Saturday, March 23, 2013

Project Life - Week 11

Whew...12 minutes to go before midnight of week 12.  Just barely making it!



Friday, March 15, 2013

Building Ye Olden Days

This week Jake had a project due for social studies class.  He and his partner were building a shipyard from the Colonial Boston era.  He's known about it for awhile, but other than the little work he did in class on it, there wasn't much done until Sunday night when we started figuring out a schedule for the week to get it accomplished.

Monday I picked up supplies and Monday night he built the actual dock.


I was in charge of cutting the Popsicle sticks with the only thing we could find that worked - the small hedge clipper things.  Popsicle sticks/branches = wood.  It's all good.


Tuesday night he started working again and without really intending to we just pushed through to finish and be done with it.


He really wanted something for texture on the roof and I showed him how to emboss.  (Thank you crafting supplies!)  He was THRILLED with that little heat gun and after he saw what it did to the embossing powder he grabbed that thing out of my hand lickety split!  Then I had to jump away because he kept aiming it at my fingers as I held the paper for him!

We were pretty excited about the rock idea along the water and especially excited about the big rock in the middle of the water.  I also really liked the pile of wood waiting to be built into a ship.


He came downstairs and said he had looked through his Lego people and had found some "old looking" ones.  Epaulets?  Check.  Vikings Helmet?  Check.  The cute blond on the left is actually "Thor".  Jake removed his cape since we didn't think it fit the theme too well.  He hadn't done research to see if shipbuilders wore capes.


The Lego people weren't officially added until Wednesday morning.  We wanted to make sure we wouldn't ruin them with the glue gun.  We dabbed a small amount on some extra legs he had upstairs on Tuesday night and let it sit over night and harden.  Wednesday morning when he realized he could scrape the glue without ruining the Lego he glued everything down.

And can I just say - GOD BLESS THE GLUE GUN!!  I don't know who came up with it, but every time we use it for something I fall more in love with it.  I'm not sure we would have been finished with this project even now if we'd been using regular Elmer's Glue.  And it sure beats the smell from the rubber cement we used as kids on a lot of projects!


He was pretty excited with the outcome.  It was due Friday and was finished (minus Legos) by 9:30pm on Tuesday.  So far....knock on wood....we've been doing pretty good on the whole "not waiting until the last minute" for projects this year.  His partner was in charge of building the ship so unfortunately we won't get to see the final project.  Just glad we can check this off the DOCKet.

Hardee har har.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Project Life - Week 10

Another week that squeaked by.  I really thought we were going to be out of luck for photos.  Whew!

New Month - new colors too!






Friday, March 8, 2013

Saturday Morning Photo Shoot

Last Saturday Tracy called me to let me know that the fields on the way to the "Y" were super sparkly.  She thought it might make interesting photos, but didn't know if I did that kind of photography.

Honestly, I don't.  I just never really seem to catch landscape stuff very well.  But, I thought it sounded like an interesting challenge.  Mike was game enough to be the driver and sit in the warm car.

I missed the sun angle Tracy saw but I was still happy to practice some with focus and getting the right balance of light.


This past week I played around with the shots.  They aren't really anything on their own, but I thought I would practice with some textures.



Then I took it a step further and added some quotations to a couple.  All textures are from Kim Klassen.  She posts a lot of beautiful pictures with quotations and I was trying to imitate her.  I still need some practice with putting all these steps together.

Honestly...there aren't a lot of uplifting "winter" quotes and these aren't the most inspiring, colorful pictures.




Some people don't really like winter, but not me.  It's my favorite season, which is weird because I'm always cold.  But I love snuggling up in warm blankets, with a fireplace on and lots of layers of clothes.  I'm sure there are a couple more little snow flakes to come, but winter will be winding down shortly so it was a fun little field trip.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Project Life - Week 9

I'm kind of glad to be done with February.  The pink was starting to get to me.




Monday, March 4, 2013

Sunday Afternoon Outside

A week ago Sunday it was gorgeous outside.  It was perfect "play outside weather".  Maddie and Jake asked if they could have the Runchey kids over to play outside and build some forts.

Rob dropped everyone off and I didn't hear from them for a bit.  Then suddenly all the girls were inside and we were hanging up soaking wet clothes.  I wasn't sure what we had for them to do inside, but Maddie had a plan.  She was going to paint the girls' fingernails.


Riley was on board, but Ellie wasn't too excited.  (Surprising since I think she's such a girlie-girl.)  She opted to color.  We printed out about six princess coloring pages and everyone was set.




Riley was pretty intent on the artistry that Maddie was trying to accomplish.  I'm not sure if it worked, but it kept everyone occupied.





Mike had the following conversation with Ellie (and Riley popped in for a say...).  I don't know how it started - but I heard the endings:

Ellie:  ....your wife, Kerry.
Mike:  Pretty Kerry?
Ellie:  You can call her whatever you like.
Riley:  Except Bob.

He just walked away trying to suppress a laugh while I snickered from the next room.

The girls headed back outside, I headed down for a nap.  The girls headed back inside and made cupcakes.

The boys stayed outside most of the afternoon with only a small break from working on Jake's snow fort.



As of right now, the fort is almost completely melted, along with the giant pile of snow on each side of the driveway.  We are supposed to be getting a bit of snow in the next day or so.  We'll see if things can be rebuilt.  If not, maybe the Runchey kids would be interested in coming over to shovel.