Redeeming Myself

Last Friday was cold. Very, very cold. I woke up to below zero temperatures and fresh snow. Again. The husband was out of town. Again. That meant that I had to shovel. Again. Stop the madness. To top it off, school was canceled so I had to fill the entire day with entertaining and educational fun for my child.

I waited until it warmed up to 4 degrees, then put on every article of outerwear that I own and went out and shoveled. It sucked—just no other way to put it.

When I got back inside, I made two phone calls.

The first one was to Tony’s voice mail. I informed him that due to all of all of the shoveling and cold weather that I have endured because he hasn’t been here to do it, he is quickly using up all of the brownie points that he earned by sending me and Molly to China.

The second call was to my sister. I needed sympathy and I knew she would give it to me. She understands. She’s a kindred spirit when it comes to the inability to tolerate the cold. Ironically, when she picked up the phone, she said that she and her family were in route to the ski slopes but were driving through a snowstorm.

My advise was to tell her husband to exit off the highway at Frisco (a Colorado mountain town) and go directly to the Village Inn (that’s the Western version of Bob Evan’s for all of you Midwesterners reading). Once at the Village Inn she and her family should enjoy a delicious breakfast then turn the car around and head back to Denver. Skiing in a snow storm is no fun, especially when you are paying soooo much to ski.

When I told my sister about my dilemma she told me that I needed to go to familyfun.com and find something to do with Molly. That’s what she did when her kids were little.

I have just one thing to say: Why didn’t I know about this website like three years ago? Amazing, this website is simply amazing! Tons of crafts, activities and games all organized and easy to understand. I may just redeem myself and become a parent who does fun,exciting things. Not one that just suggest coloring all of the time.

I selected the Crafts link (http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/). The first thing that caught my eye was a one minute video on Boredom Busting Crafts. I clicked on it and 60 seconds later I was armed with everything I needed for an afternoon of crafting fun! We weren’t going to have to spend another day coloring. Yipee!

The video showed three activities to do with a paper plate. Like I’ve said before, I am not good at thinking of things to do, but I am great at copying them.

Here’s what we did:

Paper Plate Project 1: Mosaic Flower

The video demonstrated a mosaic sun, but I thought a flower would be easier, so I improvised. Look at me go!

We started by cutting out different colors from pages of magazines. Molly did the rough cutting and then I used a paper cutter to cut them into small squares. We organized the paper squares by color in little plastic cups.

This took like an hour and a half and had Molly totally enthralled. She loved looking through the magazines.

Next we watered down some glue and brushed it over a picture of a flower that I sketched on the back of a paper plate. Molly carefully fitted the squares of colored paper in each section of the flower.

Because Molly is so anal obsessive careful she did a great job lining up the edges of her mosaic paper into straight lines.

After the entire flower was done she covered the whole plate in another layer of watered down glue.

Voila! Project 1 complete!This project took a couple of hours to do start to finish, but held Molly’s interest the entire time. It could be shortened quite a bit by using tissue paper or construction paper squares, but then you wouldn’t have the fun of explaining to your child what Stayfree Maxipads were  when she found an ad for them in her magazine.

And yes, Molly continued to do silly things right as I snapped the picture. Swell.

Paper Plate Project 2: Flying Bird

For this one, I rubber banded 2 plastic spoons together facing each other, not nested together. Molly colored in a beak with a sharpie…

and then added two eyes.

She cut a paper plate along some basic lines that I drew and we taped all of the pieces together with scotch tape. This project only took a few minutes, but flying the bird around the house lasted a lot longer.

Paper Plate Project 3: Frog Puppet

Molly painted both sides of a paper plate green.

While she waited for the paint to dry she cut out legs and eyes that I drew on green construction paper, and tongue that I drew on a scrap of the leftover pink paper plate.

The paint still wasn’t dry so it was time for Chef Molly to get busy cookin’.

She made a delicious grilled cheese sandwich on her cardboard stove (we made it a rule not to buy big plastic crap toys a long time ago).

Then sat down for a quick bite.

Before long, the paint on the craft project had dried and Molly glued eyes and legs onto the folded paper plate. I cut a slit on the fold of the plate and she finished the assembly by adding the the tongue. Frog puppet is finished!

Here’s Molly doing her frog pose with the frog puppet.

So there you go, a sixty second video filled up our day with three great crafty projects!

But by the end of the day, guess what Molly was doing…coloring. Oh well.

And by the way, my sister in Colorado called me later that evening.  She informed me that she had indeed enjoy a nice hot breakfast at the Village Inn in Frisco, and then headed back to Denver without skiing. Smart girl. Sisters help each other when times are tough! Love ya, sis!