New Artistic Mothers Group

My real-life friend, Shona Cole, has published a book called The Artistic Mother: A Practical Guide for Fitting Creativity into Your Life. (You can visit Shona's blog, "An Artful Life.") And Trudy, at Artistic Creations with Trudy, is hosting a new, online "Artisitc Mothers" group which just started. (It's not too late to join!)

 

The goal of the group is to insert a little creativity into every day with a little bit of accountability provided through the group. The book covers 12 projects and we'll be spending 2 weeks on each project. Once a week, each participant is encouraged to post about their progress. This is a "no pressure" group and you are welcome to join in even if you can't complete a project every 2 weeks or get behind. So, please check out Trudy's post if you are interested! And, I look forward to using my creativity!

Note from Trudy's site: Due to copyright laws, we are not allowed to do tutorials or step-by-step photos of the projects on our blogs or take photos of the pages in the book and post them. You may post a photo of your version of the project and talk about your experiences and feelings relating to it. Also, if you are doing this project with a friend, each person must have their book unless you are doing it together under the same roof. No photocopying of the book, please.

1,000 posts!

Hi, everyone. I wanted to let you all know that this is my 1,000th post! I can't believe I have posted that many times. I started back in July of 2005 as Alex "started" kindergarten.

(1st photo I posted of Alex, age 4. Aug 2005. 3 states of matter)

So, I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who read my blog. You encourage me and keep me blogging!

(2nd photo - comparitive size of planets)

I appreciate all of you who faithfully read my blog, who occasionally read my blog, who post comments (I love comments!), and who tell me in person that you read my blog.

(owl pellets)

So many of you have given me inspiration and encouragement through the years. I hope I encourage and inspire some of you, too! And, I'll see you again on post #1,001!

Great Sites for Planning Vacations

As I'm busy preparing for our upcoming trip to San Francisco, I thought I'd share two sites I use to help in my planning.

 San Diego - January 2009

The first site is TripAdvisor.com. This site is great for finding both hotels and things to do. What I love most about it are the reviews. "Real people" who have really stayed in the hotels or went to the museums, etc, tell you what they think about them. You get to hear their experiences - the good and the bad. Also, the hotels and activities are then ranked in order of popularity. It really helps me to find some of the special things that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Scotland - July 2009

The other site is Travel for Kids. What I like best about this site are the book lists. It gives you a book list (both picture books and books for other children) related to your destination. Although this site doesn't cover as many places as Trip Advisor, we have got to use it for Ireland, Scotland, San Deigo, Chicago, New York City, and now San Francisco.

In Honor of Texas Independence Day...

...I'm posting about our trip last weekend to San Jacinto, where Texas won its independence.

This is a photo I took of the San Jacinto monument. The battle of San Jacinto is where Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836. About 10 years later, it would become the 28th state in the Union. This would lead to the Mexican War (1846-1848) which resulted in the acquisition of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado.

 

On April 20th, General Sam Houston chose this area, where the Buffalo Bayou meets the San Jacinto River, to fight Santa Anna. Hours later, Santa Anna and his troops arrived. The next morning, another Mexican general arrived with 500 troops. Houston ordered a bridge destroyed to prevent more Mexican reinforcements, but this also isolated Houston's troops from additional troops, too. (Photo: Alex at the San Jacinto monument.)

 

Houston decided to attack that afternoon. The Texans charged across the prairie separating them from the Mexicans, but they were not seen as they were screened by trees and the rise of the ground between the two enemies. (Photo: Alex & I on nature walk near monument.)

The Mexican army wasn't expecting to fight until the following day. They had not posted sentries and were caught off guard. The Texans swarmed into the Mexican camp with cries of "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember Goliad." (Photo from top of monument showing the river.)

The Mexicans never implemented their battle plan and the battle ended in only 18 minutes. About 600 Mexican troops were killed while only nine Texans died in the battle. (Photo from top of monument. You can see the Houston skyline a little left of center.)

"General Santa Anna was captured the next day and forced to sign a treaty that recognized Texas independence and opened the gateways for America's continuing westward expansion." (Quote from San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site brochure printed by Texas Parks and Wildlife. I also used information from this brochure to write this post.)  (Photo of top of monument.)

This is a photo from one side of the monument. It begins, Texas declared her independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos March 2. For nearly two months her armies met disaster and defeat."

Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the aquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed soverignty.

The History of Origami

Today, we had our monthly homeschool get together at our church. Last month, we had an oil painting lesson. This month we learned about oragami.

 

First, our teacher told us some of the history of origami. Origami is the Japanese art of paper folding. The word origami comes from the Japanese word "ori" which means folding and "kami" which means paper. But, origami did not start in Japan. It started in China in the first or second century. It went to Japan in the sixth century. (above photo: "fortune teller" or what our teacher called a "Guess Who?")

 

At first, paper was very expensive and only the rich could afford to do origami. And, they found purposes for doing origami. For example, the Samurai warriors exchanged gifts called noshi. Noshi used strips of paper folded with strips of dried fish or dried meat. It was given as a good luck token. (above photo: "Guess Who?" upside down - can be used as a container. You can make these out of large squares of paper and actually make holiday containers, etc.)

 

As papermaking became easier, it became less expensive and origami was an art enjoyed by both rich and poor. (above photo: Box. You can modify the 4 white triangles by curling them or folding them in various ways.)

For centuries, there were no directions for origami written down. The art form was handed down from one generation to another. It was part of the cultural heritage of Japan. (above photo: Alex's bunny. It looks more like a bunny in person. You "blow up" this one to give it the "balloon" effect.)

Then, in 1797, the book How to Fold 1,000 Cranes was published. It contained the first written directions for folding origami. This book was based on the custom that folding 1,000 paper cranes would bring good luck. The more recent children's book Sadako and One Thousand Cranes by Eleanor Coerr also talks about this custom. (above photo: Alex's samuri helmet)

We ended up having 12 girls in the class with ages ranging from 5 to 12. There were also 4 boys who worked at another table. I was surprised that all of the girls lasted for 2 hours of paper folding! And, our teacher was wonderful. She brought in some samples of her work and they are amazing! (above photo: teacher showing Alex how to make a ring from a dollar bill.)

 

This is Alex's ring. Our teacher wears one and Alex asked her after class if she could show her how to make one. She did! Anyway, I just spread the photos out of some of the projects we did today. The teacher stressed that one of the most important things in origami is to be precise! Alex has tried origami before, but she is doing so much better because of our wonderful teacher! (above photo: Alex's dollar ring)

I got my information about the history of origami from our teacher's lecture and this site called "History of Origami by Callie and Jeremy."  We also Googled and found lots of lesson - both written and videos - of how to do many origami projects. So, if you're interested, give it a try!

Birds of Spring Walk

Today Alex and I worked on cleaning up the garage... for 3 hours! (She did a lot more playing then cleaning, but I enjoyed her company.) It was a beautiful day with the temperature near 70 and plenty of blue skies. As we took the trash to the curb, I noticed a bunch of birds in a tree across the street and I thought they were probably Cedar Waxwings. I grabbed my camera and we ended up walking up and down our block photographing the birds amidst the new blooms of spring.

This little bird was in our tree. I noticed yellow as I saw it fly into the tree and think it might be a Yellow Rumped Warbler. (If anyone can verify this or correct me, please let me know!)

Then, I heard a familiar bird... a Red Bellied Woodpecker. Do you see all of the holes on this tree?

We noticed 5 Vultures flying around. They were circling about a block away.

When we made it across the street, we saw about 50-70 Cedar Waxwings. They are so colorful!

I had to share this shot, too, as you can see the red tip on the wing. You can also see how the tip of the tail looks like it has been dipped in yellow paint.

Then, I noticed a bird fly to my neighbor's door and land on their wreath! I couldn't see the bird, but I knew it was there. So, I took this photo, and there he is! Do you see him? He (or she) is sitting in the center of the wreath near a small white flower. I wonder if he/she is building a nest?

We see lots of White Winged Doves in our backyard, but I thought I'd "document" this dove as part of our "birds of spring" walk. I wish I knew trees and could identify what type of tree this dove is sitting in!

And, this little Downy Woodpecker is the bird we watched the longest. I was amazed at how LOUD her pecking was! And, you can actually see the little hole she was making... it is right below her beak. I'm going to be watching this tree to see if this cute little bird comes back as this is a bird we rarely see. By the way, it's a female - the males have a red patch on the back of their neck.

XTimeline

Alex's online history class is using a FREE online timeline program called XTimeline. I'm not sure how much you'll be able to see with this embedded timeline, but you can go to the site and play around with it. Using the green buttons (upper right), you can see 2 different views of the timeline - one with photos and one without.

(TO USE: TRY CLICKING THE GREEN BUTTONS. THE BOTTOM

GREEN BUTTON DRAGS THE TIMELINE)

Basically, you can add an event with a title, a date (you can also choose a starting and ending date), a  description and a photo. You can also print out your timeline as a list - I don't think you can print it out as a chart, but I might be wrong.

Who do you think you are?

"Who Do You Think You Are?" is a new series that will air on Friday, March 5th. This series follows 7 celebrities on a quest to discover their pasts. I am looking forward to it (but, of course, I haven't watched it yet so please judge this series for yourself!)

I started doing genealogy about 13 years ago with the help of my Great Aunt Beulah. She was born in 1923 and passed away a little over a year ago. For decades, she researched our family the "old fashioned way", i.e. without a computer. I am grateful for how she taught me to research and the wonderful research she passed along to me.

Next school year, I plan on teaching a genealogy class to 4th-6th graders. I hope to pass along my love of learning about the past of our own families. Hopefully, some of these children will uncover records that will be passed down for many generations.

Here's a brief preview of the series which starts a week from Friday. I'm excited to see what this series will bring...and see who it inspires to look into their own family heritage!

Loggerhead Shrike - Vicious Predator???

Thanks for the help I received in identifying my mystery bird. It is a Loggerhead Shrike.

This sweet looking songbird is actually a vicious predator! According to Cornell's "All About Birds" site, it uses it "uses its hooked beak to kill insects, lizards, mice, and birds, and then impales them on thorns to hold them while it rips them apart." BirdWeb adds the following: "because their feet are not large or strong enough to hold prey, shrikes find a crotch in a tree, a thorn, or barbed wire to hang their prey on while they eat. Prey may be left on such a site for later consumption." Hmmm... very interesting bird!

Health, Snow, and Bird Identity

lex and I are still both recovering from our health problems of the last few weeks. Alex started a second round of antibiotics tonight for her sinus infection. My back/neck/arm are still getting back to normal after a week and a half of pain. The doctor thinks it was a pulled muscle, though I'm still not sure how I pulled it. Especially as it has hurt so bad for so long.  

Our weather has been crazy. It was 70 degrees on Sunday and today (Tuesday), we are seeing another rare Houston SNOW!!! We've just had some snowflakes mixed with rain here, but other places are getting actual snow!

 

Alex and I went on a nature walk with the Family Nature Explore Club on Saturday. It was also a history field trip and I'll try to post about it in the next few days. I took over 100 photos! But, for now, I'm wondering if anyone can help me identify this cute bird!!! My bird books don't have a good match for him, and I'm hoping someone can help me. So, if you have an idea, please let me know! Thanks!