Happy Halloween!!

From Miss Paula Deen... and Mr. Darth Vader!!

China Activities!!!

We have been studying China this week and have had opportunities for lots of fun China activities. We started the week learning to write and say some Chinese numbers.

Next, we made a Popsicle stick abacus...

And finally, since the Chinese were the ones to discover how to make paper, we thought we would try our hand at that. We started out by ripping pieces of paper into small bits, we used a mixture of plain white paper and newspaper, but any type of paper will work. Fill the blender half full of paper...

Add warm water and blend into a fine pulp...

Add 3 to 4 blender loads of pulp to a large basin of water...

Stir well...

Next, you will need some sort of mold to dip down into the basin. Nathan made this one for me using paint stirrers and a piece of window screen.

After all the excess water has dripped off the screen you lay a sheet of fabric on top, remove it from the mold and place it on a cookie sheet to dry.

After they are dry you simply lift them off and should be able to use them as sheets of paper!

China Week Kick-off!!

We're studying China in school this coming week. The kids were excited when they looked at their assignments for the week and saw that "eat Chinese food" was one of them! We thought today would be a good day for that as a belly full of Chinese food + a Sunday afternoon nap make for a great combination!

More spray paint...

Apparently I need to spray paint every item in our house before "the call" comes and our adoption wait is over!! This project has been on my mind for months and it has taken that long to convince my hubby to let me tackle it. I knew I could do it and I knew we would love the end result. We bought our kitchen table & chairs nearly 9 years ago, we fell in love with it and it matched our "grape themed" kitchen perfectly. I still love the style of it and it has held up really well, I was just kind of over the grapes and white paint. After school yesterday I hauled it out to the driveway and started painting. Thankfully, Dave made me use a really good primer which made the job a lot easier to tackle.

It turned out like this and I have fallen in love with it all over again!!

Four cans of 96 cent spray paint and two cans of primer later, I have declared it one of my favorite makeover projects!!!

I am now on the hunt for a bench I can paint black to accommodate our growing family!

Bargain Bathroom Makeover!!

We were yard-saling a few weeks ago when I came across this find...FREE PAINT! They had gallons of it in lots of different, lovely colors. Dave laughed at me when I went over to look at it and said "please tell me you are not going over there to take someone's old paint." He laughed even harder when I loaded these gallons into the van, 1/2 gallon each of chocolate brown and oyster bay blue. They were just mixed in February 2009! I considered it my blessing for the day and knew exactly what we would paint with them. This was our master bathroom before...perfectly fine and functional just very white...

Here it is now...the front half got the chocolate brown color

We spray painted all the fixtures and light white (96 cents for the can of paint) and Dave got a brilliant idea to frame out the mirror (97 cent rosettes and 68 cents a foot molding). It looks amazing!

I love these glass apothecary jars! I got them for 25 cents each at a yard/estate sale. They were filled with hundreds of teeny-tiny seashells!!

The back half of the bath got the blue color...

Honey, don't you feel silly for laughing at me for taking that free paint now?!?!? ;)

At the campfire...

We got a wild hair a few weeks ago and cleared out some more trees at the back of our property and created a new firepit area. It was actually Nathan that got the ball rolling, we were out there playing and he ran into that part of the woods and said something like "I can't believe we have lived here almost 5 years and I have never set foot on this part of our land before!" We had a cold snap this weekend and spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights out there enjoying the campfire.

On Saturday night, Grandma and Paw Paw came over and roasted some hot dogs with us!

Princess is desperately hoping that Paw Paw would roast her a hot dog!

Campfires must always includes S'mores!

We had a grand old time out there laughing and telling stories!!

Twinkle Twinkle...

Just another one of my crazy "waiting for adoption" projects...I long for the day when I will have no time to spray paint things in my garage! But in the meantime, I saw this on another blog and thought I would try and make one for an empty wall in Nathan's beach themed room. These canvases were some rejects from a one of our painting classes last winter...they had been sitting in a closet and since I am all about making things on the cheap I thought I would try and use them. A little hot glue turns them into one large canvas.

Next it was time for some paint...some tan (leftover from the kitchen) and blue (leftover from a bedroom)

A little white spray paint for some letters...

The finished project! It's really cute and with the starfish and washed out wood it looks really neat in his room!

Sukkot Feast - Unit 1 Celebration

We held our Tapestry of Grace end-of-unit celebration last night. After studying the Jewish feasts for several weeks it was decided that we would hold our own Sukkot Feast (or Feast of Booths), which was traditionally held around the harvest time of year. They would construct booths in their yards where they would eat, sleep and worship for seven days. Here are the children constructing their booth... Next, they covered it with greenery...

Listening to a story, waiting for the feast to begin...

Each family spread their blanket out around the booth to partake in the festivities.

The children put on a little skit for their Dads.

We dined on lamb, lentil stew, pitas, hummus, grapes, olives, challah bread, and more...

We are excited for the start of Unit #2!!