Sea Food and Piracy

We went to St. Augustine today for the Sea Food Festival and to explore the new Pirate Museum.







There were craft booths and delicious dessert booths, as well as seafood,





and because it is St. Augustine, there were pirates wandering about.



The new St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum was a lot of fun. The exhibits are very interactive and definitely made to keep the interest of children.







There are only two authentic pirate flags left, and one of them can be seen in the background of this picture:

Greek Architecture Models

The Middle and High School history classes at the school have been learning about ancient Greece, something I hope to do later in the school year. These student-made models are now sitting in the school centrium. I was so impressed with their work, that I wanted to share it here.

Primitive Hut Dioramas

Even though our lessons at school have moved on to Mesopotamia, there was one project we still wanted to do with with primitive man, which was having the children make models of some of the different styles of primitive huts. Each child was able to choose a picture of a hut design used by prehistoric people. The child then built a model hut that looked like their picture. We spray painted some sticks white to represent mammoth bones for some of the huts.

Kiddy Cocktail/ Shirley Temple

These seem to have gone out of style, but when I was a child, this was the festive drink that I ordered at every restaurant. Sometimes it was called a "kiddy cocktail" and sometimes it was called a "Shirley Temple", but it was always the same sweet, red, carbonated drink.

Blaze had a very good day today, so as a special treat, I made him his first Shirley Temple for dessert tonight.



1/2 cup of ginger ale

3 Tablespoons grenadine

1 Tablespoon maraschino cherry juice

ice


Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour the ginger ale over the ice, then add grenadine and cherry juice. Stir gently. Garnish with an orange slice and a maraschino cherry.

Embroidery Resources for Crazy Quilts

My newest sewing project, the crazy quilt picnic blanket, has been a great way to try out new embroidery stitches. I was very fortunate, also, because just as I finished piecing the quilt together, my boss asked me if I'd like this very large collection of embroidery floss (along with other embroidery supplies).



I've really been learning a lot from the tutorials I've found on-line.

Embroidery stitches in alphabetical order:

http://www.victorian-embroidery-and-crafts.com/embroidery-stitches.html








I have found both of these library books to be very useful. The first book is small and fat and looks like a nature guide for embroidery stitches.





Urban Threads offers embroidery designs for both hand and machine embroidery, priced between $1 and $5 per design. I really like their selection of steampunk designs:

Steampunk Embroidery

Urban Threads also has a small selection of free designs, which at the moment includes a steampunk leprechaun.

http://www.urbanthreads.com/free_designs

Free clip art sites can also provide great inspiration for embroidery designs:

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/


There are several ways to put embroidered designs on the quilt. They can be added to the quilt patches before or after the quilt is pieced together. I waited until after.


For some of the designs, I traced a picture onto tracing paper and then basted the tracing paper onto the fabric. Then I embroidered over the pencil lines on the paper.


For other designs, I found it easier to just trace around a stencil, directly onto the fabric, using a regular pencil for light fabrics, and a white pencil for dark fabrics.


The designs can be simple outlines:



or the design can be filled in:



There are also iron-on embroidery transfers available at the fabric store, although I didn't take advantage of any of those. They have special ink that can be used more that once to transfer designs onto the cloth, which can then be embroidered over.

Iron-on appliques were on sale last week at our local fabric store, so I added some of those to the quilt, as well.





There are no real rules for crazy quilts. They don't need to have any embellishment at all, but they are a great way to try out new stitches ( like a fancy sampler) and the extra stitching does strengthen the seams, as well as making the quilt prettier. It would be hard to go over-board with the embellishments. If you take a look at pictures of vintage crazy quilts, they are like multi-media collages, with embroidery, lace, silk flowers, buttons, ribbons, and trinkets. The only limitations I am putting on my quilt, are time to complete it, and I don't want too many lumpy elements on it, since I want to be able to place bowls and plates on it without them tipping over.

Health Fair and Treasure Hunt

This is how we spent our morning:































All of the children who completed the treasure map (had their map marked at each booth) received a free bike helmet.

Mesopotamia

This week, the older elementary children at school and Blaze started learning about Ancient Mesopotamia.



We've been doing worksheets about cuneiform, the writing of ancient Mesopotamia:







Blaze and I watched this movie Monday night and I will be showing it to the kids at school tomorrow morning. It's part of a series about ancient civilizations.



I also found this coloring page for the children to do, just incase the movie ends before the end of the class period:

http://highland.hitcho.com.au/sumeriancitycolor.pdf


The following website is a great resource for children learning about ancient Mesopotamia:

http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/


Last night, I discovered a rap song that tells all about ancient Mesopotamia. I just wish the sound quality on this recording was a little better.








Silly Music Video:




This was a strange co-incidence. I was working on lesson plans about Mesopotamia for Blaze this week, when DH turned on the t.v. just as Capt. Picard on Star Trek :The Next Generation started telling the story of Gilgamesh.