The Making of a Dragon

The Making of a Dragon

This is one of my all time favorite art projects ever.  This summer we found that we had a lot of cracked, sun baked plastic beach buckets of every shape and size. Instead of tossing them into the recycling bin...we repurposed them with style.  We took the largest and screwed the bottom of it to a board that we could mount to the wall later on.  Then we took a medium sized plain beach bucket and turned it upside down and shoved it into the first bucket rim to rim at a slight angle.  Then for the dragon's snout we duct taped a pointed castle form to the bottom end of the last bucket.  This gave us our basic dragon head shape.  Then we took some thick styrofoam packing  we had been saving and  cut and tore out  chuncks for the cheeks, eyelids, nostril bumps and head crest and used clear packing tape to attach them.  You could also use store bought styrofoam balls cut in half for the cheeks and into thirds or quarters for the eyelids.  Get creative and ball up some newspaper to help shape up your own dragon  or dinosaur head and tape it into place.

Here is a good side view of how the buckets fit together.

Once we had our basic form built, we covered the wooden wall mounting board with plastic so our paper mache wouldn't get all over it.  We tore our newspapers up..(don't use the shiny ad pages) into long strips.  We mixed up a simple paper mache paste out of elmers glue and water about half and half.  I usually use and even simpler paste but we wanted this to be really strong.  You can also use a homemade paste of just flour and water and it will work well.  Try one cup of flour to one and a half cups of water for a super easy  nontoxic and edible paste that is easily water washable. 

Once we had our basic form finished it was time to get sticky with the paper mache

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We needed several layers of the paper mache to make it sturdy enough to paint on so we recruited some of the neighborhood kids to help with the project.  Paper mache is either something you love or it feels totally gross...I'm not sure all the kids liked the ick factor here, but they stuck in there and got the job done.

Alexis and Donovan braving the goop and helping paper mache the dragons head.

Here is our finished dragon hanging in the classroom.

Cammy did a great job painting the dragon with acrylic paints all by herself.

Getting rid of the dryer

Ok! So I'm a few days behind in keeping up with my One Small Change challenge for the month. I'm behind on a lot of things but this is an important one. If you are just now learning about it One Small Change is a challenge posted by Hip Mountain Mama to make one small change in our daily lives that positively effects the planet. It could be to recycle, compost, use natural cleaners you name it. She challenged anyone willing to post about it to make one change every month for the year. For the month of January our family got rid of our microwave. We had lived without a microwave for years until we bought our current home and it came with one. Having been here for two years we had gotten into the habit of nuking our food which I have always found to be a little disturbing. I was glad when this challenge came along because it gave me the excuse (I didn't really need) to get rid of the large radioactive contraption in my kitchen. So for the month of February I am vowing to discontinue using our dryer. We have a clothesline strung on the back porch already (we used it quite a bit last summer) and we also have one of those wooden drying racks. So I ask myself : Why do I continue to use the dryer?....it eats up massive amounts of electricity! The answer; I was being lazy. There are no excuses for this one. Millions of people around the world have no electric dryer for their clothes much less and electric washer. I live in the southern USA where the temperature year around is mostly pleasant. We have sunny days here every week. I can dry the clothes on the wooden drying rack if it is raining. This does drive my hubby crazy though because it is quite inconvenient in our kitchen but so what if we have to walk around it. We will be saving money by not using it, we will be using less electricity, we will be setting a good example for our neighbors and children, we will in our own little way be helping our earth. I don't quite have the where with all to completely give it away to a charity yet but I think in the mean time I might get creative with some duct tape and tape the front door shut so I won't be tempted to use it. Maybe I'll even let the girls draw on it with some markers.

Indoor Camp Fire

I bet this is not what you were thinking! My daughter Cammy loves to choose indoor camping as one of her reward privileges. We have a box full of index cards that the whole family made, we each got to write down or draw fun things to do on them. Some of them are just plain silly like giving her baby sister a finger painting lesson in the bathtub or mixing your own bubble concoction. Others are really sweet like the one my husband wrote: Have a tea party with Daddy. When Cammy has earned enough pebbles in her jar she gets to choose a card from the box. The indoor camping is her favorite by far. She has only been camping once and that was with her Nana in the mountains. Sometimes we do a complete camping tent set up...sometimes we just make a classic sheet tent in the living room. This time we did the latter with a minor adjustment. It was raining outside so we couldn't do a fire in the backyard firepit to roast our marshmallows so I did smores roasted in the oven and we made this little pretend campfire inside and told stories. It was really easy to make. I have a box full of crafty recyclable stuff in the pantry. There was a drink cup holder and some paper towel tubes that proved to be the perfect fodder for a camp fire. Cammy colored the drink cup holder with red, orange and yellow markers and we ripped up a sheet of neon orange copy paper for flames and tucked them into the holes of the drink cup holder. Colored tissue paper would make nice flames if you have it. The paper towel tubes were our logs. I tried to get Cammy to color those as well but she said "Mom they are already brown!"

Making a change for the better!

I recently came across Hip Mountain Mama http://hipmountainmamablog.com/

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and have signed my family up for the One Small Change challenge. Our family has made many small changes over the years in an effort to be more environmentally conscious but we are not always truly religious in observing these. We recycle but I will admit that there is more that we could recycle...there is paper that makes it into the trash and yes the occasional plastic container of moldy food from the fridge that I'm afraid to touch to clean it out. Lights get left on. The bath water runs too long. All sorts of things need improvement around our house. So when I came across these challenges today it inspired me. Hopefully it will inspire your family too. For more information click on the links provided below and sign up your family.

• One Small Change

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• Community of Change

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  Here is a list of some of the simple changes our family has made over the past couple of years. A lot of these are in effect and some we need to revisit and get serious about implementing them and practicing them all the time not just sometimes. I have tried to be fairly honest about our family's practices. We have a long way to go still.
  
• We haven't used paper towels or paper napkins for more than a year now in the house. When my second daughter was born we were gifted way too many folding cloth diapers and we just started using them for our cloth napkins and rags. We are planning to tye dye them soon. As silly as it is I must admit though that I did buy a roll of paper towels at Christmas so our guests wouldn't feel weird using diapers to wipe their hands.
  
• We compost sometimes
  
• We switched laundry soaps when my second daughter was born to a natural soap called Charlies Soap
• We have tried our best to switch to all natural wooden toys (we gave away three large boxes of plastic toys with the full blessing of our six year old) though we do still have a few that my husband couldn't part with (Luke Skywalker figurine and Catwoman) along with a few Barbie dolls(aargh!) that my oldest didn't want to give in on.
  
• We hung a laundry line on the back porch but I am often too lazy to hang the clothes out to dry and just revert to the old habit of just throwing them conveniently into the dryer....and it shows in our electric bill.
  
• We used cloth diapers with both of our children although admittedly we used disposables when we traveled anywhere.
• We have been in our current home for two years without using any pesticides or chemicals on our garden.
• We have combated any home bug problems with natural concoctions like cayenne pepper or borax.
• I'm sure that there were others but these were the most recent that we have made. Upon talking our family has decided to get rid of our microwave. We lived without a microwave for years but when we moved into this house it came with a small microwave oven and we got back into the habit of reheating food in it or thawing food that way. I have always been wary of microwave ovens....they seem so unnatural. So for the month of January we are disposing of our microwave as our contribution in the One Small Change campaign. What will yours be?