The whole gnome family...

A couple of weeks ago I posted about our family wide gnome making project and included a picture of my gnome and her baby. I took a picture of the whole gnome family and wanted to share it too...


Z's is on the left (I made it too. The pants were a "creative" hot glue operation involving excessive gluing and then cutting them into a pants shape around the glue lines, LOL!), then M's, then mine, and then L's. I ADORE L's exuberant little guy (the red one). He made the whole thing himself, except for wrapping the legs with yarn, which I did for him. He painted it in his own special way and made the clothes and everything. Maybe it doesn't come across in the photo, but this little gnome completely cracks me up. The life and zest in it is unbelievable. L has tired of it already for the most part, but for a while he played with it a lot and it was always sitting with its legs at some wonky angle and that goofy, wonderful grin on its little face. It made me laugh every time I came across it--so unselfconscious and so insane looking. So much fun!

Speaking of more crafts, I got this book from playgroup a couple of weeks ago and last week the boys and I cooked up these fabulous knight helmets out of old cereal boxes. They were really fun to make. Then we also made "knight bread" and ate it with jam (it was really an Irish brown bread recipe from Parents magazine). I also made L a pizza box breastplate/armor, but it was less stunning than the helmets, LOL! In progress is a paper towel and toilet paper tube castle, but L is sick of painting it, so it may never reach its full glory. I know I have been known to scoff mightily at what I call "paper cup dog crafts," but with little guys, sometimes it is fun to just make stuff out of cardboard that can be finished in 20 minutes, instead of laboring over a "real" craft that they quickly burn out with and I am left in a, "leave me alone and let me FINISH this" mode instead of a family fun mode.

I close with a Zen calendar quote:

"In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you love? How deeply did you learn to let go?"

--Buddha

Maybe I should add, "how well did you construct playthings from cardboard?" ;-)

Aren't they sweethearts?!