Trying to get organized to become #crafty

Last week, I mentioned I had created lists for crafts and activities to do with the kids. I’m not a crafty person but honestly, Pinterest has actually inspired me to think I may be able to handle some crafts. Even bought my first container of Mod Podge (was a bit thrown off that there are different types, but I’ll fumble my way through)! So, if I show any crafts here, I can guarantee you that anyone can do them!

I wanted to have pretty containers for my lists of crafts and activities so the kids and I went to the dollar store and found 4 boxes we liked (ok, I liked…my daughter picked out some really brightly coloured ones with a very strange pattern – I just couldn’t imagine myself looking at them all the time).  We bought:

• 4 same-sized boxes
• scrapbooking paper (as a non-scrapbooker, of course I don’t have any at home)
• 2 pages of letter stickers to make sure I had enough letters for all the words I was going to use (I actually had some letter stickers, but in colours that didn’t match the boxes)

I traced the green side of a box that showed under the lid onto the black paper and cut it out. Then I just eyeballed to make it smaller than the side of the box (see, really technical here!), and cut the paper smaller.

I went to add the word “summer” to the paper for that box and encountered a bit of a problem before I even stuck the letter stickers. I have really good spatial awareness, so I realized that they were too big to fit horizontally across the paper. I stood there and looked at the letters, then the paper, back to the letters, back to the paper, cursed the “M” for being so wide, especially when I needed to use two for the word “summer”.  Took me a few minutes (ok, closer to 10 minutes, but I’m new to this!) for me to realize I could put the words on diagonally. So, that’s what I did.

(You would think I would have taken pictures of the word “Summer” in progress, alas, I did not. And clearly I need a better camera…any sponsors? Am willing to test out different ones…hint, hint!)

Then I repeated the same process for all 4 words I’m using to classify the lists: Summer, Rainy, Crafts, Winter.

Then I taped these “cards” onto the four boxes, and voila! I actually did a “craft” of some kind.

Watching Them Do Their Thing

My daughter is the perfect combo of girlie girl and tomboy.  For example, today she wore a white dress with big pink flowers and a pink satin ribbon to play in the sand and water at the park (yes, it washes just fine or it would have magically disappeared a long time ago).  Yesterday, she picked up a frog without hesitation to show it to the smaller kids at the park. The bigger kids all started with a huge chorus of “ewww!!!”. She gave me this look that said “What? Why are they all grossed out?”.  I chuckled at the situation and asked her to put the frog down away from the other kids so no one stepped on it.

 

Among other things, my son loves seeing the world through a lens.  Whenever he can get his hands on my Blackberry, he’ll activate the camera even though I keep the key pad locked when I’m not using it, and look through the screen to see what’s right in front of him.  The look of wonder and analysis on his face is amazing and I just love watching him.  If you try to take a picture of him, he’ll wait for the “click” and then come over and pull your hand with the camera in it so he can see the screen to look at the picture – which isn’t a problem with inexpensive cameras, except when you are with a professional photographer – no hunny, you will NOT touch his camera for fear of your life!

 

This morning, I particularly loved just watching them play in, around and on the fort my daughter built in our living room.  Extra cute quotient was when my daughter referred to her fort as a hammock when she was lying on top of the sheet, or when my son was lying with his Scooby under a duvet in the middle of the fort. They looked ready for bedtime, all cuddled up together.

I love watching my kids do their thing.