Day 11: Adventures in Paint

Today I attempted what seemed impossible.

I covered the table in wax paper.

I stripped the children of their clothes and tied their arts and crafts aprons on.

I selected three of my least favorite paintbrushes.

And then I set out the liquid paint.

They have painted many times before, but always with the dry watercolor sets.

The older two were much tidier than I expected. Lila, on the other hand . . . Well, it's nothing a bath can't fix.

But it is done. The house came through unscathed. And the ornaments have been painted.

Mostly, I sat back and supervised. But I did most of the details once they put the background color on.

I also painted the ornaments representing our family.

I painted them according to requested colors. I feel quite proud of my Aravis ornament.

December Photo Project: Day 10

Over the weekend, Lila destroyed some of the ornaments we'd made.

Today we made some new ones to replace them.

There was a lot of salt dough left over. So the kids and I played with it.

I had to show them that their creations didn't have to be two-dimensional like the ornaments we had made.

I taught Yonah how to roll balls instead of snakes.

And how to then turn those balls into cubes.

Lila ended up with a salty, floury face.

She kept sniffing hers.

December Photo Project: Day 6

In preparation for the Christmas tree coming this weekend, the kids and I got to work making some ornaments.

2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water later . . .

The kitchen is trashed, and I'm procrastinating cleaning it up.

I wasn't able to take many pictures during most of the adventure. Lila was far too eager for me to step back. But she and Yonah lost interest before too long, and I had a chance.

Tomorrow, if I'm feeling adventurous enough, the kids and I will paint them.

The hand prints were tricky. We needed the dough to be thin enough to be able to hang in the tree, but thick enough to keep the hands from going through. We erred a bit on the thin side . . .