Activities at Home

Product Review—Creating a Masterpiece 2019

October 22, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About a year and a half ago, Mr. Imagination began asking me to buy him an art course. He wanted to learn how to draw better. I bought one, but it wasn’t what he had in mind, and he only did the first couple of lessons. He keeps drawing, though, just figuring things out on his own. When the review of Creating a Masterpiece came up, I asked him if he was interested—oh, yes, he very definitely was! So, we signed up and were given a one-year subscription to the online Drawing Program. We had hardly any of the materials needed, so he couldn’t get started for several days till the pencils came, but as soon as they arrived, he was off.

Each lesson is presented in a series of several short videos, with the teacher, a lovely, grandmotherly-type woman, showing each step of drawing a particular picture. Mr. Imagination (age 7) and Little Miss (age 4) both loved watching the videos and drawing the pictures. I loved that they could do the lessons on their own! With a new baby in the house, I don’t have time to sit down with them for art lessons. They were both able to come up with some very good artwork, for their age. Little Miss liked the picture of the pumpkins so well that she drew several more later, without watching the videos. She frequently requests to do an art lesson.

This was the first lesson they did, a cartoon-style giraffe. Even Mr. Sweetie did this one! They were told they could draw just the head and neck, or more of the body if they wished—just have fun. Mr. Imagination drew the entire giraffe. I love his picture!

My children have mainly focused on the pencil drawings, both regular pencils and colored pencils. Because we have no ready access to art supplies locally, I ended up ordering the vellum paper we needed for charcoal drawings from the United Kingdom, and it took awhile to get here. (For those who live in the United States, it will be easy to obtain the supplies; she has links on her website to exactly the items she recommends.) Mr. Imagination hasn’t tried much with the charcoal yet, but I expect him to before too long. He did do quite a few of the other drawings—we had quite the display on our living room wall for awhile, till he took some down to send to a grandma!

Here is an assortment of the other pictures Mr. Imagination drew. I like the wide variety of techniques that are taught with just pencils! The one with white pencil on black paper is a seal, by the way.

I am highly impressed with Creating a Masterpiece. The lessons are presented very clearly, with each step explained and shown. The teacher’s voice is easy to listen to, and it is obvious that she loves art, which is inspiring. I think I could even draw a nice picture by using her lessons! If you have a child who wants to learn to draw, I highly recommend this course. It can be used by all ages, from preschool, as Little Miss has proven, to adults who want to learn how to draw better.

Below are some of the lessons available to us; Mr. Imagination has tried most of these.

This is what one of the lessons looks like. You simply click on a video to get the next steps in drawing the picture!

Click on the picture below to read what 70 other people have said about Creating a Masterpiece!

Learning to Draw {Creating a Masterpiece Reviews}

Miss Joy

October 20, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

It’s been awhile since I’ve shared any pictures of our baby! These are mainly for Grandma and the aunties, so if you aren’t in that category, feel free to skip this post.

This was her second time away from home. She screamed for about a minute after we started off—and suddenly fell asleep with this adorable pout on her face!

Four weeks—one of the first smiles.

A month old, wearing a dress from a special friend who drove four or five hours each way, with another dear friend, to share our joy in our new baby!

Five weeks, and getting fatter!

Five weeks

Little Miss loves having a baby sister! Here she was having a party; the cups were the party hats!Six weeks. Esther captioned this one something about hiding from the world. She likes to have her hands near her face when she sleeps.

Six weeks—just another cute picture!Esther tried many times before she was able to get a good passport photo. Keep your hands down, baby!

Getting fat and still very happy!

Seven weeks. Obviously, the love between Miss Joy and Mr. Sweetie is mutual! (Or maybe she just thinks he’s funny!)

Birthday Blessings

October 12, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 6 Comments

I have some wonderful children! I really don’t care if I receive any gifts for my birthday or not. It’s lovely to know that I am appreciated and loved, but they make sure I know that anyway. However, now that they are reaching adulthood, they are doing some incredible things for my birthday. Last year, they installed lights in the food-storage room in the garage, so I don’t have to find a flashlight when I need to get something from that room. I am appreciative every time I flick on the lights and open that door. This year, they topped that—when I didn’t think they could come up with anything I would like better!

My birthday was yesterday, and no one had any gifts for me. It was just a normal day, until after family worship—just at bedtime, actually. We finished our evening prayers, and the two youngest boys took off out of the room. They returned with:

A very interesting lemon cake that they had made without a recipe! It tasted fairly good, to my surprise. I was quite pleased with their thoughtfulness and initiative.

This morning early, the two oldest boys and Mr. Sweetie took off to town. I didn’t think much of it, because Simon goes to town on a Saturday morning every so often. They returned a few hours later, and brought a bag of kumara (sweet potatoes) into the house. I was surprised, and they told me, “We have a secret informant!” Last evening, Gayle had asked me, at bedtime, if the meal I made last night was my favorite. I told him I like it—but I like most of what I make! I had thought, while I was making it, that kumara would be good with it, but we didn’t have any. Apparently, he told the boys that I was hungry for kumara before they left!

The next act was to forbid me to go to the other side of the garage. I had planned to work in the greenhouse today, and pretended to fuss about not being able to go out there. Before lunchtime, however, they came in and told me to go out with them. I got to the greenhouse, and the first thing I saw was that the brick path was finished. The next thing I saw was:

A hazelnut tree and a lime tree! I wanted a hazelnut for a pollinator for the four we already planted, and the lime tree someone gave us froze this winter, so they replaced it for me. We’ll take more care with this one! Then, as I was admiring the trees, I suddenly got wet. Someone had turned on the sprinklers they had just installed along the ridgepole of the greenhouse! There are enough sprinklers to water the entire area, by simply connecting a hose to our outside tap! They had also tilled everything that needed replanting, so I got to play out there this afternoon and get some things planted. Isn’t this a beautiful place?

Freshly-planted cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli.

The last of the lettuces we set out in April, and some of the tomatoes I’m growing for this summer.

My baby plant nursery, out of reach of the slugs, and the silverbeet (Swiss Chard) plants the neighbor dug out of his greenhouse and gave us. We’ll get a few meals off it before it bolts.

One of the sprinklers.

I love that brick path!

The sprinklers are on—Mr. Imagination likes to get wet!

Esther shared some photos with me that she took while they were doing the work. I enjoyed seeing them all working together!

They pulled out some of the bricks that were already in place, compacted the soil and leveled it, then finished the path.

The last step was to till everything again so it looked perfect!

Birthday Cookout

September 28, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Mr. Sweetie turned 10 yesterday. He wanted to celebrate with a fire down at the river, and roast sausages and marshmallows. We invited some friends to join us, but because of an emergency on their part, we ended up just having our family. We weren’t sure we could even do it, though, until the last minute, because it’s been rainy all week and was threatening this morning. About 11:30, Gayle and the boys decided to give it a try, and went down to the riverbed to start a fire. We’ve just gotten back, at 2:00 pm, and it’s still not raining—we got away with it this time!

I didn’t get any pictures while we were roasting our sausages. Once we were finished with them and the children had started roasting marshmallows, I remembered I had a camera! The marshmallow roasting was the amusing part, anyway. One boy declared that he couldn’t catch his marshmallow on fire. He roasted them slowly and perfectly. The next thing we knew, his marshmallow was on fire! He did do one perfectly for me. Another boy deliberately caught every one of his on fire. He’s too impatient to do them slowly.

Miss Joy seemed to enjoy her first cookout. She looked around, and slept for five minutes, and looked around some more.

Mr. Imagination charred his marshmallow, then worked at picking the charcoal off.

Several people put roasted marshmallows on top of their chocolate cupcakes.

Despite the early-spring chill, Mr. Diligence wanted to go swimming. He put on his togs and leaped into the creek—and came right back out again, shivering!

Several of the boys went up the creek with their sausage sticks to try to spear eels. They didn’t get any.

The last step before leaving was to douse the fire, which these two did, gleefully!

Boys’ Fun

September 21, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The boys have been having fun blowing bubbles lately. They have made some pretty big ones with dish soap on a plate! Mr. Diligence blew this bubble one day. See the other camera focused on it?

Just after I snapped the picture above, Mr. Imagination pressed the button to take a picture—just as the bubble popped! The result was this next picture, which he was tickled to have gotten.

A few days later, he took this picture, of Mr. Sweetie blowing a bubble.

One evening while we had family worship, these three clowns all pretended to be falling asleep. This is Simon, Mr. Diligence, and Mr. Sweetie.
When you have a lot of boys living in your house, you are going to have a lot of roughhousing. Our boys have invented this game of wrestling on the couch. The goal is to stay on the couch longer than anyone else.

This wasn’t exactly fun, nor was it boys. I’ll put it in here, though. One Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, some of us came home early so I could rest. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss went out to play, and got quite muddy. Esther found Little Miss looking like this and grabbed a picture before administering a bath.

Miss Joy at Two and Three Weeks

September 14, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are loving having a baby in the house again! This little girl is a very happy baby, and sleeps and eats very well. At three weeks, she was already 13 ounces over her birthweight, so she apparently gets enough!

Here are my three beautiful girls, when we came home from church on the first Sunday that Miss Joy went to church. She was nearly two weeks old. The second photo was taken a little later, when she woke up.

Mr. Intellectual got help with his school from his baby sister.

Two weeks old. She was intently listening to her daddy singing, and studying his face.

Studying Mr. Intellectual…

…and Little Miss…

…and Simon.

Three weeks old. She does very well at holding her head up already, and is very alert—when she’s awake! She often spends a couple of hours awake in the morning, and three-four hours awake just before bedtime, with occasional cat naps; otherwise, she sleeps for several hours at a time, day and night. She’s very happy; nothing seems to bother her much except when she decides she needs to eat right now and gets put off for several minutes! She smiles a lot now, although we haven’t managed to capture that in a photo yet.

August 2019 Photos

September 8, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Simon turned 18 near the beginning of the month. We had visitors over to help celebrate, and Esther baked pavlova.

Indian wrestling in our living room! Simon and Mr. Intellectual are pretty evenly matched.

Little Miss wanted to show me her new hairstyle one day! The sticks were her hands.

One morning I noticed this helicopter spreading lime just across the river from our town. There is a company just up the hill from us that has several helicopters, and we frequently see them fly over with the fertilizer spreader dangling underneath.

More heavy equipment going past our house!

Here are several pictures from Miss Joy’s second week.

I love seeing that little head snuggling up to big brother. This is a happy baby, very much a joy to all of us!

She Has Arrived!

August 24, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

We were not anticipating meeting our new baby until at least now, but she arrived four days ago already. We are feeling incredibly blessed to have another daughter! After all the loss and trauma our family has experienced over the past three years, we are rejoicing to have new life in our home.

Maria Joy, who will henceforth be known on this blog as Miss Joy, arrived early Tuesday morning after a relatively easy labor. She weighed 7 pounds, 1.5 ounces, and was 19 inches long, our second-smallest baby. She is very happy so far, waking up every few hours to have a feed, look around for awhile at the fascinating world of light and listen to the sounds around her, have another feed and go back to sleep. She occasionally gets laid down in the bassinet—but most of the time people clamor to hold her! The three teenage boys, especially, argue good-naturedly about who gets to hold the baby!

Here is our precious newborn, just a few hours old.

Do you think they were excited?

Mr. Diligence

Mr. Sweetie

Little Miss finally had the prayer answered which she prayed at least a year and a half ago, for a sister.

The morning after she was born, we compared her feet to Mr. Intellectual’s big toe!

I got to hold two daughters at once!

Mr. Intellectual

Photo-bombers! This is Mr. Diligence and Simon. (Simon, by the way, thinks he is entitled to hold the baby any time he’s at home! He feels like he misses out on a lot because he has to work.)

Poor Simon had to do schoolwork last night and let his daddy hold the baby!

This is what is happening right now. Mr. Sweetie asked if he could hold the sleeping baby, and promptly fell asleep with her!

Egg Animals

August 17, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

A few days ago, we watched a short YouTube video about making kawaii egg animals. This really fired up Mr. Imagination’s imagination! He badly wanted to make some, so the next morning he asked me if he could make breakfast. Mr. Sweetie already had breakfast started, but I let Mr. Imagination boil some eggs to try it out. He had some trouble getting them boiled hard enough; I think I goofed up on the timing somehow. Eventually we ended up with three eggs in good enough shape to make animals from. (The rest got eaten by hungry boys!). These didn’t turn out as cute as the ones we saw on YouTube, but my little people sure loved them. Mr. Sweetie helped make them and take the pictures.

This is a mouse.

This is a dragon.

Left to right: dragon, rabbit, mouse.

I have a feeling he’ll be attempting this again sometime! And, this ticked the “art” box for the day—if I had such a thing on our schedule!

Snow in the Grey Valley!

August 10, 2019 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We rarely ever see snow on the ground. When we lived in Cheviot, I believe we saw it four times in eight years. Here, we live in a river valley, at a very low elevation. We sometimes see snow on the mountains around us, but it’s been 10-15 years since our village had it on the ground. So, we were quite surprised, Sunday at lunchtime, to see this out the window: