Wall art finished

I've just about finished up my little project. Decided after trying to cut out the silhouettes that the X-acto knife idea I found wasn't the smartest idea. Didn't give me crisp edges, so I resorted to tracing the images onto cardstock and cutting it with scissors. I still need to run out tomorrow and get some double-sided tape since one of the kids probably used it up. Nice.

I also need to decide if I want the silhouettes in individual frames like this, or put them in a 16"x 20" poster frame. Thoughts?

Swimming and other things

Two weeks ago, the kids started up swimming lessons. To be honest, I wasn't sure how Collin would do being in a non-"parent & me" session and handling the deep side of the pool. The first 20 minutes of class are in the shallow(3-4 ft.) and the second 20 minutes are in the deep side(6 ft). The first few days, Collin had a really hard time. The second and third day I spent all but the last 5 minutes of each 20 minutes getting Collin in the water & staying in the water. I made quick acquaintances with the pool managers. I am happy to say that I am the only parent allowed to be all the way up next to the edge of the pool when I need to assist Collin--keeping him on task & being an extra set of eyes to make sure he does not let go of the pool.

By the end of the first week(each class lasts 2 weeks), Collin had decided he liked staying in the water. Now I just have to deal with keeping Collin on task & having a bored 2 year old--Brent just turned 2 on Friday. Drew was in Collin's class. Drew's done well enough to move up to the next swim level. Collin, no surprise, is in the same class as last week. He can do most things but won't put his head or face in the water without help. Ivy's doing well, as expected. This week, she's in a new class and actually learning new things.

Brent had his 2nd birthday on Friday. Thursday night I took Brent to Target to pick out a couple toys. Between the toy stimulus overload and close to bedtime--I didn't want to take all 4 kids if I could help it--we had some pretty serious tantrums. We finally(after over an hour) came home with a Lighting McQueen toy car that sticks out its tongue, a 5 pack of Hot Wheels cars, and a book about trucks. Tom got whisked away to a Scout campout, so we only saw him for about 30 minutes between Friday morning and about 2 pm on Saturday. He got a Funfetti(?) cake with homemade buttercream frosting--I almost had a cow that the cheapest storebought frosting was like $2 for a tiny thing. I drew Elmo on it. Didn't turn out as nice as I wanted, but it was still recognizable and enjoyed by all. I did some fingerpainting with the food coloring since I forgot to set aside some frosting. Whoops. Lesson learned.

Today, keeping the kids as busy as I can. I'm making some cheap wall art today. Probably will be done in a day or two. The tutorial is here  (click for link) and here is a picture of me doing a layout with a poster size frame. Ivy's silhouette looks funny, since she had a low ponytail and I was being nit-picky about Collin's looked larger than her head size. So I cut off the ponytail and taped it on higher. Then I photocopied it 104% a couple times to get it the right size.

Here's the original picture I had for Ivy.

More pics and video of the swim class & birthday up in a couple days.

Christmas decorating

Let me preface by saying, I have no qualms about decorating for the holidays or others who choose to. We tend to stick to doing our Christmas tree, sometimes hang up the kids' holiday artwork from school and that's typically the extent of our decoration. Not intentional, but so far about every other year we put our Fisher Price nativity set out.

Our neighbors, we love them to death, LOVE holidays. To say they go all out in decorating is quite the understatement. They like it, the neighborhood likes it, and our kids like it.

This is how they decorated this year(my first time using the panoramic feature on the camera):

We had gotten to talking with them about decorating, and they suggested we do this(below) for our house for some laughs. It's all in good fun, and they were helpful enough to give me some pointers, since I've never done outside decoration with lights and I know there are certain things Tom doesn't want to do so I don't ask him to help with those things much. I think it turned out okay for having no clue how to do words with lights. I wish we had some black electrical tape to cover the parts in between the letters. Spells "Ditto" and the arrow points to our neighbors' house.

Almost forgot, here's our Christmas tree. The kids liked playing in the tree box after we set it up(only a 2 piece, 6 foot artificial tree). And a picture of Collin, since I didn't have a Thanksgiving one of him.

Halloween decorations

I'm not one for really for decorating for holidays besides Christmas, but I just found these and this is too cute & easy to pass up!

The directions(and printouts) are on this page: http://papercrave.com/paper-crave-halloween-freebies-halloween-garland-two-ways/