Happy Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving day I am thankful for many things. As I sit here back in my hometown, I can't help but think that I'm thankful that I no longer live here. While it's a great community that provides a lot of growth and encouragement to be creative enough to survive, I realize that I live in a great town with a great school for my children and it is the right place for us. Sometimes it takes a little reflection and going backwards to really appreciate where we're currently at in life.
I am thankful for my three beautiful children, who are wise beyond their years and are always teaching me something new about life. For my husband for being such a great provider to his family and a better serviceman to his country. I am thankful for my father, whose patience and unconditional love is something I can only hope to provide for my kids someday, the way he does. I am thankful for my mother-in-law who is an amazingly generous and loving person. I am thankful for the friends and family I don't  get to see very often, especially my family in the villages who have recently suffered some major losses and have received more difficult news recently.  I am thankful for our service members for the sacrifices you make for our country. Last but not least, I am thankful for living in such a wonderful country. It may not be perfect, but there's no where I'd rather be on this day. Happy Thanksgiving!

What We Do When We Can't Drive To School

We've had some freezing rain conditions here and needless to say, most of our beautiful white snow has now melted and it's an ice rink out there. Living on the mountain has its challenges, especially when the roads are so icy the kids are literally ice skating on them, so after reading about all the accidents yesteday morning, I called the school and told them my kids would not be attending.

Here are photos from two years ago when the roads iced over.

The roads look exactly the same today.

I was told that one class only had two kids show up. The girls were a bit disappointed as yesterday was supposed to be Kid Town Market. Kid Town Market is something our school has quarterly. Each student has the potential to earn KT money thoughout the year as a sort of merit sytem for good deeds and academic work. Once a quarter they set up a vendor market where kids bring items they've made to sell. In order to sell though, they have to apply for a business license, pay for the license, pay a table rental, and pay for a clean up fee. Once the market is closed, they have to calculate their earnings and pay taxes. The teachers act act as the bank and the kids have the choice to deposit their money. It's really a great mini-economics lesson.

Because there wasn't any school and Kid Town was cancelled, I decided to take a picture of the KT goods that the girls and I made. There are hair bands/clips, bean bag/hand warmers, dog stockings, and coasters.

While I should've been cleaning my house, finishing up laundry and packing to leave for our Thanksgiving trip today, the kids and I did a few fun things instead. 

Taylor made some fabric covered buttons.

Paige made pumpkin pie scented play dough.

We got the recipe from Blisstree here. I added a little more cinnamon than what it called for plus I added about 1/4 teaspoon of Allspice and a few drops of food coloring and now we have some yummy smelling play dough.

I took photos of Riley after she begged me for a day.

My baby is full of color and personality.

This is more of a traditional pose than I like, but I thought it was precious anyway.

This was her own pose. She was going for a dance pose, but as a friend said,

ended up looking like she was practicing her boy kissing pose.



School was cancelled today, but unstead of fun things, I'm off to finish packing for our Thanksgiving trip back home. I'm wondering how we're going to get down the mountain. An otherwise 40 minute ride to the airport is probably going to take us two hours.



My Love Affair With Frames

Those who know me know that I'm absolutely obsessed with photos. So when I saw these cute frames over at Mod Podge Rocks, I just had to make them. They're super easy to make and they make great gifts.

I started with craft frames, which can be purchased at your local craft store.

I painted them with Acrylic paint. Oh and I'm really not that sloppy with paint. I share my paint supply with my kids so the bottles, and many other things, get all yucky when I let them paint unsupervised.

Then came the Mod Podge. I used scrapbooking paper and wrapping paper.

Aren't they cute? I just love how they can be customized.

I chose a brighter color palette since I had kids in mind.

My Induction Into The Cyber World

Today is the debut of my blogging journey and quite honestly I'm really just figuring this blogging thing out, so I don't have a whole lot of exciting material to publish. I often find myself thumbing through old photos trying to figure out when the kids or I did/made/accomplished something. In an effort to journal my creative and not so creative adventures, and to keep family and friends, who I'm not always great about keeping in touch with, in the loop, I've decided to join the blogging world.

So not to leave you completely with nothing for my first entry, here are a few projects I have been working on in the last couple of days. My daughters' school has a quarterly Kid Town Market where students have the opportunity to apply for a business license, pay for it (with Kid Town money earned throughout the school year), rent a table and sell their goods. It is a big deal for my kids and this quarter my oldest is selling  hair bands/pins, bean bags, and  coasters. Here is what we have to start with. Handmade fabric/felt flowers for head bands and hair clips. Of course the ideas are not orignal. I am a proud blog stocker of about two dozen blogs. While I wish I could give credit for the inspiration of these blogs, I honestly can't remember which one(s) I got the idea from. Taylor helped with the cutting, and this weekend she will be constructing her own. These were just samples.

Here is a gathered clutch I attempted to make. My creative friend, Tiffany showed me the tutorial from Noodlehead at http://noodleheads.blogspot.com/. Working with a zipper was much harder than it looked and I'm not sure that I followed the directions exactly right as had a little bit of trouble with the zipper tabs.

And that's it for now folks. Thanks for stopping by.