Mommy Brain

The kids and I are taking the next four weeks off of school to focus on Christmas. We are still having our daily Bible and read-aloud time (we are making our way through Inkheart) and we’re planning to do a lot of crafting.

It began this morning with a Floam kit Josiah received from his birthday. Don’t believe the commercial, folks. You know the one, where the kids are all happily pressing Floam – the new styrofoam bead crafting compound – on everything from bicycle helmets to skateboards? Josiah’s kit was designed to make some insect/bug-type creatures by pressing Floam to various styrofoam molds. Unfortunately, the only thing the stuff stuck to was our hands. And our chairs. And my hair when Jonathan touched it with Floam-coated hands. I couldn’t get the darn stuff off of our hands and onto the crafts. Our project finally ended with a mutual decision to toss the stuff. Of course, this was easier said than done since it was everywhere and not wanting to come off. Did I mention it’s not particularly water-soluble?

We moved on to our second craft project. APO Industries, a small mother-daughter company, was gracious enough to send me a free set of their wooden ornaments. The ornaments are natural wood that you can either hang as is or paint.

We got out the craft paint and everyone had a blast. We had the Abby collection. Jonathan painted a bear, Josiah painted a candy cane, I did an angel, Noah did the wreath, and Natalie painted the Christmas ornament. We set them all out to dry and will be doing the backs tomorrow.

I was also sent the 2006 commemorative ornament, which is adorable. I haven’t decided yet if I want to attempt to paint it or leave it as is, because the wood is beautiful in and of itself.

There are three different 5-ornament collections, very reasonably priced at $5 for each collection. They also have more elaborate individual ornaments that sell for $7 for each ornament. On top of these great prices, standard shipping is free.

If you’re looking for a craft project to do for the kids – or just for yourself – these ornaments would be great. And you’d be supporting a mother-daughter business. If our other computer was working correctly and Kevin wasn’t so busy re-installing software and saving my files (including my massive To-Read list), I’d have him take pictures and post our efforts. Keeping in mind that the kids are all under 10 and I have absolutely no artistic talent when it comes to painting, they turned out pretty darn cute.