Cooped up

First off - I wanted to say that my Blurb 2010 Year in Review book arrived on Monday, which was incredibly speedy for the printing and shipping. (They now print and ship in Canada - no more waiting weeks for it to clear customs!) It's gorgeous - I am really thrilled with how it turned out, in spite of the fact that you can't upgrade to the premium paper option on books with so many pages. I was a bit worried about how it would look with the thinner paper, but it's just fine. I love that it is so compact and it was a really easy project to complete by uploading my photos and writing a few words to go with them once every week or two. And, no blank pages! It all printed exactly as I designed it. Phew!

Anyway. Around these parts we are starting to go a little stir-crazy. I like to get outside in the winter, but the past few weeks have been really, really cold, and we have pretty much been housebound.So... we are in the midst of trying to come up with fun things for the kids to do inside. I love that Christmas falls when it does on the calendar, because the infusion of new toys and books really does help to get us through the winter. But there are times when other diversions are necessary and this was one of them.Behold: snow painting! Very easy to throw together and it will keep the kids interested for as long as it takes the snow to melt. Get an old pan and fill it up with snow. Supply the kids with a muffin tin filled with assorted colours of water and some eyedroppers. Show them how to paint on the snow... and the rest will be history. This activity bought us about half an hour of peace and quiet, which was well worth it.