Day 81. The great U.S. of A!

We stopped by the dollar store yesterday to look for some black frames for the artwork from yesterday's photo, which we found. While we were there, the kiddo found this puzzle. "Look Mom, isn't this great? A puzzle of the great U.S. of A! Can I buy it, since we're going on a trip soon to the great state of Georgia? Please, can I?" How can I say no to that?

We each made $2 worth of purchases ... two frames for me and a puzzle and a bag of cotton candy for her. I just don't see the attraction of cotton candy -- bleck! But the little one loves it.

Refrigerator Art

A couple pieces of recent artwork, courtesy of the kiddo. I really like these pictures -- so bright colored and fun.

I may pick up some inexpensive black frames for them. They're slightly smaller than 8-1/2 x 11, so a standard size frame and a black piece of cardstock for the background will work perfectly, I think. Our refrigerator isn't the best place to display artwork, since things stuff tends to get bumped around, knocked on the floor, and touched by messy hands.

First day of spring!

Today's the first day of spring. Yay! It's been ages since I posted to my blog, so I figured this would be a good day to resume posting my daily photos. I snapped this photo of my atomic clock at the exact minute that spring officially starts. Our high temp today is supposed to be 71 degrees -- awesome! It's also supposed to be cloudy and rainy, but at least it will be warm.

Happy spring everyone!

Day 39 Sledding at McCall

We took a day trip today and headed north to the Winter Carnival in McCall. The highlight of the day for the little one was most definately the sledding. She went up and down all afternoon. I took a bunch of photos, but this one was by far my favorite. She was sitting on her sled at the top of the hill waiting her turn to go down. I was standing just behind her when she looked up at me, and I snapped this photo.

To those who inquired about TCBY ... it for the "the country's best yogurt," a chain of frozen yogurt shops. Gosh, we have lots of them around here. They've been here for years. I didn't even realize that they've been closing down elsewhere around the country.

Day 38. Special Olympic Scarves

My home town hosted the world Special Olympics this year. Here locally, a small group of women decided that it would be a nice gesture to offer a hand knitted or crocheted scarf, in the theme colors of blue and white, to each of the athletes and coaches. So, they set out to collect 2500 scarves. The company Coats & Clark donated the yarn. Months later, they FAR surpassed that goal and collected, the last I heard, over 150,000 scarves, donated by people from all over the world.

We were in Costco last week, and volunteers were giving them away in return for a donation of any size, which would go to benefit the Special Olympics. So the kiddo and I each chose one. Since then, we've seen these scarves -- all handmade and unique -- everywhere! It's quite fun. You can read more about it here:

http://www.2009worldgames.org/volunteer/scarf-project

Day 37. TCBY for family night

When asked what she'd like to do for family night, the kiddo said "Let's go to "TCBY", so we did. After sampling several varieties, she finally settled on pralines & cream. Yummy! I had strawberry, also yummy.

Day 36. The ring

This lovely photo features a toe ring given to DD by my best friend. Lately the child has been adamant about wearing it on her "wedding ring finger" to ward off the boys. You see, she reasons that if she wears the ring on the correct finger, everyone will think she has a boyfriend and, I quote, "No one will take me as their girlfriend. I don't want to get tooken!'

Day 35. Year of the Ox monoprints

I finally remembered to take the camera to school so I could take a picture of the prints that DD and her classmates made last week. I'm the class Art Parent, and this month tried to combine an art lesson with a CNY activity.

Monoprints are made by rolling paint onto a "canvas" of some sort, such as styrofoam meat trays or cheap plastic placemats, then "drawing" their picture by scraping away the paint with a Q-tip. Once that's done, a sheet of construction paper is placed over the canvas, patted down, then peeled up, which means that the words have to be "written" in mirror image in order to appear correctly in the end. The kids each got to choose any two colors of paint for their print, which they blended into a third color, and they had to include three things: 2009, Year of the Ox, and the Chinese symbol for Ox. Some of the prints turned out better than others.

When asked afterwards what they learned, some of the responses were: Red and green are not good colors to blend. Neither are blue and orange, which is very unfortunate given they are the colors of our local college football team and a good number of these 3rd graders are fans, including my own little one. Oh, and it is very tricky to write backwards in mirror image.

Day 34. The Rose

DD took this photo of the rose I presented her with after her dance recital last weekend.

For the second day in a row, it was past bedtime when we realized we forgot to take a photo today, so we had a continuation of last night with the child attempting to take photos of all things pink. Fortunately (not!) for me, I wore a pink shirt today and therefore made the cut as suitable subject matter. Since I reigned her in after only two subjects lest she be at it for another hour or more, the choice for today's photos was either a very unflattering shot of me or one of the dozen or so shots of this lovely rose. So I chose this one, with it perched on a stool from our breakfast bar. Isn't it nicely shadowed? I like the shadow.

Other choices were photos of the rose on the dining room table, on the living room coffee table, on the kitchen counter, on top of the TV, on the floor, on her bed, on my bed, and a few other places. I didn't allow her to put it on the piano for a photo because there's real water in that vase, which resulted in a pout, stomp, and eye roll, which promptly put an end to the photo session. (I should add that she had already received warnings for putting a water-filled vase on top of the TV and would have received strike #2 for putting it on the beds, only I didn't realize she had done that until I found the photos on my camera later.)

Day 33. Things pink

DD snapped this photo -- my cell phone and a pair of big pink foam dice that she selected from the prize box at the dentist the other day, which were sitting side by side on the dining room table. Nothing too exciting. You can sure see the dings on my phone here. It's been dropped a few times.

It was late in the day and we were on the verge of missing our daily photo, so she took about 20 photos of various things around the house that are pink. A pink pencil, the pink case for her glasses, a pink tissue box, a pile of dirty laundry with a pink shirt front and center (just what everyone wants to see, no doubt.)

Day 32. Speedos, ready for summer

Yesterday we in Costco, and I picked up these darling swim suits. It's still winter and the temps around here are well blow freezing, so it's hard to think about swimming right now. But at $11.95 each I've learned to snatch them when they're available, because they won't be there for long. The kiddo spends half her life in the swimming pool in the summers, and these are suits are wonderful. Cute and practical, nothing to come untied or undone, and they meet my standard for modestly. No little teensy bikini thing for my child no matter how cute she might look in one!

Day 31. Freeze Frame

Today was Freeze Frame, a pretty big performance with dancers from 15 (I think) studios from around the valley. It's the most important performance of the year after the annual recital, which will take place in June. Her class performed a ballet to "Garden Waltz," and did a wonderful job, especially considering they just started learning this dance not very long ago.

Doesn't my little angel look sweet here? Don't be fooled! The tights were brand new, right out of the package, and here they are, filthy already. I practically threatened her to hold the flower nicely and smile sweetly for a picture. Not five seconds late she was sword-fighting with one of her fellow dancers. Sigh. I just shake my head.

It was an eventful day in other ways as well. Earlier today she had her 2nd basketball game and scored her first basket! In a game, that is. She's made baskets in practice. She's really enjoying basketball, and is noticeably improved just in the few weeks she's been practicing. Compared to her first game last week, she got her hands on the ball a lot more, dribbled and made more attempts at shooting (as opposed to just passing to a more experienced teammate). Fun to watch! I have not still shots from today, but I did video tape parts of it, including her two-point shot. I have no idea how to edit it so I can post it here and show her off, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Day 30. Curls!

Check out these curls! DD's hair is thin, fine, and straight as an arrow. She got a new curling iron of her very own, one with a very small barrel, that works pretty well on her hair. Much better than my big-barrel one. If we use a ton of hairspray it will actually stay curly for more than 10 minutes. Really all she needs it for is dance performances, but today she wanted to try it out, just because.

Day 29. Our afternoon entertainment

DD had a somewhat major dental procedure this morning, so I kept her home from school for the rest of the day. I've had this jigsaw puzzle for some time, and she decided she was up to the challenge. She's good at jigsaw puzzles but hasn't ever done one with this many pieces -- 500. They're very small too. The finished size of the puzzle is only 14x18". So we'll see how it goes.

Day 28. Dragon puppets

The kiddo chose this one for our photo-of-the-day. It's the mouth of a paper dragon puppet that she made at school today. I volunteered in her classroom and gave a short lesson on Chinese New Year, and this was one of two different art projects that they did.

More dragon puppet pics

Here are a couple more photos of the dragon puppet, which show it a little better. The pieces are printed on colored paper, but they had to color in the dragon scales, then cut everything out, fold in a certain way to make the hand-puppet part and the nose/nostrils. Then it is assembled mostly with glue, but the tail pieces are attached with brads so that it can move around. This was a great CNY craft for school age kids.

Day 27. CNY gifts are ready!

Everything is ready for the red envelopes! The bookmarks are two-sided -- you can kinda see both sides in the picture. Because it's traditional in China to give gifts of oranges or tangerines with the stems attached, we've traditionally given out candy orange slices with a candy mint leaves. We made the candy bag toppers and bookmarks using the Chinese New Year kit by lliella available at Funky Playground.

The book, Happy New Year, is the one I read to the class. It's a nice book for sharing CNY traditions, but afterwards I decided it wasn't such a good choice for a public school classroom because of all the references to gods and temples. I explained that it is folklore and not churches as we thing of them -- hopefully none of the kids went home and told their parents that I was talking to them about religion.

Day 26. Red envelopes

This Wednesday I'll be going into DD's classroom to do a lesson on Chinese New Year, combined with an art project. The kiddo enjoys giving out red envelopes to her classmates. Here she is putting chocolate coins inside them. We'll also put in a bookmark and small bag of orange candy, which we're working on this evening.

Day 25. Sleepover!

The kiddo with her best friend, who spent the night with us tonight while her parents were out of town. Believe it or not, her bedroom was completely picked up and clean a mere few hours ago, but when I went in to snap a photo I could not even see the floor. Not that she has much floor space in her little room, and most of it was taken up by the trundle bed that we pulled out for her guest, but still. How can a room go from picked up and tidy to complete disaster so quickly?

Oh, and the matching bathrobes were a Target clearance score -- $3.84 each. I also got them matching shirts for $1.84 each. Gotta love a bargain!

Day 24. First basketball game

Just after her team's 23-12 victory! She did great for her first basketball game ever. Got her hands on the ball a few times ... dribbled in the right direction ... successfully passed off to more experienced shooters. I was quite proud of her.