Valentine making, crafting, needle felting, school parties and a lovely tea party

For the past two weeks, the girls have been so busy with Valentine's Day preparations. With the cold nights and early sunset coupled with no distraction from television, our evenings are usually spent around the kitchen table(which is currently my desk until we move our furniture over). Many personalized valentines were created with lots of glue, paper, stickers, modge podge, glitter, magazine clippings, etc. I always feel happy inside when I see the girls engaged in a project and being creative.

Sela was beaming on Friday afternoon as she told me about how she was called out of class to the gym by Mr. Hogle, the PE teacher. She had made him a button with all kinds of fun words describing him. He wanted to thank her (for his only handmade valentine) and did so in front of an entire class of, gasp, older kids. When she came in he thanked her and they all clapped for her. To say that it made her week is an understatement. Thank goodness for thoughtful teachers.

Darcie's girls invited us to a Sweetheart Valentine Tea Party on Wednesday. Oooh, we love tea parties! I loved catching up with Darcie...we talked at length about our shared desires for the simple, unhurried life. The girls played so well and so long. At the end of dinner, Rollin and Ceci had a little salad eating party of their own.




Nina had a Valentine's Day party at preschool. I volunteered to help and the stars must have been aligned, because Rollin slept in the car for the entire party. That was my plan, but typically, things don't work out so perfectly. So I was able to focus on Nina and her little friends for an hour. I enjoyed that very much.
























I went to Seattle this week with my friend Suzanne who is teaching me lots about using roving to create lovely felt objects. We did some shopping for our art class on Friday. We taught the kids to make felt animals using roving (unspun wool). Suzanne read them a story about the whole process that takes place to create wool, starting with shearing the sheep. Then each of the children made their own animal by making the roving into felt, a process using water and soap and lots of rubbing. The kids seem to really enjoy it, and after we came home, we started making our own little farm. I embellished the animals by needle felting, which I showed Sela how to do. We got a little carried away so at 10:30 pm, the house was quite messy, there was roving all over the place, but we had the beginnings of a nice little farm of felted animlals. So fun.


Saturday was sunny and we all worked in the yard for the bulk of the day. It was a great feeling to have cool air and sun and just to work outside. We we made a lot of progress. We were basically just trimming and raking and cutting dead plants back to make room for new growth. Little buds and flowers are coming up everywhere. Spring is within our grasp, and I am so excited to see what types of beautiful plants will be popping up all over.