Art Classes Without the Cost or Commitment

YouTube is amazing for how to tutorials on just about anything.  We've learned how to put down faux wood floors and crochet all sorts of things including several blankets, borders, wraps, toys, ornaments, scarves, and appliques. When we need to see how something is done, YouTube is often the first place we turn.

Earlier this year, Sam and I decided we wanted to learn how to become better at painting. I looked in to signing up with several good art classes in our area. But since a big part of the fun of being creative (and of homeschooling for that matter) is pursuing what is most interesting to you and your student, (not to mention the fact that neither of us wanted to commit to being somewhere at the same time every week for any great length of time), we took a fraction of the money we would have paid to an instructor and spent it on our own art supplies after finding a great teacher for free on YouTube.

 Amy Pearce has got be our favorite online art teacher so far. You can also follow her on Facebook under Her Art From The Attic as well as Mr. Otter Art Studio-Free Children's Art Classes. We love her teaching style as well as being able to choose what we will learn to paint, when we feel like painting! I definitely recommend giving some of her lessons a try. You don't have to spend much at all to paint with acrylics. You can find small bottles for less than a dollar each at Hobby Lobby and they contain plenty enough paint to get you started! :)

Here are some pics of a few of the messes we've made over the past several months:

Disclaimer: In case you wanted to paint the Gerber Daisies, that tutorial was from a different instructor. Her video was very long, and a little less helpful for an active 8 year old, in my opinion. I chose to watch that one ahead of time and then just passed on the basic info to Sam when we pulled out the paints.

Just Keeping You in The Loop

Get it? Loop?...Crochet?...cuz it's all loops and this a recap and...yeah.....

So in case you were wondering, Sammy and I did finish our afghans in time to meet our Christmas deadline. They weren't presents for anyone other than ourselves, and we enjoyed lazing around with our new blankets on a very wintry Christmas Day. Ooohhh so cozy. :)

We both just learned how to crochet in October and these were our first projects. If you've always wanted to learn crochet too, here is the link to the video we liked best for learning the basic stitches. And here is the granny square tutorial we followed to make our blankets. FYI we love The Crochet Crowd tutorials. Michael Sellick (aka Mikey) is so good at clearly explaining and demonstrating what needs to be done. Here he explains how to join the granny squares,  explaining the advantages and/or disadvantages of each method. Sammy and I both chose the single crochet option.

After we finished our blankets, we decided to try some faster, smaller projects. Sammy made this beautiful scarf.

She made all the flowers using this tutorial (again from Mikey) and then decided to join all the flowers together as a scarf.

I followed this tutorial, roughly, and made a camouflage beanie for my husband on Christmas Day. (I told you we loved The Crochet Crowd.) I used an "h" hook because I didn't have the size "g" used in the pattern. So to make if fit snugly, I had to stop increasing 2 rounds earlier than the tutorial called for. But it fits him perfectly and he loves it!

 Right now we are working on crocheting a rag rug. I have wanted one forever and after cleaning out our office closet (again!) I realized I just might have enough scrap material to try and make one. Sammy has been a huge help ripping and rolling the material. I won't take the time to explain much about the rug at this point but I can show you a picture of how far I've gotten. It is currently 2'x6' but should measure at least 6'x10' when I'm done and hopefully will replace that dirty old rug seen under our dining room table. :)

We've actually got a lot more fun (and inexpensive) projects to share with you that you might enjoy trying too, but we can't sit at the computer all day so....next time! :) 

Hint: Our next post involves paint!

Too Many Words and Not Enough Pictures :)

Wow. Was the rainbow quilt really the last thing we blogged about? So many fun things we didn't record!

Sammy and I were blessed to be able to take a quick trip to NJ for a friend's wedding and my niece's 1st birthday in September. While there, we visited Cape May for the first time, and were totally bummed this week when we found out Harriet Tubman once owned a home there! If only we had known before our trip! She is one of our favorite Heroes of History. So for now we console ourselves that she may have visited the same strip of beach we walked on...though I have a hard time imagining her taking a moment of leisure for herself.

We enjoyed Sammy's first ever surprise party, thrown by our friend Miss Tanya. She  is also the friend responsible for re-energizing our school year by helping us better understand notebooking! We had been trying to do school this way for a while without realizing it had an actual name and that many others were doing it this way already. But I was running into a problem. I had a hard time coming up with an organizational system until Tanya introduced us to several good articles on notebooking. And let me tell you, Sam and I both LOVE IT! Love, love, love it. So I'm sure you'll be seeing posts on it later. My Pinterest page is beginning to be taken over by notebooking already.

Sammy and I also learned to crochet since the last time we posted and are both currently working on afghans. I think we are each about halfway done with them. Our goal is to finish by Christmas. So fun and easy. That's another post we need to get to!

Right now we are working on Christmas-afying the house. Slowly but surely. Last night we made this garland from cinnamon scented pine cones for the front hall.  (This way you are greeted with a whiff of cinnamon instead of the scent of dog hair that I haven't swept up in a week and a half). ;) But we can't show you ours yet because we still plan to add more decorations to finish off the hall.

That about sums up what we've been doing for the past 2-3 months!

The Other Side of the Rainbow

  It occurred to us that we never showed you the soft rainbow fleece on the fuzzy side of Sammy's quilt. So here's a quick look! :)

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

  Now that Sammy is getting more comfortable using the sewing machine (and Mama is getting more comfortable letting her), we have been on the lookout for projects that go well with the many, many pieces of scrap material we have tucked away. Yesterday we finally found a use for the squares of rainbow material which were given to Sammy last summer, when we came across this tutorial for a simple quilt! We also used up the piece of rainbow fleece I was given a few years back, as well as the remaining batting I had purchased when we made these American Girl doll sleeping bags. 

Here are some pictures of Sammy in action:

After we turned the quilt and Mama whip stitched it closed, we decided it deserved some fancy buttons instead of a plain knot in each rainbow patch. So we put an end to pajama day, got dressed, and ran to Hobby Lobby where we found some great glittery butterfly buttons! In all, we only had to spend $1.79 to make this fantastic, oh so very Sammy, quilt (which we finished just in time for bed)!

DIY Denim Maxi

  Even when you're homeschooling, back to school still means new clothes. One thing on our lists of clothes we wanted to find was a long denim skirt. You would think those would be easy to find. But the ones in Mama's sizes were not her style. And the ones in Sammy's sizes were generaly super crazy short! So we gave up looking and made our own from some old jeans. ;) Way easy. Here's the link to make your own denim maxi.

My BIG Surprise

  Every school year when I finish school I get a graduation present from Mommy and Daddy. For Kindergarten I got a pink nightgown with a pegasus unicorn on it. When I finished First Grade I got Legos! Now that I am finishing Second Grade, my Mommy and Daddy gave me a BIG surprise.

I named him Spot because he has a spot around his left eye. He is lots of fun. Spot likes to go for piggy back rides,

beg for treats at the table, 

and wrestle with me.

He also likes to play the piano even though he doesn't know how to.

Sometimes we like to swing outside or read a book.

Hershey did not know if he trusted Spot at first.

But he decided that Spot was ok.

I think Spot and I will have a lot of fun in Third Grade! 

Forescore and Seven Years Ago....

 Just kidding, it was really only 2 weeks ago that we found this amazing, never before used, still in the package, Civil War themed Chess and Checkers set. 

The Union Army

 

The Confederate Army

Kings and Queens = Abraham Lincoln and Grant, Jefferson Davis and Lee

Even the checkers are decorated with the two flags.

Sammy is doing pretty well learning Chess but she is GREAT at Checkers.  It is tough to beat her! I learned years ago, when teaching her to read, that when she starts monkeying around and doing gymnastics, that is when her mind is really moving.  Just like in this shot of her contemplating her next move.

I can only teach her the basics in Chess so it looks like Grandpa Vater is just going to have to make a trip out here soon! (Please? We'll let you be the South!) :)

Banking 101

  In an earlier post we mentioned that we do not give an allowance but that Sammy was still able to have her own spending money to use at a rummage sale last month.  We thought we would explain a little more about how she is learning to manage money.

We had tried a few different ways of helping Sammy learn to do her chores, be helpful to others, and understand how to handle small amounts of money.  But in January this year, we heard of a book called Stewardship Street available from Doorposts, that seemed to cover all these topics in exactly the right way for us. 

When the book came in the mail we were able to use the patterns included, along with 7 empty cartons that we'd collected, to get started.

We made a royal mess of the office floor that day! But it was time well spent and we had a lot of fun decorating the banks together.

The idea of Stewardship Street is to decide what categories are important for your family's use of money, and make a building shaped bank from the empty carton that will correspond with that category.  For example, we have a church for our tithe and a 2 story house for Sammy's future household savings. The building and loan is her long term savings such as a car or college courses, etc. The art shop is her fun money that she can spend however she wants (though while she is still learning, Mama and Daddy get the last word on whether her purchase is a good decision or not). We also have a home with a broken window to save money for helping others, a gift shop for short term savings such as Christmas gifts for friends, and the clothing store is for living expenses.  Obviously she is not buying her own clothes right now, but she can use that savings for new socks or a shirt or belt she likes from a garage sale etc.

We left the back of each bank open to make it easier to deposit and withdraw her earnings.

Sammy doesn't get paid for every job she does. We made a list of chores she is expected to do because she lives here.  Those include making her bed,  tidying her room and bathroom, and feeding the pets daily.  If she does not do her basic chores, she gets fined from her fun money bank!  (Ouch!)

We made another list of Service Opportunities where she would be helping Mama or Daddy by doing some chores we try to stay on top of ourselves, such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, emptying all the trashcans in the house, or clearing the trash out of Mama's car. If she does a job from the Service Op. list, but complained or had to be reminded to finish it, she is still paid the set wage.  But if she does that job with a good attitude or without even being asked, we pay her double the set wage to encourage a good attitude towards helping others and taking initiative when she sees something needs to be done.

Mama records Sammy's daily earnings and every Monday is pay day.  We add up Sammy's earnings together, and divide it according to the percentages we have set up for each category.  We liked the format shown in the the book and so did not need to change any of the categories or percentages listed for our family.

Then Sammy practices counting out the correct change for each bank.  As she gets older, the pay and chores will increase. But it is surprising how much money she has been able to tuck away week by week so far.

(Honestly, we don't wear PJ's all the time, although you wouldn't know that from the last few posts!)

We really like this method so far. We've only been using it since mid January this year, but HIGHLY recommend it! 

Birds of a Feather

Mama and I started a bird collection. Well, a bird statue collection. We didn't plan to collect them, we just thought they were cute.  We started with these salt and pepper shakers from Cracker Barrel. That was in our old house, then we moved.

After we moved, Mama surprised me with two statues, one for her and one for me.  We named them Chickadee and Chirpy.

Then we got two other birds from a gift shop near our house.

Today, we roller skated at the park, and on the way home we went to the gift shop and got 2 other birds.  We named them Lucy and Ethel.

There was a lady at the gift shop who told us a good idea.  Instead of splitting up the collection when I grow up, she said we could trade them back and forth! We think that's a great idea!

Lucy and Ethel are my favorites.