Nature Art

We were inspired by a new art book I purchased from the Usborne lady at Mayfest. Below are the "pictures" we created using sticks, stones, flowers and leaves that we collected on a trip in the woods. The idea was to start with a simple shape like a circle and build your picture around that, but as you can see, Samuel expanded that idea to other things.

The Star

The Firepit

The Triangle

The House

Fun with food

In March Jim was gone for a weekend of training with Intervarsity and I felt bored with our suppers, so we had breakfast for supper. And to make it extra special I made plate size pancakes with faces. I used this recipe for homemade pancakes and before I flipped them I used blueberries to make a smiley mouth and a nose. After they were finished I added banana slices with blueberries for eyes and pupils and yogurt for hair. The kids loved it! Thanks Aunt Michelle and JJ for the inspiration!

At our house I also like to make faces on a piece of toast and peanut butter using bananas and raisins. Grandma lets the kids cut faces in their cheese slices or gives them tiny cookie cutters to make butterflies and flowers with their cheese.

It may be bad manners in some homes, but go ahead have a little fun with your food!

Be patient and persist . . .

Patience and Persistence are the two words I heard Monday morning as I lay in bed. It has been a busy few weeks. The many hours outside gardening and landscaping and just plain having fun with the kids have left lots of things undone inside the house. You know the list, laundry, dirty floors, bathrooms, bills and to top it off the dishwasher missed half the dishes on Sunday, so I was left with lots more dishes to wash. Plus the Christian Business Directories came in a few weeks ago, which just is a lot of work to coordinate. Anyway, I was feeling very overwhelmed to say the least. And I think that morning in bed was God telling me to be patient and persist through the mountains I saw before me. Slowly some things are getting done and all week now those same two words (patience and persistence) have been running through my mind and keeping me sane!

This morning, I remembered something God had shown me about patience last fall. It was in one of my lessons for Son Harbor and the teacher portion encouraged you to think about areas you needed to be patient. My first thoughts went towards situations with the kids, like Grace whining for a glass of milk or the chaos of everyone putting their shoes on to go somewhere. But then He showed me the bigger picture of patience. At that time Jim had no job for the summer and I was feeling a little worried about what our future held. But at that moment I knew God was saying be patient in these little things and also the big things of the future. I had never thought about patience in that way. Today I encourage you to find an area in life where you need to be patient.

I do have more posts with pictures and the kids, but everytime I sit down to work on it the computer jams up and I just go to bed instead. I guess I need to be more patient with this too.