "helpers", fingers in their mouths no doubt eating salt.

New game

Can one be creative without making anything? I think so. Yesterday while visiting Atticus' grandpa, in an effort to get some sillies out, Atticus made up a game in which his fingers were "buttons" and when you pushed them, some sort of physical activity happened. We had been playing a similar game in the pool earlier in the day and he must have enjoyed it because he started it again hours later.

After much finger, I mean button pushing, we pushed one of his toes instead. That really got him animated! He danced around and ran all around the house smacking (gently) the sofa, side tables, the wall, etc...It was so fun and funny to watch this sweet little boy be so silly and have such a good time running and shrieking and just being 3! I love it when he makes up his own games, which is happening more and more lately. It is such a blessing to have this little boy in my life!

On Wednesday afternoon, the kiddos got a little restless. I decided it was time to do something with all the old, broken crayons that had been replaced by new, shiny, unbroken ones. I looked up the how-to's of making one big crayon and we got started. I got the recipe here and loosely followed it. Too loosely I guess. By the time it was said and done, we had two usable crayons, a big melty wax mess and lots of leftovers for another time.

First post

Thanks for visiting my page! I'm excited to begin my quest for all things creative. I hope to explore culinary arts, childrens projects and sewing and other creative crafts. To start with, I want to post a link to a Christmas tree craft project from another blog - very, very cute.

http://www.thesmallobject.com/stenopad/wordpress/?p=822

I plan to make these when I time...which is pretty funny considering I have two children, ages 1 and 3. I don't really have any spare time...