Heart Paintings

Royal has mentioned to Jayden and few times that he needs some updated Jayden-art in his office.  I happened to have a couple smaller canvases in my art stash, so we decided to paint Royal his Valentine present.

I painted big red hearts on the canvases and told them they could do whatever they wanted.  Paint over them, paint around them, paint in them.

And they did!

Willow loves paint.  Loves it.  She didn't dip her paintbrush in paint, she uses it to scoop it up and put it on the canvas.  Hers is very textured and layered.  :)

In the end, Willow had me repaint the red heart over her finished painting because her's had "somehow disappeared".

Pumpkin and Ghost Paintings

I have really been on a halloween art project kick!  Remember how I had the kids paint pumpkins?  Well, I'm no liar, I totally have them hanging up on my wall, right next to the pumpkin wall hanging my sister-in-law, Lisa made me!

Then, last Saturday, I made my first trip to Paint the Towne, after like a 4 month hiatus, to do a pumpkin painting!  Don't worry, I'll be making up for my lack of attendance over the summer, I'm going back in just a couple weeks.  :)

Then for about a week now, I've had this idea of painting the kid's feet and turning them into ghosts.  My original idea was to just paint the whole canvas black and then do their ghost feet prints on top of that, but at the last minute, I decided to do more color and came up with this :

Jayden of course had an opinion and told me what the faces needed to look like.  But I don't mind, I get way more compliments on my work if I do something that Jayden wants me to do.  If I had just done a plain ole smiley pumpkin, Jayden would of said something like, "hmm, yea, i guess that's nice' But since I did a squiggly face pumpkin, I got, "I LOOOOOVE it"  I like the second compliment much better, and really, that's what I'm after.

Halloween Shrinky Dinks

There is just something about watching melting plastic that makes me happy.  And there is something about getting to use the permanent markers that sit way up high on the shelf that makes my kids just as happy.

Somedays I think it's better for dinner to be late and for the kiddos and me to sit around the table and do a craft.  Jayden's been begging to do shrinky dinks for awhile (there must be something about melting plastic that makes him happy too), so I finally tracked down the plastic sheets and drew on some halloween creatures - a pumpkin, ghost, and bat.

Before the shrinking :

And after!

 Jayden was so excited that all 3 of them turned out and none of them folded in on themselves and melted in half.  He is currently in his room with his pumpkin and bat singing a musical between them.  Something about how the pumpkin wishes he had wings so he could go flying with the bat and the bat feeling sorrying for the pumpkin but telling him how much he still loves him and how he'll be back to visit him soon and how he hopes that soon the pumpkin will grow wings so they can go flying off into the night together.  (really need to sign this kid up for some sort of acting/drama/music...)

Fall Suncatchers

Royal and I undertook a gigantic project yesterday.  I have been battling a ridiculous moth infestation in my pantry, pretty much, all summer.  They make me so mad, and Royal has squished them all over the walls, which also infuriates me.  But I haven't been able to find where exactly they are coming from, and my pantry is gigantic.  It's bigger than my closet.  It has a window in it, it is so big, and I need a stool to get anything off the top shelf.  It's big.  Finally, yesterday, I'd had it.  I started taking everything out of the pantry, all 6 huge corner shelves, emptied.  It took me a good hour or two.  Then I made Royal go in and kill all the moths, and wipe down all the shelves, and all the squished moths on the walls.  Then it took me another 2 hours to reorganize the whole thing, and wipe down any can or box or anything that the moths might be hiding in.  I actually put 2 moth jackpots back in the pantry without even know it.  Luckily Royal found them later that night and got rid of them, and so far, we have been moth free!  Hallelujah!   But with all the work I was doing in the kitchen, the kids felt a tad ignored, so after dinner, I decided we should do an art project.  An art project I found while cleaning out the pantry!

Snoopy sun catchers!  I had forgotten all about these little suckers.  I found them marked down like 80% last year when we were out doing our Christmas shopping and had gotten them thinking they would be so much fun to do in the fall.  And if I hadn't had to clean out the pantry, I might not have remembered them at all!  Thank you little moths!

This was a really good project for Royal and I.  We are both, very definitely, color inside the lines kind of people.  And kids, well, they just don't color in the lines.  Sometimes, they make Snoopy's head orange.

Both of us had to keep reminding the other person to just let the kids color them however they wanted.  And that if they squeezed too much colored glue in one area, it really didn't matter.

Sometimes, I really need to just give up a bit of control.  What's the big deal anyway?  I control so much of the kid's lives, why in the world do I need to control how they create something.  And I'm sure the kid's probably enjoyed themselves more without me trying to hover over their shoulders "helping" them.  All I did was put tips on the color of the glue they wanted next, and use a toothpick to help spread glue piles that got a little too high.  I think they turned out great!