Mermaid + Merboy. Perhaps a prince! He does have a crown.

Two separate paper cutouts, with the hands glued together.

Mer-boy prince.

Mer-maid!

OMG she just kills me.

I KNOW that if I had stepped in and “helped” her with this project, they would not have turned out as AWESOME as they did.

She said, “I’m making some paper dolls, Mommy!” And make them she did.

Behold! The dolls!

#1: halloween (note the ghostie earring) #2: rocking out with headphones (note the music note) #3 ROBOTS! OMG SHE MADE ROBOTS!!! #4 normal girl

Behold! The clothing she made for the dolls!

And here are the dolls with their clothes on. I laid the clothes on the dolls and scanned them “dressed”:

#1: halloween girl now has ghostie shirt too! #3 That robot girl is lookin’ pretty boobtastic!

If you click the images, you’ll go to my flickr page where I have added a few notes to the first and second page.

Oh man. These just kill me. KILL me. I am going crazy in the best way, when I look at these! That girl. I love her.

-amy

It is a worksheet he made for Jocelyn. The first part is a “matching” section, where she is supposed to look at the first shape and then circle the matching shape in the next 3 columns. The next is a simple counting question, complete with multiple choice (!!! multiple choice! oh god, it kills me!) And then he also has a blank for the answer (asr). I almost flipped when I saw this.

Next up we have some beautiful ladies drawn by Jocelyn, in fancy upturned dresses. I asked her if they were doing the splits or something, but no, those are their DRESSES. I absolutely ADORE the first girlie’s face. I don’t know if you can really tell in this picture but it is just the sweetiest little face EVER! I have had the urge to sew something lately and this little gem is pushing it over the edge – I simply have GOT to make a little dollie with that face!

Oh man. I can’t even tell you how much these feel me with GLEE! I just love them and HAD to share!

-amy

Crazy Monster with Many Eyes

tomorrow – the book Ethan wrote and illustrated.

The rest of the weekend was nice too, I had visions of getting the tree and decorating it Friday, but the actuality of it was less appealing than the idea of it. I did take Jocelyn and get a tree on Sunday however (let her pick it it, because my track record isn’t that great) and so it is up, but undecorated.

Lots of craftiness ensued, the kids and I painted butterflies, hearts, and christmas trees — all things you cut out on a fold, paint, and then fold again for symmetrical paint blobbiness (and then when you’re done with the paint, that’s when the glitter is sprinkled) – it was great fun. My kitchen floor is all glittery now

We also did some gumdrop sticking, and I made some Martha Stewart paper ornaments, and a couple of hot pads. I need to take pictures of everything to show off.

My gumdrop wreath:

Ethan’s gumdrop tree:

Jocelyn’s gumdrop tree:

Grumbling (from Ethan mostly) came along with Monday morning, but the promise of taking detours on the way home to see people’s christmas lights helped to assuage that.

There was also lots of shopping done, and despite my wish to make it low key and do lots of hand made things, there are closets stocked with presents already. On the plus side, I think we may be done! Waiting for a few things to be delivered, and need to go over all the lists, but largely, I think the shopping is pretty much done.

It was a lovely holiday.

Well, they were off and downstairs in a jiffy. And now, here’s the video of our budding super star!

Oh. My. Lord.

I just died. From the cuteness. My favorite part, the first 3 seconds when she’s struggling just to sit on the couch with the guitar on her lap. The rest is awesome too though. Especially the end, where she’s states, “That’s the END.”

-amy

We had a lovely father’s day. The kids got up and snuck downstairs while James and I slept in a bit. I must say, this is the nicest part about them getting a bit older. When they started making a bit of a racket, I got up and went downstairs with them so daddy could sleep in.

We got out the present we had gotten for James and got to work. I mixed up some concret, poured it in the mold, and then the kids got busy sticking glass bead-like things in it, making hand impressions, and trying very hard to distract me so that they could do letter stamps all over the place willy nilly. I, however, used my mom-powers to not get distracted and kept all the words as actual words.

The resulting garden stepping stone turned out quite nicely.

I am pretty unoriginal, as this is the same thing we did for Father’s Day 2 years ago. I’m glad I got a fancier kit this time, because in the other one, we had to just scratch the letters into the concret with a toothpick and it really didn’t look that great. We had to embellish everything with paint.

I don’t mind that it’s unoriginal and now we have 2 because look at those handprints! We’ll want those later! Too cute!

So we made the stepping stone and set it in a safe place to set for 2 days. After we let James sleep in, we brought him breakfast in bed (poptarts and coke) and all the homemade cards and pictures the kids had made in school.

The sweetest part of the day was after I shooed the kids from basically jumping on Daddy, he turned to me, his eyes moist and said, “I’m so happy we have them. I love being a daddy. They make me so happy.”

We spent the rest of the day poking around at the Potomac mall (legos for ethan, new shoes for jocelyn) and then came home to launch teeeny tiny rockets at a nearby soccer field.

Everyone had a great day.

Thanks for being such a great daddy, James. I love you.

-amy

Freezer stenciling on t-shirts. I have photos of the process for Jocelyn’s but only the finished product of Ethan’s. I used angry chicken’s freezer stencil tutorial to make these.

Here’s the stencil for Jocelyn’s shirt.

Next, I put the freezer paper over it, shiny side down, and traced it. Then I had to cut it out. This is probably the most time consuming part. Then, I ironed it onto Jocelyn’s blank t-shirt.

Then Jocelyn and I got to painting. (This was taken several weeks ago. You can see how I caved to kid pressure and put a little pink streak in her hair. OK, I’m lying. I caved because I totally wanted to do it! However, you’ll see later, in the photo I took this morning, how it’s pretty much disappeared now. It gave her several weeks of pure bliss. You can also see in this picture how pink haired ladies should never wear orange shirts!)

After painting, I set the shirt aside to dry. By the next morning, it was dry and I tossed it in the dryer to heat set it, and she wore it that day.

I did Jocelyn’s shirt first, because I pretty much knew what we wanted. After hers was drying, I asked Ethan what we should put on a shirt for him. He gave me a blank look. Jocelyn has a shirt that says, “My daddy loves me,” so drawing for something, ANYTHING, I suggested, “How about ‘I love my daddy?’”

He shook his head, thought a minute, and then said, “I love TRUCKS!”

“Should we put that on your shirt?”

“YEAH!”

I thought that sounded a little boring, but then I got the idea to take one of his drawings of a truck, and use that as well.

I took the purple truck, got rid of the line/road at the bottom, and made it part of the stencil.

So here is the finished results, of both shirts, taken this morning in front of their school (notice how the pink is now gone):

the rest are Ethan’s:

Fire house with orange bell and ladder.

trucks

Maze. Ethan loves mazes (it’s so nice that now there’s something to engage him while we wait for our food at a restaurant). So this drawing was especially sweet.

T’s have monkey tails. Just letting you know.

Practice writing, crane on a flat bed truck.

I don’t remember if he said that tall one was a rocket, or a tower, or just a tall house or what.

Houses.

Our house. Not just any house, OUR HOUSE. Because our bricks are sort of pinkish, mommy!

and finally, this one is my favorite:

It could be because when I saw it, his cute face was looking up at me, and he said, “I made this FOR YOU mommy!”

It could be because for MONTHS, nay, YEARS I have been trying to get him to draw ANYTHING, but alas, to no effect. Always, he would hand me or his father the drawing utensil, and patiently instruct us on what we were supposed to draw. “A train!” “No! Not like that! With a grill! On a track! Now a truck! No! not like that! A dump truck!” “Why don’t you try?” “No. Just you do it.” and now finally, look! He is doing it himself. I think this is a big part of why this one is my favorite.

but mostly, it’s because you can see how happy he is drawing trucks. He obviously loves trucks. and he loves to draw them. A merry little page of a busy flock of little trucks.

And he made it just for ME!