Father's Day Portraits

Last Sunday was Father's Day in Australia. 

I've already shared the card that I made for the kids to give to Kim (you can see it here) but I also wanted to show you the fantastic drawings that the kids drew for their Daddy.

Ava is quite the accomplished little artist and has been drawing beautiful pictures from a very young age. Can you believe that she started drawing pictures recognisable as people before her second birthday? Crazy, right? It completely took me by surprise when I found her drawing an army of chalk people on our driveway a month before she turned two.  

Lola hasn't been quite as keen on drawing as Ava. Her drawings tend to be mostly squiggles and she gets frustrated very quickly if her picture doesn't look like what it's supposed to be. She'll draw if asked to but she won't sit down and start drawing of her own accord. Until now. In the last few weeks everything about Lola's drawings has changed. She's drawing people with bodies (not just heads with arms and legs sticking out!), she has started adding scenery and details, and - the best bit - she has started drawing without being asked to. Hooray! 

So here are the girls' Father's Day drawings. Ava drew the whole family with a beautiful sunset over the water because Daddy likes watching the sun set. Lola draw herself and Daddy at the beach. She even included the blue hat that Kim has been wearing lately (you'll see it popping up everywhere in my upcoming Seattle and Portland posts!).

Ava's Family Portrait

Lola's portrait of her and Daddy at the beach

Hooray for little artists!

Little Bags of Honey Biscuits

Today was Ava's last day of school for the year. Roll on the start of the two week winter break!

Ava's class celebrated their last day of school before Christmas by making Christmas crafts, watching a movie and, the kids' favourite part, wearing their pyjamas all day! Not a bad day of school.

And if all that doesn't sound good enough there was just one more treat...

Ava took bags of honey biscuits to school to give out to her classmates and teacher.

Bags of honey biscuits

Technically sweet treats like biscuits/cookies aren't actually allowed at school but we got around this by bagging the biscuits up for the kids to take home. Ah, loopholes! To make the bags of biscuits a little more festive I made cards from one of Ava's Christmas drawings and tied them on with red and white baker's twine. Ava personalised each bag of biscuits by writing a message on the back of each card. I was quite impressed that she was able to recognise each of her classmates names on the cards when handing them out. It's good to know that she is learning at school!

Merry Christmas

Halloween Cards

This year Ava and I made Halloween cards to send to her friends.

I thought we'd go for a printing technique that I haven't used in a really long time, so rather than printing the cards from our computer I made a linoleum block print from one of Ava's drawing.

We started with Ava's drawing of herself as a vampire from Hotel Transylvania. You can see the original drawing below. I resized it a little in photoshop and then traced over the print out to transfer it onto the linoleum block. Then it was time for the fun part: the carving. Ava was really keen to help out with this part but she had to give it a miss given how sharp the carving tools are and how easy it could be for her to a) cut herself, b) mess up the printing block or c) all of the above.

I hadn't done any linoleum block carving for about 15 years so I was a little concerned that it might take a really long time for me to get through it but in actual fact it was all done within a few hours. Much easier than I had expected and I found it quite a relaxing way to spend an evening.

Lola is almost 2...

Can you believe it? My little baby is almost 2 years old. In just 10 days it will be her birthday. I guess she's not a baby anymore.

To celebrate Lola's 2nd birthday we will be having a little party with some of her friends.
The theme of Lola's party? Her new obsession: Mickey Mouse.

Here's a look at the invitation for Lola's birthday party...

One happy little Mouseketeer

Lola's invitation 

Thanks to big sister Ava for the beautiful drawing of Lola the Mouseketeer!

Shrinky Dinky Doo (Part 1)

Shrinky Dinks: remember them? I loved making Shrinky Dinks as a kids but had kind of forgotten that they existed. That was until I found them on sale a little while back on The Mini Social. I grabbed a bunch of the blank Shrinky Dink paper and put them aside as a Summer vacation activity for the girls.

Shrinky Dinks

Ava loves Swampy

Ava has a new obsession...

Goodbye Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja. You've been replaced by the loveable alligator Swampy in the Disney mobile game Where's My Water?

Both Ava and Lola have been pretty mad about playing Where's My Water? since I downloaded it a few weeks ago. Ava seems quite smitten with the main character Swampy, a cute and friendly looking alligator. In the game Swampy is desperate to have a bath, however the water has been blocked off - hence the title. The player digs through dirt to get the water through to the bathtub, collecting rubber duckies and avoiding moss and slime along the way.

Ava has been talking about Swampy quite a bit lately and a few days ago she spent much of the afternoon making a book about him and the game. Of course, Ava features alongside Swampy in her book as well. Who wouldn't want to share a bath with an alligator? :)
Here's a look at Ava's book:

Swampy and Ava

Nail Salon

Today the girls played nail salon.

We all received brightly coloured (and slightly messy) manicures and pedicures plus the girls relaxed with a foot spa. Ok, so it was just a bucket filled with warm water and bubble bath. Close enough!

Lola's little finger nails

Lola eagerly waits for her turn in the "foot spa"

Pretty nails

Lola loved soaking her feet in the "foot spa"

We use Hopscotch Kids Watercolors range of kid friendly, water based nail polishes. They come in a great range of bright colours with fantastic names. At the nail salon today we used "Eenie Meenie Miney Moe" (green), "Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum in a Dish" (pink) and "Ink, A Bink, A Bottle of Ink" (blue).

I got a manicure too!

Nice work Ava

Once our nails were done the girls decided they'd like tattoos too. They chose popsicle and rainbow designs from Tattly which went nicely with their colourful nails.

Choosing tattoos

Popsicles

Ava decided to make a sign for our front door advertising her tattoo and nail salon. I love all the detail she has included in the sign. Apparently her manicures cost one dollar note and one penny - or is that a backwards ten?

Ava's Tattoo & Nails

When we first moved to Berkeley Ava set up a little nail salon in our lounge room and created a similar sign. She posted this sign in one of our front windows in the hope that people passing by might stop in for a manicure!

Ava's Nail Salon back in November

Ava's old salon used markers 

A little more gardening...

Ava seems to have been bitten by the gardening bug lately.

As well as today's herb and tree plantings (which you can read about here) Ava has planted her own vegetable patch right in the middle of our lounge room. Now you might think that sounds rather messy but you see, these are special vegetables made with paper and markers. (On a side note, I really must get into the habit of using the word "marker" rather than "texta". No one here knows what a texta is. Must be an Australian brand name.)

These special vegetables popped up fully grown in the vegetable patch (a knit blanket) in the backyard of Ava and Lola's house (a fort made of chairs, tables, step stools, blankets and the couch).

Ava & Lola in their "backyard" with the vegetable patch

There are tomatoes on vines, carrots, lettuces, potatoes and even a pumpkin growing in the vegetable patch.

Vegetable patch

The girls have been harvesting their vegetable crop and making themselves salad.

Carrot, potato, lettuce, tomato and pumpkin

Delicious :)


 

Father's Day USA

Oops... once again I've written out a blog post and then forgotten to go back, add in the last few details and click the publish button!

It's not really Father's Day here anymore, but it was when I started typing this post...

--

It's Father's Day here in America.

Lucky Kim gets to celebrate Father's Day twice a year; in June for American Father's Day and again in September for Australian Father's Day. No fair! I only get one Mother's Day.

The upside (for me) to having two Father's Days a year is that I get an extra chance to work on gift and card ideas.

This year for Father's Day (USA edition) Ava and I decided to give Kim the gift of family bike rides. Ava drew some lovely pictures of Kim and the girls riding their bikes and I turned them into a gift pack.

Ava liked the idea of giving Kim a booklet of vouchers. I liked the idea of making him a card that entitled him to unlimited family bike rides. Something he could keep in his wallet and pull out every time he wanted to take the girls for a ride. We decided to combine the ideas and make both. Well, sort of.

We came up with the idea of the Mason Family Bike Club. Ava and I made ID cards for each member of our family and these were included in a Member Gift Pack with a dozen vouchers, each one good for one family bike ride.

The "Mason Family Bike Club"  member gift pack with Ava' original drawings

Welcome Mamma & Papa

A few days ago my parents arrived in America to spend a week with us on their way home from Europe.

Ava and Lola have been so excited about seeing Mamma and Papa in real life. For the past 7 months Mamma and Papa have lived in the Skype app in our laptop - or at least that's how it seems to the kids :)

I thought it would be a nice surprise to have a few decorations ready to welcome Mamma and Papa when they arrived at our apartment in Berkeley. Ok, so I might have gone a little overboard but it was fun making the decorations and Mamma and Papa were certainly surprised!

Here's a little look at what greeted Mamma and Papa on their arrival...

Ava and Lola with their special t-shirts, flags and bunting

T-shirts, flags and bunting... yep, we went a little overboard!

Ava and I made the bunting together. As usual I did all the boring stuff (printing out the flags, cutting them out and assembling them into bunting) and Ava did the fun stuff (colouring the flags and drawing pictures). Lola helped out a little with the colouring too. She loves to copy whatever her big sister is doing and is really getting into colouring and drawing. 

Once Ava had decorated all of the flags and I'd cut them all out I set about assembling them. I used cotton twine and colourful Japanese washi masking tape for this. Nice and simple.

Ava decorated bunting in beautiful patterns to welcome Mamma and Papa

The bunting even included pictures of Mamma and Papa

Lola coloured in a few pieces of the bunting too

The finished bunting

Ava also drew a welcome picture of us all to hang on our front door. I like how Mamma and Papa have switched heights!

Ava, Lola, Mummy, Daddy, Mamma and Papa

Ava and Lola get ready to head out to find Mamma and Papa

My favourite part of the welcome was the t-shirts that I made for the girls to wear. I took Ava's drawings of Mamma and Papa from the bunting flags and printed them on t-shirts with Ava's handwritten text: Mamma and Papa USA 2012.

The girls love wearing their special t-shirts and they'll be wearing them as much as possible while we play tourist with Mamma and Papa.

   

The official "Mamma and Papa USA 2012" tour t-shirt - available at all good souvenir stores!

A little one for Lola and a big one for Ava

And last of all we made flags. Once again I printed, cut out and assembled the flags while Ava decorated them. Ava held a "Mamma" flag and Lola waved a "Papa" flag.

A warm welcome

Welcome Mamma and Papa!

Updated Calendar

Last February I put up a post about the daily "calendar" that I had made for Ava.

Ava's "calendar"

This calendar, which is more of a daily schedule, shows what the day has in store for Ava i.e. preschool, swimming, playing with friends... I made the calendar just before Ava turned three in an effort to stop the repetitive "What are we going to do today?" that she would come out with every single morning.

Almost Thanksgiving

It's almost Thanksgiving - another first for us here in America.

Ava is pretty excited about Thanksgiving although she has absolutely no idea what it's about! All she cares about is that she gets to eat turkey and cranberry sauce, and for that she's very thankful.

I'm looking forward to roasting a turkey and baking a pumpkin pie. I have this image in my head of me roasting an entire turkey, so big that it takes up the entire oven. Of course, there's no way that we could realistically eat that much turkey (no matter how much Ava loves it) so I've let practicality take over and I'm roasting a turkey breast roll instead. This way we get all the best turkey meat anyway. I'm not so good with all the "gooby" bits!

Ava has been drawing lots of turkeys for Thanksgiving decorations and for friends back home  - who of course will not be celebrating Thanksgiving. Here are a few of Ava's best turkey drawings.

Ava's first attempt at drawing a turkey.

The turkey gets a little more body this time

A Thanksgiving picture for our neighbors

Happy Smile Biscuits

Every time we go into the city Ava asks for her one of her favourite treats: a happy smile biscuit from the David Jones food hall.

Mmm... happy smile biscuits! White chocolate eyes, raspberry nose, lolly teeth and hundreds & thousands hair on a delicious biscuit base. What's not to love?

They also make great masks.

What a pretty face!

A mask for Daddy too

Recently Ava decided to make her own happy smile biscuit with her favourite "ingredients" - paper, textas and scissors.

Ava creates her own happy smile biscuit.
I love the hundreds & thousands hair that she has drawn.

Can you tell the difference between the real happy smile biscuits and Ava's?

Delicious :)

Paper Food

Ava loves drawing.

Ava loves cooking.

Ava loves combing the two and making her own food with paper, textas and scissors.

Here's a meal that Ava cooked up recently.

Mmm... carrots, beans, broccoli and a tomato.

Don't forget to eat your vegetables!

When I grow up

When Ava grows up she wants to be a ballet teacher.
Or a dentist.
Or an astronaut.
Or a fireman.
Or an artist.
Or a builder.
Or a paleontologist.
Or someone who works at Ikea!

Today we decided to keep a record of all the jobs that Ava would like to do when she grows up. It's a long list! Ava has been writing the jobs in her journal and has decided to draw a picture for each one. It's taking a while to get through the list but I thought I'd share a few of the pictures so for.

When I grow up I want to be an Ast Teacher.
Oops! Two words on the list merged into one! 

Supermarket Lady? I think the official title is Check Out Chick :)

So many opportunities. I wonder what the future holds.

Ava practices being a dentist

At least all of the jobs on Ava's list are exclusively human.
When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a frog - so I could marry Kermit!