Jenny Penny and Turkey Lurkey

This year thanksgiving is at my house. It was my idea, I think it will be nice, but im starting to stress out a little. We found out about all these new fun food allergies, and it means that I can't use any convenience food, no pie crusts from the dairy case, no premade cookies, no premade pies, no stovetop, no already made for me dinner rolls, nope none at all. I will be making it all from scratch, which is quite an undertaking. Thanks GOODNESS I don't have to pluck the turkey!!!!

My OCD might be taking over, I have opened a google document with 4 collaborators to plan my menu and I have a "strategy" document where I have listed out all of the days left until thankgiving with all of the things we need to do. I of course have planned for using all 24 hours of the day. Sleep didn't make the list. I have this planned out down to which decorative craft the kids will be doing each day and I have broken the house down into "zones" for deep cleaning. I think, perhaps, they have medication for this.

Brian has threatened to ban any and all Martha Stewart books and TV shows from the home. She only feeds my OCD, and he finds it creepy when I turn to him, bleary eyed because I haven't slept in 48 hours and say "its a good thing". It might explain why some people describe her as "grouchy", you can't be that anal without being a grouch. She has great ideas, but she also has a staff to help out behind the scenes. I also have good ideas, but I have three children who find whatever I am doing terribly interesting and they need to take it apart. So unfair.....

So I will have to keep updated on my progress, today I met all my goals, I got the kitchen prepped for painting, wrangled all the summer clothes, and went grocery shopping, yay! Tomorrow I have to test out several recipes, paint, clean the carpets, and start our thanksgiving crafts.....

Art Class: Stellaluna

This is my all time favorite book ever! I think maybe because in my life I have found myself feeling like a bat who is lost in a world of birds, I identify with little Stellaluna and its just the sweetest story ever! Okay so I was more than happy to do a little themed activity with this book.

The purpose of the exercise is to use warm fall colors on a cool background, and to start to distinguish how trees have branches, leaves...

1. Read Stellaluna, you will LOVE it!!! It opens up discussion about all kinds of things like what fruit bats eat, nocturnal animals, echolocation, etc.

2. Have kids draw a tree trunk and tree branches and try to encourage them to make the branches "realistic"

3. Then have kids take a white crayon, or white pencil and draw stars for the night sky

4. cut out a moon from yellow construction paper and glue it onto the paper.

5. Have child take qtips and dip it into yellow, red, and orange paint and dot it onto the paper on the branches of the tree

6. Cut a fruit bat out of construction paper out of brown construction paper with longish wings, then fold the wings, draw details onto the fruit bat and then glue onto paper.

Below are more examples from the kids in our art class.....

Art Class: My Favorite Palette

This is another lesson we did at our Co-op. The point of this lesson was to have the kids practice using the different types of lines: straight lines, curvy lines, wavy lines etc; And also, to have them practice blending colors and choosing colors.

1. Have the children draw intersecting lines all across the page. It is important that the lines meet so that they will form little pockets for the color later.

2. Go over all of the lines with black paint. Let Dry.

3. Have kids choose a color palette they want to use, mix up those colors, and paint them on the different parts of the picture!


Below are several examples from the students in our co-op.

Art Class Tutorial: Itsy Bitsy Spider/Warm and Cool

I got the idea for this project off Artsonia, and I made a few modifications. I used it to teach Warm and cool colors, the use of watercolors and it related well to both the itsy bitsy spider, and to Eric Carle's The very busy spider.

1. Have student draw a spider web that takes up most of the page with a lightly colored pencil.

2. Have student go over all of the lines that create the spider web with a thin bead of glue. Let dry. You want for the entire spiderweb to be made from glue since the glue will resist the watercolors.

3. Have children do a watercolor wash over the entire surface with cool colors. encourage the children to not leave any "white" areas. Let Dry

4. Cut out leaves and watercolor wash them with Warm colors. Let dry.

5. Use scrapbook mounting tape to provide dimension, or glue the dried leaves to the spiderweb picture in the corners.

6. Take four stems of brown or black pipecleaners and twist into a spider shape. Glue onto painting.

The most horribly, awful cake gone wrong....really, really wrong....

Okay so I'm sick, and tired.... and I come across this blog..... I laughed so hard soda came out my nose. Brian had the same reaction, so I figured I would share....... you can find more bad cakes at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Obviously, this is wrong on a level so VERY wrong that it doesn't really need elaboration. However, I feel compelled to point out that the, er, "mom" here has the face of a blow-up doll, is completely nekkid (is that a new trend in delivery rooms?), and is anatomically correct where you wouldn't expect her to be (ergo the censor bars - sorry, fellas!).I'm picturing the games they played at this baby shower: "Pin the Epidural", "Catch the After-birth", and of course the ever popular "Guess Whose Hoo-Haw?". Yeesh - just what do you suppose the party favors were? No, wait, let's not go there...

more about the cake wrecks blog from its author......

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.Now, don't you have a photo you want to send me? ;)

The vomit comet...

Its the new name of our rental car. We are sick, in that serious, stomach flu, I'm not sure I'm going to make it kind of way... It started yesterday, Brian was sick yesterday VERY early in the morning. That's how we know he started it!!! Then Emma came down with it before noon. I foolishly thought that possibly John, Chloe and I had escaped. So we went to turn in the rental car...... halfway there, Chloe spontaneously threw her socks up in the car (that's right....again in the RENTAL). I had the unique joy and privilege of cleaning that up! Then later that evening it hit me. So far John has gotten away unscathed. Today we aren't puking, but we all feel like we have been hit by a truck, so we are cozied up in the living room TOGETHER watching The Yong Indiana Jones Chronicles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Indiana_Jones_Chronicles . My brother and I watched them when they were out and they are PERFECT family viewing and they even manage to be sorta educational. So that's my blog post, I'm going to limp off now to curl up and wait for it to all go away!

CRACK-A-LACKIN Good

This may be the only time my kids ever want to read my blog. They are addicted to the song from Madagascar.... and watching John dance to it makes me laugh, its not something you should miss.

Today we went to see the second installment of Madagascar. It was really good, it made me laugh out loud and it was even touching and they did all that without killing off any parents. Hey Disney, are you listening?? That is my pet peeve with Disney, they are always killing off a parent. Madagascar 2 was exactly my kind of kid movie, visual, funny, and maybe a little predictable.

I think we were just so glad to get Brian back home!! We needed a nice family day out with no pressure. After the movie we went to, well, I think its Chaubuca but I call it Chewbaca. They had this nice man playing piano and it might be true that music soothes the savage beasts, cause the children were just golden, it was downright romantic. We even stared into each others eyes a bit.... and then we had to go back to cutting everyone's meat.

Oh and we also have watched the Barbie Christmas Carol Movie and I think its well worth it. It was very nice, and it mostly followed the story of the Christmas Carol, except Scrooge was Eden, played by Barbie, and instead of working at a bank, she was in the theater. Then her mentor comes to her in chains, she experiences the three spirits.... and has a change of heart. Oh, I should have announced a spoiler alert.:) Well, most of us have a basic grasp of the whole storyline anyway.