It's Too Hot!

When the temperature gets so warm the sidewalk is blistering and even the tomato plants are looking for shade, then life at the Big Brown Farm turns inward. 900 square feet may not lend itself to such cool inventions as carpet skates (I saw these once at a toy store and thought they looked cool and I should get some, then realized that our 5x8 foot rug might not be the ideal skating rink.), but there is enough room to do some crafting.

This day, the craft was decorating egg cartons. This, of course, with the expectation that our Hot Chicks will be laying more prolifically in the near future, and we will need custom storage for their calcium coated bundles of joy.

Mason, no stranger to the medium, dove into the watercolors with gusto. While Ellie, curious about the culinary aspects of the pigments, tasted each color much to her mother's disapproval.

In the end, we created enough storage for seven dozen eggs.

Now it's up to the Ladies to come clean on their end of the bargain. So, come on Ladies! Get those pushers pushin"!

Artist in Residence

So, I had this old desk in my classroom that nobody (myself included) wanted. I don't even know where it came from. I just walked into my classroom one day, and there it was. Kind of like The Shoemaker and the Elves, but less cool and less useful... until now.


Jen has been busy transforming our patio into a playroom. This is very useful. Kids, it turns out, come with their fair share of stuff. We have not even bought any of this stuff (probably the work of the desk elves). Anyway, I took that desk, lopped off the legs at the ankles and now it is a fine art desk for Mason.

The summer of recycling continues with this easel. This showed up in our driveway one morning and was partially broken. It was originally built for three artists, but, being a crowd, I repaired the two useable portions and now...


Ta-Dah! Art for the masses. Well, for two.
We wanted to limit Mason's color palate to promote his creativity. That, and, well, we only had orange.


Apparently the elf suppliers are experiencing some sort of paint embargo.