She's Crafty

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Before taking our Acorn books back to the library we decided to make one more piece of art. I saw a great idea on The Nature of Grace where they painted with tea bags and I knew it was something that we HAD to try. My Mother-in-Law is an artist and uses tea bags for painting backgrounds all the time so I knew how beautiful it would look. Funny thing is that while my kids did enjoy painting with the tea bags, once they had the opportunity to use water colors on their picture, they painted completely over all of the tea painting. So it might have been in vain, but oh well. Here is our pictures and underneath I'll describe how we made them.

To make the artwork, I started by tracing an acorn cookie cutter all over the card stock paper very lightly in pencil. Then after making a cup of tea we squeezed most of the water out of the tea bag and then pressed it and rubbed it all over our paper to make the background. You can see the effect in the top picture.

Once that was all dry (which only took a couple minutes) we traced our acorns very darkly with brown crayon. We also drew a line for the top of the acorn and colored them in, making sure to leave a little bit uncolored to fill in with green paint.

Last we got out the water colors and painted our acorns brown (Luke painted a couple red because it's his favorite color) and the tops green. I added some colors around the edge of my paper but the boys decided to paint over the tea background with fall colors. It was a little disheartening at first but as they got painting it looked so pretty so I really didn't mind.  :)  I thought it kind of looked like the acorns were laying in a pile of fall colored leaves.

If you missed our Acorns Everywhere Craft you can read about it HERE. I have pictures in that post of the books we read to go along with our Acorn crafts but they were Acorns Everywhere by Kevin Sherry and Nuts to You by Lois Ehlert.

Happy Crafting!!

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I don't know about you but whenever I walk into my children's bedroom after they've been in there playing for quite some time, it usually looks like a tornado swept through it. I have to admit that sometimes I pay little attention to detail and just tell them it's time to clean up.

But the other day I stood in their disastrous bedroom and realized how much I'm missing out on whenever I'm in a hurry to get it all cleaned up. When I take the time to pay attention to the small details the joy of Motherhood swells in my heart as I witness my children's amazing creativity.

They got every detail down just perfect from the ground underneath...


to the food in the animals mouths...


to even providing shelter for some of the animals...


to making sure there was plants and greenery...


and trees...


And even tree frogs in trees...


They even found a nice pond for Mr. Plesiosaur...


Sometimes I get so carried away in getting it all done, in staying caught up, in keeping up the housework that I don't appreciate these special moments. Before long, these boys of mine will be outgrown of Lego's and creating scenes with their animals. Before long, the tubs of toys will be replaced with computers and crazy posters all over the walls. Before long, there will be a sign hung on the outside of their door that reads "Boys Only" and I won't even be permitted to step foot inside....

I better start enjoying these messes. They only come around once a lifetime!