Craftiness

These last couple of weeks I have not been the happiness mom around. Grumpy. Maybe it was the 2 solid weeks of clouds, rain and being stuck in doors. Maybe it was the feeling that I would NEVER get caught up on housework and that no one else seemed to care that the place was a disaster. Maybe it was lack of sleep. Whatever it was by the end of the week I was realizing we all needed to do SOMETHING. Something creative, something for fun, I needed to do something for my kids, and we needed to relax a bit.

So I decided to make up some quick art carriers one for each of the kids to put their basic art supplies in, all in hopes of keeping things in one place, so I could eliminate them other places. I also just needed a quick easy fast project that I could finish up in a day and feel like I accomplished something! The kids were all excited about it and were excited to get 'theirs' finished so they could but their own stuff in. It fits some colored pencils, a normal pencil, pen, crayons, scissors, and a glue stick.

Afterwards we pulled them out and did a quick project. I love Ed Emberely's book. They teach you the basics of drawing - that everything is made up of shapes that have just been put together. They are easy for kids to follow along, plus they work great for constructing things out of paper. They also help the kids learn how to follow directions. I helped them cut out the shapes the animals needed, and they followed the directions to put them together. Isaac thought it was great. He needed lots of help but he was so excited to see that all those shapes made a dog, that he immediately grabbed the paper and demanded we make an alligator too.

Afterwards the kids wanted to hang them on the wall by the family picture. I've been meaning to get some individual pictures of the kids up on the wall here, but the other day all the glass to the weird size dimensioned frames got broken, and now I'm trying to figure out the next best solutions. So these pictures will have to do for now.

Yesterday was 'clean like a mad woman' day getting ready for friends coming over for dinner. If your having trouble getting the house clean, invite someone over to dinner, and not people that see your house on a normal basis. The pride issue kicks in (which isn't a good thing, but a big motivator) and before you know it your house is looking better than it has for a long time. Now the challenge of keeping it this way!

I loved this post at Simple Mom yesterday. Needing some motivation being a mom... these are some great ideas.

Now that my house is mostly clean, we're hoping to tackle my bedroom which didn't get done yesterday. I'm going to get my round of exercise in that I missed yesterday. This morning we'll be off to service group to get the kids out of the house so they can't mess it up. Tonight my husband has granted me privilege of letting him take care of dinner and putting the kids to bed so I can work on a design project that I'm totally pumped about. Here is to a good day.