Little Pumpkinbear Links

Do you see it up there? It's a new-ish addition to my linkbar, and I've finally finished futzing with it (for a while).

My girlies are NOT allowed to surf the internet yet, and they're not allowed to visit web sites that contain external advertising, and they're not allowed to browse youtube unsupervised, and they're not allowed to visit most web sites that promote toys and other mass-market consumer culture products.

There are, however, loads and loads of educational web sites that the girlies ARE allowed to access, of course, and Little Pumpkinbear Links is the place where I keep them. My blog is one of my home page tabs that pops up whenever a child opens our internet browser, and from there, the child is able to find her tab and then scroll through her links.

If you've got a little pumpkin or bear about the ages of mine, then you're absolutely welcome to check out our links, too. I'll warn you, though--they tend to be a bit dinosaur-heavy.

Last Day of the Year

Sewing

 

I really, really, REALLY want our homemade peace flags to be ready to hang tomorrow. Since I haven't stenciled them yet, however, and the paint takes 24 hours to cure before it can be heat-set...well, Sunday's a good enough New Year's Day in pretend time.

Painting Dinosaurs

These paintable dinos were a big old splurge for Santa stockings, but lordy, they're well worth it and I LOVE them! They're sturdy and creative and make for a toy that will be played with very often, I believe. 

Fixing the Dishwasher

See the duct tape, and the cat encyclopedia that the big kid read to me to keep me company in my labors?

Alas, it was to no avail, as the damn thing still leaks like a sieve. I'm guessing it's the water valve, which is way beyond my expertise, and I don't even need to tell you how much it sucks to have to make yet another huge, unexpected purchase (did I tell you that we blew out TWO tires on the van on the drive down to Arkansas?), especially one that we don't really "need," in its strictest sense, although I probably also don't even need to tell you how it feels to be so totally overwhelmed by just the day's regular housekeeping that it makes me feel just as sick in my stomach to not have a dishwasher as it does to shell out 600 bucks for a new one.

Fortunately, we still have

Kittens

to cheer me up, and a night full of board games, movies, pasta, and champagne/sparkling cider (for we're ALL going to stay up until midnight).

And then tomorrow, I get to get up late, drink a big cup of coffee, and go buy a bigger, brighter, brand-new dishwasher, in which I will happily wash dishes all day.

Yellow Snow Plus Blue Snow Equals Green Snow

Syd's been way into color mixing lately. She's gotten the secondary color combos down, and now enjoys mixing them up with paints on paper and colored water in clear jelly jars.

Her obvious next medium?

SNOW!!!

We're having an unseasonably warm patch just lately (hallelujah!), but due to our property's miserable lack of direct sunlight, we still have plenty of nice, thick, clean-ish white snow for painting on. I mixed up three bottles of snow paint for the girls in the primary colors (even yellow!), and sent them out to see what they could see.

Do the secondary color combos still work in the snow?

They do!

Cue much running around and mischief making and tagging snow-covered outcroppings:

 Animal tracks are fascinating when sprayed, because it brings out the definition and the depth:

By late this afternoon the temperature had climbed to a shocking 50 degrees, and there were few outcroppings of snow to paint (at least few nice, clean outcroppings--there are still lots of dirty, gross piles of plowed snow all around), but instead there were lots and lots of slush puddles to stomp in, and freezing little rivulets to follow, and bare dirt patches to hop between, and it turns out that that's pretty fun, too.

Lit up, Then under the Weather

Yep, nothing like a nasty case of gastroenteritis to finish up the Christmas holidays. Really draws a line under all those holiday indulgences, don't you think? Sure, there may be leftover peanut butter fudge and a half-bottle of red wine and the last of the devilled eggs in the refrigerator, but you're just hoping that you'll eventually be able to keep down some ice chips, and maybe a Saltine in a couple of hours if you're really feeling frisky.

Christmas night (one day before it all went to hell), Matt and I drove the girlies over to this house in Van Buren that really does the holidays up right. My Aunt Pam's directions to me consisted of, "Okay, you get to the intersection with the Walgreen's and you take a left. Pass the Dollar General, take a left at the three-way stop, and then, you can just follow the cars."

Have you ever been to a house so done up with Christmas lights that there's a line of cars waiting to drive past it every night? A house where they have their own radio broadcast frequency, so that you can listen to their own personal Christmas mix on your radio as you drive by? A house where all the lights are choreographed to dance along to that Christmas mix?

I hope you have, but if you haven't, then you can take a look-see at this one:

And sometimes? Sometimes! Sometimes, the owner of the house dresses up as Santa and stands out on the street and hands out candy canes.

Merry Christmas to All!

Wishing you a holiday filled with MANY more smiles than screams!

Tutorial: Painted Wooden Christmas Ornaments

We usually make the Christmas presents for the girlies' California grandparents after Christmas, so that we have the pleasure of giving them to them in person during their yearly visit to us in January. However, this year two of the recipients of gifts that we mail before Christmas--two little cousins, and my awesome brother-in-law--were going to be at that California grandparents' house for Christmas.

Well, you can't send a box full of Christmas presents to somebody's house, and there's not even a single Christmas present in it for that somebody!

We had to put in a little homemade love for Grandma Janie and Poppa, and here's how we did it.

You will need:

•  craft acrylic paints (and a metallic Sharpie, if you long for extra fanciness)
• wooden two-dimensional shapes
• drill
• yarn or twine

1. Have your little critter paint all the wooden shapes to her heart's content. Acrylic paint dries pretty quickly, so you ought to be able to paint both sides in the same session:

Don't you just love that little pot belly? Can you see where she drew on herself with markers? That's her piano, and yes, she plays her belly and sings.

2. Let the paint dry completely:

 If you like, you can add additional details with paint pens:

The narrow edges of the wooden shape are hard for a little kid to paint, so I neatened them afterwards with a metallic Sharpie along the edges:

 When the paint is all dry, they're all good to go...

 ...except they need holes! Drill a hole near the top of each shape, and then tie a nice piece of twine or yarn into a loop through the hole, perfect for hanging from a Christmas tree--

--or a cutie little finger!

Edible Chess: Food for the Mind AND the Tummy

My library copy of Candy Construction is a dangerous book to leave around when there are little readers about. We've already made the Rice Krispy Treat Christmas trees (perfection!) and the edible chocolate play dough (the messiest project that I've ever made, and it didn't even turn out that great, but I'm going to give it a second shot, anyway), and when Willow spied the edible chessboard, it didn't take long before Sydney and I were in the kitchen, mixing up a big batch of made-from-scratch brownies and a big batch of made-from-scratch blondies.

The brownies and blondies are supposed to be cut into perfect squares, then arranged in a chessboard pattern. Willow cut all the treats into (sort of) identical small squares--

--and then Matt helped them arrange the pieces into chessboard formation on our extra-large cutting board.

And then, to play!

 
Often, when Will and I play chess, Sydney wants to play, too. Sydney and I play as a team, and we take turns making the move when it's our turn. This evens out my play with Willow quite a bit, because I can guarantee you that if I have a tricky little trap set up, Sydney will sacrifice my queen or expose my king before I can spring it:

 It took a lot of persuasion to keep the girls from nibbling away the chessboard while we played just one game:

By the second game, we made up a rule that if a square gets eaten, then it no longer exists as part of the chessboard. That's a rule that's sure to liven things up! It has excellent strategic potential:

It probably wouldn't surprise you to discover that there wasn't enough chessboard left for a third game.