It's a Boy's Life: crafts

Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

Sunday

The Mountain State Fair: Project Round Up

It's that time of year again. For the past 3 years my kids have enjoyed entering projects in the fair. Drop off day is Tuesday. Which means Monday will be spent in the kitchen- since Lakin is finally old enough for the competition we have a total of 11 baked goods to be entered. I capped them at 4 each and one didn't go through. It'll be a long day with lots of dish washing! I will apologize in advance that most of the pictures are from my phone and instagram!

This year the boys are entering more from the garden. Rylan is going for the largest watermelon. I don't have a picture of it since it's still out in the garden. He had plans for other squashes- winter and summer, but with all the rain and other odd weather, the plants had a hard time. Cale and Cohen are both entering winter squashes seen below, and Lakin is entering his butternut squash (not pictured)

Cale, Cohen and Lakin have also been working on some of the craft categories, here are a few of their projects. Cohen's santa ornament made from a recycled coke can, felt and alpaca fiber. Cale's basket made from a hose and zip ties.

This one has been hanging in the living room for months now. It's Cale's recycled decoration- a skeleton made out of milk jugs.

Lakin's jewelry. Beaded earrings and a bracelet for the recycled jewelry category. Do you remember Cale's peacock sculpture from last year? This year he's entering this Big Head as his sculpture. It's still a work in progress- which must be finished tomorrow! Cohen is also making a sculpture- of a beetle. And we have a couple more Christmas ornaments not shown as well as some art- oil pastels, watercolors, etc.

Of course, I have mentioned Cale's big pumpkins. The stems were getting soft- some sort of fungus I think- so we picked them since the bugs were starting to pick at the soft spots. We crossed our fingers that they would last until the drop off date.

But today this happened. The smaller of the 2 giants...rotted from the stem and bottom. It was great fun considering this occurred in the living room! It smelled TERRIBLE and took about 20 or more towels to clean up and Rylan, Cale and me to drag it out of the house- gagging all the way. We are still hoping the biggest will last. Like I said- not a good squash year.

This year Rylan didn't enter many arts and crafts- 2 pieces of art work was it. He did enter 3 model kits, a lot from the garden, baked goods and 6 photographs. My dad let him use his camera, and I thought he got some great shots!

So there are just a few of their projects. I'll post pictures of their baked goods on Tuesday once they are all done!

Wednesday

The Mountain State Fair Round-Up

The kids look forward to entering the fair every year. Last year when we finalized our plans to relocate that was one of the things they asked about- is there a fair? So we searched online and found it- the Mountain State Fair. Close by, tons of categories and pretty similar to the TN Valley Fair they had entered in the previous 2 years. When it came time to submit entries, they went big- Rylan entered close to 20 categories. Cale and Cohen entered around 13. And Lakin qualified to entered the participation group so he entered 3 things.

Drop off day was last Tuesday and Wednesday, so they had been working hard on their entries everyday. Here is what they entered:

Cohen:
Art: Colored pencil, oil pastel, water color and tempera paint
Crafts: Christmas Decoration, recycled craft, any other craft, pottery
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, drop cookies, pie, yeast bread

Cale:
Art: Colored pencil, tempera paint, crayon
Crafts: Christmas decoration, sculpture, recycled, metal craft, pottery and any other
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, rolled cookies, old fashion fudge, any other baked item

Rylan:
Art: Crayon, oil pastel
Photography: Color animal. color plants/flower, B&W plant/flower, B&W animal
Agriculture: Banana peppers (he did sign up for more, but our garden didn't cooperate this year)
Crafts: Christmas ornaments, paper craft
Baking: Decorated cupcakes, yeast rolls, cupcakes, muffins, pie and any other baked item

Lakin had 6 categories to choose from and he entered art, jewelry and crafts.

I must say that the baking portion is the most stressful. With 14 items and one kitchen it got a little hectic. But because of the location, later drop off times and the items the kids chose to make we were able to stretch the baking from Monday afternoon-Wednesday morning and still make the deadline. But there were 3 batches of cupcakes, Rylan's cheesecake and garlic bread sticks, a pumpkin pie, a peanut butter pie, pumpkin muffins, spice cookies, chocolate chip cookies, honey oatmeal bread, 1 batch of botched fudge and another that set, and soft pretzels! And that is a lot. Plus bagging, tagging and printing recipes for each one. And next year Lakin gets to join in on the baking fun!

We did take a trip on Friday to check out the fair- so they did get to see if their entries won. But we didn't see all of them so I will wait to unveil the winning entries until next Monday when we go to pick up their stuff!

Crafting Cale and the Duct Tape Peacock

Cale entered to make a sculpture in the fair this year. He poured over Pinterest, and finally settled on this peacock. The inspiration piece (linked above) looked like it was made out of foil, but after he modeled the body out of plastic bags and tin foil he decided he would use duct tape to cover the outside instead. He used pencils and more foil and bags to add the feet. And lots and lots of blue duct tape.

The tail is made from a piece of heavy cardboard. Covered in purple and peace sign duct tape. He used gorilla tape and hot glue to attach it to the body. Because of the leg angle the peacock needed a little lift, so he used a covered tin can to make a little seat for it. Then added toothpicks and pom-poms for the crown. I love it!

And just for the full picture, let me zoom out a bit. This is what my living room looks like in the middle of a crafting session. This was not all of the mess either.

Later in the day, Cale also decided to make Annika a doll using the same method. She absolutely loved it. And hugged it and patted it's back for a long time. She was all smiles. She's also got some of the best big brothers ever. Ones that make her dolls and bring her flowers and share their snacks.

linked to Weekend Whatever, The Sunday Showcase,

Saturday

Fun. Life. Holidays.

Miss Annika will be one in 12 days. A couple of weeks ago she finally decided walking wasn't so bad. Still not her favorite mode of transportation, but she's getting there.

We had a Christmas craft get together with friends. We made cookie mix in a jar. Which a couple kids cleverly gifted to each other so they could eat the cookies. We gave one to a friend and one to the mail carrier and one is earmarked for Santa.

And painted gingerbread ornaments. They smell really nice, Annika has to carry hers around and smell it at least a couple times a day.

And time capsule ornaments.

Annika's scrunchy face. This is a mellow, happy version. When she doesn't get her way she scrunches it up completely and pouts. Apparently she gets this from me. Leave it to Paul to point that out. He said she gets it from me and I turned and said she did not....accompanied by my own scrunched up face. Guess I proved his point....

Paul graduated yesterday. The first in his family.

After the ceremony...

Wearing Daddy's hat...

Can you tell who is turning into a Daddy's girl?

We stopped for a Christmas tree on the way home.

We've gone to the same farm down the road from our house for the past 8 years. The boys already have asked about finding a tree farm in NC.

Decorating at home

We have collected a ton of ornaments over the past 10 years. The tree is so full, but each one has a story and a memory attached to it and I can't leave any out.

The boys have gotten into playing around with the webcam and all it's weird effects. It's like the house of mirrors distorting their faces. I like this effect though-