Collage fun!

With so many inspiring pictures, quotations and people out there, I wanted a way to bring some of my favorites together for me to admire, refer to and just have on hand. Mostly I wanted to look at all the wonderful projects that other women do on the many blogs I try to read. So I decided to create a scrapbook of things I liked. I don't have much in it yet. But it's exciting to have started it. Yesterday Ian and I sat down during Cai's morning nap to work on collages. I have been saving my Mothering and Parentings magazines for him. I just recently got a pair of child scissors and now feel I can let him cut paper (since now he has his own scissors). He pick out his magazine and happily went away cuttng bits and pieces. Of course most of the time its ripping. Every once in awhile he gets the scissors to work for him and has a nice cut. I've trying showing him how to hold the scissors, but I think its just something he will have to figure out himself with time. For me, I took pages from Mothering's March-April 09 issue that I saved. There was a wonderful article on "Crafty Mamas." Not only was the article itself good, the pictures were lovely. So while Ian worked on his collage, I worked on mine. By the way, Ian is now in love with cutting with scissors. My lounge chair is currently covered with magazine scraps he has cut up. :) I've been trying to get him to add them to his collage. We'll see what happens.
Here is Ian's beautiful work. And the first page for my inspiration scrapbook.

For the perfectionist in me, I was mostly pleased with the way mine came out. It was so nice to do something creative though. What fun art have you worked on recently?

Valentines

Today was Ian's first Valentine's party at storytime at the library. See we moved Ian from the toddler storytime to the preschool storytime. This has meant in addition to an extra story and more involved puppet show, crafts!!! It's been fun watching Ian get excited about it. And the more we're with the older kids the more I realize that he was ready for the switch. So anyway, one of the things the preschool storytime does is holiday parties. So last week the kids decorated envelopes for valentines, and this week we brought valentines for everyone. Plus us parents signed up to bring snacks and drinks. I didn't want to go out and just buy valentines. For one, I just didn't want to spend the money. Silly, I know. Two, since Ian can't write letters yet I couldn't even have him write his name. So basically I would be doing all the work myself and that just felt did not feel right. So instead we made some. I had Ian paint on colored construction paper and then I cut the paintings up into small cards. I then had him decorate each card with stickers and I wrote "Happy Valentine's Day from Ian". I added a chocolate kiss and they were done. :) I have to say for the little extra work they took it was fun. And I really felt like Ian got to help this way and thus they really are from him. He was so excited to go to storytime today. Of course he was not so sure about giving away his valentines. I had to once again explain that we made them to give to the other kids and that they in turn were going to give valentines to him. :) Anyway, it was a fun project and a fun storytime.

Fun with paint

So today is my husband's birthday. And unfortunately, all week the whole family has been fighting colds. Tis the season, I guess. I was worried I wouldn't be able to do anything special for him b/c of my lack of energy. To add to the drama of today, Ian decided he would not sleep during nap time. Luckly, when I did finally let him get up from nap he was in a fairly good mood. And I found alittle energy. So I thought it would be great if we painted something for Mark. The other day I had gotten an end roll of paper for the newpaper office. I rolled it out on the floor on top of a plastic tablecloth and got out the paint. We painted hand prints all over a sign saying Happy Birthday I made. Than we rolled out a free piece and used our feet. It was so fun. The great part was letting Ian get all messy. He is really quite a clean kid. He hates, I mean hates having his hands dirty. Even today, it took him a few minutes to really get into paining. First he used one finger. Then we it had paint on it me to clean it. I just demonstrated how to wipe the paint off on the paper as part of the painting. He than got excited and he even initiated putting his whole hand in pant to make hand prints. I was very impressed. He was so cute. The best part was watching him slide his foot around the paint and then sliding it across the paper. Afterwards we had a bath and enjoyed the purple water from all the paint on our body. :) Best of all we were able to make something for Mark and he seemed to like it. I'm even thinking of using the foot print panting as wrapping paper come Christmas. Being that it is news print paper it is very thin so it should wrap nicely. And I'm sure grandparents will get a kick out of homemade wrapping paper. Of course all the energy painting and cleaning up meant I am really tired tonight. But it was worth it. Now if only I could actually fall asleep. I'm only still up b/c I know I'll just lie awake in bed. ARGGGG!!!