Murals

I know that most of you have seen these murals on my kids' walls, but I am posting them for my artist cousin to see. We had a local lady paint these for us. Ethan's room is the fire fighter room and the inspiration came from a Little Golden Book.

Emmett's is a treasure map. Aaron's mom made a boat quilt that hung in the room, so we played off that theme. The artist made the main land form an "E" shape for Emmett. We used silly nick names for some of the other labels on the map.



After doing a fictitious map, Aaron wished that it had been one that could be used for educational purposes. So, the basement toy room got a more realistic treatment where we did the solar system.

Our Weekend

For Christmas we bought Ethan a Gold Mining kit. Late on Friday night the kids asked if we could do it. They are supposed to use a hammer/scraper tool to remove the "rock" and find the treasure inside the rock. The paint brush is to brush away the dust that is created from the chiseling process. Ethan lost interest after about 5 minutes, but Emmett diligently worked until the first piece of treasure was removed from the rock. He looked like a little geologist. This little kit gave me a greater appreciation of how difficult it must be to find fossils or whatnot embedded in rock. It was difficult to chip away the rock and then to know that we may have started where nothing was to be found.

Aaron has been spending the weekend transforming the family room in our basement. He made trim to go on the ledge of the knee wall and then scuffed up some hard-to-find corrugated steel. (In the picture it looks shiny, but it is not). Now that it is all in place he has some finishing touches to complete. And then we have the task of decorating! He did such a great job and it looks SO cool!