A Haunted Birthday Treat

Is there a better way to spook your teacher than

with creepy crawly cupcakes? I don't think so.

Hoedown

Every fall we try to make the pilgrimage to our friends' annual fall hoedown. It is so much fun - partially due to the fact that they have a gaggle of kids. OK, only don't quite have a gaggle - just five. And let me tell you, they are five of the most wonderful kids you can imagine - even the teenagers. Anyway, my two little ones love going to down to the Reed's because it is always so much fun! And the fun just isn't playing and hanging out with friends, oh no. There's so much to do! Want to go on a hayride? OK, Mr. Reed may just take you on three or four of them.

Are you getting cold? No problem. There's a nice toasty fire going down near the front yard. Head down there to warm up for a while.

 

Or, you could hang up in the garage and dance to some great music provided by the Easy Idle String Band. If you'd rather just listen, that's OK, too.

 

Are you hungry? Grab a bite to eat from the desert table between dances and then go dive into the Corn Box. Yes, that's right, the Corn Box. (Picture a big sand box, perhaps six feet (about one meter) square and 12 inches  (about 30 cm) deep and then fill it with dry corn. The kids loved it! The only down side is my friend, Lisa, is going to find corn all over her house for the next six months.) 

  

Need a break from the corn? No problem. Walk down to the barn and check to see if there are any eggs. And while you're there, stop and visit with the ducks.

photo via

And that's just the start. There were sheep to visit, donuts to eat, baby chicks to play with and beads to string. We've been home for a week and the kids are still talking about how much fun they had.

Oh yeah, and I'm still finding corn in the bottom of the washing machine...

A Haunted House Birthday

Our dining room has been a wee bit haunted lately

because my son requested a "Haunted House Party" for his birthday this year. Of all the parties I've done, this one was probably the easiest. I bought two of these from Oriental Trader to drape over the windows, a ton of Halloween spider webs from the Dollar Store, and covered all the furniture in the room with white sheets. (Thank goodness his birthday is in the fall rather than in, say, May.) The banner you see on the china cabinet (it says Happy Haunting) can be downloaded here. I just stitched the pieces into a length of double fold bias tape.

My husband and our friend, Miranda, made my son's cake. Very spooky, don't you think? I think my favorite part was the sugar windows - they looked amazing when lit by candlelight from behind. (My husband found the cake recipe and pattern  here.)

Of course we had to have the traditional new birthday napkins and crazy place card holders. This year they were vampire teeth spray painted silver. The font I used for the names is Magic School - you'll find it here. The vampire teeth and all the little spiders were also from Oriental Trader.

I did a lot of spray painting for this party. Back in July I started searching thrift shops for old candle holders and by early September I had 20 or so and was ready to paint. Each one got a couple coats of basic black and then a coat or two of this stuff in aged iron. Basically it made the candle holders look like they were made out of stone. I bought the cheapest candles I could find, let them burn an hour or two the night before the party (helping the drips along with an additional candle,) and the table looked great the next day. 

I used candle holders made out of wood, glass and metal. None of them were primed - I just went to town with the paint. If you want to replicate these, just remember you need to use a base coat of black first. I tried using the texturizer first - without black underneath and it didn't work.  I used an entire can of the stuff and it still hadn't covered up the original color of the candle holders. So I grabbed a can of black from the basement, did a base coat of that and then used the texture. I did spend about $30.00 on all of them, plus another $12.00 or so on the paint, but I'm sure I'll get them out and reuse them every year for Halloween. I probably wouldn't have spent all that if they had been just for the birthday party, but since I'll reuse them I didn't mind.

Now he's engulfed in Halloween spirit and is chomping at the bit to dig out the outside Halloween decorations. Mama just needs to find some energy...

Mackinac Moment

Mornings on Mackinac Island have been stunning lately. I snapped this at about 7:45 on Friday morning from Windermere Point. It was so quiet and still - with that fall chill in the air...

Classroom Redo: Chair

 

My desk chair as she use to be: gray, plain, and utilitarian. She was fine as chairs went, quite comfortable in fact, but she was just so boring. Well, not any more!

I recovered her in a lovely lime green. (Well, I think it's lovely.) Lime green with hot pink trim. As cute as that piping looks, it actually was a necessity.  After removing the hardware from the back of the chair, I had to get the two pieces apart. They were joined together with four plastic rivet-like thingies that I  had to cut with an old long serrated bread knife. The plastic pieces were meant to be permanent, so there was no way to replace them. As I was searching for suggestions on recovering office chairs, I found a woman who shared her frustration at not being able to get the two pieces back together as tightly as they were originally. She didn't like the small gap left between the two them.  (I wish I could remember where so I could give her credit.)

I thought piping would do a good job at covering up that space. The two pieces are screwed and glued together, but they are not was snug as they once were. I'm so glad that  little pop of color does a great job of hiding that fact. What do you think?

Best Year Ever

Two weeks? Really? We've been back at school for two weeks? I feel like I've blinked, and in the millisecond my eyes were closed, those weeks have whizzed by. Do you ever feel like that? I have clear memories of those weeks,  but I'm not sure where they went.  Then again, I kind of feel that way about my teaching career. This fall I started my 20th year. I have clear memories of those 20 years, but it certainly doesn't feel like 20 years. Guess I'm officially a "veteran" teacher now.



My school year is off to a pretty fantastic start, I've got to tell you. I'm teaching a combined 4th and 5th grade group this year and have the privilege of working with 13 of the most amazing kids I've ever met. They're going to achieve great things this year; I can feel it.

My two little ones are off to a great start as well. My daughter, pictured above, is so excited to go to school all day this year now that she's a big first grader. My son, now a second grader, has moved up into the 2nd-3rd grade classroom and is loving his new teacher...

Excursion: Round Island

 

We have been wanting to get over to Round Island all summer. The weather and waves were perfect this morning, so we borrowed a friend's boat and made the mile trip in no time. 

 

 

 

There was so much to do the kids couldn't

decide what to do first.

Should we explore the lighthouse?

Smash rocks?

Or find new friends?

 We were only on Round Island for a few hours,

but we had a great time.

The kids were disappointed that the door to the lighthouse was locked. (Surprise surprise.) I suggested we come back next year for the Open House, which is usually the second Saturday in July. Until then, I temporally satisfied their curiosity with this:

Mackinac Moment

As my daughter got up off the couch to head up to bed tonight, she happened to look out into our backyard. "Why does everything  look so red?" she asked; the entire backyard had an ethereal reddish glow. One look up into the sky and she had her answer. 

I can only imagine how amazing tonight's sunset was for those on Mackinac with a westerly view. I may not be able to see the water from my house, but my little patch of sky makes me smile. Now, all I need are some northern lights!

Classroom Couch Redo

I've had this little love seat for ages; at least 15 years. Originally I had it in my classroom, but when my teaching assignment changed to only math and science there just wasn't room for her in the room.  So for the last ten years or so she's lived out in the storage building. As you can see she wasn't much to look at; stained and ugly. Well, at least she use to be stained and ugly - now she looks fabulous!

It's hard to believe that it's the same couch. Thanks to this tutorial, she is now a beautiful bright turquoise and  I couldn't be happier with how she turned out. Believe it or not, I didn't recover her - she's painted. Yeah, you read that right - painted  - with latex wall paint. (Exotic Sea semi-gloss by Valspar.)

I won't redo Kristy's tutorial (because it's great) but I'll give you the basic lowdown. I started by giving the old girl a really good cleaning. Then I went right into the first coat because you want to fabric to be wet to help the paint soak in.

The first two coats of paint (mixed with fabric medium) are really watered down and just soaked right into the fabric. The love seat was kind of a canvasey fabric and really sucked up the paint. In fact, after the first coat the color wasn't all that different.

I was glad that in her tutorial Kristy warned readers about how awful her chair looked after the first coat. Here's my couch after the first two coats. Pretty blotchy, huh. But she looked better after each one.

Kristy used acrylic paint for her final coat of, but I just used the wall paint I bought. I had a custom color mixed at Lowe's rather than trying to mix my own out of small bottles of acrylic. You should have seen the face of The Paint Man at Lowe's when I was asking him about the differences between the cheap paint and the more expensive stuff.

"You're going to paint what? Really?"

To his credit, he never gave me "that look" and kindly suggested I get the higher-end paint because he said it had more pigment than the cheaper stuff. He thought since it covered walls in fewer coats there would be more color to soak into the fabric and I'd get a better result. It was about $10.00 more expensive for the gallon, but I think it was worth it. It was just a few dollars more to get a gallon than it was to get two quarts, so I have about 1/2 of the gallon leftover. Now, every time I walk by the ugly old metal filing cabinet in my classroom I keep getting ideas. Before next fall, it may be turquoise as well...

Kristy's chair only took three coats, but my love seat needed four, and the cushion took five coats  to achieve a nice even color. I think it was because of how warn the fabric was in some spots. Those spots soaked up more paint that the less-worn areas. The front edge of the cushion was the worst; it had a spot that was almost threadbare. I actually dabbed a few extra coats on that spot.

Now, you're probably wondering how the couch feels to sit in. It certainly isn't as soft as it originally was, but that's OK - it's in my classroom. The kids aren't going to mind that it feels more like outdoor canvas fabric than something soft and snuggly; they're just going to love having a comfortable spot to read.

I followed Kristy's tutorial (mostly) to the letter. However, I did make a few small changes: 

• I accidentally bought semi-gloss. No problem, it worked fine, though the fabric does have a slight sheen to it now.
• I didn't sand. My fabric was woven and I was concerned it would weaken it.
• I only used latex paint.

If you decide you want to give this a try, check out Kristy's Chair's Page. She's linked to lots of people who have tried her tutorial and some of them have great suggestions. I especially enjoyed the Fails section at the end. Those were all mistakes I wanted to avoid! 

Now I just can't wait to see how the kids react to our new little reading corner. I hope they give it an A+.

Who Needs Stray Dogs

Yesterday, while we were sitting at the breakfast table we heard noises coming from the empty lot across the street. It sounded like something was traipsing through the woods - something big. Little did we know a fence had broken nearby and we were soon going to have some company...

some rather large company. The next thing we knew these two Belgian draft horses came walking out of the woods. Over the course of about 30 minutes a total of six horses decided they wanted to take a little walk through the neighborhood.

So we made a phone call or two to let the owners know the horses were loose and sat back to watch. Watching them was kind of fun. They stuck pretty close together; if one decided to head off in one way or another, the group followed. They just  moseyed  up and down the street munching on shrubs and grass as they walked. Before too long Joe arrived to walk them back to the barn and the excitement was over.



Only on Mackinac...

Excursion: Kitch-iti-kipi

Come on, we're heading on a mystery trip. You'll come with us, won't you?

Kitch-iti-kipi, inside Palms Brook State Park is a pretty cool place. You can go out on the observation raft and look through the open bottom into the spring.

It's hard to believe 10,000 gallons (about 630 liters) flow into the spring every second!

photo by John Wanserski

The kids thought it looked like there were little volcanoes all over the bottom and it was really cool. It's not my video, but it gives a much better idea of what it actually looks like.

If you happen to be in the Manistique  area, Palms Brook State Park is worth a stop.

And now for a request:

I've been having some issues with Blogger lately, specifically positioning photos and getting them to appear where I want them to in my posts. I'm having to play around with justifying my photos. For some reason horizontal ones have to be left justified in order for the entire photo to appear. The posts look OK when I view them on my laptop, but I'm wondering about other devices.  I've played around with a few here, but I can't try everything, so if things look a bit off, would you let me know? Thanks!

Alanson Riverfest

We spent the day here, enjoying their annual Riverfest celebration. We discovered Riverfest by accident a few years ago on our way to get groceries. As we were driving through town, the kids saw all the bounce houses and begged to stop. Now Riverfest is on the calendar and we try to stop every summer.

We just can't pass up the opportunity to bounce the afternoon away, but beating on your brother can be lots of fun, too.

The local scout troop had their Pinewood Derby track set up and invited the kids to give racing a try.

But if car racing wasn't up your alley, they also had minnow races.

Of course we couldn't leave without enjoying some deep fried food on a stick. I think it's a requirement at events like this.

I think the kids' favorite part of the day was the fishing. This was the first year we realized there was a kid's fishing pond behind this shop. The kids caught three rainbow trout, which was great. But the best part was the Young's guys gutted all three fish and even put them on ice for our drive home. Talk about fabulous!

For dinner tonight Allen deep fried fish sticks for the kids, and pan fried the remaining two fish for he and I. Oh my - it was good.

A darn good meal at the end of a darn good day.

One Lucky Girl

I know it's a bit warm for her to wear it these days, but this winter it's sure to become a favorite. One day this little girl will realize not everyone is lucky enough to have a grandma who knits special sweaters and even alters the pattern so the sweaters are long enough to be worn with leggings (just about the only long "pants" this particular little girl will currently wear.) Thank you Grandma!