Mosaic Monday and Halloween Fun!!

Here's my mosaic for Mosaic Monday hosted by Mary at little red house!! Thank you Mary for hosting this fun party!
We adopted Lucy about two months ago! She is such a sweet little pup! She has offered many great photo ops. This mosaic is called, "I love Lucy!"





Check out more awesome MOSAICS

Halloween Fun!!

What do eight, eleven and thirteen year old boys have in common? They all like sharp objects and ripping the guts out of a pumpkin!

This afternoon, in order to kill time (pun intended) I took my boys to a pumpkin patch to get three pumpkins, one for each of my boys and my thirteen year old nephew(their cousin).
We came home and invited cuz over to carve pumpkins.

It was a wonderful afternoon! The three of them were so busy, stabbing, cutting, ripping and creating.

My eleven year old, the future chef, was most busy cleaning and roasting the seeds. My eight year old mostly ripped the guts out of his pumpkin (I did the carving). And my nephew, the thirteen year old, took such pride in his masterpiece, and he enjoyed spending much of the time teasing his old Aunt.:)

Halloween is one of those times when you become painfully aware of your children growing up, by how they perceive the holiday.

It warmed my heart to see them all still acting like children.
Later, we went trick or treating, which brings out the kid in all of us!




I hope you had a happy and safe Halloween!

Click on the following links to see other Halloween posts:
My eight year old was an Evil Jester and my eleven year old was Chucky as played in my spooky story
My, what a difference four years makes! Noah, age 4, as a majestic lion!

Oh yeah, don't forget to enter my chalkboard giveaway!:)

Be sure to stop by The Second Annual SITS Halloween Parade to see all the fun!

It's getting spooky around here!

I was standing in my kitchen thinking of what to make for dinner tonight, when a cool breeze swept through the room. It gave me goosebumps and made the hairs on my arm stand up.

Lucy started barking in the direction of the sink as she darted from side to side. It was as if she was seeing something that I could not.



The next thing I knew, Lucy ran into the living room and came back into the kitchen, with the strap of my camera dangling from her mouth, camera attached. I took the camera from between her teeth and looked in the direction she was barking. She continued to bark at the sink. It seemed as if she was telling me to take a picture of that area of the room.

The air still had an eerie chill. Due to Lucy's insistence, I snapped one picture of my kitchen sink and cabinets. Looking at the camera screen, I detected a shadowy figure but it was too small to make out what it might be. I quickly uploaded it to my computer for a closer look.


I could not believe my eyes!

It was the ghost of Chucky standing right there in my kitchen!




The chill has since left the room. What was he doing there? What did he want? I hope he doesn't come back tomorrow night looking for dinner...

Happy Halloween!!

Getting ready for Halloween!

Taking the Halloween costume for a test drive! To see what Noah wore 4 years ago click here. My, what a difference 4 years makes!




But he's still my baby! Isn't he precious?!

Week 42 I Heart Faces "Halloween Dress-Up"

This is my first time entering the I ♥ Faces challenge. When I saw all of the adorable entries it made me think of one of my all time favorite pictures of my son, Noah. I had to dig through some discs to find it. This is Noah at age 4. I loved to watch him run around the house in this costume. He literally looked like a living doll!
I may have to do a chalk pastel of this one!


See more wonderful faces Here

Mosaic Monday!

I really love Mosaic Monday! Especially since I do so many mosaics for my Creatively Fit walks:)
Thank you Mary for doing this! I also love visiting all of the other Mosaics Mondays! I have found some fabulous blogs this way. To see more mosaics go to little red house! ( A very awesome blog!!)

Here's my Mosaic (s)
I found this park close to my house last week, during a CF walk. It just took my breath away, so much so that I had to go back, for a second look, on my Saturday walk. You can see more pictures of it here.




Also on this same walk that I discovered my magical place I spied signs of Fall(Not easy to do here in Florida)





Also don't forget to check out my Fall Giveaway!

Fall Giveaway!!

It's giveaway time!!

This Fall Giveaway Gift includes this beautiful 5"x7" Gold framed Chalkboard! Perfect size for leaving little love notes! Also included in this gift is a canvas covered handpainted chalkbox with chalk. (the boxes shown are examples. The giveaway box will have hearts painted on it or you may make a request for your own personalized message or image.) The giveaway will also include the wooden table stand (as shown in the picture above) This will all come in a lovely fall basket!

To enter the giveaway:
1. Leave a comment on this post one entry
2. Follow Chalk it up!:) two entries
3.Visit Creatively Fit and become a follower there too! three entries
4. If you're really daring become a Creatively Fit teammate!! (All you have to do is email me. This is not required to enter the giveaway:))

This giveaway will run until Sunday Nov. 7th. A winner will be announced after 12 noon on Sunday.

I've run out of space!!

Well, blogger has pulled the free upload your pictures plug! Apparently I have run out of space on my picasa and blogger accounts.
I do have several blogs with lots of pictures.
Chalk it up!
My Colorful Canvas
Muralwizard
Art Teacher Portfolio
Creatively Fit
And a few others that aren't public

I admit it, I'm a blogger junkie.

I was discussing this whole blogging thing with a good friend, who shall remain nameless (also a bit of a junkie) and we both were trying to figure out exactly what is the blog thing. It's not something tangible like a book or a photo that you can hold in your hand. Does it really exist at all. I mean one day it's here and the next it can be gone. See my very first post, to know that it is TRUE! Yet it is so valuable to all of us bloggers. There is meaning in every post. Our grandchildren and great grandchildren would find our posts interesting, I believe. I would like to have a recording of life from my ancestors, like this. But alas, where is this all going. Will it all be dumped somewhere in cyberspace in the end!

I'm sure many of you have wondered about this to. How are we to perserve these valuable journals? I think it is important to thing about now, before I start shelling out money to blogger to record something that may not be there tomorrow, in my vitrual journals, portfolios, photo albums.

One idea given to me by my friend was to have each post sent to your email and than print out the email each day. This is a very good idea but could blow through a lot of ink.

Do you have any ideas on how to perserve all the work and precious memories of our valuable blogs? I'll love to hear them!

Thank you,
Cindy

Cheap Costume Idea!

Last night was the Scholastic Book Fair at our Elementary school. You can see my hand painted banner here. The kids wore costumes representing people from around the world.

Noah said he wanted to be a Mariachi Player. So I went to the local Halloween Costume Headquarters Store and found a sombrero and poncho set for $25! I knew this was a costume that he was only going to be wearing for a few minutes and thought No Way! From there, I went a few doors down, to the local discount card store to see what I could find. I went down the party theme decoration aisle and found children sombreros for $2.99 and a plastic fiesta tablecloth for $4.00. I went home and cut the tablecloth down to size, cut a slit for the head to go through and laid the costume on my son's bed, for when he arrived home from school. The trick to getting your child to wear a tablecloth is to not let him know that it is one:). Noah isn't smiling here but he was happy with the costume. I think it turned out rather well for a costume in a pinch. A set of plastic maracas would finish the costume nicely (the party store was all out:(

Do you have any good, cheap, creative costume ideas for this Halloween? I'd love to hear about them!

Mosaic Monday- Climbing a tree!

Yesterday was a great day for climbing a tree. I took my two boys and their friend to Bok Sanctuary, in Lake Wales, Florida. We met my friend and her family there. It was a great day with incredible Florida weather! Here is my Mosaic Monday of the boys climbing the tree. They had a blast! Click on photo to enlarge and see the fun up close:)

For more fabulous mosaics go to The little Red House. You discover some wonderful new blogs too!

Have a great week!
Cindy

Scholastic Book Fair Banner/Mural

This year's Scholastic Book Fair theme is:Destination Book Fair, reading around the world. This banner will hang in the hallway of our elementary school, as one of the decorative features. The approximate size of this mural is 6'x6' on banner paper. Each individual painting(i.e. Statue of Liberty, penguins...) is 14"x14". It took about 1 hour to complete each picture.

It felt good to be painting again!:)

All nighter...not! AND mosaic Monday!!

I've hit the wall. I must face it, my all niter days are behind me. They are not decorating for the fair until Tuesday. I will have to work on this and finish it tomorrow after I take my son to the doctor, pack and ship a painting and chalkboard, go food shopping, pay bills, clean the house and do laundry.:) I wished I could have finished this tonight but if I don't get some sleep I won't be able to do anything today.

If you click here you can see what I painted for the book fair last year.

Here is my Creatively Fit posts from this weekend...

This is also my Mosaic Monday. See more wonderful mosaic at Little Red House
I apologize to the Mosaic Monday people. I didn't read carefully enough to see it was Autumn colors. In Florida it's not easy to find. This first group of pictures does have Autumn colors but not depicted in the traditional sense.
Last night was a late night, I wasn't making much sense.
Saturday's walk:

This next collage is a preview of Christmas. We walked in an adjoining neighborhood and took some pictures of houses with Halloween decorations. Yes some people even put lights up.

This last group of pictures is a little experimentation with the camera settings. Three were taken on close up setting and the other three were taken on fireworks setting. Can you guess which were which?

Friday's walk:

Place: Lake Lily Park with lots of signs!

Weather: Stinkin Hot! Even the birds didn't want to move! I had to walk around them.

Point of interest: The Cottage, with this really cool garden thingy!

Challenge: Capture bird in flight. Well, could be better:(

Detour: Eclectic neighborhood.

Observe: Details

Favorite pix... this duck was ready to bite my nose off. We were that close!

One more favorite

Collection picture: another manhole cover. Love the patina!

Another Detour: knitting store across the street, to visit my sister. She's a knitting instructor there, the best! I didn't stick around long, as I was dripping with sweat. Did I mention it was stinkin HOT!!

It was hard to choose just a few pictures today. So I tried to limit my words.

Happy Birthday Noah!!

Eight is Great!

Can you guess how old Noah is today?!



Noah is my amazing 8 year old!! He is one special kid! Kind and Considerate. Loving and Sweet. Fun and a little wacky!

The many wonderful faces of NOAH!!
Happy Birthday My Love!

It was an amazing walk!!

This post is from my Creatively Fit walk on Saturday. I enjoyed it so much I had to share it with you on my Chalk it up! Blog too:)

Today's walk was creative and CORNY! We went to the Zellwood Corn Maze. Today was the first day of this event. We started in the small maze (the snow flake) and worked our way up to the big one( the sun)! There were activities to do in each maze, word finds and pencil rubbings in the big maze...

Mosaic Monday. See more mosaics here
Also see lots of great mosaics on Creatively Fit

Finger painted fortune telling in the small maze. At different spots in the maze you had to paint one of your fingers the color that was there. The finger you chose for each color was up to you. When we exited the maze we compared our color arrangement with the ones on the chart. Then we read our fortune. Mine was #82 YOU CAN CLOSE A DEAL! Hubby's was: YOU HAVE A KEEN WIT! Matthew: YOU ARE A HIGH ACHIEVER! and Noah: YOU ARE A GREAT STORYTELLER!

Did I mention it was HOT!! There was a bridge in the center of the maze with a man selling ice cold water. We bought two!

There was also a wind tunnel outside the maze. Very cool!!

Noah before the corn maze and hay ride-City Slicker

Noah after the corn maze and hay ride- Country Bumpkin

The large maze was a 4 mile walk(if walked the entire maze) I would say we walked about 3/4 of the maze. The smaller one was about a mile. I was delirious toward the end. I wore jeans, stupid move!

It looked like Fall but it sure didn't feel like it!
I hope you're enjoying some crisp Autumn air today!

Unfortunately, our day ended with Matthew being sick. The poor thing is feeling terrible with a fever. I hope he's feeling better in the morning.

Add on: It's now Sunday going into Monday and he still has a fever. It started late Saturday. We'll give it another day before calling the doctor (unless it gets worse-than I'll call today)

I hope everyone else is feeling healthy and fit today!

Happy Birthday Heller!

Yesterday was Heller's Birthday. We celebrated his birthday by releasing balloons, red for his favorite color and yellow for the sunshine he brought to all who were fortunate enough to know him and call him our friend. To read more about Heller click here and here.

This hawk was sitting on the fence door in my backyard yesterday. He looked so beautiful, I had to take his picture!

I missed my friday's featured follower yesterday. I'm slacking, sorry. I will try to get back on track:)

Have a great weekend everyone!
Cindy