Sunday, June 03, 2007

Crafty Day

Monday, Memorial Day,

(will write about Sunday later…power outage lost file)

Since we are away from relatives, over coming my fears of actually having a car payment rather than paying cash and basically doing Memorial Day weekend on our own we dive into to crafts. ManSon and Oldest Daughter are off with friends. Snow White and I brave the shopping strips expecting them to be closed due to the holiday. To our surprise all stores are open! We rush into AC More and fill up our cart with much needed items to create a wonderful end of year thank you gift from Snow White to her teacher. A gift card to the local Olive Garden would have sufficed but a crafty gift from the heart seems more personal. I thought the projects would take up most of the day but turns out Snow White has become a wiz at crafts. Quick drying paint was also a culprit in her finishing so quickly.

First on Snow White’s agenda… the Box. She picked out a good sized hinged box. I picked out a clay flower pot. We made our way through the isles picking out things she liked such as stickers of puppies and flowers and other miscellaneous things from the scrap booking sections. Then we made our way to the paint area. I asked Snow White what she wanted to make of the box and flower pot. The flower pot would be for flowers on teacher’s desk and the box would be for whatnots she has no drawers for. Still the paint selections were a bit fuzzy to me at the time but I knew they would make a nice addition to our craft paint selection at home. One final item was a turtle she saw hanging on to a pottery planter.

After our little crafters extrusion we decided to go out for dinner. Snow White requested a restaurant we had seen on our way to the craft store, Cheese Burger in Paradise. We have a few rules for dining out. You should pick a restaurant you have not tried and a dish you never had before. Apparently she loves gumbo and Cheese Burger in Paradise. She could not stop saying the word paradise. This place looks like paradise, the food is like a tropical island of paradise, Madagascar movie Paradise was reveled when the lion liked sushi and it was under an umbrella just like this! Look at my fruit! Paradise fruit! This is paradise! Our table of the ocean and land is paradise.

When we were home we laid out all of our new supplies. I am very proud of her creativity. I have to say even as an adult there were moments I thought “Wait! Let Mommy help you!” but she had more confidence in herself than I had realized. I let her do her own thing and then waited on the side lines to fix it. I came to the realization, she knows what she wants to do and she can achieve it! She did let me pain the flower pot and put the flower stems in. That was all. One thing I really wanted to do was paint over the blue drip on the front of the box. Okay, maybe you have to look hard to see it…bottom corner of the box. She would not let me. They are her projects and I no choice but to let her do them as she likes. She is 8 years old after all.

Garden of Knowlege

Teacher's Box


Since Snow White was afraid her precious gifts would be distroyed on the school bus I brought them to her class during my lunch hour. The teacher was thrilled! After all the students had a chance to see them up close she put the flowers on her desk and took the box home to use as a jewelry box.

3 comments:

Lahdeedah said...

Okay,

I'm dragging my sorry little tween daughter's butt to the craft store, and we're doing a fairy pot this week...

So um. What kind of paint do you buy?

Because I've always been a ahem cough cough failure ahem at crafts.

MommasWorld said...

Are paint is not anything super fancy. Anita's or Folk Art Acrylic Paints work well on wood, plaster, canvas, clay, metal, and other surface. They are water based so clean up is simple and a 2 ox container usually costs between $2-$2.50. We used maybe one eighth of each color on the two projects.
This is not our lively hood so our brushes are inexpensive as well. I keep a few packages of the $1.99 thin sets and a dozen or so 1 - 2 inch foam brushes which are only 20 cents each.

Most of the craft stores we have visited have a wood craft area full of ready made items you can paint. The box was pre-assembled with the lid and hinges. Snow White picked out and attached the mirror. The boxes and other wood items (bird houses, light houses, shelves, letters, etc.) come in a variety of sizes. From a doll house sized chest to a large chest for storing toys. Walmart has little wooden trinket boxes, trains and other little nick-nack items you can paint. Our whole family enjoys painting. Snow White said it best "It calms me. Puts me in a wonderful relaxing place."

One thing more, the flowers we used for the Garden of Knowledge are from the scrap book section of the store. There are so many cute items in that section. We have used them for poster projects, book reports and home made cards.

I hope you and your daughter have as much fun painting as we do.

Lahdeedah said...

I can't wait, I'm drag... taking her Thursday :)