Mommy Duties

This last week I had to do perform a mommy duty. Well, I had to perform more than one, but this was one I always put off. 

Ironing.

Usually I wait until I have a pile of items and then turn on a show I enjoy and iron away.

But not last week. My children had a special ironing request that had to be done.

Immediately.

These are what were so important:

A horse….

                       

Red Skull from Captain America….

                                         

and Captain America himself.

                                         

Melty beads or fusion beads, as they could be known. My talented little boys like to create all kinds of creatures with these and then wait patiently for me to iron them. (Just a little sarcasm inserted there.)  But once they’re completed, they have oh-so-much-fun with them. And it was certainly worth pulling the iron out for.

The Finished Project

Some time ago I had shared that Laina was working on a hand-stitched quilt project. She started this with her 4H group last year, but did not complete it with the group.

Not long after we moved, I suggested she dig it out and work on it. In a matter of minutes, she finished it up and was ready to move on to something new.

Here is the finished project:

                                          

It’s about the size of a doll quilt or small lap blanket.

Pretty darn cute.

Weekend Crafting

For the past three days Conman has been bugging me to make baking clay. I'm not even sure where he got the idea for that, because I have never made baking clay!

I do have a handy book titled The Stuff That Fun Is Made of: A Comprehensive Collection of Recipes for Play & Learning by Selena Laporte. I purchased this at a homeschool convention I attended last July, and hadn't used it yet. So out it came and we found a recipe for basic modeling dough:

• 5 cups of flour
• 1 cup of salt (yes, you read that right-1 cup!)
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil
• 2 cups of hot water

We mixed it all together, kneaded it really well and the boys dove in! You can add food coloring if you want to seperate out some dough and then color it. I chose to avoid that and have the boys paint their creations after they had baked and cooled.

This was actually a two day process. Yesterday they crafted and baked; today we painted. We baked them at 200 degrees and it took several hours for Blakester's pieces since they were larger than Conman's. After painting them, I sealed them with clear nail polish. This is a suggestion from the book's author for sealing smaller pieces.

Here's some pics of them working diligently modeling their clay and painting it:

Conman made what he calls "lego guys". You can tell from my previous posts he has a huge fascination with these. Blakester made a snake and a replica of Conman's head:

Ah, brotherly love! At least they worked quietly together during the process.