We spent most of Labor Day weekend painting the girls’ rooms. We only expected to spend a day painting, but because the previous color of the walls were such a strong blue, it took more coats than expected and the process ended up taking up our whole three-day weekend! We were pretty happy with the results, though. Check out the before and after…
Mio’s Room: Before (furniture pushed to the middle in preparation for painting)
Mirei’s Room: Before
The previous owner had sons, so the walls were all this shade of blue.
For Mio’s room, we painted the whole room in an ivory with a very subtle hint of pink, and we chose a light coral with which to paint a striped accent wall. We loved how it turned out, and so did Mio!
Here’s a video of her waking up to the reveal…
Afterwards, we mounted these alphabet hooks that we repainted gold. Thank you hubs! You know he’s the one when he says, “I tried my best to kern them.”
For Mirei’s room, we chose a very delicate and sophisticated shade of pink. I love that it is not too garish or childish, and will be a timeless wall color that she won’t outgrow too quickly.
Mio received a birdhouse kit from her friends as one of her birthday presents, and so we decided to put it together this week! She first built it by assembling the pieces with Daddy, and then painted it with me on Thursday.
Mio was pretty particular and wanted to paint each panel/surface a different color.
Leaning back to admire her creation!
The completed birdhouse!
A collaborative creation between Mio, Daddy, and Mama.
Thanks for the great gift, Kosei, Avonlea, and Smith family! 🙂
Happy Halloween! The Halloween fun continued into this week, even though we’d already had a good share of activities over the weekend. While Dan had carved his pumpkin at the Halloween party on Saturday, Mio and I decided to paint our pumpkins at home this week. She’s still a little too young to be wielding a knife, so we thought painting would be a much safer alternative. 😉
Painting our pumpkins at home together.
Mio kept saying, “Pumpkin! Paint!” and while we each had our own pumpkins to paint, she kept dabbing her paintbrush on mine to help me paint my pumpkin. So sweet!
With our completed pumpkins this morning. Happy Halloween!
Mio and I’s painted pumpkins next to Daddy’s carved pumpkin.
Earlier this week on Tuesday, there was a little Halloween event at Mio’s preschool! Parents were invited to come by earlier than the usual pickup time, so we could sit down in the classroom as the kids sang to us. It was our first time really getting to observe our kids in the classroom setting, so I was really looking forward to it!
The sign on Mio’s preschool classroom door showing the kids’ names.
While Mio was quietly sitting in the circle with all the other kids in the class when I entered, as soon as she noticed me sitting at the table, she sprang up and clung to me, refusing to sit back down in the circle and sing with the other children… much to my dismay because I wanted to see her participating like all the other kids. Oh well… she’s the youngest one in the class (they let her into the class this year even though her birthday was just past the cut-off date), so I guess she’s still comparatively a bit of a baby and has some separation anxiety issues. After the kids finished singing their songs, they were invited to change into their costumes for their mini Halloween parade outside.
Mio changing into her Snow White costume for the third time in a week…
The 2.5 year old class is the youngest class, so that day they walked out into the parking lot, showing off their costumes to the older classes that were seated across from them. The older classes then sang songs to the little ones — it was really cute!
Mio being bashful in front of the older kids.
The 3’s and 4’s classes singing to the 2.5 year old class children.
Taking a picture of all the kids in Mio’s class together… or trying to.
It was tough getting them all together in a picture, so this is just some of them. What a cute bunch!
Happy Halloween, everyone! Hope it is eventful and full of fun. 🙂
Dan and I are both artists who have turned our creative passions into careers, so we’ve always talked about how we wanted to expose Mio to arts and crafts at an early age, in hopes that she’d enjoy being creative, too! We recently bought some painting supplies for her so that we could introduce her to the fun world of painting.
My concern was, of course, the paint. Mio is still in the phase where she puts most things she can get her hands on into her mouth… and I knew with absolute certainty that she’d try to eat the paint that we gave her, too. Thankfully, there are some options for natural, non-toxic, edible paints specifically made for toddlers like Mio. The one I chose was an organic, vegetable-based finger paint set from the company We Can Too. (Apparently it’s gluten-free and dairy-free, too, which wasn’t as huge of a concern to me… but probably even more of a plus for some parents out there!) The paints are a bit pricier than regular finger paints, but they come in powder form which you mix with water, and a little goes a long way! I only used a little bit this time and it was enough, so I think it’ll take us a while to go through all of the paint that came in the set.
The only disadvantage of this paint is that it is slightly grainy because it’s food-based, and is not as highly pigmented and smooth as regular paint. I think it’s a small trade-off if it means ensuring that your child doesn’t accidentally ingest harmful substances, though.
Mixing water into the powder to create the paints.
We took all the supplies outside, and I laid down some plastic and set up an area for her to paint freely, to her heart’s content.
She got the hang of painting immediately, grabbing the handle of the brush and dabbing the paper with paint.
Mio creating her first work of art. Look at her double-fisting the paintbrushes... that's a true artist!
And, as expected, she brings it to her mouth for a taste...
I was impressed by how well she held the paintbrush!
Surprisingly, she knew to put each brush back into the right color. (Most of the time.)
I unscrewed the lids of the paint cups so that Mio could stick her hand in them and finger paint (since the paints are “finger paints,” after all), she mistook it as her cue for her to try eating them.
Literally trying to drink the paint...
She was determined to taste-test each color.
This is precisely why I got these edible veggie paints, because I knew this was going to happen. So I just let her go to town with it and lick the paint all she wanted — fun, uninhibited exploration for Mio, and stress-free supervision for me.
Eventually, after she had taste-tested all four paint colors, she actually came around and started using her hands and fingers to paint. 🙂
Finger painting fun!
"Look at you!" At the end of the painting session, Mio was quite a mess...
...but it was all worth it to see her light up with a smile!
Yay for a fun afternoon of painting!
Clean-up was pretty quick and easy, as we’d been painting outdoors and Mio had been wearing her smock… just had to take the smock off, wash and clean off her face and hands, and bring the supplies inside to wash out. I think it only took about five minutes! We will definitely have to have more art days for our little budding artist… 😀
Happy Easter! My favorite childhood memories of Easter was decorating Easter eggs with my mother and my brother every year. It’s been well over fifteen years since the last time I decorated Easter eggs, but becoming a mother myself brought back those memories and made me want to relive them this year.
As always, Dan was a good sport with my sudden urge to craft, and we decorated these eggs together on Friday night. (I know, we’re such party animals!) We huffed and puffed and blew the eggs out, and then tried a couple decorating techniques.
The first one we attempted was a “gilded” look with some metallic dyes. It didn’t come out quite as clean as I had wanted them too (I wanted them to have more uniform coverage), but as Dan pointed out, you have to have enough dye to dip it in, and we only had enough to paint it on with a brush. Oh well… it has more of an organic, abstract look to them with the painterly texture.
The second method I tried (at this point, Dan had given up and run off to indulge in a Breaking Bad-watching marathon) was one which involved wrapping the eggs in Japanese patterned paper. I was definitely happier with these results! 🙂 It’s a lovely Eastern take on a Western tradition.
The best part about these is that we can keep them around for decoration for a while, since the insides are hollow because we blew them out, and the decorated eggs won’t go bad.
I can’t wait until Mio is old enough to decorate Easter eggs with us! 😀
