Playing With Fire

One night after an early supper, Emma and I decided to play with fire.

This was the result.

Crayons and a candle. I got the idea over at Craft Knife. I love that site. 

Emma and I had a blast mixing the colors together, making valleys and rivers of hot wax, and drawing with the partially melted crayons. We will be doing this again. 

And I am excited to add it to the list over at Ordinary Life Magic's Saturday's Artist link up.  Another site I love :)

Fun with numbers

A few months ago Emma and I started playing with numbers. It is a game where we make up math questions. This game and the rhyming game are two of our favorites.

Off and on and in odd places, Emma will ask if we can play either one.

Lately it has been getting much more complicated.

The other day;

Emma- "Mama, if I have 5 piles of 4 rocks, how many rocks do I have?"

Multiplication! I was a little intimidated. I hate math. Oh well.

Me- "You would have...(counting four times on each finger on one hand) 20 rocks."

Emma- "So if I have 5 piles of 4 rocks and we take 2 piles away, how many do I have now?"

I counted out the 20 again, then we counted out 2 'piles' to subtract, then counted how many we had left.

Might not be the best way to go about doing it, but she understood and enjoyed it (and surprising enough, so did I).

I also explained to her that she just did a math equation. She wanted to do more.

Emma- "If I have 5 horses, I give you one, then you give me three, how many do I have?"

For the last 2 days, it has been this is how we have played our number game. It really is fun, and easy or hard, depending on what we are in the mood for.

Amazing that my child is the one to teach me that math can be fun.

A blast from the past. Emma and Grampy (my dad) reading a book together in 2008.

Budding Reader

I have been noticing over the last few days that Emma is reading a lot more. She was sitting on the floor yesterday with a Bone comic book, sucking on a lollipop, reading.

Every few minutes she would read a word or two out loud, then keeping doing her thing, then read a few more words out loud. 

I was trying to take a sneaky photo through my hoop weaving project, but the red eye reduction gave me away. 

Eventually she stopped caring that I was taking pictures. 

When we went to Chili's today for lunch, Emma was reading all the words on her cup, as well as the "Food To Go" sign that was right over our table. 

It is so much fun listening to her read!!!

Emma's New Room

Her room isn't really new, but with Operation Uplifting Sleep, we couldn't leave the rest of the room a mess.

A few weeks ago I installed the tracks for adjustable shelves. For the first day or two we made do with bits and pieces of lumber for shelves. I realized that the bits and pieces really didn't give Emma much shelf space. I went out and bought 2 8' shelves.

It made a big difference.

When we ran back to Lowes yesterday to pick up the missing piece of lumber, we also picked up two more 8' shelves.  

Now I am happy.

So are Emma and Da. As I write this, they are in Emma's room doing puzzles. I love when they play together.

I also spent much of today creating a comfy reading area under Emma's loft. After all the work we did yesterday and today, I was a little tired. So when I sat down to test out the chair placement...

I fell asleep. Emma and Icky (the dog) were happy to just hang out while I dozed. 

 

The shelves (one is designated specifically for horses), and her easel. She gets great light almost all day long. And at night she gets an awesome view of Luna (the moon).

(Jared's head-He and Emma are getting set up to do a puzzle) 

Emma checking out her options with the shelves set up and organized.

Re-positionable horse stickers (grouped by family, her favorite way to group). Plus a few butterflies that I didn't notice until I took this photo :) Emma played up in her bed while I was trying to figure out the bookcase add-on below deck. It was so much fun listening to her play up there with her stuffed animals.  

The most up-to-date photo. 

The bookcase (to the left of the flower chair) was made using left over 2X6 boards. I would have filled it up with books, but I ran out of steam. 

I doubt it will stay looking like this for very long. Aside from her room turning into a disaster zone, we have grand plans to collage all over the bed with anything we can get to stick. 

I am not usually one for on going projects, but at least now when she complains, I can tell her to go glue things to her bed. 

p.s. Be sure to read yesterday's post for a few photos of the assembly process. 

Operation Uplifting Sleep

I have finally gotten around to a project I have wanted to do for a very long time.

The bonus is I managed to find something to do with all the pages from the books I turn into purses.

(please excuse the crappy photos. My camera battery was dead, so I used Emma's camera and apparently there is something wrong with it.)

We made Emma a loft bed!! 

We all went to Lowes last night to pick up the lumber and hardware. Joel, (one of the guys working at Lowes) was super nice and super helpful. He grabbed all the lumber for us (he even dug through to make sure we got good pieces), then made all the cuts for me. It ended up being over 20 cuts, but he didn't seem to mind. 

While I was hovering around the wood cutting area (I wasn't sure what I was suppose to be doing while Joel cut the wood, so I felt like I was hovering), Emma and Jared ran around throughout the rest of the store. By the time the wood was finished being cut, it was way past Emma's bed time (although to be fair, we didn't get to Lowes until 7ish, which is when Emma goes to bed). Jared looked more worn out then Emma did. 

Once we got home, the only lumber we brought in was the plywood piece that goes under the mattress. It made the trip home strapped to the roof of the car and we didn't want to leave it outside all night. 

Operation Uplifting Sleep 

(Jared's code names are way better than mine: Operation Loft Bed)

Laying out the lumber made things a bit easier. Glad I did, as I realized we where missing one piece of lumber. It was an important piece, but not necessary for me to run out and replace it at that moment. 

Got the first few pieces put together and realized I have no idea when the best time to take pictures during a project is. 

Emma was a big help. When I was measuring and marking the drill holes, Emma helped me find the numbers on the tape measure. When we where ready for the screws, she was in charge of handing out the correct number. She placed the washers on all of the larger bolts while counting them. 

When she wasn't helping, she was busy playing in/on/around all the lumber :)

I even put Jared to work. 

A lot. Well, it looks like that because I was the one taking the pictures, but I did actually do a lot of work too. So much that I got a blister that popped in the same day (hour?) it showed up.

At this point in the project we realized that a few additional tools would make the rest of the work go by a lot quicker, and seeing as I still needed to pick up the missing piece of lumber, we headed to Lowes.

Once back home, we worked for a bit, stopped for dinner, then finished assembling the bed. Start to finish, including our trip to the store, took about 11 hours. 

Here is the assembled bed. 

I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the bed. Did I want to prime it, stain it, seal it? If so, what color?

I like this color :)

A little (ok a lot) of Modge Podge and some book pages that needed a purpose. The pages will make the perfect back drop for horse collages, drawings, writings, stamps, stickers, pictures, and whatever else we might decide to stick to the bed. 

Who knew making your bed could be so much fun?

*edited 19Feb11*

 Here is a picture of Emma enjoying her new loft bed the morning after we finished it. She is replacing the horse wall stickers that we had to take down to make the bed. 

I love making things for Emma :)

p.p.s. For more updated photos, check out Emma's New Room.

p.p.s.s. I almost forgot to mention that I am sharing this post over at Ordinary Life Magic's Saturday's Artist.

Swim Lessons

Emma LOVES swim lessons. She loves them so much I am tempted to enroll her in two swim lessons next session so that we can go 2 days a week.

Maybe. It's kinda expensive.

Although it is cheaper then doing gymnastics and swimming.

We will have to see.

After swim lessons we went to a place called The Playground. Emma enjoyed it when we first got there because the number of kids was pretty low. Once preschool started letting out though, the place got packed pretty quickly.

Lunch at the new Olive Garden in Ankeny followed. Emma at bread sticks and some beans from my minestrone soup.

I pigged out on salad. Oink.

Then we opted out of groceries (we have milk and cereal, all is good) and came home.

Emma played on the computer, then had some fun with glitter, then watched the last few kids shows on PBS before the adult shows come on.

A quick, right-before-bed dinner (of rice crispies with soy milk) and a popsicle for desert.

Da gets home, time to brush.

"Wait, can I sit with you so I can warm up?" followed by a few bites of my crockpot chicken, potatoes, and carrots dinner (I waited for Jared before I ate), brush, potty, pj's, and clean off the bed.

A chapter of the latest Bella Sara book (#4), Nike's Great Race while snuggling.

Hugs, giggles, tickles, and kisses then lights out.

It was a good day.

Emma and Da putting together a giant floor horse puzzle last night.

Writers Block

I am sitting here, staring off into space, trying to think of something witty or intelligent to say when all I really want to do is show you some pictures of Emma's latest master pieces

I guess instead, I will just tell you about her art.

The other night when I was needle felting Emma's newest hat, Emma asked if she could needle felt also. She was in the process of getting ready for bed, so I told her that she could needle felt in the morning.

And she did. I set her loose with some bigger scrap pieces of a black wool sweater that I had felted. I also gave her the roving I had used on her hat, some commercial roving (it is more processed then the stuff on her hat), some wool yarn, and a bag full of bits and pieces of felted wool sweaters.

When she was done, we had a bunch of odd shaped pieces of needle felted art work. When I asked Emma what she wanted to do with them ( because I really had no idea what to do with them), she informed me she wanted to put them in picture frames and sell them.

It just so happens that we have a ton of picture frames around. And it just so happens Emma's art looks AWESOME in them!

This one is my favorite. 

As soon as we got the first one in the frame, I wanted to run to the store to create another picture wall like the one we had in our home in Tucson.

If you look past the cute kid hamming it up for the camera, you can see one of the shelves we had on our picture wall. Made changing pictures out easy (with no holes).

Now I have to decide if I could actually part with them...