Art Was Never My Favorite Subject

I never want to see another foam art kit again. I know, never say never...but I've given it nearly a week and I still feel the same!

Last Saturday afternoon I took the boys out to buy Christmas decorations. James thinks this could be our very first family Christmas. Sounds weird, but with various deployments and duty stations, he could be right...I have always had a small Christmas tree and put up my collection of ornaments, but this year the boys get to run with it. We got stockings and non-breakable ornaments, and I found foam art kits for a Santa's Workshop and Gingerbread House.

"How hard can it be?" I thought. So we cleared the dining table for our family art time:

The boys were quite serious about their work...

It seemed simple enough. All the pieces are pre-cut and either snap together or need to be glued on. There was also a small tube of glitter glue in each kit. Only after we put together 75% of each structure did I see the very fine print suggesting some type of artsy (tacky) glue or a medium-temp glue gun. No wonder nothing was sticking. We had been using the glitter glue!!! I guess it was OK too since it provided the sparkly"snowy" scene once the glue dried, but the most frustrating part (for me) was trying to keep those tiny foam pieces where they were supposed to stick -- and off my fingers! James said it was working fine for him and Noah (Santa's Workshop) because he was just globbing the glue on...he said I was getting too worked up about the details. Details...that is the difference between males and females!

Here is their finished work...

He said they had some extra pieces leftover but he's not worried...and Noah decided to add pom-poms to the roof and red shutters next to the door. (I don't know where he got those pieces of foam.)

Here is what Jonah and I did...although Jonah was much more interested in squeezing out the glitter glue onto the tabletop. I had to set the house on its side to dry because the mini pom-poms kept falling off.

A few days later I saw a foam art kit for a Nativity. Christmas is not Christmas without a Nativity. So I bought it and thought I could put it together while Noah was at school and during Jonah's nap time. (such a sucker for punishment.) Some of those Nativity pieces were had self-adhesive backing -- yay! But the challenge was trying to make Mary and Joseph. I just could not get the foam to roll into a cone shape to stay glued!!! (I had switched to Elmer's glue for this project.) Finally I gave up. I got some construction paper and made my own Mary and Joseph figures. Don't even get me started on how I got the "straw" and baby Jesus in the manger. Three days after I started that project it was completed.

And now our home is starting to feel Christmasy!

(After the holidays these things are going into their very own storage boxes so I don't have this kind of headache next year.)

Noah also asked about Advent Calendars so we have started our countdown to Jesus' birthday!

Merry Christmas to everyone!