Smile!

Alexandros & Adriana

Hi.
I can not believe the January has almost passed already. Last year I made some nice goals, set some targets... some I achieved, some not, but in general I am happy with how it went. It seams like a long year, full of many happenings, mostly related to my children and family.

They grow up so fast... I want to do many things for myself, but I often get caught up with everyday activities regarding home and kids and the day passes sooner than I realize. I am sure many mothers could say the same. At the end of it I am often so tired, that even a simple knit is more than I'm able to concentrate on. And yet, I have this calm happiness in me. The most important things in my life are in balance, the rest will come.

I've been doing several little projects with my kids lately. One of the most fun was painting the fridge magnets! Oh, the excitement for all the bright colors! Alexandros was painting stars in black night, and the yellow sun in blue sky among other things, Adriana was trying out colors and her tiles are a wonderful chaos of bright and cheerful color splashes! All of these are now decorating our fridge and my kids are so proud to be the creators of them. The original thought was to send one or two to grand-mom, but I've been very selfish and this time they have all stayed with us. We might do another project like this closer to mother's day and indeed send them :)

hand made by Alexandros & Adriana with a bit of assistance from their mom :)

 I think these kind of projects are great for kids. Fantasy is working full speed on, concentration and hand coordination are in play - it is much more tricky to paint with a brush than a pencil! They also learn about mixing colors, like yellow + blue = green, etc...

This time we got a ready-made set for painting tiles from a toy store, but you could use any small tiles for this project and a magnet base.

I am thinking that next time we will go to the beach and find flat pebbles for painting, then paint them like fish or bugs or flowers, depending on what my kids will have mood for... that might be even more fun!