brimming over

Paper dolls

One of my favorite things about Amy Grace is how she can take an activity, book, or game, and expand it into something new and fun that will occupy her for hours.  :)

My sister-in-law, Caren, always picks out really fun gifts for the kids and she chose a great paper doll set for Amy Grace a while back.  Amy Grace has played with it a lot and tends to get it out for a few days and then put it away for a while.  Recently, she got it out and spread the dolls and clothes out everywhere to play and then told me she wanted markers to draw faces on the back side of the dolls (one side already has faces).

Next thing I knew, this was the scene at the kitchen table:

She was using the paper dolls as patterns to create her own set out of construction paper.

Hours of fun (and a big mess to clean up).  But she is so content just to work on it for the entire afternoon.

 
  

Learning happens here

You may remember that I mentioned a while back that we are making a school room in what was formerly our dining room.  Well, we finally have made some significant progress AND I managed to take some pictures!  Hey, that adds up to a LOT of progress.  :)

Years ago, we were truly blessed when my grandparents down-sized their home and needed to get rid of their dining room furniture.  We were the fortunate recipients of their large dining room table, chairs, china cabinet, and buffet.  And we sure do appreciate all these years that we've been able to have a wonderful room full of furniture when so many young families have empty dining rooms!  Thank you, Grandmother!

We've never been a very formal family, so I can't say that the dining room table has ever gotten a lot of use as an eating place.  And we don't use our lovely formal china a lot either. 

Since we started homeschooling, the dining room table turned into a catch-all place for papers, books, puzzles, and other things.  And the dining room became a pet bedroom for Lucy, Theodore, and Amos.  :)  Even though Craig suggested it a while back, it took me a while to come around to the realization that it really suits our family better for the dining room to be a school room. 

I was inspired when The Pioneer Woman's guest blogger, OMSH, posted pictures of her homeschool room.  After that, I was on a hunt for all pictures I could find for inspiration and ideas.  One great resource was the Not Back-to-School Blog Hop School Room Week hosted by Life With My 3 Boybarians.  After looking through over 100 homeschool rooms, I had lots of great ideas and we were ready to get started! 

We're still working on things.  But since that may go on for a while, knowing our pattern with big projects such as this, I thought I'd go ahead and post some pictures.

You may notice that the guinea pigs got to remain but Lucy moved out.  She is currently right next door in the den/foyer area but her permanent residence is still up for debate.  Her giant bed doesn't fit there very well so she'll either have to get a new bed or move to a different location.

The kids were very instrumental in choosing the counter-height table.  I wanted one that was a regular height because the distance between the seats and tabletop seemed shorter (and therefore better for doing schoolwork).  But the kids were insistent.  They love this table and want to sit there to do everything. 

The piano is still in the room which works out well since we schedule piano practice into our school days.  I'm planning to frame all sorts of artwork that the kids have done and hang it over the piano and probably over the guineas, too.  I want it to be in a random arrangement and in different shapes and styles of frames rather than really orderly.  A good example of what I have in mind is the art wall that the Hillman Family has at The Very Flowers That Bend and Meet. 

This fabulous shelf is an Expedit shelf from IKEA.  I love, love, love it!  It may look full but it really still has tons of space left right now.  I still have some organizing to do with it.  And we need some more of those wonderful green magazine files (also IKEA).  The lights on top are also from IKEA and are really just to provide some extra light in the room rather than to spotlight the shelves.

The shelf holds all of our current materials and things we use regularly.  Plus lots of games, math manipulatives, extra workbooks, teacher's manuals, and catalogs.  We still have our homeschool closet downstairs that houses books waiting to be read (Sonlight cores) and used curriculum.  To say that homeschooling produces lots of "stuff" would be quite an understatement!

If I had to choose one thing as my favorite, it might be the rug.  I looked long and hard for the perfect rug to go under the table.  I forced Craig and both my parents to view rug after rug after rug on Overstock.com, Target.com, Crate and Barrel, and every other website you can imagine as well as dragging Craig out to lots of local stores to look at rugs.  We probably looked at close to 100 in person.  And I literally looked at thousands online.  I wanted something that was colorful and kind of playful.  But I didn't want it to be wild.  And since this is in a very visible part of our house, it couldn't be so colorful that it was obnoxious.  And the size turned out to be another issue...most rugs were too big or too small.  I finally decided it was going to have to be round.

I think this rug turned out to be just right.  It is colorful but the colors are subdued enough that they don't screech at you when you come through the front door.  The stripes are fun and have a bit of pattern.  And the roundness of the rug softens all the hard lines in the room.  The only thing not just right about it is that it wasn't cheap enough.  :)

Just to the left of the shelves we put a small desk for the laptop with two stools.  The desk is really a cafe table but it is just the perfect size for the laptop, a book or paper, and a small lamp.  The kids love the padded stools! 

The ledges above the desk currently have books about fall and Thanksgiving displayed on them.  I guess we'll switch to Christmas and winter books in December.  I don't know if we'll always use these ledges like this for books but they work well for that right now and the books make a colorful display.

This short wall was once mostly concealed behind a door to the kitchen.  Since we always kept the door open (really, I'm not sure we *ever* shut it), we decided to remove the door and make it into a cased opening so that we could have more usable wall space.  Of course, we still have to fill in the hinge holes, remove the molding, and repaint, but we'll get around to that one day.

The wall has another book ledge at the top.  Right under that is a magnetic knife holder from IKEA for scissors.  (I think that is the kids' favorite thing in the room!)  Underneath the scissors, we have two kitchen rails with plastic cups hanging on them.  The cups are filled with all manner of useful stuff such as pencils, markers, crayons, multiple sizes of popsicle sticks, and googly eyes.  These are terrific because they can easily be carried over to the table whenever crayons (or googly eyes) are needed.

Two things in this picture are important:
1) the light...we removed our fancy chandelier to replace it with something more school room appropriate.  Because I had a certain image stuck in my head of what a school room should have in it, this is the 3rd light fixture we tried.  And honestly, the one I really wanted all along.  Ha!  It's from Pottery Barn and is "adjustable", meaning that it can be raised and lowered to make the light closer or further from the table.  Of course, my idea of adjustable and Pottery Barn's idea of adjustable are not the same.  It will be staying put at this distance from the table all the time.  And it could stand to be brighter but we couldn't get that without going with a multiple bulb fixture which I didn't want to do.  Also, any time we put a brighter bulb into it (which we can do), I am blinded whenever I look up at it.  Downsides of being short, I guess.

2) the walls above the doorways...I have been planning to use this space to put an inspirational quote.  My plan has been to get vinyl letters from a place such as Wall Words to wrap around the corner above the doors.  I've been gathering ideas for quotes.  When I mentioned it to Craig, he told me about a local school whose media center has inspirational quotes around the top of the entire room.  His thinking is to use multiple quotes and do them around the room.  I'm not sure which way to go now.  For one thing, doing multiple quotes would get expensive.  Also, I wasn't sure if they would all be the same font/color or if maybe they would be the same color but each quote in a different font.

What do you think?  What would look best?  And while you're commenting, tell me what you think about painting the wall the shelves are on...maybe the same green as the kitchen?  Or another color?  Thanks!

We're really enjoying our new school room.  The kids and I spend a lot of time in there during the day.  And Craig has even commented that he thinks it may be his favorite room in the house now!  It is very pleasant and cheerful.  What more could be better in a room for learning?
 

A boy's view of the world

Parker just came to me with his camera and asked me to upload his pictures to the computer. 

I thought it would be fun to share with you some of his pictures.  They give a little insight into his world, what he thinks is important, and our family life in general. 

Plus some of them are pretty good, I think.  :)

Remember I said we had a garden?  Proof...

We're still getting a bountiful crop from those pepper plants! 

Is there any wonder I'm always hearing screams coming from downstairs?

Craig breakfasting in his regular spot.

School stuff...

Headed to Fall Festival at church...a wizard and a spy.

 

There you have it: a boy's life in pictures.   

 

Games with Parker

Parker has been playing middle school team tennis this fall.  He really loves it a lot. 

I haven't gotten any great pictures of him playing.  I need a better camera lens for sports action photography.  Too bad that's about number 211 on our list of 220 things we need to purchase.  Sigh.

Anyway, here is one picture just to prove that I tried and that he has been playing:

That was his first singles match this season and he'd really been looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, I think he's so accustomed to playing doubles that it threw him for a loop.  He really struggled to cover the whole court and made mistakes that he doesn't usually make.  It was a heart-breaking defeat.  For me.  Parker seemed to take the whole thing in stride after a couple of minutes to compose himself.

And best of all, he made us so proud because he displayed good sportsmanship throughout the entire match.  Even when I could tell all he wanted to do was get off that court, he was still kind and generous and did not act angry or frustrated.  I was really impressed.

Now, on to a game where he apparently had the upper hand...Bananagrams!  I've been wanting to get this game for quite a while and finally threw it into an order I was placing at Rainbow Resource.  Wesley was too caught up in the last chapters of Harry Potter book 3 to play with us, so Parker and I played one on one. 

I was sailing through the entire time, creating my puzzle with ease, and he was struggling.  And then he pulled out a victory with the last tiles!  Turkey!

Just four tiles left and I couldn't figure out how to rearrange and make them fit!  Argh!!

We give Bananagrams two thumbs up!  It took us a while to get the hang of it but it was great fun.  And we think it will move a lot faster with multiple players. 
  
 
 

A friendly rivalry

In our house, fall means a lot of things...back to school, pumpkin foods, Halloween, crazy weather.  But most of all, fall means college football!

And college football means University of Alabama football!  Roll Tide! (that's for Craig and the boys.)

College football rivalries can be pretty fierce in the SEC.  And we are out of our element since we live in a part of Georgia that is liberally populated with about 30% Auburn fans, 30% Georgia fans, and 20% Georgia Tech fans.  The remaining 20% are split widely among teams as varied as Maryland, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss, Miami, and more.

We have developed a very friendly, and mostly civil, rivalry with our very close friends who are Tennessee fans.  It's particularly interesting since I'm a UT traitor, having given up the fight when I realized it was just too difficult being married to a man who eats/sleeps/dreams Alabama football.

A few years back, our friends' teenage son covered Craig's Alabama car tag and decals with UT stuff when they beat Bama.  And that started the ongoing battle.  There were a few bleak years when the Vols won several in a row.  Then Bama won and we hung an Alabama flag in a tree in their yard (where it remained for several days while they were out of town before they came home and removed it!). And so the rivalry progressed.

Now this year, it should have been easy victory.  Alabama is ranked in the top 5.  Tennessee has been struggling.  But this is a game that never goes as expected.  The Tide won, but just by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins.  Or should we say by a certain player's chin.  Terrence Cody saved the day by blocking a last minute UT field goal (his second block of the day!). 

Craig and Parker worked on this masterpiece and delivered it to our friends on Halloween.

Tonight our doorbell rang and we found this awaiting us on the front porch.

(It says "VOLS" for anyone having difficulty reading the word.)

If I must watch endless hours of college football, at least this makes it fun.  :) 
 
  

Trick-or-Treat!

Bleak, rainy, and cold.  That just never happens on our South Georgia Halloweens!  Weird. 

As usual, we were still preparing at the very last minute.  But highly unusual, we still had no idea this morning (yikes!) exactly what everyone would dress as for Halloween! 

Try as we might, Amy Grace and I could not convince those stubborn, stick-in-the-mud boys to help us decide on costumes.  I had pretty much decided that Amy Grace would dress up to Trick-or-Treat and the boys would just have to deal with not getting any candy.  Too bad.

Then this morning, Parker had an idea that Wesley was totally on board with doing.  Amy Grace wasn't completely sure but eventually came around to join in the plan with gusto.

So I present...a trio from Mount Olympus...

Parker as Poseidon, god of the sea:

Amy Grace as Athena, goddess of wisdom and victory:

And Wesley as Zeus, lord of the universe:

And this is what you get for Halloween when homeschoolers study the ancient world.  :)

We trick-or-treated with our friends and had a sort of "block party" beforehand for everyone to fill up on munchies.  The cold rainy mist only dampened spirts a little bit!  Here's a picture of all the costumed kids from the little ones on up to the teens...

Hope you had a great boo day, too! 
 
  
 
  

Capital gifts

Craig was away most of this week at the CCH User Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.  But really that means he was in Washington, DC. 

This conference really knows how to do things up right!  They give out gifts and extras like crazy.  And it's all stuff that you actually want to keep instead of junk that immediately ends up in the trash at home.

CCH also provides some pretty spectacular entertainment during the evenings of the conference.  One night this year the evening event was at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.  And we were lucky enough to get gifts that Craig hand-picked for us in the gift shop!

A prism for Parker...he loves it and was thrilled this morning to see the light spectrum when he took it outside.

For Amy Grace, a "flexi sphere"...a delicate wire contraption that flexes and changes to form many different shapes from a flower to a sphere to an hourglass and more.

Newton's Cradle for Wesley...click, click, click...the principles of physics in action.  And boring their clicking way into my brain...click, click, click.  Oops.  It's a wonderful gift and Wesley (along with the other kids) adores it!

And lastly, for me...does this gift prove to you that my sweet husband knows me well or what? 

Politics and Christmas all rolled into one!  Perfection!  Although this little guy is so cute, it may be hard to pack him away with the ornaments.  :) 
  
  
  
  

Pumpkin

One of my favorite things about fall is pumpkin. 

No, I do not mean pumpkins, like the big orange round things that people carve up with scary faces.  This is not about pumpkin patches since around here those mostly consist of plant nurseries and churches setting up goofy little areas with hay bales and scarecrows and other fall items in order to sell gobs of already cut off the vine pumpkins. 

One time we did make the trek to a fabulous real live pumpkin patch in north Georgia to actually cut our very own pumpkins off the vine.  That was cool!  They gave us vine cutters like we use to cut small branches in the yard and set us free in the pumpkin patch with a wheel barrow.  Once we chose and cut the pumpkins we liked, we carted them up to the front and they weighed them and we paid by the pound. 

Then we brought them home and made a lovely arrangement on the front porch, complete with a bale of hay and some potted mums.  It was delightful!  It was our first year in this house and our first year with a true front porch on which to put a fall display.

And then the very next morning we got up for church and the kids noticed that there were pumpkins in the yard.  Huh?  Yep.  During the night, someone (multiple someones?) had come along and vandalized our beautiful fall vignette.  Some pumpkins were missing completely along with a small sign and a scarecrow, things were overturned, and pumpkins were strewn about the yard.  Thankfully, our ferocious guard dog, Lucy, did not lose any beauty sleep while the hooligans did their dirty work.

I haven't had the heart to really do it up since then.  Sigh.

But I digress.  How did I get so off topic?  This is supposed to be about happy pumpkin!  You know, the eatin' kind! 

One of my favorite things about fall is that it's time to eat pumpkin and pumpkin flavored foods!  Yeah, yeah, I know that with modern conveniences you're able to have pumpkin year 'round.  And I also freely admit that I'm not getting my pumpkin the old fashioned way, except that I do use a hand-operated can opener rather than an electric one.

Fortunately, the children inherited my love of pumpkin.  They love pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, and pumpkin cookies.  And I'm sure Wesley would adore a pumpkin latte from Starbucks if I'd spring for one for him.  The only thing they don't seem particularly fond of is pumpkin pie but I'm working on it. 

They're always on the lookout for new pumpkin items.  So when we hit Trader Joe's in Atlanta last week, they were immediately clamoring for the Pumpkin Pancake and Waffle Mix that was prominently displayed.  And who am I to argue with something that sounds as good as that?

So we had pumpkin pancakes tonight for supper. 

Oh, yummy.

Full, satisfied grin.

And this one declared them, "The best pancakes I have ever eaten."

They were really good.  Honestly, I think they smelled way better than they tasted but I'm glad the kids were happy.   

And don't worry, Doc, I'm pretty sure he was just caught up in the moment...everyone knows your sourdough pancakes are the best pancakes ever!
  
  
  

Countdown to Halloween

Because today is the first day of the beginning of Halloween week...
And because my children love Halloween...
And because Amy Grace has been dreaming up possible Halloween costumes (even to the point of drawing instructions for me to make them!) for at least a month...

I bring you a blast from the past:

Emily and Amy Grace on Halloween 2006.  Aren't they too cute?  Note that Amy Grace is wearing her dress backwards for some unknown reason. 

And while the picture above is the cuter one because they are both smiling and happy, I have to share this one so that you can get the full scope of Emily's "costume" created by Amy Grace, complete with wand:

Em, you're such a good sport!  Amy Grace would dearly love to dress up with you this week!  We miss you. 
  

Bubbles

Remember how much fun it was to take a bubble bath when you were a kid? 

Oh, the joy!