Monday, April 12, 2010

Rainbow Party Project #1: Rainbow Paper Chain

On the one hand, some of us (Willow) are still in our pajamas at 7:00 pm--these will apparently be tonight's pajamas, as well. Others of us (Sydney) have worn a sparkly leotard and tights all day. Cookies were eaten. Magic School Bus computer games were played allllllll morning.

Microsoft Scholastic's The Magic School Bus Explores in the Age of Dinosaurs (Jewel Case) Ages 6-10

On the other hand, we also made the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, and a dandelion greens frittata for breakfast, AND had macaroni bar for dinner (available toppings: leftover dandelion greens, veggie parmesan, roasted red peppers, vegan chili, and avocado oil), and I did two loads of dishes (obviously, after all that cooking), and worked out, and we planted pie pumpkins and spinach in our community garden and spied what might be baby kale there, and I took some photos for ebay, and prepped a package for etsy, and we read lots of books, and of course there was some business with the glue stick.

Although I do not plan for Sydney's birthday party to cost a great deal, I do plan for it to be elaborate. Sydney enjoys elaborate planning, as does Willow, and they are VERY happy making lists and doing little projects to prep for the main event. VERY happy. Seriously. This rainbow birthday party is practically the only subject of conversation among the household under-six set these days.

To date, party plans range from spray-painting the EZ-Up to dyeing ice cubes with food coloring, but today was the first time that we actually put a plan into action:
Remember the birthday count-down paper chain that Sydney adores so much? Those packages of stash strips include every color of the rainbow, and they have been crafted into our first rainbow party decoration:
In rainbow order, of course.

I don't know how long the chain ended up being, but I'm hoping that it will drape nicely around the perimeter of the EZ-UP, both for the party and for future craft fairs. It looks EZ-Up size, doesn't it?
I haven't figured out any nice way of attaching it to the EZ-Up yet--I am SO over futzing with duct tape at sunrise--but still, one party decoration is achieved. Huzzah.

P.S. Speaking of huzzah, Crafting a Green World is back!!! Someday we'll split a pitcher of margaritas and I'll tell you the whole story, but for now just suffice with checking out my review of The Sewing Machine Attachment Handbook and my tutorial on painting with flowers. Huzzah!

4 comments:

cake said...

i need to know more about the magic school bus computer games. for instance, do they have them at the library? can i find some for free, online?

also, what's an EZ-up?

rainbow party sounds really fun.

julie said...

Other than a couple of garage sale finds, we get all our computer games from the library. And we get a LOT of them at a time, firstly because Willow is really into them, and secondly because they're older, and so they don't always install correctly, and it sucked the couple of times that we brought home, like, one computer game and I had to be all, "Sorry, doesn't work. Better luck next time."

Anyway, Syd isn't into computer games yet, although she'll hang out with Will while she does them, but Willow LOVES the Magic School Bus games, and all the I Spy games. She likes all the Jump Start stuff, too, which I also like, but she also likes the School Zone titles, and I think that some of those are kind of iffy.

EZ-Up is my big-ass craft fair tent. Super-versatile big-ass tent, and I may spray-paint it.

cake said...

thank you julie. cosmo loves magic schoolbus, and computer games of all sorts, but i have never tried the MSB computer games! i am sure they will be a welcome change from the really difficult puzzle games (room escapes with strange "logical" sequences, for example) that he has been playing, which usually require a lot of adult assistance.

will the EZ-up be painted rainbow, perhaps?

julie said...

Do you have Cosmo playing Myst? Oh, I love myself a crazy logic game. For the past ten years, off and on in the five minutes that I play a computer game per year, I've been playing Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic. LOVE it.

I bet he'd really like I Spy Junior, and perhaps even regular I Spy. Right now, Will is loving a library game called Crazy Machines--you build an elaborate machine using other simple machines like inclined planes, and lots of physics, and it does silly stuff. She can do the majority of it, with a little help from me as I sew. In June, we're going to start calling it Homeschool Math/Science.

We're such regular patrons that if we like a library game, we leave it installed on my computer, and just check it out over and over. I have the shortcuts to the games that we have installed and in the house in one corner of my desktop so that Will can access them independently--that's a very new thing, but it seems to be working out.