Painting with Friends

Last week some of my friends from school got together to celebrate my friend, Judy's, birthday. A shop in our area recently started doing a painting class, kind of like Painting with a Twist, so we went there to create some masterpieces. 

I immediately fell in love with so many of her canvases in her store. I saw so many I wanted to paint.

Our class painted a paisley cross that night and they turned out so cute. We all loved it!

Torri and Una painting their background.

Me and my bestie from school, Sarah

I opted for a brown background. Brown is probably one of my favorite colors.

Painting the inside of the paisleys.

Sarah working on her paisleys.

My finished product. I love how it turned out!

The class lasted about 1 1/2 hours, but the time passed so quickly. Everyone chatted, laughed, painted, and had a great time. Erin, the owner/instructor, walked around the entire time helping those that needed it. She was so nice and made it fun for everyone. At the end, we all posed with our masterpieces we had created. 

Judy, the birthday girl!

Una

Torri

Sarah

Me

Group shot of all of us with our paintings

I love how they're all similar, but everyone's personality shines through.

As we were leaving the store, I saw several more paintings I wanted to re-create for my house. I actually plan on doing a lot of the art work for our new space, and I'm really excited about it! I think I want to do a fleur de lis somewhere, but maybe include our family name on it.

It was hard not to take a picture of what you see next. Notice the pink spray painted deer? Not only was the deer pink, but the antlers were spray painted silver, and there were fake pink glittler eyelashes on her eyes. Oh wow! I wonder how many husbands would let their wives do this to their prize deer? Probably not very many!

After the painting party, we went to a local restaurant downtown called Fat Mama's for a late night snack. We had so much fun getting together outside the classroom. These ladies are one of the reasons why I love my job so much. It's fun to go work at place where you get along so well with your co-workers. In fact, we're already planning our next girls night out :)

Happy Birthday, Judy! You are such a light and a joy to teach with at school and I'm so thankful for our friendship! Thanks for letting us celebrate your special day with you! We love you!!

Hangin' Out at the Ball Park

Our friends the Hargon's invited us out to the ball park last week to watch their son, Joshua's, baseball game. His team was in the play-offs for his division and it sounded like it was going to be a great game. We packed up and headed to the ball fields. When we got there, it was still blazing hot. UGH! Nothing like summer in the deep south. 

That didn't stop Eli, Hannah, and Marlie from playing and running around though! They all had a blast running around in the grass, playing in the back of Josh's truck, racing, jumping, climbing, and keeping their parents busy. Eli, of course, had to wear his shades at all times. I've never met a kid who loves sunglasses as much as he does. Aren't these blue ones so cute? I found them at Forever21 for $1.50! I knew he'd love them because they were blue.

Look at how big our babies have gotten!

Such a happy couple :)

Sisters!

All three kiddos

Once the sun started to set, we let the kids down so they could race each other. Look at how much fun they had! Marlie won every time, but Eli and Hannah gave it their all every time!

I love their expressions!

Unfortunately for us, the game that was before Joshua's went an hour and a half over, so we were only able to watch a couple of innings of Joshua's game. Eli was running on fumes and needed to get home, so around 9:30 we packed up and headed home. What's crazy to think about is that in a couple of years I'm going to be attending MY little boy's t-ball games!! Goodness! Where does the time go??

Summer Projects: Edible Finger Paint

While I was on Pinterest one day (it's SO addicting!!! Let me know if you want to join and I'll send you an invite!) I found a "pin" someone had posted showing how to make edible finger paint from the website ourbestbites.com. After looking at the ingredients needed-corn starch (that miracle ingredient!), water, and food coloring-Eli and I began the process of making it.

It didn't take long at all and before we knew it we had our very own finger paint. Now this is the point where I'd LOVE to tell you how much fun we had, how we painted for hours and hours, and how my child cried because he didn't want to stop painting. That wasn't exactly how things went however...

Eli dipped his finger in the paint and immediately made a grossed out face and could not wait to get that stuff off his fingers. The kid hates getting anything on his hands or feet. I guess the texture felt funny to him. He wasn't tired of painting, but he definitely wanted to switch from using his hands to using a brush.

I, however, had no problem getting icky and enjoyed painting using our new finger paints.

Eli tried using a brush, but the finger paint was really too think for it to spread easily. He went and found his other paint and used that instead.

Meanwhile, the artsy fartsy momma in me came out and I kept creating lots of pictures.

I quickly realized I had a teachable moment on my hands, so I convinced Eli to try painting again encouraging him to get just a little glob on his fingers so it wouldn't be so bad.

I had Eli paint a circle of each of the primary colors-red, blue, and yellow. Then I put a small glob of red and blue next to each other, a small glob of red and yellow next to each other, and a small glob of blue and yellow next to each other. Eli and I mixed them together and we "discovered" the secondary colors-purple, orange, and green.

We posted our poster on the refrigerator and labeled it. This would be a great activity to do with my students at school. They all know their colors, but I think it would fun for them to see how two colors can make another color. 

Another fun summer project completed! I love finding new ideas and trying them out with my little boy. Summer is so much fun!

Summer Projects: Sidewalk Paint

Last week, I thought I'd try out another fun summer activity with Eli. We created our own sidewalk paint! I wish I could claim credit for this great idea, but, alas, I can't. This idea came from The Idea Room's blog and it's super easy to do! One thing I've discovered this summer is that corn starch is a magical component for so many homemade recipes I've been doing lately and this one was no exception. I'm going to have to buy that stuff in bulk!

Eli helped me mix up three colors and outside we went to decorate our sidewalk with paint. One of the tips The Idea Room shared was to use cheap paint brushes rather than foam brushes. They held up really well and we'll be able to use them over and over again.

Eli helping me paint a rainbow. 

I attempted to get him to sing his rainbow song, but he wouldn't do it. 

Don't worry, I'll keep trying because it is PRECIOUS!

Eli mostly painted with the blue paint (his favorite color).

As you can see, I really enjoyed painting :)

We stopped for a quick pop-pop break. 

We made these rainbow pops earlier in the summer and we love them!

Also not my idea, but very easy to re-create!

After our pop-pop break, I painted a race track for Eli so he could play with his cars on it. He loved it!

My sweet Maggie. She's starting to get really white around her face :)

Eli with his pop-pop mouth :)

Love this sweet boy so much!

Summer Projects: Homemade Playdough

This summer I've made it my mission to find fun stuff for Eli and me to do while we're at home. Where we live it's scorching during the daylight hours, so unless you're in water, being outside is just too miserable. If we venture out of the house to do something outside, we try to do it as soon as we wake up and we stay in the shade. It's the only way to beat the summer heat. We do go to the pool a lot, but I know Eli wants to do other stuff sometimes. I recently joined Pinterest (LOVE it by the way!) and I found some really cute ideas of how to make fun kids stuff at home. 

Our first project was homemade playdough. I found the instructions on how to make it here. The directions were easy and the only thing I changed was I divided my cooked dough into four separate bowls and then added the color. (Note: Use a spoon to mix in the food coloring, and not your hands. Yes, I don't know what I was thinking. I looked like a blue/green/yellow/purple martian the rest of the day!)

Eli loved the playdough and couldn't wait to play with it. I loved it because I made it using ingredients I already had at home, so I didn't have to pay for something new! Plus, our playdough looked and felt just like the store bought kind. It was a winner!

He really didn't want to stop and take a picture if you can tell. 

All he wanted to do was start playing with the playdough.

We'll add some more colors to our collection the next time we make it. 

These were the colors Eli chose for this first project.

I got out all my cookie cutters and we had fun cutting our different shapes. 

We made a sneaky snake and lots of other creatures with our playdough.

Our playdough ended up making the perfect road for Eli's cars.

He kept singing "Life Is a Highway" as he rolled "Mack" on the road.

Our playdough is tucked safely away in Ziploc storage containers right now until we get it out again. I'm so glad I can do fun projects like this with my little one. Being a mommy is such fun!