Owl

Schoolwork - connect the dots and color.

I love how Kaila colored her owl. The marker strokes on the wings and body follow the feathers, as does in the eyebrows. The yellow feathers on the feet give her drawing dimension. I also really liked the orange outline around the eyes and feet.

"Who, who... am I?"

Felting

I wish I had time to do all the little things that catch my eye here and there at the craft store. A few weeks ago, I spotted on a shelf Laurie Sharp's book "Wool Pets: Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle" and had to page through it. She makes the cutest little felt animals. I hope to find a workshop in town where I can try felting, just for fun.

Click to look inside on Amazon - "Wool Pets".

The Nutcracker & Dreidels

A traditional Christmas ballet and a party for the kids to play dreidels - that started our holiday season this Saturday.

The kids attended their first Nutcracker performance. Kaila and Daniel were completely enchanted by the music, the dance and the story. The first act went by pretty quickly. The Christmas tree scenario was beautiful making the living room setting come to life. The children playing on stage added fast movement and interest. The Nutcracker becomes a prince after saving Clara from huge mice that invade her room. Intermission and act 2 begins. Clara and the Nutcracker Prince travel to the 'Kingdom of Sweets' and a series of dances begin - Arabian, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, ...and it went on as Daniel falls asleep in my arms 3/4 of the way through and Kaila starts to want to go home...at this point I shift Kaila's focus by asking her to watch the ballerinas' feet very closely to see their movement. That did it pretty well - a few minutes into it she says very quietly, "How can they do that without bars?!" And by 'that' she meant all the footwork and arm positions she started learning in ballet class. That exercise took us through the last 10 minutes of the performance and everyone was happy. The Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker Prince dance beautifully and as the celebration ends in the enchanted land, Clara finds herself back at home drifting off to sleep and Nutcracker salutes everyone goodnight.

A game of dreidels followed at a friends house. The kids played for pistachios and were treated at the end to making their own marshmallow dreidels decorated with pretzel sticks and raisins!

A fun afternoon for everyone.

Photo Credits (www.HoustonBallet.org)
Ballet: The Nutcracker
Dancers: Amy Fote and Nicholas Leschke
Photo by: Amitava Sarkar

Martha Stewart Punchers

Quick note cards are easy to make with edge punchers. I used a monarch butterfly figure and bubble punches for the kids' birthday "thank you bookmarks".

I just discovered while shopping this weekend the new "punch everywhere". The top and base separate allowing a punch to be made anywhere in the page, not just at the edges! There is a heart that will be really neat for Valentines and a set of stars that I fell in love with (and, of course, not to be found at the store!). Will check back in a couple of weeks...

The Butterfly Project

One and a half million innocent children lost their lives in the Holocaust. In an effort to remember them, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies to be setup in an exhibition scheduled for Spring 2013.

If you'd like to participate, create as many butterflies as you wish and send them to The Butterfly Project.

Better than chocolate

I love those moments just before Kaila falls asleep when she just has to share something that pops in her head. A couple of days ago she told me:

"Mommy, I love you more than I love chocolate..."

"I love you too, sweetheart", I replied and she drifted off to sleep.