Tile Floor Before and Afters

Today, we had our tile floors cleaned, grout repaired and stained, and all sealed.  They look sooooo good.  Now, remember, we haven't been in this house even a year yet.  We aren't sure how the floors were maintained before, but this should last for years.

Kitchen before (I picked the grossest area to photograph so you could really see the difference):

Kitchen after:

Entry way before:

Entry way after (doesn't the lighter grout make a difference?):

Pom-Pom-tastic

Not sure if you've been keeping up with our Craft Thursdays, but we've been having fun with it.  This week's is a little different.  We actually started this one on Tuesday and finished it on Thursday. 

I read about these cool pom-pom makers on another blog early this week and thought they might be fun to try.  You can buy them at JoAnn's, or I'm sure other places carry them.  They are way better than cardboard circles!  I don't knit or crochet, so I don't keep a huge supply of yarn, so I just bought a couple skeins of multicolored yarn to make it easy.  We had to much fun making them, that Lily and I went back today and bought another set of smaller makers so we could make different sizes.  

I tried to take some pictures to show how they work. They make it so easy that the girls can do it pretty much by themselves. 

We decided to thread yarn through all our pom-poms and make a garland.  We LOVE it.

An out of this world Craft Thursday

For this week's Craft Thursday, I planned an outer space project that I've seen on another blog that we copycatted.

The girls started by tracing around a bunch of circular things in the kitchen:  cups, a coin, jars, etc.  Then, we painted them with watercolors in cool ways to look like all kinds of fun planets.  Then, we set those aside to dry.

Next we needed to create our starry sky.  We used black construction paper, white paint, and a toothbrush.  Super fun!  The girls used their fingers to flick white paint onto the paper to create little white stars.

We took a short break to let everything dry and then came back and cut out our planets...

...and glue them to our black sky.

This is Abby's finished product.  She wanted hers hung in the kitchen where I only have about one cabinet left for artwork.   (I think it looks crooked, I have since fixed it.  It was driving me crazy.)

Here is Lily's.  She wanted hers in her room.

They liked the project, now I have to come up with one for next week!

Reading about Narnia

In January, our family watch the three Chronicles of Narnia movies that have been made.  I blogged about it here.  I've since found my copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which is the first book in the series.  I bought the copy back during my first year of teaching.  I decided it would make it a great read aloud for the girls, and they could compare it to the movie.  -kind of backwards from how I would usually recommend.

We just finished it, and the girls loved it.  It added to the movie, but wasn't too different.  In this case, I think the movie helped them visualize the book a little better.

Since the girls were enjoying the books so much, when Abby brought her Scholastic book order home from school last month, I ordered the Magician's Nephew (which is a prequel to the above).  If your child gets the book order, I had to order it online and do a search for it.  

It talks about how Narnia was formed, but wasn't actually written first.  Different publishers number the books differently, but we're reading it second.  

We started it last night.  I think it helps to have an understanding of Narnia first before reading this one.  That's my 2 cents, having read both of them before.  So far, they love it.  

Are you reading anything good lately?

The Unexpected Surprise of LOTS of Raggedy Anns

In preparation for the possibility of cabin fever tomorrow and Monday due to an upcoming winter storm coming in tonight, we got out today.  While we were out, we decided to feed our new hobby of visiting antique stores.  

I mentioned in the post earlier this week that the girls weren't fond of all the dolls, including the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls.  My mom and I were talking about how funny this was.  I thought she, and maybe anyone, would think it was funny exactly how many we saw.  So, this time I decided to document it.  By the time I decided to snap pictures of just how many there were, we had already seen quite a few, so this is just a sampling.  We probably saw all of these in 10 minutes.  They were literally around every corner.  It was  kind of funny once I started taking pictures.

So, that's it.  The whole point of this post.  Raggedy Anns.  Everywhere.  The End.  :)