Where is the fun??

I have totally fallen off of my fun bandwagon, it is sad.  We have been busy keeping warm, cleaning up after our dog, going to basketball practice, writing reports about the rainforest and the Dewey Decimal system, and of course watching way too much TV.

We figured out how to get movies from Netflix on our XBox and the kids have been demanding regular movie nights.  First we watched Benji, then Bolt and just now Tater and his dad finished watching some Tom & Jerry.  Lots of animal flick action!

I am busy writing over here at 43 Resolutions...and I did post a fun video of my dogs being silly, so maybe that will distract you momentarily while I get my act together to post more fun stuff over here.  I haven't forgotten about you!  Really!

Tater has been working on these little pegboard "fuse bead" projects (pictured at the top there) like a maniac. We have had them for a few years, and now he is coordinated enough to do them himself.  When the kids were smaller they would make me sort the different colored beads out for them, which was a bit tedious for me, but made them feel all management-like.

If you do a Google search on "pegboard beads" or "fuse beads" you can find them, or they are available at any craft shop and even in the toy department at IKEA.  Here are a few Amazon links to get you started: Perler Fuse Beads, Perler Small Pegboards For Fuse Bead Activities, Perler Fuse Bead Bucket Activity Kit.

We discovered that it is most cost-effective to buy a big tub-o-beads and the basic pegboards and then go print designs from on-line.  Google "fuse bead designs" and you will find tons of them for FREE!!

Tater does these en masse and then makes me get out the iron and fuse them all together.  I think he does this just for the novelty of seeing me with an iron in my hand.

Very rare.  With an element of danger that is very exciting...will I set something on fire??

I haven't yet.  But every time there is a chance!


Never a dull moment!

Fine Art

How do you like this fabulous piece of art? It was painted especially for us by a young (very young) artist.

You know her as Sprout.

She did this one when she was about 4. I liked the abstractness of it and thought it looked like many of the random artworks that you could buy to fill your walls. So I got this nice frame and hung it on my wall.

This one is a Tater original.

I believe that the lines were made by driving a toy truck through paint. Very emotive, I think.

Then we have this example of a multi-media composition, I think this was a Sprout, but I can't be sure. Colored tissue paper. The rainbow-ness of it is moving in the direction of clearly pre-school art. But I love it nonetheless.

And finally, a Pollack-like splattery thing. I think this is a Tater. I should have labeled them so that my poor, weak brain cells wouldn't have to search for the answer.

I have these hanging in my "formal" living room and dining room. I think the abstractness of them is key to it not looking like my kids' artwork is hanging all over the place. But maybe it just looks like my kids' artwork is hanging all over the place and no one has called me on it.

Either way, this could be a good idea for what to do with some of the huge piles of artwork your kids bring home from school at the end of the year. It makes them feel like "real" artists to see their work hanging in real frames on the real walls.

And I love that the art on our walls means something to us.

And, yes, I know you can see my reflection taking the picture in almost every shot.
I meant to do that.