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 We go through many, many crayons at our house.  I buy several boxes of the 24 count crayons during the back to school sales when I can get them for a quarter a box, and we use them all before the next year.  I have always figured the 24 different colors were enough for the kids to draw what they wanted, but this last year E1 convinced me to splurge on the 120 count box.  She was right; they have really used the subtle shades.

  We have one of the best next door neighbors!  Besides being very friendly and doting on the kids, almost every week she brings over a bunch of bakery items to share with us.  This week she brought a pack of rolls, a cherry strudel, two giant cinnamon rolls, a pan of plain frosted brownies and a pan of German chocolate frosted brownies.  German chocolate cake is one of my favorites, and I have to say the German chocolate frosting on rich brownies is even better.

  I took this as part of my current “there’s art in everyday things” series, but I think it might be stretching that a bit.

I was washing dishes after everyone was asleep, and it made me think of the kids asking to play with the bubbles created from the dish soap in the sink. They will use the bubbles to sculpt with and decorate the front of the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen.  The first time I will have to admit I was cringing inside at the “mess” I was perceiving, but I realized after they were done and I quickly wiped the cabinets and the floor- voilà! super clean kitchen.

  I beat my April 1 deadline and got E4’s longies done!  I’m technically still working on the drawstring, but I’m not going to count that because she can wear them without one.  I took several pictures, but due to teething I couldn’t get a good one without her hands in her mouth.

  E3 and her cousins helped my father-in-law roll the cookies in powdered sugar.  They had so much fun, and they spent the rest of the afternoon on a sugar high from licking their fingers completely clean after every one.

  My kids love the refrigerator.  All of them (well, the mobile ones 🙂 ) love to stand and rearrange the magnets, spell nonsense words, make designs, and draw pictures to put up.  I know that is rather typical of many kids, but it still fascinates me how long they will play there and that it is still fun to them.

  Since I’m using the pictures-a-day challenge to chronicle parts of our life this year, it seems strange I don’t have a picture of newspapers yet since they are a big part of it. 

 E1 starting an afghan block has inspired me to cast on a new project as well.  This yarn will (eventually, I hope) be a pair of felted mocs for E4 using a pattern from LittleTurtleKnits.  The yarn I’m using is very different than what I’ve used before, it’s Paton’s SWS which is a 70% wool/30% soy blend self-striping yarn. The soy content makes it feel very silky, but it’s still supposed to felt really well. I can’t wait to see how it looks and feels felted!

 We had a really relaxing afternoon. We started a 1000 piece puzzle while finishing our current audiobook, Magyk by Angie Sage.

 Have you seen the new dollar coin yet?

I’m still playing around some with macro photography. OlympusDigitalSchool is a neat site I found that has different types of photo lessons. Some of them are listed for their specific cameras, but I think that the concepts are useful for any digital camera.