Black Apple Dolls

While visiting dear friends over Thanksgiving, I was shown THESE cute handmade dolls and wanted to make some for my girls. Christmas was filled with sewing/craft projects for everyone but Maddie and Abbie. And then their birthdays came and went with no new dolls.

The dreamy idea of handmade dolls kept creeping into my imagination, so for an early Valentine's gift, I finally got them started and finished (in the same week!).

As you can see, they were a big hit. The girls instantly fell in love and named them Pinky Dinky Doo (Maddie) and Tyler (Abbie...which is Pinky Dinky Doo's brother's name). There's a pattern of them naming things after the characters from whatever book we read last.

Madeline and Abigail promptly made a house for them under the computer desk complete with a radio, nightlight and beds.

They were fairly easy to make and I've already been charged with making pajamas and raincoats for them. Also, the dolls' dresses were made from remnants from each girl's baby binder, which I'll discuss in a future post. Lovies for my loves...perfect!

Make vs. Buy: I'll definitely be making these over buying them for $40 each! MAKE!!

A Breakthrough

Remember we're working on some new rules around here, right? Rule #4: read two pages from the Book of Mormon (BoM) daily, as a family. In the past, we've never had a reading schedule. We'd read here and there, time permitting. If the kids were late getting to bed, scriptures would have been skipped for the day. We used to read from the Bible and then back to the BoM, back and forth with no rhyme or reason.

One way to prevent all of this vascillation was to have this black and white rule.

2 pages per day, whether the kids are mutinous before bedtime or half-asleep,

we have stuck to it.

Today is the 25th of January and we've read our 50 pages so far.

I'm impressed.

And proof that we've actually started a good habit was discovered in speaking with Madeline on Sunday...

I was filling out her "spotlight" form (each Sunday a child has things read about them in primary and the rest of the kids guess who it is) and she answered what her least favorite food was (chili), what she likes to do in the summertime (have picnics), what she wants to be when she grows up (an ice skater), and the like.

I then asked her "The best thing about my family is..." and after pondering for a moment, she replied:

"Reading scriptures before bedtime."

Out of all the things that we do together, scripture reading is it!

Again, I'm impressed.

It's not going to the zoo or playgrounds or driving thousands of miles to see the sights or having birthday parties or opening Christmas gifts or eating a special treat at Dairy Queen or any other temporal, tangible thing...

They are happy to be nourished by the Spirit.

The Lifecycle of a Pinata

I know you've all been frothing at the bit (really, who says that?! yuck!) to see our pinata, so this one's for you! Remember we started with THIS...


About an hour and one really thick layer of newspaper later. I was advised to have multiple layers, but I figured one would do the trick.

After it dried for a day, we started on the pink primer. It's just poster paint, nothing too fancy here.

Now we have a pink factory.

Time for the details. The girls used glittery paint and glittery foam stickers to decorate. They had so much fun making it their own creation.

A few paper cones and some flags and voila, it's done!

A view from the back. Of course every surface except the bottom had something sparkly.

Everyone at the girls' birthday party took a turn at thumping the pinata... to no avail. The older boys got some extra turns to try and open it up.

They got some good whacks in, but it still wouldn't pour out the sweet treasures. It eventually took Jeremy to rip the bottom open...I guess one layer of paper mache was enough!

The End.

I'd like to thank all the helpers big and little at helping this pinata to have a wonderful life.

And yes, I'd do it all again to save $20 and give the girls some fun memories.

Make vs. Buy: The winner is MAKE!

The Bookshelf

When you first step foot into our house, besides noticing a huge feather-like object above the hallway (baleen), you'll see that we've got two bookshelves, a couch, and a corner office space. Unless you were an expected guest, the floor could possibly be littered with toys, books, and perhaps the stray piece of popcorn or afternoon snack (even likely from the day before). Really though, I try to keep most things in order as best I can with three little kidlets that travel behind me to undo my doneness.

The chaos of children's odds and ends strewn about the floor makes my eye twitch and my nerves twinge.

The bookshelves though, they're a special place for chaos. Contained on the bottom two shelves of each bookcase, just for the children, are all they can devour as far as reading material goes. On the very bottom shelf of one of the bookcases are two baskets full of toys and board books. Sometimes the baskets are emptied and an art installation is created.

Brayton prefers the toy section of our library, while Maddie and Abbie are usually digging around on the second shelf up, pulling off books about animals, princesses, planets, and other 2-5 year old stuff. Go up to the third shelf and there you'll find some books for youth and adults. Then the higher shelves contain even more precious, keep-your-sticky-afternoon-snack-fingers-off books. Ones that the kids try to reach. Many times I've found Abigail sneaking a book or two off by climbing up on a toy-turned-stool. She's been successful at thumbing through a few of my books, upside down, only to find that there are no pictures.



But that's what it's all about: enticing the children to the bookshelf with toys and picture books. Having them linger in brillance that is to be discovered. It's OK to have books toppled on the shelves haphazardly, making it easy to grab one or five at a time. It's OK to have chaotic baskets of board books spill over with color and texture and sound in a main living space. One's bookshelf should be enabling the children to look up to higher levels of learning and having them reach for bigger words, fewer pictures, and deeper morals and ideas.

And with that end in mind, I can stand this chaos.

Pinata

Madeline and Abigail have birthdays 4 days apart from another. And Jeremy's birthday is on Abbie's...or the other way around, really. The girls will have a combined party this year, which is unprecedented as far as having an actual party goes. It's usually just cake and ice cream with family. But Maddie turns the big 5 this year, so I thought it would be nice to have friends over too.

They've decided on a fairy princess theme (sorry boys) and as we browsed Walmart the other week, they spotted the perfect pinata: Cinderella's castle. For $20. I figured we've got resources to build one ourselves, so why not?


So we're making our own pinata instead. The girls LOVE the idea of a custom designed castle! We worked on the bones today, now we just need some newspaper and lots of "glue". More to come...and I'm sure that it'll end up looking more like a princess castle and less like a factory in the end.

Happy New Year!

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! The girls just loved their presents...and they had plenty to open. I think next year we'll get them 3 gifts each (symbolic of the 3 gifts Jesus received from the Wise Men) and they can donate some of their current toys to a family in need. Yeah, so they'll be almost 2 and 4, but I think it'd be a good start on giving service as a Christmas tradition. So when they are older, hopefully they'll think of others first. I've included some photos of the girls in the outfits that Grandma Barbara got them. The second is a total candid photo I took - Madeline was crying because she didn't want to get her picture taken anymore, and Abbie looks on as if to say "it's ok, don't cry sister." It's precious - and it is so Abbie - she's such a lover. We visited Grandma Dee at Chena Hot Springs (she's the pilot at the resort) on New Year's Day and got some swimming in. We all had a great time - Madeline even got brave and put on a life jacket and swam around us without help! I think 2008 is going to be a fun, exciting, and definitely new year :)

Winter wonderland

We had such beautiful weather around Thanksgiving...Maddie got to play outside at the playground one morning, which was an answer to her prayers - she's always praying that she can go to the playground. We went for a short walk to get some photos - the light was amazing. She was so happy to be out in the sun and snow. Thank you Kim for the inspiration to use the Beaver Springs bridge in the background :)