Paper Circle Fun

Today Miss E and I traced and cut circles, made a card each, addressed and stuffed an envelope, and took a little walk to our mailbox together. She really enjoyed stamping the envelope, finding out that the envelope has a sticky flap if you lick it, and finally getting carried "like a baby" so that she could place the envelope inside the mail box "all by [her]self". The whole thing felt like a movie montage. Haha!

We recycle Miss E's daily report cards from school for our circles.

The paper circles are a gift for our friends in Cali :) We have had so much fun making things with them, and I thought it'd be a fun little something to share with friends who cannot be here with us to join in the paper circl fun in person. There is so much that can be done with these cool little shapes!

The whole thing started because of this amazing book, Picture Pie, which shows you how to make flat paper flowers, birds, bugs, etc. by cutting circles into fractions, the way you would cut a pizza pie. Math AND art. I'm in love.

 I googled "Picture Pie" and clicked images and LOTS of images of the book and art inspired by it instantly appeared, so I won't add the pictures I took to respect the book's artist. But I'll include some images I found, since they are already out and they might be good inspiration for you. The first one explains the process pretty well, and hopefully after you see how it goes, you can copy the design from the other images more easily.















You can also add more shapes and get creative:








Picture Pie style fun with paper circles is not the only way to enjoy little paper circles. I found lots of other things one can do with paper shapes. Makes me want to get a 2in circle punch!

I've always been a sucker for a garland. You can sew them or glue the string inside a two-circle sandwich. You can turn several strands into a cute mobile. You can go 3D by folding three or more circles in half and gluing the flaps together! It's unsurprisingly endless, the garland fun.

From http://www.brit.co/paper-decor/

from sunsail.com

Look at this cool art idea from mer mag:




And how about this scalloped art by You Are My Fave?! (There are a couple other ideas in this link too)



And then there is also the 3D stuff you can make!
Like these tulips:  (Click and scroll down for a brief explanation of the steps)





And this other flower design (from the same link above)




Finally a truly complicated and time consuming option LOL that would have been incredibly fun for my 12 year old self. Fine, I would love to have the time to make these now. Instructions here. It is very well explained- step by step, with pictures! You basically draw a triangle inside several circles, fold, and glue all the flaps together.



You can make simpler versions by using less circles:


It is certainly time consuming to cut circle by circle, especially if you need them to be exactly the same size, so I see why crafters will often get a punch. Having said that, I probably won't because I've been trying to simplify, so anything I don't absolutely need I want out of my house. Plus, I'm not necessarily interested in perfect circles and half the fun is watching poor little Miss E try to cut the shape. Haha!   

Hope you have fun!!

The Games My Children Play

Miss E plays doctor-
She wears her toy stethoscope, and enlists Mama or Daddy to be her guinea pig patient. She listens to our heart and looks inside our mouth. Asks if we have butterflies in our ears. She will then inevitably decide that her patient needs medicine. I think it is so funny how she always asks me if I want pink or green medicine, only to insist in giving me whatever color I did not ask for. She also thinks it's hilarious, so I always mock concern that it is the wrong color. Finally, she will be convinced to graciously give me the color of medicine I wanted. Mocosa!

Her favorite game these days, though, is "Super Why"
Super Why is an educational show that airs on PBS and is also available on Netflix. Their goal is to teach children the alphabet and some basic spelling skills through the adventures of the super heroes pictured above. They always show up and save the day, of course, and Miss E loves to swish her invisible cape as she appears on the scene (usually a huge bad monster has appeared out of nowhere, or someone is stuck somewhere and needs to be "unstuck"). The game easily adapts to when we are playing with the bunny family, of course, as the "Baby girl bunny" can quite easily fall off the edge of the toy house and inexplicably get trapped in a shape sorting cube, and will need to be saved over and over again in an interminable cycle of madness and incredible lack of balance. Mama is only able to play this game so many times. haha!

 She came up with a new game this week. It is called building a bridge, I suppose, since that is all there is to it: she finds toys that are flat and sturdy enough to step on (or asks me to do it) and then spends ten to twenty minutes stepping on the bridge, back and forth. Yay. LoL. I usually just sit on the leather chair and try to hold a conversation while she does this. Or I just try not to fall asleep. haha!

Mr E has much simpler games, just the kind I can play over and over again much more painlessly. He loves to play with cars, trucks, and even the little people airplane we got when Miss E was a baby-toddler. It's easy for me to follow him around the house wheeling the toy cars around, or send one of those pull-back cars to the kitchen for him to catch and send back. Which reminds me that he also loves balls these days and can toss the ball so well!! Mr E is so very socially intelligent! He quickly understood that if he throws the ball at me, I will throw it back, and it will be a fun game. He has always enjoyed cars, but he did not always enjoy the game as much as he does these days, possibly because he is more skilled at catching and throwing said ball?

They play some games together, or enjoy them separately. They love to sit in boxes, of course, or in the laundry basket. The containers can be boats, or school buses, or trains.
They also love to sit under the table and play house. They bring in their sheep skins, blankets, and cushions, and basically just sit there and have conversations that I can almost never understand. But they go back and forth, so I think they are communicating somehow!

These are the main games I can think of them playing these days..   :)
 

Sick Week

We have been sick. Again.
This is no fun.

Miss E had to stay home this week, and she is bored to death.

I am sick and grumpy.

Quijote went to back to work this week and the adjustment time could not have come at a worse time. I had actually been looking fwd to our collective return to "normal" and "scheduled" but instead I have had little sense of knowing what is going on or having any control over it. He has been super sweet and has tried to help- HAS helped a lot. But it's not his fault. It's my mindset. Can't shake the blues. Sigh.

Let me share some pictures, in an attempt to sheer myself up a little bit :) We did have a great time, esa semana de mi cumpleanos. We were still on vacation (read Quijote was around all day, jeje!)

And as you know, my inlaws were here for the weekend-

Thanks for the mat! it's a permanent exhibition now ;)

 Later that week Miss E was into being a ballerina cat (I blame it on Daniel Tiger)

And she wanted -insistently- Mr E to be a Tiger, but he only let me give him whiskers and a little black nose:

Please notice the kitty tail I made for her. Please ignore the lack of pants. jaja!

The next weekend we tried to go to the park, but it was hot and we ended up going to the Children's museum:

Wings!!!!

Temporary exhibition- Miss E loved it!

She put on her explorer's vest and ran around and played bear in the cave with Mr E

Then we climbed around!! It was challenging!

She only made it a couple rocks over to the right, but she did not give up.

She kept getting back on the climbing wall and kept going till the end :)

Mr E was a fan of the air and bubbles section.

hahaha!

my little opera singer

we put that skeleton together!

cool spacious set up where kids can run :) or stop and look at things...

And of course the big blue blocks are always a hit

they had so much fun!

Love the arts and crafts area. We need to make it out to one of their events.

If I ever have the $ and space I want this for our craft room :)

We also ate pretty well that week! Courtesy of the inlaws, who left us with lots of good foods in our fridge.

A yummy recipe from real simple- taragon sauce for the meat, and roasted red onions and carrots as a side.

I keep trying my fave foods from childhood on them. With mixed success. "Mixed" is a euphemism.

Miss E did eat them quite happily.

Ice cream is always a hit.

yep. I broke our blender, as you know. but this particular recipe is actually easier with the hand blender

the ice cream itself has barely a teaspoon per batch, but the first time we made it we added cherries. lotta sugar in those :P

they didn't complain though..

this is his I-m-way-too-exited-I-can-t-contain-myself face

ta-da!

lamb meat balls

and a second time with cous cous. Mr E likes that word.

And the bunny family moved to a cottage- the big house was too hard to play with! the open concept is working out better for us all.

I do feel better. Two weeks of partying is worth the sick week afterwards. Right? hehe.. sigh.