Cocooon of Chaos

Fingerprint Gift Tags

So, my new addiction is Pinterest, an online pin board, really. I just love, love, love getting inspired by other people's creativity! Even the girls created their own boards, filled with horses, pigs, and Selena Gomez (sigh). That being said, I saw two great ideas for wrapping paper and gift wrap using stamp pads and wee little fingers. Our smart and creative Advent elf left us a bag of creative goodness to get us started on our fingerprint gift tags:

 How great did these turn out?! Do you know what the best part was...it was thirty minutes of no squabbling, just giggles and compliments for each other's creativity.

P.S. We are knee deep in the Clarice Bean Collection of Chapter Books, so my scribbling may be peppered with a wee bit English from across the pond now and then (like squabbing above!)...oh, how I LOVE how much these little girls of mine love these books! Each night, our day ends in giggles reading on the floor...just as it should. Tell me, what are you reading with your kiddos?

Happy Birthday, Marie Curie

Woke up this morning to find out--thanks to Google--it was Marie Curie's 144th birthday. I remember as a young girl, being astonished by what she did for science and the bravery she had to refute conventions of what a "good woman" should be doing. Did you know she recieved not one, but TWO Nobel Prizes. That is amazing. Ava's recent interest is science so we went through my bookcase, looked her up in the Webster's Dictionary of Women, and decided to celebrate this remarkable woman's birthday with an off-the- cuff science experiment.

Materials: baking soda, water, vinegar, container to pour into, and towel to cover surface

Before we mixed the ingredients, I asked the girls what they thought might happen. Ava guessed it would bubble and Lillian guessed it would bubbble "so, so much!" We mixed equal parts water, vinegar, 1 tablespoon of baking soda and watched as we made our own little explosions. What great fun! We then experimented with the amount of water, vinegar, and baking soda...it went on for a good 45 minutes.

Once again, something with things we always have leads to great educational fun!

Tomorrow is voting day and I am humbled by women like Marie Curie who had the gusto to follow their hearts, no matter what the cost. To those women who fought so I have the voice, choice, and right to carry on each day, I do hope I'm doing your courage and determination some justice. There are few times I get on my soap box, but VOTE! People gave their lives so we have this right. Apathy gets us nowhere. Okay, off my soap box and into bedtime stories. 

Scratch Paper Mosaics

Confession: I should be working on my research paper about Cultural Inclusive Classrooms, but my tea cup was empty and my brain about to explode, so here I am. Need a little break from Academia and a dose of creativity. Ava officially has pneumonia, so my days have been peppered with vapo rub applications, movie watching (forgot how much I love Annie!), and blasts of creativity on the fly. (Wouldn't that be a great name for a book?!) Anyhoo, I keep a bag of scratch paper in the art tower that was overflowing, so we decided to do scratch paper mosaics.

Materials: scratch paper ripped (or cut), paper, glue, marker

Draw something, apply glue, scatter pieces of paper and if you feel like it, trace over shapes with a marker.

Ava's sun and hearts, Ollie's motorcyle, and my owl

Once again, so much artsy fun with so little. This project is great for fine motor skills from the ripping, gross motor with scissor skills, and sensory exploration...not that we need an excuse to be creative, but these things are ALWAYS in the back of my mind. Once a teacher, always a teacher.

On a different note, I have so enjoyed my time with my eldest. She is in school all day, comes home to homework, then outside to play, and all other independent seven year old stuff...I did not realize how much I miss spending time with her. Pneumonia is not a friend of mine by any means, but having the time to create, read, and wonder with her have made these long days a bit more enjoyable. I've learned that she's hoping to become president, be a scientist, own three horses and write poems. It is hard finding individual time for each of these little beings with the craziness of life, but even if it is wracked with illness, I am grateful.

May your weekend be full of doing nothing...

Warding off the Nightmares: Homemade Dreamcatchers

For the last couple of weeks, Ava wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. The same recurring dream is haunting her: a boy in a wheelchair is wrapped in duct tape in a cage and other kids are making fun of him and she cannot do anything about it. Frightening, right?! It is heartbreaking for two reasons, one, visually it is disturbing, but also it is emotionally disturbing because Ava is, by nature, extremely compassionate. She is also a tad obsessive, so bedtime is truly disastrous, as she is afraid to go to sleep, in fear she is going to have the nightmare again. So, at two a.m. the other day, I had an epiphany: if she made her own dream catcher, she may be able to conquer the fear of sleep. We collected our supplies, did some research, and constructed our own dream catchers...

Our supplies included two embroidery hoops, yarn, pipe cleaners, beads, and feathers. (We made our own feathers, as I don't have hawk feathers at my disposal!)

 
We researched the meanings of different feathers and Ava chose the hawk for protection and the goose for love; Lillian chose the owl for wisdom and the seagull for travel. (In her own words, "I don't have crazy dreams like Ava, just nice ones of me in France or me with my pigs on my farm.") Lucky lass!

Happy to report, last night was nightmare free!

 

Handmade Windowboxes

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt

 
My brilliant husband had the grand idea of using some of the many small scraps of wood in our garage for window boxes. I do have to say, in the fourteen years I've been with him, his craftiness continues to improve and these window boxes came out fantastic. Yes, we probably should have painted them ourselves, but the girls really wanted to and the joy of watching them working together, rather than fighting was marvelous. They used some leftover low VOC paint from one of our hallway projects earlier in the year and I'm just thrilled with the result.

 
It would of course be much easier to head to the local hardware store or big box store and purchase some window boxes that were perfect, but using what we have to make something new felt right. Yes, there are some areas that may need to be touched up, but these window boxes are perfect in their imperfections. Every time I come home, the memory of the girls and Devin making those purple window boxes puts a smile on my face.

Feliz Cumpleanos, Frida...

Seems to be a week of birthdays around here, but there is always more and more room for celebration. Today we celebrated one of my favorite artists, the infamous Frida Kahlo . We read a great book, entitled Frida, which is beautiful in both illustrations and writing. After looking at some of her art, the girls decided, they, too, wanted to make their very own Kahlo-esque self portraits...oh, and I got in on the fun, too...

 

 

 

 
 
 "There is nothing more precious than laughter--It is strength to laugh and lose oneself."~Frida Kahlo

I hope you had the chance to get lost in some of your own laughter today, if not, try tomorrow. 

Pepper Prints and Teacher Gifts

Oh, the Grant abode has been abuzz with activity the past few days. School is coming to an end, extracurricular activities are being put on hold to enjoy the beach, and I've had a little creative renewal sparked by the absence of responsibilities whilst on vacation. The wonders a little break from the mundane can do!

While chopping peppers for our curry vegetables and tofu dinner the other night, I cut the tops off and marveled at how beautiful this vegetable was--it was in the perfect shape of a flower. So, I grabbed a bag, threw the two tops in and decided to do pepper prints the next morning. Great fun...

 

We later used the paintings as cards for the girls' art teachers whose gifts are below.

 
 Using glass markers, Lily took a recycled Yankee Candle tin, decorate it, and placed a "fire circle" (also known as a candle) in it. She grabbed six more "fire circles" just in case her teacher ran out. 

 
 Ava used the same markers, decorated two mugs, and picked out the tea for her two teachers. The cutest part was one of the cards in which Ava wrote, "you amayze me" to one of her art teachers who is also a very talented musician...hence the guitars. 

And the rest of the week is full of Father's Day gift making. We are aiming for a lovingly handmade extravaganza. Hope your own hands, big or little, get a little messy this week.
 

Girls and their sticks...making necklace trees

With all the wind storms this Winter and Spring, Mother Nature provided us with endless amount of sticks in our yards. That, and the fact that Ava has been arriving to the dinner table with the minimum of three necklaces, which I later find all over the house, inspired these necklace trees.

Materials: air dry clay, sticks with branches, and acrylic paints

and Ava's suggestions of beads,"to make them look spectacular!" Of course, how silly and plain of me!

finished product

and voila, we now have one more effective system of organization in this chaotic house...in just our artsy style

Happy Weekend to all...

 

Waiting...

One thing I have learned to be as a parent is patient. Patient with myself, my children, and life. I must admit, however, my patience is indeed being tested this week. My weekly visit with my midwife was a happy one, as Oliver has moved into position and I am dilated. She does not think I will go another week and quite frankly, I'm not sure I can. This has been an odd pregnancy: in the beginning we were stressed about losing the baby and stressed about being stressed; in the middle, my midwives feared I had blood clots and scared me enough to realign my priorities and sit my behind down when I needed to (something I am terrible at); and at the end, my emotional strength was tested with the fear of losing my mother.  All in all, this pregnancy allowed me to stop in the chaos of life and just breathe. Life is going to happen, no matter what I do and worrying, stressing, and fretting is only going to make it worse for myself. I learned to take five minutes to myself everyday, whether it be in the bathtub or on a walk, and just relax into the moment. We spend so much time worrying about things, we miss what is in front of us. The past nine months have been trying for various reasons, but I'm not sure I can express how watching this baby grow has been the best medicine.  I guess it is the surprises in life that test our true character. I'm rambling here, but this baby is going to be welcomed into the world with so much love and hope...

    To make the days pass with my severe discomfort, we have all been taking it easy. Ava caught a cold and has graced us with her presence for the past two days, which has been lovely. I've been soaking up all the time I can with them because I know how much I will miss them while in the hospital. These little girls have given me so very much in such a short time.  I feel grateful each moment I spend with them and only hope they feel the same way. I know many changes are coming there way and Ava is very worried "about the noise" with the baby; the first time she heard Lily cry, she cried too, and tried to soothe her as best she could, being only 19 months herself. I've tried as best I can to prepare the girls for the baby without over-preparing them. Lily has been fascinated with my belly. She asks me daily, "Mummy, are you sure you're going to be small again?" I ask myself this question, too, little girl, and am also amazed watching my body morph with this baby. I am much larger than I was with either of the girls and I've been trying to embrace the beauty of pregnancy, rather than the drudgery of it.  So, today, we had some fun...

I made body paint (basic poster paints mixed with a little non-toxic dish soap) and let the girls go to town on my belly. As they were painting, the baby was moving around and it was such a surreal activity.

I, of course, joined in on the fun and painted the girls. When I asked them what they wanted, they both decided they wanted to be pregnant cats...

Recycled Letter Boards

These two cookie sheets have been grossing me out for quite some time but being that I feel everything can be repurposed in some way, decided to use my imagination...sometimes this can be very dangerous, but this time, it was a success!

Materials

old cookie sheet

contact paper (bought mine at our local thrift store for 25 cents!)

2 packages of magnetic letters (52 total)

construction paper or card stock cut in squares

stickers or pictures from magazines

glue stick

scissors

marker

Instructions for boards

cut piece of contact paper to fit cookie sheet and press down

Instructions for sight word cards

glue pictures or apply stickers to paper

neatly write the word below/beside/under picture (I used lower case, as both my girls know their capital letters)

Voila! A letter board in less than 10 minutes! The only packages of letters I could find are upper case and it may seem confusing for younger children to distinguish between upper and lower case, so do as you see fit for your own child. This is a great activity for letter recognition and beginner literacy skills. (Also a lovely time killer whilst preparing a meal!)