My husband is awesome!

It's that time of year again, when the kids are assigned some sort of school project and I pass all responsibility onto Ryan. He never fails to impress though!

Storm had to make a musical instrument that changed pitch, volume etc. Ryan made her a harp.

How cute is that! She decorated it all up too.

Hunter's project was to make a self-propelled vehicle that went at least 2m. They made this elastic powered one to begin with, but when it failed to pass the 2m test Ryan was unimpressed with it. Considering he hates working with wood, I think that little car is rocking though! Even if it wouldn't go very far.

Enter Google. This is Hunter's new project! I think it's awesome.

That little baby will go over 15 feet! It consists of: a playing card, two sets of wheels from a dollar store truck, a straw, a balloon, and some duct tape. There are some ingenious people out there!

I had to include this picture I took of them working on the wooden car. Blade's face is hilarious!

Family 411

I'm patiently waiting for Spring.  Okay, patient may not be the right word.

In the meantime I've been finding a few things to do, besides lamenting the dirty step and brown grass that is slowly being exposed. Such as this:

Look! It looks like presents, and it looks like it could just be something fantastic inside too!  My mom gave me this nice little parcel.  Too bad all they contain are MORE pictures! Gah!  Thanks Mom.  On the upside she also gave me the most fabulous set of measuring spoons.  Probably to soften the blow of all those damn pictures she pawned off on me that need organizing and sorting into the kid's photo boxes.

Aren't they pretty!?  I said they were almost too pretty to use, but I quickly got disabused of that notion and was told to use them no matter what.  So the teaspoon one has found it's new home in my sugar bowl for my coffee.  Yes, I'm back on the crack.  I didn't miss the coffee, but I did miss the coffee ritual with Ryan.  Still off the pop though, so that's a big yay my way.

These kids:

have been doing extremely well with the meal planning and cooking of supper.  We've tried a few new recipes, some good ones, some meh, and now I just need to convince them that we should use up all the frozen meat I have in the freezer instead of thinking of fabulously interesting recipes that need to be made but of which we have none of the ingredients on hand!

Hunter went for his eye exam yesterday, and although the eye doctor says he still technically has 20/20 vision in both eyes, since the board at school is blurry and getting worse, he is getting glasses.  I'll update a picture for the family when they come in.

I just registered Clayton for driving lessons.  Whew, better them than me, that's all I have to say about that!  He doesn't start until next month, just in time for spring and hopefully he will get his driver's licence right after he takes the lessons.  In any event, this way I get to keep my hair gray-free and the floorboard of the van doesn't have my shoe permanently imprinted into it after trying to step on the brake on the passenger side!

I know spring is in the air though, because I'm back at the potato farm next week sorting seed potatoes for shipment to the states.  Which is a good thing, because there's glasses and lessons to be paid for!

Indecision

Wordle.

My new love/hate website.

I could hit Randomize for hours, trying to find just the perfect layout of words and fonts.  I think I was literally driving myself a little bonkers. 

I know, I know, I'm already there, no need to go farther! 

I was attempting a new layout for a matching painting to go beside my Sweet Family painting I did last week.  Eventually, I pried my mouse away from the randomize button, with about 8 layouts I couldn't seem to decide between.  I sent a desperate shout-out by email to a bunch of friends.  We narrowed it down to this one:

Sorry to all my friends!


And then I went downstairs to put it on the projector, and on the canvas, only to find out that the font was just TOO small!!  O M G. 

Instead of driving my friends bonkers as well, I just went back to Wordle solo and hit random a few more zillion times, making sure my words were big enough and I ended up with a similar font as the other painting.

I was aiming for a big S on one side, with a list of S words that describe our family on the other side.  I couldn't get the S big enough for me, so I ended up doing two separate pictures.  One of a S solo, and one of all the S words. 

Yeah, I should have just done that to begin with.  Nothing like taking the long hard road....

And then came the painting, and the squinting, and the cramping of fingers and arms.

I made sure to have more white colored words this time.

Here it is next to the other one.

Finally. 

Finally, that wall doesn't look so bare any more.  I'd show you the rest of that wall, but that would mean I would have to clean.......and I have Christmas crafts to make.

Screw cleaning.

Subway art, my way

My hand is a little sore.  My arm is a little sore.  I haven't painted in a really long time.

But I got it done.  Even before Christmas!  Go me.

It started off with using Wordle  to inspire me with the placement of the words.

Decided on something finally.  I had tons of screen snips.  I could spend hours hitting randomize on that site.  Anyways.  Here's a shot of the words on the canvas before painting.

I used our projector and traced the words on with pencil.

Words all painted.  Looks good with a white background, but I wanted black.  Sometimes, if I'm doing a black background and using the projector I'll just print the picture or words in white and then either draw the outlines on with chalk, or paint in the dark with the projector on.  Yes I've painted in the dark.  Lots.   But it's freaking cold in the basement and I wanted to paint at the kitchen table.  So I painted all the lettering first.

Then I outlined in black. 

Here's where I stopped for the night.  All the eyes and faces are for the kid's amusement when they woke up in the morning!  They were quite fascinated with the painting.  Blade was so happy his name was in brown, because it's his favorite color!! Um, not really, it isn't, but he's a sweet child and he was just excited to see his name and everyone else's on a painting.  Hehe.

Finished Painting.

It now hangs in the kitchen.  The colors look a little off in this picture, but here's the inspiration for these particular colors.  It hangs about 15 feet to the right of the gigantic painting I did 4 years ago for behind our table.

Side note:

Hunter came home from school and seen the painting with just the letters done.  He says, "Did you do that with Wordle?".  I was like .. um yes, thinking in my head, how do you know about Wordle?  Hunter: "Oh, yea, we use that at school when making our Power Point Presentations!"  

...

Have I ever mentioned he's 9 folks??  NINE, and they are making Power point presentations in school..with wordle.   School rocks these days!