Sunset Pictures

The kids didn't have school on Monday, so I took this opportunity to do an art project with them. Since the kids are all getting older, I'm trying to find projects that are a little bit more challenging, so they will last longer than 5 minutes. :0)
I've seen variations of this project before, so I thought we would try it out and make it our own. First, I showed the kids pictures of sunsets. They looked at what colors sunsets can be, and they noticed that the objects sometimes looked black against the sunset. They all chose an object they wanted in their picture, then they started painting their sunsets, while I looked for pictures to print out of their objects.

This is Lily's sunset when she was done painting it:

Riley chose dolphins for his picture, so he cut out some black paper for water, then he cut out the dolphins I printed out, that happened to be black, and glued them on his paper like they were jumping out of the water.

Lily wanted a tree, so she cut out black paper for grass, then she glued this tree onto black paper & cut it out to be glued, black side up, on her sunset.

Zach wanted a pirate ship. The ship he wanted was already black, but kind of intricate to cut out, so he cut out the basic shape, then glued it onto his paper and painted his sunset over it.

He also painted a beach and water.

Riley:

Lily:

Zach:

 

I love how they all took the basic idea of this and made it their own. They all did a good job and it took them about an hour to do. (Yeah!) ;0)

Goodbye Emma

A little over a year ago, Amy & Sam entrusted this little cutie into my care:

Today is my last day to watch her on a daily basis. I know I will still get to see her a lot, but it won't be the same. I am happy that Amy gets to stay home with her, but I am a little sad, that she won't be here everyday to crack me up. :0)
Here are some pictures from the last year of my time with Emma:

Good thing I'm her aunt. That way I still get to see her!! :0)

You Are My Sunshine

I did a cute sunshine art project with Emma yesterday. I needed a canvas (I used 12x16), yellow paint and one other color (I chose blue), stencils and....

An Emma!

You don't specifically need an Emma though. ;0)

First, I stenciled "You are my sunshine" on the canvas in blue (like the sky).

After that was dry, I painted one of Emma's hands yellow and pressed it a few inches away from the bottom corner of the canvas. You need to leave enough room so that you can do both hands and both feet.

After I did one hand, I did one foot, then did the other hand and foot. These are the sun's rays.

Before I was done, I needed to make the sun part. I just filled in the corner with yellow paint.

Don't do what I did & drop a giant blob of paint on the canvas where you don't want paint, so you have to fill it in awkwardly. I thought it was still cute though. Amy liked it & that's all that matters. :0)

I  Also have another little girl here with me this week, and while I thought I had two canvases, I guess I didn't. So, I made a different one using just paper. I printed the words from the computer this time, and just used 4 hand prints to make the sun. I thought this also turned out cute.

The girls and I had fun doing both of these. I might have to do something like this with Lily. (I don't think the boys will let me do this with them though.....) ;0)

Zach's Room Make-Over

We moved into this house when Zach had just turned 4 years old, and I decided on how it was going to be decorated/painted. Since he will be 11 in a few months (Waah!!), I decided to let him have a room make-over. 
This is what his room looked like before: 

That was his idea of clean when I took these pictures....
Also, he had the blanket up because he likes his room dark. And I swear he had curtains, I just don't know what he did with them.....
(He also has gotten a new bed & dresser in the last year.)

Just cleaning out that bookshelf would have been an improvement, but after I cleaned it out, stripped off the wallpaper border, put primer over the burgundy paint, and had Jeff edge with the paint Zach picked out, it looked like this:

Yes, I was using his bottom bunk as a throw all for everything in his room. 
:0)

After I painted the walls, and Jeff put Zach's new bookshelf & desk together, we asked Zach where he wanted things up on his wall. 
This is the finished project:

I eventually want to get matching comforters for his top & bottom bunk, but that's going to have to wait a bit.
Zach is very happy with his new grown-up room! 
Now let's see if he actually keeps it clean now.......