Recycling?

When the back door slams summer's butt on its way out, that means it's time for fall to come dancing through your front door. Our September weather has been great, but the first day of fall was overcast, cool and wet. It rained most of the day so the kids played inside. So I had to march way back into the archives of my brain to come up with something to occupy the kids for more than 2 minutes. Because 2 minutes is all the time they are willing to allow before their 'I'm bored' alarm goes off.

So what do you do?

You go into the garage and find two shoe boxes. Give them to the kids and tell them to make dioramas. When they stare at you with bewildered faces, you tell them to make a cool display for your Littlest Pet Shop or Star Wars action figures.
That seemed to work better. This is what they came up with.

As you can see, Sweet Pea's Pet Shop pets are enjoying their local playground. Complete with a drinking straw swing and teeter totter. Some pipe cleaner ropes to climb and a few cups of dry macaroni and beans for safety. We wouldn't want any pets to fall and skin their knees. Sweet Pea is pretty creative with art projects. She usually needs more than just crayons. She always asks for extra things like tape, string, glue, marbles, sticks (popcicle and tree branch), soldering iron or a circular saw.

Number One Son decided to use his Lego people instead of his action figures.

I think he did pretty well with the volcano and Jedi fighting in the background. He usually doesn't like to do art projects as much as his sister but he put a lot of effort and creativity into his project and it turned out OK.

Now we have to decide how long to 'display' our artwork. I think after a week on the kitchen counter, we will relocate the exhibit to a shelf in the closet that the kids can visit at any time. In another week, the closet exhibit will hopefully close for lack of interest and be moved to a temporary location at the Cylindrical Museum of Domestic Relics. From there a government official will personally deliver them to their permanent homes at an open air sculpture garden of similar items a few miles out of town. The pets and Legos will have to be removed for historic reasons as they are still being intensely studied by their curators.

How's that for recycling?