magnetic me

This project comes to you courtesy of my friend Kellie, who did it with her three girls a few years ago.

Magnetic dress up dolls--of yourself!

You start off with magnetic paper. I got mine at Wal-Mart in the office supply aisle. It was with the Avery label products.

Dress your kids in a leotard or bathing suit and have them pose in front of a white wall. I had my kids pose with their hands on their hips and their feet slightly apart.

 

Take pictures!
Then choose dress up outfits. I let my kids each choose two outfits. I laid them out on the floor and took pictures of those as well.

Then I opened a blank Word document and inserted all the pictures. I messed around with sizing until it looked like the clothes were the right size for the bodies--the kids pictures were 4x6, the clothes pictures were a little bit smaller. Then I printed it all off on magnetic paper.
I carefully cut around the kids and the clothes and gave them the scraps of leftover magnetic paper to design even more dress ups!

They made bouquets of flowers to hold, scarves, shoes, Christmas tights, pants, dresses, and even a moose hat. There's still some scraps of paper for them to make more as well!

  
I put everything in a pencil box (my preferred toy storage) and have them stashed in the playroom. Perfect to entertain little girls when I am trying to get dinner on the table!

Here's Tempe, all dressed up and wearing her moose hat!

Summer art + lime watermelon slushies!

For our art project yesterday, I surprised the girls with a sensory painting experience!
A few days ago, I filled ice cube trays halfway up with plain acrylic craft paint and then topped each one off with a little water and mixed it all up. I froze them for a few days until we were ready to use them. After quiet time, I rolled out a long sheet of paper on the deck, changed the kids into their bathing suits, and gave them the paint cubes. It was fun, but M-E-S-S-Y!

Tempe and Helena experimented with doing hand and foot prints--and then tracked the paint across the deck to the wash off station. It's a good thing I am planning on redoing the deck in the fall!

While the girls were doing their project, I was enjoying the most wonderful, delicious, summer drink I have ever had. Lately we've been making lots of Brazilian Lemonade (we like this recipe) and smoothies with tons of fruits and veggies in them. Those are good, but this is even better and much simpler (simpler than the Brazilian Lemonade, at least).
Lime watermelon slushie. Yum, yum, yum. Great way to use up leftover watermelon, because the secret ingredient is frozen chunks of watermelon. When I buy a watermelon, I cube it all and freeze half (or more) in a single layer on a baking sheet. Then I transfer the frozen chunks to a gallon size bag.
So to make this yummy drink, fill a blender jar 1/2 way with regular watermelon chunks and then the rest of the way with frozen watermelon chunks. Add the juice of 3-4 limes and 1/4 cup sugar and blend until slushy. Enjoy!

Neighborhood field trip: International Peace Gardens + afternoon art projects

I set up a little field trip schedule for my family for the summer and we've been inviting everyone in our neighborhood. We do a little outing--usually free or very, very cheap--every week. This week we went to the International Peace Gardens (yep, again, my family seems to go there a lot) and three other moms and their kids joined us.

Also, the girls always want to do art projects and I am really not good at it, but I'm making an effort this summer. This week we made sidewalk paint (equal parts cornstarch and water + food coloring). It was really fun to splatter paint with it. Next time I make it, I'm going to get those water shooters from the dollar store to spray the driveway (or maybe each other!)

Andy Warhol quiet time basket

So last month we went to the Andy Warhol exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art. And it was awesome and we loved it. And while we were there, Jason found this cute little board book to give Juno for Christmas: Andy Warhol's Colors. It's become a favorite and last week when I was changing our quiet time baskets (for the first time in like three months, oops), I put together a little Andy Warhol basket. Yes. An Andy Warhol quiet time basket.

I chose about 25 of my favorite pictures of our family and printed them in black and white on cardstock. Paired with some fluorescent crayons in a pencil box, they provide--well--maybe not hours, but quite a bit of fun for my girls. Juno especially loves coloring pictures of herself with her paci or pictures of Daddy!

And here's my most recent masterpiece. Isn't it fun?

MOA

Jason and I both went to BYU, and even though it's been quite a while since we moved away, we just keep going back!
We go to Provo at least once a month. All four of my siblings live there, we go to football or basketball games, or we go for the museums (or a combination of all of those things!)
One of our favorite places to take our kids is the Museum of Art at BYU. Admission is free and we've seen so many wonderful exhibits over the years--Walter Wick (Games, Gizmos, and Toys in the Attic), Carl Bloch (The Master's Hand), Dorothea Lange (Three Mormon Towns), AT WAR!, Suburbia, Brian Knep, Beauty and Belief (Islamic Culture), William Lamson, Michael Whiting (8-bit modern). Our personal favorites are always in the multimedia rooms with crazy weird videos, heat sensitive floor mats, all kinds of great stuff.
I've been excited for the current exhibitions for months! Andy Warhol and Takashi Murakami?!?! How cool is that??
We went down to Provo a few weeks ago to check it out!

Tempe and Helena loved this "Silver Clouds"-inspired Andy Warhol exhibit.

"People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly." Andy Warhol

The Andy Warhol exhibit was cool, but it turned out to be mostly stuff we had already seen, like the Marilyn Monroe or Queen Elizabeth (shown above) portraits.
After we saw the Andy Warhol exhibit, we went to the We Could Be Heroes exhibit upstairs, which I think edged out one we saw a few years ago as my #1 art exhibit of all time (I can't remember what it was called and I can't find it on their website, but it was all trash: hundreds of popped balloons weaved into a huge sculpture, dozens of packets of duck sauce tiling a wall).
Anyway, We Could Be Heroes: The Mythology of Monsters and Heroes in Contemporary Art was all about the values and shared perceptions of so-called heroes and monsters and their relationship in pop culture and a growing global culture. 

Jason and the girls posing in front of a Bob Dylan inspired piece.

Tempe was trying to pose like Bigfoot--she's not scared out of her mind, like she looks. 

Maybe the best part of the MOA? The kids' room in the northern part of the museum (down the hall across from the gift shop). Seriously, so great. This room changes with the exhibitions (a few months ago it was about Islamic culture) so right now it's themed around heroes in pop culture. There's a glass display case filled with action figures and toys from epic hero tales (LOTR, Spiderman, TMNT, etc), a video from YouTube that's the "most epic movie montage of all time" (it made me cry), a comic book making station, a dress up box of masks, and a ton of children's books.

How do I get a job as the curator for the children's section at an art museum? Not to brag, but I would be AWESOME at it.

This was a small print of one of the pictures from the exhibit. The words are in Polish, and I think they are "Cooking", "Cleaning", and "Dishes" (or something along those lines, at least). Love it!!!