A is for Apple, Autumn and Art

A is also for absent and apologize.  Which I have been and I do, respectively.  Life has been consumed with overlapping football and baseball practices/games for both boys, Wildman’s required daily reading assignments, play dates, parties, J’s travel schedule, trips, arts and crafts and many other things that eat away at my blogging time.  But I’m here tonight to give you a little glimpse of my recent projects.

Cutie Pie’s class is talking about apples this week which triggered a memory of an apple snack that I had seen in a magazine not too long ago.  I cannot remember the magazine though.  I just finished putting the finishing touches on the little red chocolate-dipped Oreo apples for snack tomorrow.  There are 18 extra for Wildman’s class because, as my great grandmother told me, “what you do for one, you have to do for the other.”  So true, Grandma.  So true!

With it being mid-September and all, I’m finding myself in the mood for autumn.  But, because I live in Florida, we don’t really get much of a fall season.  I have to create my own with glittery silk leaves, a pumpkin candle and a cinnamon broom.  The temperature has dipped down to a refreshing 85 degrees lately so I feel justified in feeling fall-ish.

Tongue

In

Cheek 🙂

Cutie Pie and I attempted to make our own autumn tree using pom poms in fall colors.  I saw the idea here.  The ones in the magazine came out adorably spherical.  Ours looked more adorably Seussical if you ask me.  Ha!  Our little tree has a place of honor in my kitchen window.  It makes me happy 🙂

I’ve been trying my hand at melted crayon art lately too.  I’m sure you’ve seen this craft all over the Internet.  It’s super easy to do and looks incredible.

So far, I’ve made one for Cutie Pie’s classroom and Wildman’s bedroom.  I’m thinking of giving one to Wildman’s teacher as well.  These art pieces make me smile every time I look at them.

B and I are doing our local craft fair again this November.  And, as a result, I’ve been scouring the Internet for inspiration.  I came across these adorable hand sanitizer packages here and could not resist making a few.

As you can see, I’ve been keeping myself busy with project after project.  A 12-day absence from the blog is a little bit inexcusable though.  I’ll try to be less of a stranger this week!

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Christmas Craft: Simple Tree Ornaments

I have a bunch of craft sticks leftover from last year’s ornament project that Wildman made.  Cutie Pie loves to work on art projects so I thought I’d let him and Cousin B work on some ornaments of their very own last Tuesday morning.  The surplus craft sticks were perfect for making ornaments again this year!

The night before I glued three craft sticks into the shape of a triangle (or Christmas tree in this case).  They were dry and ready for painting by morning.

I set the boys up on the outside bar with plenty of washable green paint and brushes.  They attacked the project with gusto.  Paint was liberally applied to the trees.

When they were finished painting I let them go play on the swing set while the paint dried.  I had to help it along a bit by blotting off the excess paint with a paper towel.  But don’t tell them that…

Ornaments, in the form of colorful pom-poms, were added when the paint had dried.  I let the boys squeeze a huge pool of white glue onto the craft paper work space.  They enjoyed dipping the pom-poms into the glue and pressing them onto the tree ornaments.

It was a simple and quick art project perfect for preschoolers.  They were so proud of their art work and were even prouder to hang them on their Christmas trees!

More from Less

The receptionist at the local recreation center where Steph and I teach Zumba e-mailed me earlier this week requesting class photos for the new bulletin board design that she’s putting together.  The bulletin board is in the lobby of the rec. center and most people who enter tend to take a look at what’s posted.  The current photos on the board are pretty old and faded.  Most of the classes are not offered anymore.  The board is in desperate need of some updating.

Well, I thought Great!  I’ll just take a few quick photos of our students this week, print them out and stick them under the door for the receptionist.  No problem.

In reality: problem…

Apparently, most of our students have been struck down by illness or this was a really, really off week because we had a poor showing in the rec. center classes.  Needless to say, that’s not a great set up for a photo.  How do you show a large group of people having fun, getting down with their bad selves when only 4 people show?

Anyway, I decided to get a little creative for the kids’ class photo.  Only ONE child came to class this week.  ONE!!! I knew I needed color and props and smiles.  So, I put the little boy on the open parachute, gave him an orange pom-pom and made some crazy faces so he would smile.  It came out great.  I have not asked his mom’s permission to share the photo on this blog so I won’t post it here.  But I will post the staged photo I took of my own kids and B’s daughter, Moose this afternoon.

I think it came out pretty great.  I love the all of the colors!  Hopefully, the staged photo and the one of the little boy who came to class will be enough to show that Zumba Kids is awesome for preschoolers.  And it is!  I look forward to the kids classes the most each week.  The music is great and the choreography is perfect so fun for kids and adults alike.

*sigh*  It’s frustrating that I couldn’t get a better depiction of what a real kids class looks like.