Archive for the ‘2011’ Category
{Wordless Wednesday} – Seattle Area Child PhotographerDecember 14th, 2011 |
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{Santa at the Space Needle} – Seattle Area Child PhotographerDecember 10th, 2011I was at Starbucks the other day and saw that they had a “Rocket to the Top of the Space Needle” coupon. You buy one adult Space Needle ticket, and you get one adult ticket OR two youth tickets FREE. Adults tickets are $18, youth tickets (ages 4-12) are $11, and 3 and under are [...] |
I was at Starbucks the other day and saw that they had a “Rocket to the Top of the Space Needle” coupon. You buy one adult Space Needle ticket, and you get one adult ticket OR two youth tickets FREE. Adults tickets are $18, youth tickets (ages 4-12) are $11, and 3 and under are free so the buy one, get one free was a great deal. In addition, Santa Claus would be up there in his rocket ship as well. Here is the blurb from the website:
Seattle’s Coolest Santa and his Out-of-this-World Workship
December 10-11 & 17-24: 11am – 5pm*
*Santa will only be here until 4pm on December 11
The coolest, hippest Santa Seattle has ever seen will be chillin’ out with a couple of his elves at the top of the Space Needle this holiday season. Eager to show off his super-sleek WorkShip, Jolly St. Nick will be on the Observation Deck to meet and greet guests and take pictures in his shiny ride.
After telling Santa what is on their wish list, kids are invited to visit the arts and crafts station on the Observation Deck to make and take home a complimentary holiday keepsake.
My boys have never been a huge fan of Santa Claus. They love the abstract idea of Santa, but when faced with the real life Man in Red, it’s another story. I’m pretty sure I have the only kids who have cried and ran away from Santa, who dared to wave at them from 20 feet away. Last year, when my oldest was five, he surprised us by actually asking to go visit Santa and having his picture taken with the Man in Red. My younger son, who was two at the time, was not a big fan. This year, he’s six, and been all over the whole Santa thing. My youngest…still not so much interested. But, they both love space, and rockets. Plus, my husband had not been up to the top of the Space Needle since he was a child, so we planned a family outing to the Space Needle. It was one of the rare, sunny, and clear days in the Seattle winter, and we had a gorgeous view on top. It was also super windy and cold, so we did not spend a lot of time on the observation deck. Rocket Santa was as awesome as he promised to be, and my oldest son was enchanted by his visit with Santa in the rocket. My younger son…not so much. In fact, he outright refused to make eye contact with Santa, or take the candy cane from Santa’s elf helper. Oh well, maybe another year.
In all, if you are looking for a different Santa experience, I would suggest going up to the Space Needle!
At the observation deck on top of the Space Needle. Please note that two out of three photo participants were cold and grumpy.
Waiting in line for Santa Claus
Someone was a wee bit excited
They were really nice and gave parents photo opportunities as well. I’m a little sad my oldest is out of focus but he was way more interested in getting back to talk with Santa rather than look up for pictures.
My youngest wouldn’t even get in line with us.
He was much more vested in checking out the view from the telescopes
Older brother wanted a turn as well
As a bonus, we found an actual mound of actual SNOW in the Seattle Center. King of the Mountain!
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{Penguin Footprints} – Seattle Area Child PhotographerDecember 8th, 2011Back before I had kids, I use to waste my time online looking at celebrity gossip sites and entertainment news sites. Nowadays, I get sucked into crafting sites such as Pinterest and Craftgawker. I particularly love Pinterest because I’m able to organize everything I find online into great boards such as “kid crafts”, “photography”, or [...] |
Back before I had kids, I use to waste my time online looking at celebrity gossip sites and entertainment news sites. Nowadays, I get sucked into crafting sites such as Pinterest and Craftgawker. I particularly love Pinterest because I’m able to organize everything I find online into great boards such as “kid crafts”, “photography”, or just simple “things I like”. I found this great tutorial on making a penguin footprint picture. It was so fantastically simple, I had to try it out with my boys!
First, you take some children. I have these two on hand all the time.
Then, you strip them down to their toesies. I actually had the boys do this in their underwear and had my husband directly deposit them in bath afterwards, to make clean up easier.
Then, you paint their feet black. I did it using it a paint brush on their feet. I used acrylic paint, as we were going to be stepping onto canvas instead of just paper. For easier clean up, I highly recommend using washable tempara paint
Then I had them step onto the canvas. My canvas was sized 11″x14″. I did it one foot at a time, having them hold onto a chair. I then pressed their toes and feet down to get a good impression. Then have it dry overnight.
Once dry, paint on black wings, a white belly, an orange beak, and some googly eyes for fun. Aren’t they adorable? For more fun, you can also paint their toes orange to make orange feet, but we were not that ambitious.
Here’s our finished product! The snowflakes were popsicle stick snowflakes we had made earlier this week which I thought made a nice background. The ones on your left are my youngest son’s footprints. The ones on the right (with the bigger googly eyes) are made by my older son, who is the one doing the hammy smile in the background.
I hope you guys can make penguin footprint art with your kids too! Happy crafting!
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{Book inspired crafts} – Seattle Area Lifestyle photographerDecember 7th, 2011I’m grateful that we live in an area with a fabulous library system, with some awesome childrens’ programs. We go to the library weekly and get new books, and my kids love choosing and picking their own books for reading at home. We also love going to story time and listening to the great childrens’ [...] |
I’m grateful that we live in an area with a fabulous library system, with some awesome childrens’ programs. We go to the library weekly and get new books, and my kids love choosing and picking their own books for reading at home. We also love going to story time and listening to the great childrens’ librarians read, sing songs, and tell great stories. I get inspired by both the storytelling and the repeated reading of of the boys’ favorite books, to do interactive crafts with them. It helps promote literacy, pre-reading skills, and also is very hands on and fun. Sometimes when the boys are being super wiggly and can’t sit still for a story, they’ll still listen to it if they can follow along with their own crafts.
Here’s one of our favorites, and a must have book for any house. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
I got the idea from The Crafting Chicks for this craft. Toilet paper tubes, some green paper, and foam stickers I had plenty of in stock! The boys loved finding the different alphabet letters as we read the book, then putting them up to climb on the “tree”.
My youngest took finding space for all the letters quite seriously
I covered the toilet paper tubes in brown paper to make it more tree like.
Chicka chicka boom boom!
Here’s another book we love in this house. My Heart Is Like A Zoo
In this book, each letter in the alphabet is represented by an animal. And all the animals, are made up entirely of hearts. So here are some of our animals made of heart drawings. We have a heart frog, and a heart lion.
Then, we cut out a bunch of different sized hearts out of scrapbook paper.
And we glued them together to make animals. Here is my younger son’s bunny (he had some help with the glueing and pasting)
And here is my older son’s blue heron. He did this one all by himself.
And another fun book to turn into a craft. Dog’s Colorful Day.
For this craft, I just cut the dog out of paper, then gave them colored markers. As we read along in the story, they put colored dots on their dog. Later, I cut the dots and dog out of fleece to make this fun read along craft we could do over and over again. Here is my youngest son’s colorful dog rendition
And my older son. Please forgive the awesome face he is making for the picture. 
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{Wordless Wednesday} – Seattle Area Lifestyle photographerDecember 7th, 2011 |
