I am thankful for creative people.
Recently, I've seen several things that have caught my fancy and made me smile. There are some pretty creative people out there thinking up these things. For these creative minds and what they produce, I am thankful.
Here are a few of them.
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| The summer reading theme this year at our library is "Build a Better World". We have gone with the building theme in several ways and here is one of them. Various staff and volunteers built an igloo from milk jugs. It is big enough that most adults can stand up inside. The kids love it in there and the adults are grunting a bit as they crawl in and out (me included). |
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| The inside is my favorite part of the igloo. The milk jug lids give it an unexpected look. |
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| My son, Theo, and I recently took a walk through a marsh where we found this fun bench. It's a little hard to make out the details, but notice the ripples on the seat and the two duck bottoms above them. It looks like the ducks are diving underwater. Very cute. |
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| Here's the creative part. When we looked under the bench, we saw the heads of the two diving ducks. That was definitely a fun discovery. |
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| Last weekend, my niece got married and had an outdoor reception. She decided it would probably be too hot for cake, so she had cookies instead. They were all made by another very creative aunt of hers. Everyone especially smiled at these bride and groom sugar cookies she made. |
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| She also made some very elaborate cookies that had to be slowly baked in a spring form mold. They were very impressive and tasty. Some of you out there probably know the name for these German cookies. I can't remember it. |
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| Now I'm going to toot my own horn. This is something that I made for a storytime about elephants. Remember the song, Five little elephants went out to play, Out on a spider's web one day...? I used this for that song. What I'm happy about is this was very simple to assemble, and I was able to use things I had around the house. The base, where the pink elephants are, is a ice holder from the freezer we no longer use. The spider's web is on an old piece of foam core we had and it is friction fitted to the base with an piece of packing Styrofoam we got with our new freezer. I was very pleased that it was light weight and very stable. I didn't actually have the elephants laying around. They are puppy chew toys I ordered. I am going to donate them to a shelter when I'm done. |
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| A volunteer sunflower on my deck. Wasn't I creative to happen to have a planter below the birdfeeder, to give the dropped birdseed a place to sprout? :) As usually happens with volunteer plants, this one is doing much better than the sunflowers I formally planted. |
I love your spider web, but I confess, I've never heard the song. I think my favorite is the milk jug igloo. I have fantasies about building some sort of all weather green house out of jugs of water - because the water would act as a thermal mass and protect the plants even in the dead of winter. I have a terrible fear that the thing could come crashing down around me though. I can just see the headlines: "Woman crushed to death in horrific se collapse!" Well anyway, your sunflower is beautiful. My volunteers have been blooming for weeks now, but the ones I planted? Nothin'!
ReplyDeleteOops! Don't know what that "se" was... the perils of editing one's comment! "Readers confused to death by horrific 'se' typo!" :-)
DeleteNot to worry about typos. My life is full of them. I had sunflowers that were given to me as a house warming gift that were supposed to be mammoth sunflowers, i.e. 10-12' tall with huge flowers. That's not what I got. It's not that I don't appreciate them, but I'm disappointed that they are smaller with heads that are breaking off. However, the birds are all over them. So that part is good.
DeleteI can totally see you building a water house. I look forward to seeing it.
I am also unfamiliar with the song, but it sounds like a fun one. Nice job with your creativity.
ReplyDeleteMy kids would have loved the igloo! Actually, even though my son is almost 14, I bet he would still get a kick out of it.
The cookies I am familiar with are called springerle. Here's a link--maybe you can tell me if I have the name correct. :) http://www.marthastewart.com/332892/springerle-cookies
I would love a bench like that! What a neat discovery.
Yep, they are springerle cookies. From someone who usually makes bar cookies instead of individual ones because of the work involved, springele cookies are a little out of my league. However, maybe if I committed to them for something like a wedding, I might make them. But first there is a big investment in molds.
DeleteEveryone loves the igloo from the elderly to babies. Lot's of pictures have been taken this summer with the igloo. It is pretty impressive when you first see it.
Glad to know I'm not the only fan of bar cookies! One of my son's friends was confused this past year because he was eating a bar cookie--I told my son to tell him that cookies can come in many shapes, not just circles! The older I get, the less I want to putz around shaping cookies ... and I'm not sure I like the taste of springerle enough to go to the effort of making them.
DeleteI love your eye for the quirky and your creativity in making the exhibit with the pink elephants for the song! I used to know the name for those cookies but it is long forgotten. Have a good week.
ReplyDeleteI do appreciate quirky things, that's for sure. As far as the spider's web goes, I'm not sure that it is really that special, but I was pleased that it was so simple to do with stuff that I had on hand. And the finished product was very easy to work with. A win-win.
DeleteI love that you thought to put a planter under your bird feeders so the seeds dropped on the ground might have a chance to germinate and give you new flowers for free! That's one impressive sunflower, too! I probably need to do what you did, although nothing seems to germinate under my bird feeders... but as you know the seed that I threw in the gravel path, hoping that the birds or squirrels would come and eat it, did germinate there, arrgh.
ReplyDeleteBack when my kids were in elementary school, each year the school organized a "Celebration of Learning" event for the families and each classroom pod was decorated with science projects that the kids had worked on during the year. The 1st grade quad was always themed for the arctic and the teacher and kids/volunteers built that same water bottle igloo each year and made other things too with upcycled materials that they had asked families to turn in all year. Now I wish I could remember what they did! I'll need to look through all my pictures and see if I kept any of them, it was quite impressive. I don't think the bottles are glued at all, either!
It was very nice for you to make the spider web with the little pink elephants for storytime! Kids surely appreciated it. That spider looks very friendly, you did a great job! I think the song was on one of the CDs my kids used to listen to all the time.
We collected used milk jugs for months for the igloo. Each one was washed with bleach and the lids were glued on. Our igloo as hot glued together with two jug units. We were very afraid that little kids would climb on it or it might not hold up, but it's doing just fine.
DeleteI thought about making the spider lifelike because you know I like bugs. But I decided against it because some people are afraid of spiders and I didn't want to make them uncomfortable.
I remember the song and used to sing it to Son3 all the time! Great visual for it.
ReplyDeleteThat igloo house is the bomb. If Pip lived closer I would make one for her room here.
After we sang the song with that visual, we got out the parachute and pretended that was the spider's web and bounced the elephants on it as we helped them play. The kids loved it.
DeleteWow, what a grandmother you would be if you made an igloo house for Pip. However, I bet she would love the elephant-spider web, too. Kids are easy as long as their not tired or hungry.
My sunflowers have not bloomed this year. I can't figure out why. They keep growing taller and taller, but haven't bloomed. I love that bench with the diving ducks underneath. Now that is awesome and very creative!
ReplyDeleteI love the bench also. My husband doesn't do metal work, but I wonder if he/we could make a bench with a similar surprise underneath. This is going to require some thought.
DeleteLove all the creative things you photographed! I think the bench is my favorite, but that sunflower is awesome! My daughter would have loved an igloo like that! What a great creation!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I could have ever gotten my sons out of that igloo.
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