Catch Up Time!!

Lots of days on here...

Here we go!!!

A Bad Habit = Procrastionation. I mean, my last post was on July 28.....need I say more?

Someone I Love = Miles. Dirt and all, and even though he steals our toothbrushes so I have to constantly buy new ones (proof right here). He's been my easiest kid so far, and he's so much fun to have around. That being said-I love all my boys, Alan included. I just had to split up them up with the pictures I was taking.

Childhood Memory = Our trip to Lake Tahoe When I was about 11 or 12. We went to Ponderosa Ranch, where Bonanza was filmed (outdoor scenes at least), and I had my first taste of Sarsaparilla. Lovely sarsaparilla! I've been a fan ever since.

Something Blue = Since I am the mother of all boys this was pretty easy. Plus, I love blue AND I love skulls, so.....

Sunset = This was harder since I rarely know when the sun is even setting. I'm usually running around, or doing something. Today, I made an effort to be outside to photograph it. Certainly wasn't spectacular by any means, but it was pretty with the contrast of the porch colors, and the trees. At least I thought so.

Yourself With 13 Things = These 13 magnets represent different things I love. A pumpkin for my enormous LOVE of the holiday season (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas). Skulls for my love of science. (These came from National Geographic, so very sciencey. hee, hee.) An elephant for my love of animals-other people's animals. The goldfish, both because I like this kind of goldfish (again, other people's), and I love the color orange. The hard one to see in the center is the rainbow effect left on the water from an oil spill. It reminds me that beautiful things can come from disastrous events. The little girl is for my love of drawing. The 4 leaf clover is for my love of nature. The skull bottle cap, again represents my boys and how I love them, but they will probably be the death of me. =) The Leninade cap represents my trip to Russia with my brother, Jason and sister, Holly. Fun time. The lower right different language one is the bible in ancient Greek. Reminds me to keep God in my life. The top different language just represents my love of learning about  anything foreign, and travelling!!!! The footprint shows the way I prefer to be-sans shoes. And last but not least, San Francisco. The Bay Area. My home. I miss it greatly.

Eyes = Nick's eyes. You can probably tell he is raising his eyebrows in question at the time I took this. This is soooo Nick. Always asking questions. Any answer I give is never good enough to stop the questions, so I chose this for the shot.

Sunflare = Ok, I substituted Silhouette because I couldn't get Ben to co-operate with taking a picture. Plus I got this pretty awesome shot while I was waiting for the sun to go down. This reminds me of the absolute power books can have in our lives; whether it be for good and they brighten our lives with their knowledge, or for worse and they blind us to the world around us.

Long Exposure = Nathan was pretending to fly. He is so giggly, this was a hard thing to do and get any kind of focus in the picture. It is what it is. He had fun though. =)

What makes me smile.....

In a word......CRAFTS!!! It doesn't matter what kind of horrible day I've had, fights I've gotten into with the kids, or sleep I didn't get-If there is an opportunity to make something, especially something from scratch, then I am all in, baby! I have noticed too, when the boys are arguing amongst each other, the best way to end it is ask if they want to make something. Clearly the creativity genes have been passed on. =)

Below are a few pictures of things I have made. I know it's supposed to be one picture a day, but honestly-I can do what I want with this challenge. It's my blog. Here we go....

Sculptey Yo Gabba Gabba Ornaments

Painted Shirt For A Friend's Birthday Present

Map Coasters

Scrabble Tile Coasters For My Brother

Jet Packs For The Boys

Bubble Magnets!!!

These are the kind of things that really make me smile. Apart from my family, because that's an easy answer. Granted, they don't make me smile all the time. I think there is an equal amount of glaring, frowning, and looks of confusion that accompany those smiley, happy times. Crafts will always make me smile, without fail. LOVE THEM. In fact, I'm about to go in and paint some coasters with the kids right now. Well, as soon as Ben and Nick get off time out......

Something Green, From Low, From High......

Three days of my photo challenge at once. Right on time.....

This is our "Green" Family. Faces courtesy of my 8 year old.

"Looking up" at one of the enormous trees on our property.

This slug was right at my feet while I was watching one of my kids in the little pool outside. Scared the life out of my youngest boy. Gross looking, but I thought I'd share. This is my "looking down" picture, by the way. =)



Clouds....

There are really not much in the way of clouds today, since it is hot and very breezy. I DID however manage to document the very few there were before they got blown away. You're welcome. ;)

Horrible view, right? I should really complain to someone about this..... =)



What I Wore Today...

I should have changed this one too, now that I think about it. How boring to take a picture of what I wore today....Unless I showed the more scandalous type of pictures. But believe me when I tell you, a picture of my shirt and pants is actually WAY more appealing to look at. I spared you the chocolate smears, nose wiped, dried tears and some white stuff that I have absolutely NO idea what it is, and just took a picture of the heap. Although, that again might have made this day a bit more interesting.....

No Star Wars underwear here.....Unfortunately. =(

Self Portrait.......

Here I am in all my Glory. Fresh faced and watching you.......

30 Day Photography Challenge

I have become slightly addicted to this site called pinterest.com. It's a mecca for crafty minded people to come together and waste many, many hours of their day pinning things to their "boards" to do someday, but will probably be closer to never. We all have grand ideas, don't we? Oh, yes. Yet, I have decided that won't be what happens to me. I will see these wonderful things to do, and I will actually try them out! I have been busy making so many things in the past few days that I got off Pinterest, that my house literally looks like the aftermath of Armageddon, but honestly-I have never been happier! My kids are loving it, because they get to help with some of them, and play with others and I love, love, LOVE creating things with my hands.

One of the boards I have on there is of things I have found that I think are "Great Ideas", and this post was one of them. It gives a list of different pictures to take for 30 days to basically improve your picture taking ability, and give you more interesting pictures. I adore taking pictures. My two year old says "Cheese" every time I pull out my phone cause he thinks he's going to get his picture taken. It's not that unusual for me to document random things they do throughout the day. Oh, I absolutely love taking picures........just not of myself. This is going to be kind of humbling for me. I loathe every picture of me since I've had kids and gained weight, but at least by me doing this, when I die-my kids will be able to remember what I looked like! I tend to always be the one BEHIND the camera. =)

I can't start the actual picture taking until tomorrow since I left my camera in my Mom's car. I don't know why either, but if you are a follower of this blog, you know I am as absentminded as that once famous Professor and these things tend to happen.

Here is the list.....

30 Day Photography Challenge

Day 1   Self Portrait
Day 2   What You Wore Today
Day 3   Clouds
Day 4   Something Green
Day 5   From A High Angle
Day 6   From A Low Angle
Day 7   Something That Makes You Smile (They had fruit, But I hate fruit pictures, so....)
Day 8   A Bad Habit (Even though I don't have any? =}  )
Day 9   Someone You Love
Day 10 Childhood Memory
Day 11 Something Blue
Day 12 Sunset
Day 13 Yourself With 13 Things
Day 14 Eyes
Day 15 Silhouette
Day 16 Long Exposure
Day 17 Technology
Day 18 Your Shoes
Day 19 Something Orange
Day 20 Bokeh (I had to Google this. It means blurred background.  I know, right?!? The Japanese make everything sound so exotic....)
Day 21 Faceless Self Portrait (Ummm, this should be interesting...)
Day 22 Hands
Day 23 Sunflare
Day 24 Animal
Day 25 Something Pink
Day 26 Close up
Day 27 From a distance
Day 28 Flowers
Day 29 Black and White
Day 30 Self Portrait

This is (mostly) what they had, I mean really....fruit? Ugh. Regardless, I am going to do this! Feel free to join me on your blogs, and lets get some fancy, fruitless photography flying! Everyone LOVES pictures, and when you break it down it is only one a day. So easy!  You don't even have to keep the order if you don't want to....I won't tell.

Summer ideas to do with the kiddos!

The boys brought a little booklet home from school that gives different websites that are educational, so over the summer they can "play" on them and retain what they have learned, and possibly learn something else. Fantastic idea! I decided to go on the computer and check some of them out. I only got to the first one, and I am in love. It has crafty ideas for all ages, and science projects! I'm sure there's more but that's as far as I've gotten so far, because there's too much fun stuff to do!!

http://www.sandford-artedventures.com/

My favorites bar is going to refuse to let me save anything else pretty soon. I tried one of them out with the kids yesterday, and it was a huge hit!

Here's how to do it:

1) Get a plain piece of white paper. I think I would use a thicker paper other than just printer paper next time. Freezer paper would be great, since the back is waxy and it would be stronger. But if you don't have it, plain ol' printer paper DID work.

2) Color the paper in completely with different colored crayons. Fill ALL the white in. Warning, it gets very tiring. Might have developed a bit of Carpal Tunnel just doing 3 papers. This would be a great step for the kids to do. =)

3) With black Tempura paint, paint the entire paper. It looks like it's not covered when it's wet, but let it dry and you can cover spots that are kind of thin. I thought I'd have to do 2 coats of paint, but I was very surprised that when it dried, most of it was actually black. I only had to do touch ups on a few spots. It took overnight, then half the next day to dry....Maybe if it was in the sunlight or if it had a fan on it, it would dry faster. You could always just do 2 coats, if you want. Make sure it is all covered that way. If 2 coats are your thing, definitely use thicker paper to prevent tearing when you get to the etching part.

4) When paint is completely dry, have them etch out a picture in the paint. They can use a popsicle stick, a toothpick, their fingernail....anything. Then you just hang up the picture after, and enjoy!

Here are my boy's pictures....

Ben's jet

Nick's picture of Chicago

Nathan's bee and flower

The other Art website they gave was:

www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm


Have fun!

P.s. I made these magnets too, but that's another post if you want it. =)

Ticks = GROSS!!

Not all vampires look like Robert Pattison!

Ticks freak me the heck out! I never thought too much about them before this month, other than I knew they could give you Lyme disease. And really, all I knew about Lyme Disease is that it could make you go absolutely crazy like the girl from The Real World many years ago. In one of the only episodes I ever watched, a brunette girl flipped out on one of her roommates, started beating on him and dang near foaming at the mouth! Then when confronted about it, she blamed it on the fact that she had Lyme disease. Sob story ensued, etc. After seeing that, I made a mental note to steer clear of Ticks.

Tick bite = Lyme Disease = Certifiably Nuts

But it really wasn't until I recently watched a Animal Planet show on Moose from Alaska that cemented my fear. I don't know why we were watching it, except I remember wanting to show the kids how huge moose actually are, and then we all were totally sucked into the awesome moose information flying our way. We are weird like that I guess. So anyway, part way through the show they showed how these tiny little flea size ticks would crawl to the top of these tall weeds, and wait for an unsuspecting moose to pass by. When they did, the little vampires would attach themselves and then suck the 900 lb. moose dry. Thousands of these itsy bitsy bugs could literally drain it's blood until it died!!! And seeing them all engorged just made me want to puke. Completely lose my lunch all over the room, and vomit up everything I have ever eaten-or will ever eat! I had to look away. I couldn't stomach looking at the screen with all those bugs on the dead carcass. But that was it! I was creeped out by seeing the massive amount of ticks, now I have developed a very real fear of the little crawling leaches.

Then two weeks ago when I went to pick up Alan and the boys at a friend's house, after they had gotten back from camping, it only got worse. Living out in the country has certain perks, but a serious downside is these gross bugs. I don't know if their dog went camping with them, or it got them from the yard alone-all I know is I watched as our friend pulled one after another off the dog, and smashed them between two boards. Let me tell you, these boards looked like they belonged in a crime scene! They were so bloody, they honestly could have been murder weapons. He said he had pulled off some 30 or so ticks from this poor dog, and he was finding more every time he looked. I have no idea how this dog was even moving with all the blood he had lost. I was horrified, and totally checked the baggage and the kids all over for them when we got home.

I am terrified to let the kids wander outside, go in the woods, or even grass that is taller than 3-4 inches. It is a full blown phobia at this point. One that I don't see getting any better, anytime soon. Not until we move out of the country, at least . Until then, I will live in fear of finding bugs burrowed into my children that I can't just pull out because their heads will remain in them. Why is that necessary?!? I have to put a burning match up to my kids' skin to get it off? Seems a bit extreme. So instead, I just don't have the boys go where ticks might hide. Freaky little predators, hopefully will never meet me face to face. I honestly don't think I could handle it. Instead of helping my offspring, I might in all reality, run away from them instead. Not very maternal of me. I hope to never have to cross that bridge. I'd like to have the kids think they can count on me to be brave in every circumstance. Let them wait a few years to find out that I'm a total wuss when it comes to certain gross bugs. Ignorance is bliss.

Blind-Folded Portraits....

So, I got bored today and was looking through a little book I got at the dollar store that talks about "52 Date ideas for Married Couples", and got to one of the ideas that read "Be Art Critics". For some reason just looking at that put this idea into my head, that I had to immediately try. I walked out to Alan and informed him that I was going to blind-fold him and he was going to draw me. He was a little skeptical....

Me "I'm gonna blind-fold you, and you are going to draw me."

Alan "Why?"

Me "Because it will be fun. Come on."

(I grabbed the brand new industrial roll of paper I bought to entertain the kids when they are home)

Alan "For who? This doesn't sound like fun." He grudgingly followed me to the bathroom door, where we would be doing it.

All the kids who were in our room watching Toy Story 3, came out to see what we were up to.

Me "Ok, you are going to draw me. No peeking."

Then I put my flashiest pink ribbon over his eyes and placed him in front of the paper, crayon in hand. The boys were so giddy with excitement they could hardly stand it. I guided his free hand over the paper so he would know where the edges were and not draw on the door.

He drew a tiny circle.

Me "Draw it bigger."

He drew it a tiny bit bigger, pretty much over where he drew the first circle.

Me "Bigger."

He drew it a tiny bit bigger, again over the same spot.

Nick "You keep drawing it in the same spot, Dad!"

I moved him over a few inches, and used his free hand to demonstrate how big I was thinking. He started drawing, and so did the fun. Ben and I were laughing silently, Nick just threw care to the wind and was openly giggling. Pretty soon, Ben and I gave up and joined Nick in laughing hysterically. When Alan finished, he pulled the blind-fold off, and chuckled along with us. Here is his masterpiece:

Nathan thought he drew a zombie, and was therefore scared of it. The older boys started saying they wanted to do it too. But first, my turn....


Ok. I must say, I WAS blind-folded, but we were using crayons so I had an idea of where I had drawn. Before drawing, I would swipe with my free hand to feel where the crayon was so I had some clue where things should go. Not technically cheating, really-but I'll use a marker next time to even the playing field. Here is Alan, through my prettily covered eyes:

He does not wear ties nor bring me flowers, but it was a lot of fun. The boys all did their own drawings of us too. I think we started a new tradition, because this was a very entertaining for all, even doubting Alan. I highly recommend it for family nights, date-nights, or just because. I think we're going to do self portraits next time. =)

Now the kids' pictures....

Ben drew Alan.

Nathan drew both Alan and I.

Nick drew me.