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A different Christmas tree

This weekend, we're with Matt's family in Southern Iowa. We put up the big family Christmas tree after Thanksgiving dinner, and our niece and nephew (ages 4 and 6) were mesmerized. Unfortunately, they also wanted to spend a lot of time playing with the more delicate ornaments. Their mom mentioned wanting to do some sort of kid-friendly felt tree, and that sparked a memory in me.

During grad school, one of my friends wanted to do a tree, but she didn't have much room in her tiny apartment. She decided to hang a felt tree on the wall, and we all decorated little felt ornaments to hang up on the tree. I showed the pics to my sister-in-law, and she was game.

This morning, I avoided the worst of Black Friday by waiting to go out until noon. I picked up some felt for our project. I purchased both a yard of green (~$4.00) and 8 little felt squares (23 cents each, except for the fancy leopard print, which was 97 cents). My mother in law was buying some stockings to decorate, so she picked up a pack of glitter glue for ~$5.

Once we got home, we got everything going. I roughly traced a tree on the felt. Actually, I did this twice, as you can see. I'm not 100% happy with my tree (the branches tilt up a bit too much), but it's good enough.

Tracing:

And the finished, cut-out tree:

I don't have much for reference in this picture, but the tree is a bit more than a yard tall. We used the width of the felt so we'd have a taller tree.

Then, we got down to business. My SIL and I cut out ornaments, and we did some decorating along with my niece. My nephew sat next to me and played with legos, but his only decorating contributions were "no, thank you" when I asked if he wanted to decorate and "laser eyes!" or "red!" when I wanted decorating suggestions.

Here I am, decorating the star for the top of treee:

Here's my SIL and niece decorating:

Here's the laser-eyes teddy bear:

And a collection of a bunch of finished ornaments -- click on the pics to go to flickr and see a bigger version:

Here's the "finished" tree on the table. The ornaments are still drying, so we aren't able to hang the tree up yet. But I'm hoping the kids have a fun time "decorating" this tree of their own and don't get too much into the big tree. If nothing else, this was a fun way to spend an afternoon. My niece managed to hang on for a good bit of decorating, and she really enjoyed checking out the ornaments I was doing in between bouts of running off to play or get a snack.

I anticipate this would be a great craft for a slightly older kid (ages 5-10 or so?) or anyone artsy. Our overall expenses were under $12, and we have plenty more glitter glue for other crafts. When I made this in grad school, we used push pins to secure the tree to the wall. Using the push pins, we put on garland and candy canes, and the ornaments stuck just fine. I'm not sure how well it will work with little kids, but my SIL has velcro waiting in the wings in case the tree needs a little something more.

Nov 21, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving, all! We are en route to my in-laws' place in southern Iowa to celebrate the holiday. I hope everyone has a great, safe holiday.

If our newest pet is any indication, tomorrow will be a great feast. Check out Blue, our crawdad, excitedly stuffing his face with the whole weekend's worth of food. Enjoy!

Bonding

In quite possibly the only time ever on my blog, I've got two movie-related posts in a row (side note: it's not like I don't enjoy movies, but I just don't see many). Last weekend, Matt and did a little bonding in more sense than one by taking in Skyfall, the recent James Bond movie. Apparently, it's the third in a series, but I don't think I missed too much by not seeing the other two movies.

I don't want to ruin too much of the plot, but I will say that we really enjoyed the film. There was an extra creepy looking villain, some fun technological gadgetry, and a cute nerd thrown in for good measure. I think the first two are par for the course with James Bond, but I don't think there's usually a cute nerd. I have only see a few Bond movies, so I might be wrong.

In any case, if you're looking for a good adventure movie to check out, I'd hit this up in the theater. The scenery and action sequences play well on the big screen.

We've got Annie

As a child, my favorite movie was Annie. Apparently, I watched the video tape every day when I was two and a half. I'm going to spare myself the more embarrassing details of this story, but suffice to say that you could hear the gritty details by attending one of my dad's sermons.

Years later, I still love this movie. There are chipper songs, snazzy dance moves, and orphans. What's not to love?

It's been awhile since I watched the movie, but I did get to see the stage version this weekend. My school put on the musical, and I volunteered to sell tickets on Saturday night for free admission. It was a hoot to see my students up on stage. My absolute favorite was one of my freshmen who played Pepper, a sassy and scowling orphan. This student is a dear in the class and always quite sweet. On stage, she was a yelling, brawling, hot mess.

Since then, I've been bitten by the Annie bug. I made my lunch while humming "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," and "Tomorrow" was my mental refrain today during a particularly rough class period (though "It's the Hard Knock Life" might be better for that period full of rude students).

I still have work to do tonight, including test writing, but I'm indulging in a little movie therapy. Thank goodness for favorite movies.

Two fun facts:

Annie came out the year I was born (1982)!
Aileen Quinn played Annie in the films. She was apparently under contract to play Annie in other movies, but it never happened. She wasn't in many movies but did pursue some stage work. She also worked as a translator for a bit after college. She is currently a theatre teacher.

Quiet time

When I was single, I learned how to comfortably dine out by myself. Learning this skill was actually a point of pride for me. It took time to be comfortable saying "yes, table for one" without feeling supremely alone.

Now that I am firmly coupled, the dinner out alone is a rare luxury. I can order exactly what I want! Lots of quiet alone time and people watching! Taking time to pamper myself is still important.

So, the other night, I enjoyed a solo sushi dinner. Evidence is photographed below. Matt likes sushi, but I love it. And there's nothing greater than ordering just the rolls I like (salmon avocado and eel avocado, thanks) and savoring the burn of wasabi. And I won't even elaborate on how freeing it is to just order tofu without having to barter with Matt about what he'd prefer. Yum.

Mouse in the House part 2

As promised, here are some pictures of possible mouse holes. They're all fixed, so now it's just a matter of waiting and watching for signs of mice.

Now, if only I could patch up every box elder bug and Asian lady beetle hole. Sigh.

Photos below are a sink before & after and a pic of the gaping hole for bathroom access. I did convince Matt to just screw the board in place and not use crazy glue. Future access and all.

Mouse in the House

Winter is approaching here in the Great Frozen North, and that has been abundantly obvious in our house. After last year's mild winter, we're not quite as prepared as usual. This year, for the first time in our 2-some years in our apartment, we have had mice.

I suspect it will be a cold winter, because the mice have never visited before. We used to think that Lucy, our cat, just did an excellent job keeping the mice away. Now, we know that she is not a good mouser. We were storing bird seed in a bag in our hall closet, and I cleaned out the closet to discover evidence of the little nibblers. I might further add that mice are my second least favorite visitors after rats. I don't mind mice outdoors, but they don't belong in my house.

I have since put the bird seed into a bin and set traps in the closet. We moved the stove and stuffed steel wool in a hole there, but we were still catching mice in the closet trap. Ahh, the sink, we thought. I'll post this in a separate post (the pictures are on my phone), but our sink had a huge, gaping hole. We got maintenance to completely fix the sink, but still the mice were entering.

The last frontier? The fridge! We moved the fridge, and we discovered that the access panel for our bathroom plumbing was behind there. The board was only loosely duct-taped against the wall. Not effective for mouse prevention.

Matt has since screwed the board into the wall, and we haven't seen evidence of a mouse since. I'm hoping that was the last hole, but we continue to keep the closet trap set, just in case. And that's all the news from small-town Minnesota, at least for tonight.

Spoons

Matt's family loves a good practical joke. With three boys at home, that's not surprising. Apparently, the best one ever came from his parents. When Matt was little, they bought a new car that's main selling point was its excellent gas mileage. After a month, Matt's mom still hadn't filled the tank despite driving the car every day. She touted this feature to friends and family in amazement.

Then, one day, she headed out to the garage to find Matt's dad topping off the tank with a gas can! Little did she realize that he'd been slyly adding a half gallon of gas or so each day to keep the fuel meter level.

Since then, she's been more skeptical, but they still get some good tricks in. This is entirely different from my family. I don't ever recall a practical joke, but witty reparte and punning are regular features in conversation. I tell you this because of the phone conversation as I drove home today.

Matt called me to talk about dinner. Then, he hesitantly said, "so, are you playing a joke on me with the spoons?"

I burst out laughing as I realized that I'd forgotten to tell Matt about my day's activity. I had grabbed all our spoons that morning to use in a class activity for my freshman intro to science class where we investigated friction and vibrations with dry ice. Not a practical joke, but it sure played like one. Maybe his family is rubbing off on me more than I realized.