So in the mean time, I thought I'd share with you some of the nonsense that we've been up to. Not ground breaking stuff, but thought it'd give you an idea of the random happenings around here.
Dens and yarn and "Klob" houses.
My five year old's family tree she made (she sat in the trolley around home depot cutting out all those apple shapes from photographs, while we looked for bolts and screws to rescue the latest craigslist find) See the guy that looks like me with no hair? It was his birthday last week. Happy Birthday Dad!
We've been trying to add to the veggies we're growing in the yard without having to spend a lot of money on compost and pots etc. We were lucky enough to find a lovely family near us that were getting rid of a load of pots for free on Craigslist because they were moving house. When we went to collect the pots we found out that they also had a raised planter they were going to ditch, so Paul went back a few days later and took it all apart and brought it home. Last weekend I spent a ridiculous three hours in the yard, sifting through the six contractors bin bags containing a mixture of rocks and potting compost, pulling out all the rocks from it, to go at the bottom for drainage. It was a very windy day and the potting compost was bone dry, so although it was easy to fish out all the white rocks from it, I ended up looking like I'd walked away from an explosion in an instant coffee factory. It's all put together now though and planted up with tomatoes, peppers, basil, corgettes, bush beans and carrots. The kids did a wonderful paint job on it too!
We have a bit of an epic restoration project to handle over the next couple of weekends. We were lucky enough to score a free play structure from a local family who bought a house with it in the garden, but who's kid was too old for it. They had been trying to get rid of it for a couple of years, but no one who came to look at it could figure out how to take it apart. It took us quite a while to get it apart because a lot of it had been nailed together rather than screwed, but it's still structurally sound, so after I've done a lot of painting then we can saw off the bottom six inches that are rotten, and get it put back together for the kids to clamber all over. A lot of time to put in, but given that the thing would be nearly four grand when new, it's the only way the kids will be having one! With the paint, some replacement bolts and screws, and the cost of the Uhaul to go get it, I think we can bring it in for under $200. I'll let you know how it works out.
Also, thought you'd get a giggle out of our 4th July decorations. We never managed to get rid of our Christmas tree. It's just been sitting at the end of the porch looking sorry for itself, so the kids decorated it. I think we'll decorate it as a halloween tree next!
Multi-story car park improvisation
Upsidedown tomatoes in old containers seem to be doing well! I painted the containers black so that the roots of the plants are nice and toasty warm. They seem to like it :) The one below is a Folger's coffee container that I swiped from the local preschool's recycling bin. We have tomato plants growing in Creamer containers, soda bottles and animal cracker boxes too. Classy!
We've been doing outdoor movie nights on the weekends this month too. Paul was able to borrow a projector from his work, so we've just been dragging all the bedding out into the yard and having friends over to watch a kid flick with popcorn and fairy lights. I LOVE the atmosphere. We just project onto the side of the house, because it's a pale yellow. The last one we had we were babysitting for some friends, so we had nine kids.
Here is my four year old and her two best four year old buddies huddled up in a storage box with blankets waiting for the movie to start. Sooooo CUTE! This Saturday if the weather allows us, we're going to do the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz.
Lastly, my kids painted a huge picture of me today! I'm so flattered! My four year old drew it and they both painted it together. I look terrifyingly Tim Burtonesque in it (apparently those are gardening gloves, and yes, my farmer's tan is pretty much that bad!), but dang, I wish that skirt was real! I'd wear it every day, just look at the colours!!! It's taller than I am by about 6 inches. Maybe I have killer heels on under the skirt?
Anyhoo, just wanted to say hi really, and promise to post some real Filth Wizardry projects soon :)Also, while we're chit chatting... Here are a few more links to some people that have tried our projects and blogged about them :)
- The Addams family made a playdough mermaid kingdom here. Just look at those gorgeous wooden mermaid dolls!
- The Owens family made a stained glass window with tissue paper here. Seeing that made me wish we had some Nepalese Prayer flags like my inlaws have to hang in the house or the garden.
- Lady Hawkes-Fenster blogged about using our print and cut out robot parts from a looooong time ago here. Good to see that even ancient FW posts are still of use to people!
- Over at Handmade Beginnings, Eva made some tshirt skirts like my girl's easter ones, with the iron on plastic bag decal technique, here. She found perfect party bags for it!
Almost a year ago I made a couple of DIY spinny spellers for my kids, because they were learning to sound out letter combinations and blend sounds to start reading. 
It worked a treat and I agreed with my older daughter's kindergarten teacher that it would be a good tool for the classroom, so I've got a box of wooden blocks that her husband kindly cut and drill pressed holes in, plus a bunch of dowelling and all the left over wooden beads from a thrift store find, to make over 40 of these things. I'm hoping I can get my act together and find some appropriate letraset cheaply to put letters on all the blocks and varnish them. I was going to try 
Anyway, as well as the spinny speller hackathon, I've ended up making a set of creative spelling/reading/story making blocks from our Duplo bricks. I wanted something with a bit more freedom than just the three blocks of the spinny speller. Something that could grow with the kids ability. We are lucky enough to have a good amount of Duplo because my mum saved all mine and my sisters, and we scored a couple of cool garage sale sets too, plus uncle Chris gave the kids a zoo set. Their dad stole a few of the bricks 
The kids are now preferring more and more to build with the smallest scale Lego, but the Duplo still has so many possibilities for them as they get older.
All I did was sit down one evening with a bunch of white stickers and write out a load of easy words. Sight words and words that my kids can already read or sound out. It took a while to write and cut them all, but it was very cheap, and we were lucky enough to have a mate we'd not seen in years staying with us that night, so we all sat around and chatted until about 3am while I stuck all these words on the blocks. For some of them I put the opposites on the other side of the block, like "love" and "hate" or "big" and "small" and for others I put complimentary words like "his" and "her", so that the kids could change sentances they made easily by switching around a block. I had a couple of long blocks, so used them for entertaining long words.
The kids have enjoyed them a lot. We started out making story walls together, and then when left to their own devices they started making funny sentances stacked up vertically.
For my younger daughter, who is four, I made another set that were in a different orientation, that would work a bit more like an extension to the spinny speller. They just had vowel bricks with a different vowel on each of the four sides, and consonant bricks with four consonants on each side. I also made a few bricks that had combinations like "ch", "sh", "th" etc, because she's learning those sounds in words too.
Of course the Duplo bricks can still be used in regular building play, but this adds an extra learning possibility to the play. The really seem to like the idea of "building" a word or a sentance. I really think that Lego should just make sets like this. The kids were so into building with the words and it would be great to be able to buy grade level appropriate sets or character story telling sets. Limitless!
