Scarecrow Friends

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The boys helped me decorate for Fall/Halloween today.  They put out several stick style scarecrows, and I thought this duo in my Ficus pot was really cute together.

The boys told me this grouping represents Mr. Don, Mom, Joey, and Johnny:-)

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If you have a few minutes, please check out my latest GeekMom post on Project Feederwatch.

Life's a Glitch

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A really cool pin I saw at Guardian Angel today.  It seemed to fit the day I was having.  I have a Windows 8 Samsung ATIV laptop, and I have been avoiding the frequent prompts to go to Windows 8.1, then last week, I accidentally let 8.1 go on.  The only reason I didn't want to upgrade was that I hadn't made back-up boot disks for my computer, and I wanted to do that just in case.  Immediately after 8.1 went on, my  machine display went dim, and the brightness controls no longer worked.  I could read the screen, but it was like being in a dungeon.  Also, I couldn't adjust the direction of the touchpad scroll.  I did a lot of research on these issues, and I switched the display driver from Intel and Radeon to Microsoft Basic, and that got the brightness back.  But, then I put on a Windows Update, and my machine wouldn't boot.  I had to go into safe mode to repair it, and then after the repair, the display was dim again.  Now tonight it's back bright.  I can't process photos on this machine when it's dim.  I'm a girl that likes a bright screen.  So here's hoping the glitch is gone and things stay bright!  I've got First Lego League tomorrow, and I'm counting on my machine working so the kids can use it.  The touchpad issue I'm just ignoring and using a mouse.  

Johnny Volcano

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Besides making a pond model, Johnny's teacher, Ms. Kulesza, also asked the kids to make volcanoes. Now this project I thought was well suited for Playdough!  Johnny and I researched volcanoes on Pinterest where they suggested using tinfoil to make volcano form and shape.  That worked pretty well!  We did use some packing tape to hold the volcano together.

A week later, the playdough had cracked and slid a bit.  Still neat but we were disappointed with that.

Johnny Pond Landform School Project

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This is a project Johnny did for school. He was assigned to write a paper on ponds and to create a pond model. He originally wanted to use Playdough. I suggested instead that he use acrylic water. We looked at several vases that had the acrylic water in them at Guardian Angel, and he liked the idea. We hunted plastic shapes for the pond and came across one that was both irregular yet still symmetrical that was about the right size. The acrylic water is quite expensive. In order to make sure we had enough to fill the container with just one kit, we looked at using marbles or rocks as the pond bottom. Pretty cool that the rocks also look like a real pond bottom! The fish in the pond are fishing lures put on toothpicks so that they would stay in place when the acrylic was poured. Felt was used to make a grassy area and walkway around the pond. Johnny got some silk flowers and some figurines from Guardian Angel that we also glued on. We got Donnie to cut out the box lid to match the pond shape. I was too afraid Johnny and I would screw it up. Donnie did a good job. Johnny had fun and was pleased with the results as was I. Our only problem...the acrylic never really dried and we're going on day 8 as I write this.