Recycling and Backyard Fun

We were at the mall the other day and saw a large display of school kids’ recycle projects. It was very intriguing to see their creativity. Of course this got my daughters’ creative juices flowing. Back at home, we were finding boxes from our paper trash to make into a city in no time.

If you’d like to do this at home too, here’s what we did:

1. I wrapped each box in shipping paper so the paint would stick.
2. The girls decided what each building would be and where it would go on our cardboard landscape.
3. They drew what they planned out with pencil before painting.
4. Loads of painting! After the paint dried, they filled in details with marker.
5. The next day I hot glued rolled scrap fabric “roof tiles” {like we see here in Portugal} or some form of roof, then each box to the base and any other details the girls thought of.
6. Lots of play time!

Thankfully, when the recycle village project was finished, and the girls wanted to know what that day’s “project” would be, I turned to my Smart Summer Challenge calendar {Backyard Science Week}. Today said “Choose a number and make it into a picture using items from your yard.” Since today was the 14th, we decided to make fourteens. The girls flew outside to find great yard treasures and came back to create. Can you find the fourteen?

Other backyard fun at our house continues to be harvesting from our garden…

and bringing the backyard indoors.

P.S.: If you have a minute…

The most accepting Foo-Foo has been of the girls’ feeding her yet. We enjoyed her munching sounds!

Fourth of July Firsts

Yes, the holiday is past, but I wanted to share some fun things I tried this year. I’ll start with a top personal accomplishment, a paper wreath for my front door!

I was inspired by Corner House’s awesome paper wreath. It is beautiful—you have to go see it! She has great instructions too.

Anyway, I had a small wreath to spare that I thought would not take too many scalloped circle cones. Ha! This was a labor of love OR more like an opportunity to persevere! Don’t let me scare you on this—I think it is the perfect project to work on as you’re talking on the phone or watching a show. Just know it may not get done overnight! Having a large scalloped paper puncher is a huge help.

A quirky thing about this 4th of July wreath is that the book pages are from a vintage Portuguese book! You could say that’s not OK on a piece of Americana, but we’ll just settle that we are blending cultures here! {or using what I can get my hands on!}

Speaking of blending cultures, I decided to go a little more low-key on 4th décor this year since we were having Portuguese and British guests {ie: the other side of the placemats made by my mother-in-law are covered in US flags}. Of course we had a few laughs about how we’d been freed from them! But they were great sports, even wearing red, white and blue!

We are only able to get our hands on sparklers in Portugal, so pretty-ing them up made it feel a bit more special. The free printables are from Thig and Twistle.

My other big attempt for this holiday was homemade hamburger buns. Not to complain, but the options for good hamburger buns here are very slim, so much that I’d gotten to where I really didn’t want to make hamburgers! This was a last attempt to keep one of my husband’s favorite foods in our normal repertoire. I think they turned out well—a recipe request from a guest makes you think others like them too! Oh how necessity{?} breeds resourcefulness!

Sharing this at Turning the Table Thursday and

Fingernails and the Circus

Our girls finished up Portuguese kindergarten this past Tuesday, so our summer is just getting started! My surgery recovery has limited most of our afterschool homeschool activities, but I’m thankful to see the benefits of the girls’ creative play time without too much mommy intervention.

This morning was the beauty shop! Their Nana had brought the girls some cute boxes with new lip gloss and fingernail polish. The girls spent time making bracelets for everyone who was coming to the “salon” (our interns were invited since they are leaving next week and love being with our girls).

My 5 year old did a great job copying my written words for a sign she was making! 

 

Both girls enjoyed the special attention and getting to paint a big person’s nails {they are so nice to let them do that!} and fake nails. Take note of these faces of concentration!

Nail painting could not top the circus we had at our house a few days prior. At the girls’ trampoline class exhibition, we saw other unusual-to-us sports like synchronized roller skating and circus acrobatics. {Really!}  Now we have want-to-be acrobats in our home who have daily been working on new “tricks”!

So, they had a show for us complete with music, clowns and animals! {Sorry to those of you who don’t think tricks off the couch is a good idea. We have great mats they land on!}

I have been so pleased at how hard they’ve worked on moves like balancing on an exercise ball in the doorway or how they play the classical music over and over and move to the beat for their “routines”!

We have also been adding dates to our July calendar from 1+1+1=1’s 4th of July Connection Cards. The girls eagerly want to add each day and hear about who or what in on the picture. I have the activity calendar up from the Smart Summer Challenge and hope to do more of those now that the girls are home. So, I feel there’s no lack of learning opportunities around here!

Sharing this at:

Weights of Worries, Unforgiveness, and Sin

Hefty title, heh? Pun intended!  My husband, Sunday School teacher extraordinaire, came up with a brilliant idea to help our girls understand how worry, unforgiveness and sin can effect our lives and those around us. {We have Sunday School at home with our kiddos here in Portugal.}

First, he had the girls “practice” obeying God by walking to the table and back as if God had given them that instruction. He held their hand as if God was going with them {and He does!}.

He first put a belt around their waist, and bungee-corded “a worry” they might have, then another onto the belt. Then he asked them to do the same obedience exercise, walking to the table with God. This time is was more difficult for the girls to keep up the pace with him and not get hurt! Hmm…how does worry affect our walk with God?

He used the same weight example with sin that we don’t confess to God and receive forgiveness for.  As with worry {it is really a sin in itself: Matthew 6:25-34; Philippians 4:6}, unconfessed sin interferes with our relationship with God, our ability to receive His love and walk in all the good stuff He has for us!

We also talked about unforgiveness—how it is a weight on us to not let the other person off the hook, whether they ask forgiveness or not!

Lastly, we talked about how we can give these weights to other people if we’re not careful—interfering with others’ ability to receive God’s love, and to obey and worship Him. Nothing like a little weight to make a worship time difficult!

My heart in sharing this is more than documenting our own family’s journey with God. We hope YOU can know:

• the LOVE of the Father in such a way that His TRUTH replaces worries
• His plan of forgiveness through His Son, Jesus, for EVERY sin
• how we can FORGIVE OTHERS because we are forgiven
• how we love others by not defiling them with information about others, stirring up fear, and things like this

If you have any questions, I’d love to field them as I can. We’ll be working on not carrying these weights at our house!

The Mint Bed

Last year, we buried two buckets full of dirt and mint in our garden, hoping to let the mint have more space and still be contained. It thrived for the most part, but later we discovered it had hopped out of it’s boundaries! Amazing how such a wonderful plant can take over!

We decided to try something different rather than the mint being bound to pots this year. They don’t seem to do as well for me there—probably my lack of watering! 

My husband dug a small pit under the ladder to the kids’ playhouse, next to our bunny cage.  He lined the pit with weed barrier, filled it back in with dirt, and started putting all our potted mint plants into this new bed. There were several different varieties of mint, but I didn’t mind them growing with one another.

Here is the mint bed about a month later. We collected bigger rocks from various beaches we’ve been to here to edge the bed. It is filling in nicely!

Now we’ve got to attend to the grass problem--the sprinkler hidden in the corner there is not reaching the grass. My husband is such a good sport to continually tackle keeping the yard watered!

Our bunny is not complaining about this new treat next to the cage. Thankfully she cannot reach all of it!

Guest Room Redo

Over a year ago, I wrote about motivation to complete our guest room. I’m glad to report that a few changes in that room make it more of what I hoped it could be in this house. Did you see my lampshade facelift after buying a new duvet cover? Well, this new cover continued to inspire the change from this:

to this:

We decided to not paint the freebie headboard for now. The beige Euro shams and other light-hearted textures and color help off-set its heavy feel. We changed out the rug with a blue one we’d used in our old office too.

I made the center pillow from an old flannel pillow case I found at the flea market. We added one more plate with a little blue to balance the plate wall around the headboard.

  

I did not previously post about my side table paint job since I was kind of disappointed in it. Long story short: Getting the right paint in Portugal has been a challenge for us! However, it works if you don’t look too close! A chair re-do is in order when the funds are available.

A few other blue touches around the room helped pull together what I was going for—a little less stuffy/a little more fun I think! My current guest is enjoying it!

Tissue Box Beauty

I’m on a roll {HA!—especially when I’m talking about tissue!} with seeing what needs to be changed or finished around here. Amazing how a new round of guests coming can motivate me!

Since I moved overseas, I had to start using the long versus tall boxes of Kleenex/tissue because they didn’t sell the tall kind in Germany, much less cute boxes.  So I couldn’t use the tall decorative covers I brought from America. Portugal does offer many nicer looking boxes of tissue, but the price is not worth it. Did I like this look? NO.

But sadly I settled for this look for WAY TOO LONG. This paper maché cover has been waiting for some attention for possibly 4 years!

I had some sweet guests who brought me a swath of new scrapbook paper from America, so I had new inspiration to get moving with.

 Much better, heh? It was really simple to trace around the edges and hole of the box to the back of the paper, cut and then glue on with decoupage glue. I love it!  This inspired me to attack the other blank box in my bedroom.

This tissue box cover is wooden {so German!}, and I had bought some lovely fabric-like paper in Germany to cover it. Thankfully I had not nabbed it for another project! I tried to cover it with one whole piece and layer the seams. It worked out pretty well except that you can see the wood grain through it in certain spots.

I’ve actually seen some pretty amazing homemade tissue box covers in blogland—quilted, embellished, you name it. Yet using paper was doable enough for me that I might have to go find some more blank covers to bring some beauty to an otherwise unattractive necessity in our home.

Linking up to Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap-up Party!