OCTOBER IN WISCONSIN

Here we are back in Oshkosh. Our family is such fun for us and keeps us moving! I attended swim lessons this Sat morning. Emma is doing well with her back float kicking. She has a strong kick! Matti is practicing the crawl stroke and becoming more accustomed to water in her face. The three little boys in her class love to splash and all the time, much to her frustration.

After swimming, we made a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and the girls each picked out two colors of embroidery thread. Emma has two stuffed animals who need some repairs to their faces and Matti just "needed" some thread "for her picture". Not sure what picture and what she intends to "create" but she likes to experiment with things. I let them each pick out a stamp in the discontinued ones. Emma chose a walking mummy with bandages all around except for eyes and some bandages are unraveling. Matti chose a 2x2 Stampabilities stamp with 2 haunted houses. She asked me if I have turquoise ink and I do, so we will have to see what she makes from that.

I am playing around with both of their stamps. I used the houses and created a night time scene with the houses in black over a sunset sky and I did the whole card in 10 min. I was experimenting directly onto the card front and it just happened. I will wait until Matti makes her card before posting mine, and will put them up together. Mine uses Cat's eye chalk inks for the sky, and I made a circle mask for the moon before inking the sky. I drew the clouds, the spider webs, and the spider. The rest is pretty simple.

Here is Matti's card, all bright and sunny just like she is! The only part I did for her was to ink up the stamp for her(so she didn't get it on her clothing!). She picked out all the colors and where she wanted to put them. The turquoise house is close to the pink one and she did not stamp it hard enough to get the full color, so I outlined it with her permission. We talked about the sidewalks and the punched flowers for the flower beds. She wanted some birds in the sky, so I showed her on another piece of paper how to make birds from the letter "M", but the points are rounded. Matti made hers more like "M's" but that is OK. She did it herself! I think for a 4 1/2 yr old, she did a super job and is learning so much. It is amazing that one stamp can be used to create such different looks. We had a blast being together and "stamping".

We are making ourselves available for picking up the girls to help the family when needed. Jodi is finishing up her second masters and so there is a time crunch some days since Matti is still in the daycare, and Emma is in kindergarten. We help when we can.

Thanks for stopping by.