We’ve had a dry, dry summer.  It seems like all the rain that we missed, came last week, when we had several rainy days in a row; dark and chill.

Boy One and Boy Two turned to paper craft for a diversion.  They greatly amuse me.  They go through phases where they will both make something, together or side by side,  over and over and over again…until….I don’t know what, but eventually they’ll move on to something else.  My favorites to date have been the 1/2-3/4 sized paper families and the miniature stringed instruments.  The various styles of paper glasses with clear plastic lenses where interesting too.

The paper people were representations of us.  They would use several sheets of paper to make them 3 or 4 feet high and all of the features and clothing would be cut from different papers and layered on.  Sometimes there were removable elements as well, like mittens that came on and off.

The instruments were three-dimensional, usually around the size of my hand, with every detail down to each individual string, and where applicable, a tiny bow.  For a while there, my entire house was filled with little paper violas, cellos, guitars…  We easily could have outfitted the entire string section of a paper doll orchestra.

The current fad seems to be paper feathers…

And paper quivers, for their home-made arrows.  All to go with their home-made bows, also of their own design.  The attention to detail and several thoughtful design features on the bows garnered much praise at Camp Trueheart.

While the littler folks and I finally found success in a gluten-free play dough recipe.

It’s made in the crock pot of all things!  But it turned out great.  She says that it took two hours for hers to reach the right consistency, but ours was done in just 30 minutes.  We left it plain white.  It’s much whiter then most play doughs tend to be.  Galen made a stack of “marshmallows” and then proceeded to pretend to roast them on sticks!