Styrofoam Printmaking with Molly

Well, if I don't start somewhere I'll never get started again.  Ya know?  And since, it seems, my life is now only recorded by cell phone pics, I'm starting at the most recent end of my camera roll and working my way back to try and catch y'all up a bit.

First up, a super cool craft we used for Christmas presents this year.  And no, this wasn't inspired by a Pinterest find (I haven't had time for any Pinterest surfing anyhow) but rather the craft at this year's cowboy festival.  This year they made landscape prints and they were so easy, cheap, and came out so impressively that Karma, Kara and I decided to have the kids recreate the project at home to make stationary for grandparents and great-grandparents.  It's a technique I'm sure I've done before as a kid but I was happy to come upon it again at the festival and Molly had a great time with it too.  I'm sharing Molly's part of that here.

The first step is drawing a picture on thin styrofoam.  The two on the left were done on small (new) meat trays from Publix and the two on the right were done on pink styrofoam plates that I had cut to the size of the cards we were making.

She drew the pictures with a regular pencil.  She wanted to draw a snowman and was really frustrated by not being able to draw a good circle because the pencil kept getting snagged on the styrofoam.  I got out some round cookie cutters and those were just the thing to make the circles and save her frustration!

After you draw the pictures you color them in with water-based markers (we used Crayola and Ikea brand markers).  The important thing is to make sure you color the entire surface of the styrofoam or you'll end up with a lot of white space--that is unless you want something to be white (like the snowman for instance).  It also helps to draw a border around the outside to define your print.

"A Christmas tree with all the Charlie Brown Christmas trees all around it".  (She's referring to the Christmas tree lot that CB visits with all the multi-colored aluminum trees etc.)

After you've drawn and colored the styrofoam you need to dampen the paper you want to transfer your print onto.  In this case it was a half sheet of cardstock.  Then simply press the styrofoam onto the dampened paper, press down firmly all over the design, lift carefully, and there you have your very own print!  (I didn't think to use a printmaking roller to help with this but I have one and I think I'll use it next time!)

"A snowman with a hat kinda like Santa"

"Outer Space with a planet (blue) and shooting stars and a rocket"  My fave is the two-tone purple sky.

"A kitty in a basket playing with yarn (green)"

 After she'd done the hard work of drawing the design and coloring it, she was over the novelty of the project which left it up to me to reproduce them all.  All I did was recolor the design (based on the colors she'd already chosen) for each print I needed to make.

Snowmen and Christmas trees drying

Outer space and Kitties in baskets drying

I also added a little nameplate print to the back so her name would be on them.  This had to be written backwards so I wrote the "made by" and I traced her actual signature for the Molly part.  (For the last 6ish weeks her signature has included a "y" whose tail underlines the rest of her name.  It's my favorite thing;)
The last step was adding the envelopes (bought in a box of 50 from Walmart in a size just bigger than a half sheet of cardstock.  Yay.) and tying them into cute little notecard bundles perfect for gifting to all the GPs!

Ready for gifting!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I turned 31 on October 19th:)  I'm glad I did when I consider the alternative (which is NOT turning 31).  That would be sad.  But I was sharing with my oldest sister (and birthday sharer) that 31, though it doesn't feel different, means I'm IN my 30's.  When I was 30 everyone knew that I was in my 20's last year but now I'm not as close.  In the grand scheme of things I now understand that you always, whether 21 or 31, feel like you were just 18 a bit ago so in that way it's all the same to me.  Am I the only one who thinks this way?
I have to say that I do believe this was one of my favorite birthdays.  I mean it's hard to compete with the beach (last year) but this year was really, really good.  I started the weekend on Friday morning by driving to my alma mater, Carson Newman, to participate in an A Cappella Choir alumni Christmas recording.  It was magical.  We sung through once, he fixed a bit, we sang through again, we recorded, we recorded once more, we moved on to the next piece.  Repeat 10 times.  Amazing.  Every marking was observed, every vowel was pure, every rhythm was accurate--and that was the FIRST time through!  Then Doc would tweak a few things and it'd sound even better, because he's Doc.  It totally filled my music tank way UP!
(P.S. I hijacked these pics from Talia's facebook.)

First Baptist Jeff City, where we recorded (as always) and directly across from my first dorm

I'm the one to the right of Doc in the gray dress and brown boots:)  There were about 180 singers there.

And on top of singing with a room full of musicians, I got to see so many wonderful friends from the music building.  Here are just a few from another hijacked picture:):

I'm not a homecoming goer normally (this was my first time back ON homecoming) but it just was lovely and made me yearn for college days again.  I drove back that evening and got home on my birthday, 12:45ish AM.

The next morning Molly came in to whisper sweet birthday wishes in my ear.  She said, "since it's your birthday you can pick WHEREVER you want to go for breakfast!!!  And I think you should pick Waffle House!"  So, I picked Waffle House:) and we had a lovely birthday breakfast as a family.

 After that, Ryan informed me that we were on our way to Karma's to drop the kids off.  "Until when?"  "Well, they're going to church with them tomorrow."  WHAT?  "And we get to do whatever you want from now til then."  AMAZING!  We dropped them off at 9:30 or something like that and then we were on our own.  It was like one giant 36 hour date.  And it. was. FUN!  (Well, if you call thrift shop hopping, etc. fun...and I DO!)  We started by going back to the house and leisurely getting ready without keeping little hands busy or worrying about the curling iron cord getting caught on little feet and falling off to burn someone's forehead.  It was great.  Then we went to an early movie.  Which only cost $9.50 cause it was a matinee!  (Please tell me you sense the sarcasm there.)

I mean, what does a regular movie cost then?  $15?  Can you tell it's been awhile since we've been to the picture show?  We decided to treat our selves to popcorn and a coke icee because it would count as lunch and we used gift cards for the tickets.  Do you know what that costs???  I know I'm going off topic but it's just so outrageous.  Um, well you can get a small (that is actually small sized) popcorn/drink for $13 or you can get a size freaking-ridiculous for $14 and unlimited refills.  Well, I guess I'll take the ginormous size that I'll never even make a dent in for the extra dollar.  I mean it is my birthday.  Why not pay the amount I would normally spend on a meal at a "fancy" restaurant on a movie snack?  If you were wondering, I believe we ate about 57 actual cents worth of  14 dollar popcorn between the two of us.  Ryan stopped my rant and reminded me to just have fun and enjoy the movie theater experience.  He's chill like that which makes things more fun than if I were in charge:).  The good news is the movie was awesome.  I recommend Captain Phillips.

We left there and stopped by Garden Ridge (don't laugh, I love that place) to check out a few things.  Ryan was such a good sport and we had so much fun just sauntering around.  We left Kennesaw and drove to Decatur which is one of my most favorite places to walk around.  It's always my go to section of the city whenever we have an unplanned Saturday.  We didn't visit the farmer's market like usual but we did go to my other most favorite classy-flea-on-steroids joint:

We took our time walking around every square inch not worrying about snack bribes, dirty diapers, or potty breaks.  It was glorious.  Plus I made it out of there with this happy little poppy painting to remember my 31st birthday by.  Sylvia, if you're reading this, you gotta come so we can go here.  You'll LOVE it!  

We drove down the street to Farm Burger for dinner.  It was yummy.  Especially the onion rings.  Then we walked around in and out of shops for the remainder of the evening until some frozen custard at Rita's to round out the evening.

We went home and didn't have to get cranky kids out of the car or brush any teeth (but our own) or suffer through multiple stalling tactics by a certain 4 year old darling.  Although, we did find ourselves missing the little buggers an awful lot and Ryan ended up closing both bedroom doors so we wouldn't wake up and see Molly's open door and go around frantically looking for her in a sleepy stupor.

The next morning we slept in (a bit anyway) and had a quaint breakfast at La Madeleine before embarking on several errands and tasks before we picked up our tired kids after lunch.

Mark and Karma had worn them out enough for a long Sunday afternoon family nap.  It was a pretty epic weekend and I'm so glad it all went down like it did.  I'm 31 y'all!

The Lucases Do the Zoo

We (except for Ryan) had a Monday and Tuesday off in young October for fall break.  Ryan joined us that Tuesday for a trip to the zoo.  This is how we all felt about that:

Making our way from the van to the ZOO:)

And we all kept those smiles for the duration of the day.  Here's why...

First of all perfect, PERFECT, weather.  The first day of "cooler"...started in the upper 60s and leveled off at a lovely 72 degrees.

Getting a good look at the muddy elephants

Next, the price was right at FREE, well actually $4.  We checked out the Zoo Atlanta dvd from the library which gets you four free tickets into the zoo (Jack would have been free anyway).  Plus, no parking fee. Plus you can bring whatever food you want or need into the park so we took a picnic lunch from home.  So, the $4 came in when we rode the train at the end of our visit.  All of us rode for that price since both our kids are below the height where you can ride by yourself (if you have to ride as a parent cause your kids are below the limit you ride free).  So glad we sprang for that ride...you'll see from the pictures that Jack was thrilled to be a train passenger.

The parakeet aviary.  A Molly favorite this time around.

Jack pointed to every animal he spotted

The next wonderful part of our day was that the animals were out and active.  We watched the orangutans especially forever.  So many times on zoo trips you get to the exhibit and the animals are sleeping or hidden and it's hard for little ones to even spot them in their habitat.  Not the case this day...cooler weather perhaps?

Molly and Jack were so cooperative and happy all day.  Like this:

Except for when we made them take sibling pictures like this (side note: that makes Ryan cranky, too).

I just like this of the back of their heads...you can't really tell that the highest "rock" in the pic is a giant gorilla walking away after just sitting in the clearing while we stared at him:

The tiger was totally up for this photo op:

Two of God's beautiful creatures:)

Getting a closer look with his sister.

This tiger was fascinating and hung out for awhile as we gazed and talked about him and his stripes and how we bet he would make a lot of yummy butter if his friends were around to join him a la Little Black Sambo:

We were loving the tiger

Molly was most excited to see the pandas because they put on a great show for us the last time we were at the zoo (when I was 9 months pregnant:).  They didn't disappoint:

Molly was super excited about the petting zoo too.  She wasn't very confident last time we were here but she jumped in with both hands this time around.

Pensive Petting

Our last endeavor was a train ride.  Here we are at the station waiting for the train:

Train ride partners

My train buddy

I took Jack out of the ergo to sit on the bench next to me and he had a BLAST!  I'm thinking this boy may have a soft spot for trains.  Or maybe feeling the wind in his hair.

He "talked" the whole time

Taking it all in

Clapping and saying "Yay"!  periodically along the way

We left the zoo that day, went home, put Jack down for a nap, and Molly, Ryan, and I worked and played outside for the remainder of the perfect October day.  We're really loving this season of our little family.  Thank you, God, for days of enjoying each other.

Gingham Style

It all started with a Christmas gift--a copy of The Wizard of Oz and a stuffed Toto to go with it--from G-ma and G-daddy.  

The book was carefully avoided at all costs for many months because it was one of those--a hundred-page, word-filled, minimal picture book housed in a deceptive "children's book" cover.  Every time she would pick it we'd be all like "how 'bout something else....see, look we haven't read Hop on Pop in awhile".  Then we finally decided to give in and start The Wizard of Oz I guess sometime this summer.  It only took about 7 bedtime sessions to get through the hundred pages and she was really intrigued by the story and in love with the characters which brings us to present day:

The book was a slightly abridged version using all of Frank Baum's original text.  She didn't find it scary at all (perhaps it's because Ryan and I would both read with an over-the-top sap-happy voice whenever something remotely scary would come about to avoid anything that could come back to haunt US later on in the form of bedtime drama).  She knew there was a movie and kept asking to watch it but since I'm pretty sure the movie still creeps me out, we weren't about to let that happen just yet.

Then I saw that the Center for Puppetry Arts was showing The Wizard of Oz in October and I thought that would be the perfect way to help her realize the story visually.  I checked out a puppet museum pass from the library (which gets you 25% off performances) and booked our tickets for an October Saturday. 

Here's the morning of where she knew we were doing something special but she wasn't sure what it was yet.  Looking all like a teenager in her white cami and shorts.  And her sweet little belly:

Becoming Dorothy

We like to joke that Molly's kind of an Oz purist.  In the book Dorothy's shoes are silver.  Every time she would talk about the book (doctor's office, school) people would make conversation about the ruby slippers.  One time during a blood draw at Dr. Van Meter's--"and what color were Dorothy's shoes?  Red?",  Molly--through tears (from the needle) and a puzzled you-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about look--"NO!  They were silver!" Like, why are people still ignorant about the color of Dorothy's shoes??  Reading comprehension, much? After that time I remembered to explain that Dorothy's shoes in the movie were red and she was totally down with that from then on.  

What was super cool was we got a little Dorothy dress up outfit in some hand me downs from her friend Ella.  I remembered that just in time for her to don it for the puppet show.  Just the week before, we were getting down a box of need-to-grow-into shoes, since Molly's feet are the fastest growing thing about her right now, and there were a size 7.5 sparkly ruby slippers that absolutely fit her like a glove (or like good-fitting shoes, I suppose).  Glinda must be smiling down on us.  Ha.  What's more?  I found some blue gingham ribbon in my ribbon stash.  Just enough for two little bows.  I may have geeked out a little with that discovery...

By the way...were you keeping track?  Yep.  Puppet show garb and halloween costume for FREE

Sweet Dorothy

Sassy Dorothy

Get me from the side, Mom.

She was psyched to get to go to the puppet museum again.  And so were we.  We'd had a blast the last time we went (almost a year ago to see Peter and the Wolf, another Molly favorite).  

We dressed Jack in his blue gingham overalls to coordinate with his big sis Dorothy.

Jack, look at Mommy!

Sitting on the giant marionette foot

Just happy to be there...and climb on everything;)

Sadly, their Big Bird and main room of exhibits were totally gone to make room for renovations but the other exhibits were there so it was still a good time.

Putting on a shadow puppet show for Daddy

Checking out Toto's shadow

The show was great.  It wasn't scary in the least.  The wicked witch was hilarious (on a four-year-old scale mind you) and Dorothy and Aunt Em were black and sang spirituals and the blues.  Really cool twist.

Almost forgot one of my favorite parts...the puppet workshop!  During the week it's a staff led session but on the weekends you're on your own.  It was so crowded we just took a to-go Tin Man puppet kit and did it at home.  So glad because if we did it at the museum we wouldn't have had the leftover die cuts from Jack's gentleman party and washer eyeballs lying around to decorate him with.  Molly was smitten.  He's cute don't you think?

A good day to be Molly:)