Sunday, June 14, 2015

Gallery Wall project - part 1

Miss M has always (always!) loved art. Her love of art is a big reason we chose to enroll her (three years ago) in our local charter school that integrates the arts into other areas of study. She has also participated in an art camps and classes in the past, and will do an art and writing camp this summer. Mister J has been at our charter school for two school years now, and tried out an animation class last summer. They have both created some lovely (and to us, pretty impressive) artwork at school, and one of the projects we are tackling this summer is to get some of their artwork framed and hang it up to create a gallery area in our home. 
We purchased a lot of frames yesterday - size and quantity based on my quick measurements of a few pieces. I didn't have 100% success sizing things, and I need to go back for some additional mounting paper and hanging hardware, but I've gotten a good start. 


Carts - plural! - full of frames

Unloaded at home

Left - Miss M's artwork from an art camp; Center - J's 'splatter painting' from this past school year; Right - J's pencil drawing of a diamondback rattlesnake (done in conjuction with study of the American West)

Left - M's cherry blossoms (done in conjunction with a study of Japan); Right - "Help" by M, based on the story of Icarus

Not all of our goodies are from school - or even by the kids.  Left - print of Seattle's Pike Place Market, a gift from my brother- and sister-in-law, previously framed but now in a more substantial frame; Right - M's work from a summer camp a few years ago.
There are several more items to frame, including some larger-format photos we are picking up later today.  I can't wait to put our gallery together ans see all of these things in one place!  I'll try to post pictures when it's all complete!

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Settlers of America

On the fourth day, we finished! So much fun! Look for an update from Mr J in the coming days.


June 23, 2105 - update from Mr. J
Catan Settlers of America is a game where you settle in different places as you move west and as you build tracks to deliver goods to the opponents towns. To win, you need to deliver all your goods to the opponents' towns. You can try to stop them from getting to your town by building tracks so that they pay you when they move on your track. There are special cards called development cards that can give you the ability to move a train up to 5 tracks for free no matter how many opponents' tracks you move over. But there can also be other abilities that the cards give you. The winner for game 1 was my mom and the winner of game number 2 was me, Mister J. 

Friday, June 12, 2015

Summer projects & a guest blogger!

It's summer! We've been out of school for nearly a week now, and after a quick weekend trip we are settling into our summer routine. A summer camp here, a home project there, and fun and games, too!

I'm also trying to get things back in gear on the blog, with the help of a guest blogger! Mister J - who is now 11.5 years old and just completed 5th grade - will be helping me write posts, starting with a quick rundown of this morning's fun project. (As a reminder, I don't use the names of our family members on the blog; for those of you who know us, please keep this in mind as you comment!)

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Hi I am mister J, and this is going to be about a simple way to clean your jewelry and silverware. you need to take a bowl(it doesn't matter what type of bowl) and put tinfoil in the bowl as shown below.  then you heat some water up to a boil but don't put it in yet. you put your silver items in the bowl with tin foil and pour baking soda on it. after that, you pour the hot water in the bowl, wait a minute and the tarnish should be gone!




my mom knew what to do, she just wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do. so we found a video on this blog post.

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Thanks to my guest blogger for pitching in today!  Hopefully this is the start of several posts over the summer documenting our projects and progress.  We have a couple of bigger projects in mind, though we are juggling those with camp schedules and other to-dos (for both the parents and kids!).