Tip the Scales

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving for those in the US!  I am thankful for every one of my readers!  Your positive energy brightens my day!  Thanksgiving was early this year!  Or rather, as I said to Will, it wasn’t early it is always the 4th Thursday in November!  But Will pointed out November has 5 Thursdays this year so it is early!  That has thrown me off!  It doesn’t feel like the winter season.  Despite that we got our tree this past Sunday.  So we have a Christmas tree inside and pumpkins outside.  I’m not ready to let go of fall yet…

Alas, the kids are already on to the next holiday.  Patricia asked me this morning (she was home sick) if it was Christmas.  I told her it was not yet Christmas, but it was the next holiday coming up.  She then said “oh yeah, so it is Christmas”.  Which, sure, I guess it’s Christmas season.  Whatever floats their boat.  Julius made a Christmas list that is 6 pieces of paper stapled vertically that he pasted toys onto that he cut out from magazines.  6 sheets of paper. That means it’s 66 inches long, taller than me.  We need to work on minimalism.

I think Santa will be favorable towards my children though.  For the most part they are sweet to each other and to others.  Patricia is constantly asking Julius to be part of her pretend games.  The pretend games are almost always “parent and child” where one of them is the mom or dad and the other is the kiddo.  Julius sometimes gets annoyed with this game, but more often than you’d think has fun playing with her.  This past weekend I called Patricia downstairs for something, and Julius objected saying “But we were playing mommies, who am I going to play with now?”  Then the next day there was this interaction:

Patricia: Julius do you want to be the kid and I’ll be the mom?

Julius: no.

Patricia: Do you want to be the dad and I’ll be the kid?

Julius: no.

Patricia: What do you want to be?

Julius: I don’t want to be anything.

Patricia followed him around for another few minutes thinking of variants of the game that he might like to play with her, convinced that she must have heard him wrong.

Despite Halloween being over and fall coming to a close it’s never the wrong time to become a mermaid.  So I would love to give you some cricut patterns I made for face painting and how to apply them!

Mermaid Face painting Stencils

What you’ll need:

• Cricut Patterns:
  • small mermaid scales
  • large mermaid scales
  • small shell
  • small starfish
• Mylar sheet (mine was leftover from the backing of a roll of permanent vinyl I got online)

1. Load cricut pattern and then follow instructions to cut out “mylar” material.
2. Gently remove from mat.
3. Cut around the area, leaving a 3/4″ border all around.
4. Repeat for other shapes

To Adorn Mermaid Scales

What you’ll need:

• facepaint & sponge (I used Snazaroo face paint which was on sale and Michaels and was sensitive skin friendly)
• Stencils above

1. Choose side of the face you want to adorn.  Get the sponge wet and then ring it out so it is damp.  Swirl in the white paint until the sponge is covered.  Pat white all around the area you plan to adorn (in this case it was the side of the face).  Rinse sponge and ring out again so it’s damp.
2. Take your scale stencil (either small for side of the face, or large for forehead area) and position over the white paint.
3. Swirl sponge in light color paint (I used light green).  Pat the light colored paint all over the stencil directly on top of the white paint.
4. Swirl sponge in darker color paint (we did purple, pink or blue) and apply on top of the light colored paint in strategic areas.  I did more of this color in the center and left the green color around the edges.
   

   Applying scale stencil.

5. Remove stencil.
6. Rinse and ring out sponge so it is damp again.  Swirl sponge in white paint.
7. Place seashell or starfish stencil in desired location (I did mine on the lower part of the cheek at the bottom of where the scales end).
8. Pat white paint onto stencil, remove stencil.
   

   Applying starfish stencil

9. Wash all stencils to be reused.

Finished facepaint.

By the end of the day Julius had his whole face painted.