Project 52: Week 8 ~ Looking Up!

No story this week, just looking up at a snow laden tree!  Very pretty snow, but waiting for winter to be over now!

 

Continue the circle at Maaret's page!

Pink Lemonade and Sunshine! Northern Minnsota Children's Photography

Spring is just around the corner and I am having fun making some fresh spring designs and photographing them!  The most fun part about making a new dress is taking pictures of it.  It gives me a great excuse to practice lighting, styling, posing, and angles.  Here are some of my favorites from a quick session my daughter help me set up yesterday.


 

Project 52: Week 7 ~ Cabin Fever

We have been suffering from serious cabin fever around this place!  Partly because yes it is winter and to go outside is a big job.  Boots, snowpants, jackets, hats, mitts on everyone; it takes a while just to get ready to go out.  Also partly due to the fact that mom is down to 8 weeks of pregnancy left and these small tasks aren't so small anymore when her face turns purple if she bends over too long!  :)  And maybe mostly because Dad/husband has been out of town for his third {but FINAL!!} consecutive week taking a (yawwwwn) Bridge Building class.  No really he did say he would back out of it, but I told him to go ahead and take it cause really when in this life will it be "convenient"? ... Anyway here we were couped up and had just survived a massive snowstorm and the weather for February really wasn't feeling or looking to bad!  So Wednesday we took the day off and headed to ECFE again where they had all kinds of fun things (everything from clay to flarp to playdough to mention a few) to mix up and bring home.  What a hit and what a hoot!  We stirred and mixed for an hour and a half or so, then buckled back up and headed for McDonald's for lunch! Good times I'm tellin' ya!  After that it was go to the grocery store and stock up on all the sales and coupons and penny pinchers for the week.  It was at the grocery store that my cell phone rang.  School.  First grader has a fever!  Well I was just checking out so we loaded everything into the van: kids, groceries toilet paper, and off to the school to pick him up.  After one final stop at the pharmacy to stock up on a few meds, we made our way back home just in time to unload everyone and everything, get the groceries in the cupboard and welcome the rest of the school kids!  It was a busy day but fun and out of the ordinary and cured us of our cabin fever for a few days anyway.  First grader is well and we are working on nursing kid #2 back to health!  And the best news is Dad will be home tonight!

~ A little cabin fever story, sorry if it got a little windy, and a picture to go with it! 

 

Now head on over to Maaret's page and see her take on Cabin Fever!

Project 52: Week 6 ~ Work of Art

When you are a mother of seven going on eight children you have many different styles and levels of "works of art" going on in your own home.  It is great to encourage imagination so I try my best to do that, even tho I tend to be a bit of a neat freak.  {Although you wouldn't want to see my sewing room on a daily basis! I like to leave fabrics laying about on the bed and such so that I can walk in and out and go "hmmmmm...!" and switch them around and around until I go "uh-huh!"}  Which, maybe, is what my kids are doing when they leave their toys laying about?!?  Anyway here is one level of art that goes on around here:

 

I am trying to get back into the weekly mode of visiting ECFE with my kids because there they can perform all kinds of works of art.  The best part about it is, I don't have to set it up and clean it up when they are done.  I just assist them in the process of creating.  This is one of our projects that we made this week.  Appropriate for the season:

 

Now my three oldest have been begging me to sew, so a couple weeks ago I gave them the task of organizing my fabric and restacking it in exchange for my fabric scraps.  They are working on sewing blocks together in color coordinating pieces to make a quilt for their bedroom. I will give you an update on this as they progress.  They were really gung-ho for a week and last week, not so much.  But they are back at it now and it is kind of exciting watching them work on such a project.



Now head on over to Maaret's page and see her Work of Art for this week!

School Sheets

Another cold day in northern MN!  The buses were 2 hours late this morning as the thermomter read 28 below when we got up.  We are up to 1 above out there now so things are looking up.  None the less too cold to spend any time outside.  This morning we decided to get back into our "school lessons".  I found a great tool online earlier when school was back in session for another year.  My 5 year old needed some extra stimulation, so I started printing him worksheets from eduction.com a few times a week, working on learning to print a new letter each week.  It has been a great distraction for him and an excellent learning tool.  There are also coloring pages for the younger folks and math, reading, writing, etc.. for all grades through high school.



Visit education.com for these great free printables for your little ones!

Project 52: Week 5 ~Black and White

It is Friday and time for our weekly display of Project 52.  This week the theme is black and white, which was fun and challenging for me as I tend to stick with color images!

We finally got a nice dumping of snow here in northern Minnesota. Last time we were forcasted to have snow, a few weeks ago, it warmed up and we got rain instead, then snowed a crumby little inch on top of that.  I have been waiting to go cross country skiing, and an inch of snow on top of ice does not make for great skiing conditions.  So on Monday when the snow was coming down I was singing "Let it Snow"! 

Today was the third day in a row that I got out.  The first day wasn't til after supper so it was dark and a little hard to see, even with a head lamp on, with the cloud coverage.  Yesterday it was daylight but the wind had picked up and the temps were a little below zero.  Today finally the sun came out but still breezy and cold! So of course by the time I got out there with my camera and the sun shining the snow was pretty much blown off the trees.  It was still lovely.  We (my daughter and I) skied through the woods out to this field, then did a loop on the field and back home through the woods.  There was a lovely trail for us as my father-in-law had been through the woods on Monday with the skid loader to plow our driveway, but out on the field there was no trail and it was cold and windy so we didn't last long there.  Here is my picture in black and white, for this week's theme, of the field!
 

Also our mailbox looked pretty cool with the snow piled on top of it!

To continue on in the circle go to Maaret's page to see her black and white images.  She always has fun pictures!