Stuff about the Duff's

Thursday, May 30, 2013

January 2013 Art creations

We made several fun art projects this year. The following ones are actually all from January when I actually took pictures of all the projects.

While I am not an amazing artist, I do like art and want my kids to develop appreciation for it in addition to learning the basic skills. Art is FUN!

Also, Princess' REALLY likes art projects. She loves participating in them and does them much longer than anyone else. I need to have lots of fun art just for her interests.

This art project was about lighting, seeing the way the shadows change the snowman's coloring. I got the idea here. (And I LOVE pinterest for kids art ideas. It has helped me discover some awesome art teacher blogs full of ideas!) Plus drawing snowmen is fun when you have no snow!

My example snowman

Dinoguy's snowman

Trainboy's snowman

Princess' first snowman

Princess' second snowman

Princess drawing yet another snowman. (She liked this project!)

This next one was a drawing exercise from the book "Drawing with Children" by Mona Brookes. We drew the lion from step by step instructions, embellished and then we colored before outlining in marker.

This is Dinoguy's Lion.

This is Trainboy's lion

This is Princess' lion

Here is my example lion.

This was also a drawing exercise from the same book as above. The goal was to work on drawing objects in front of other objects (overlapping wings/birds).

Dinoguy's birds

Trainboy's drawing

Princess' birds

Little Guy's drawing

My example birds

This next one was kings and queens portraits done with tempera paint. It went along well with our history study of the middle ages and was fun! Idea came from this blog.

Dinoguy's King

Trainboy's knight

My queen

Princess and Little Guy were happily painting the whole time too. But they are still in the exploration stage of painting when you mix colors and fill in the whole page until it is muddy. So no pictures of that. I just tried to contain the mess.

Dinoguy's abstract art/stained glass

Trainboy's abstract art/stained glass

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Trainboy gets baptized! (January 2013)

At the beginning of the new year, Trainboy was able to get baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Since he had turned 8 in December, he had already had an interview with our bishop and we chose to participate in the baptism service held in his Grandparents' stake in Idaho so that more family could celebrate with us.

Cuddling with his blanket

Length shot shows the full blanket. He should still be able to use it when he is 6 feet tall.

I just like this picture.

For his special baptism present, I had been working all year on his crocheted blanket. He chose the pattern and the colors. I crocheted like crazy to finish it by his baptism. He loved it when it was finished though which made it worth all 50 billion color changes (just an estimate an it may be exaggerated).

Handsome guy

Making his "I'm freezing!" face

He nicely agreed to have his picture taken the day before standing outside in the cold snow so that I could finish a photo display I wanted to put up at the lunch the next day. His Idaho Grandma gave him the lovely white tie and the lego belt was a previous year Christmas present I had made.

Standing in front of the font with Dad

8 years goes by so quickly!

After the baptism service, we had a family lunch buffet with sandwiches and cookies. (His choice!) We were happy to have his Grandpa from South Carolina there as well as several of my siblings in addition to Grandma and Grandpa and several Aunts and Uncles and lots of cousins from Idaho.

My photo display showing him on blessing day, growing up, birthday and baptism day.

One end of the buffet view with Princess starting in on the sandwiches

From the other end with the treats!

We also took photos with family before they all scattered again. I didn't get a picture with everyone there which would have been fun, but here are some pictures we did get.