we visited family on the east coast recently, and ever since we left, novi has been looooonging for my mom. chin quivering, holding back tears at the sound of her name. sobbing at the sight of her picture. saying that “seeing her on skype just isn’t the same!” telling me several times a day how she misses “gwee” so much that her heart hurts. (that’s what she calls my mom.) this is hard for a momma -who just moved across the country from gwee- to hear. i’m grateful she can name such a complex emotion, and i’ve told her how normal it is to miss people we love who are far away.

gwee & novi reunited at the airport on our trip

the good news is that my mom (and sister) are coming for a visit to california in about a month. the other day, my mom told novi that she bought her plane ticket. ever since novi heard that, she has been saying (a few times a day) “gwee is on a plane right now coming to see me!” or “gwee will be here when i wake up from my nap today, right?” so i’ve had to explain the passing of time to her a few times. we’ve looked at a calendar. then i figured we’d better make time more concrete.

besides, i had some old magazines and scrap papers in the recycling bin…

so i cut them into strips that were about an inch (or 1.5″ maybe) wide, all about 9″ tall. let’s face it – i can barely cut in a straight line, and that much cutting with those tiny toddler scissors just isn’t gonna happen with my 3-year-old.

then novi and i counted the days on the calendar until gwee’s visit – 31. she picked out and counted the strips, as i taped them together into loops. (she lamented at how long the chain was getting, understanding it’d be that much longer that she’d have to wait.)

then we hung the chain off of the bookshelf near our dining room table, and decided that we’d cut a strip off each night at dinner.

now this would be a great time for her to practice with her scissors! (one of these days we’ve gotta put the CUT in paintCUTpaste over here!)

so the countdown to gwee begins…

i have always adored making mosaics. i made a huuuge one in grad school from tiles i painted, fired, cut, and grouted myself… mixed with mirrors and photos under glass. whew! this was going to be quite a different feat – so much tinier, so much easier, right? so i saved the shells.

then i organized them by color while novi napped – way satisfying for this ROY G BIV nerd!

i decided that the colors would really pop on a black background. i took the liberty of drawing butterfly and dragonfly shapes on the papers before novi woke up that we could fill in together later. your kids can draw their own shapes, or no shapes at all. the eggshells are so pretty in their own right that they don’t need a design, but i thought the colors and broken shapes lent themselves well to winged creatures.

when novi was awake, we got out the trusty elmer’s glue and tried the mosaic. um, fail. okay… if you have older kids (like kids who have the dexterity to peel the tiniest, most delicate stickers off of sticker paper with half-dried glue on their hands and not get frustrated, that’s the age we’re going for. fyi: even i am barely mature enough to tolerate this.)

fill the design with glue, and start putting down the tiny shell bits. try not to scream. i totally lost novi within about two minutes of this, though she was my colorist and told me which colors to make the insects’ body parts.

then she ran around a lot and drew on her magnadoodle, eventually revisiting to check on how i was doing.

she helped me to spread the remaining eggshells in our flowerbed when we were all finished.

all in all, i feel like this would be a great meditative exercise in patience for adults and older children, but hardly for toddlers. i thought i’d include it here, for those individuals. enjoy every little bit and piece!

where would my home be without ikea ribba frames?

naturally, i wanted novi to join in the upcycling fun. i mean, this truly is a paint cut paste project (uh… cut, paint, paste) so we tried it out… cutting through cardboard with kid scissors isn’t too much fun, so i cut up two paper towel rolls into little rings that were about an inch wide. i didn’t measure to be exact – i just eye-balled it.

for some odd reason, i figured that i’d spray paint (alone during nap time: spray paint + kids = no way) the rings white. i thought it’d make it more brilliant when she painted them with colors, but honestly it made no difference. skip this step, unless you want your finished product to be white and modern (aka: not a kid craft.)

when the white paint was dry, the fun began. novi chose the paint (we used acrylics) some of the rings lavender and some of them spring green. she had lots of fun painting her hands the rings. she opted to only paint the outsides of the rings (though if you were able to paint the insides, too, the finished product may be more cohesive.)

once the colorful paint dried, we had fun arranging the rings into shapes. i had spray painted a box top white earlier, and novi decided this would be her frame, and she wanted to make a flower inside of it. we glued the rings together in a flower shape, holding them with mini clothespins until they were dry. (any clips will work.) if you’re not doing this with kids, staples may be quicker.

after the leaves and petals had adhered together, novi drizzled the glue generously onto the back of the flower, and i pressed it into her frame. (elmer’s glue dries clear so no worries on the drizzling.) she was excited about the results!

with the remaining “leaves” we decided to glue them together at random to make a cluster. right now it’s just sort of hanging out in novi’s bathroom.

i’m considering doing a natural-colored (no painting involved) version of this for our playroom wall, above novi’s fairy treehouse… if i do, i’ll letcha know!

novi really enjoyed watercoloring on wooden castanets, so she can make plenty more noise at home. (watercolors on wood is one of my personal favs… check back near the holidays for more on this medium!)

painting castanets

let's flamenco!

we also made shakers out of household objects like paper plates and beans. just fold the plate in half, staple around 3/4 of it, and let your little one put dried beans inside. (we used pinto beans.) then your kiddo can decorate the shaker with any sort of paints, crayons, markers, glued objects you have around. (novi opted to make painted dots and then play “connect the dots” with a crayon on hers.)

polka dotted pinto bean shaker

once we got home, novi wanted to continue making musical instruments. she said she really wanted a drum. i noticed that our raisins were pretty low, so we turned a cardboard raisin box into a tissue paper mod podge drum…

thinking on my toes to find drum supplies

so we can still see paul newman through the tissue... oh well

maybe later this afternoon we’ll put on an artsy concert for daddy. if you don’t wanna make art, but you want to make music, melissa and doug always got your back:

reason being: we already had all of the materials at home, and we love to repurpose items we already have into art and playthings. also, after doing the monster mash on jib-jab where novi got to play the part of frankenstein, she’s pretty into this particular massive mutant.

all you need is stuff in your recycling bin and maybe a few tokens and art materials you can find around the home:

• an empty toilet paper roll or a paper towel roll cut in half (for two monsters! we did it this way.)
• green & black paint, markers, or crayons (we used watercolors)
• golf tees, beads, or cardboard scraps (anything that can be ear-like)
• googly-eyes, buttons, felt, or construction paper (anything that makes eyes)
• scissors
• glue

paint or color your toilet paper roll about 2/3 green and 1/3 black.

cut slits along the top of the black part and fold them down to make “hair” and paint the folded down flaps.

hair colorist

then poke holes for your golf tees to go through. or, if you’re like us and are not a golfing family, just glue on some beads or cardboard or whatever you have lying around for knobby monster ears. then we used buttons for eyes because googly-eyes didn’t warrant a special trip to the craft store, and why buy new when you can reuse whatcha got? i had beads left over from the stash i found for our leaf garland.

novi drew mouths onto the frankensteins, and our little monsters came to life!

they did the monster mash... waaahooooo...

so this frankenstein is green in more ways than one! (hey, what are blogs for if not for cheesy puns?)