This Boy

I miss him! I don't understand why God chose me and my family to share this little blessing with. He is pure joy and so special to me. I have so much Love for this boy, and right now I'm having a really hard time understanding why I have to live so far away from him. I'm trying to figure out the lesson I am supposed to be learning in being so far away.... Ready for less confusion and more peace.

I can not overlook the adventure we are living here in california. This weekend we are going camping in Yosemite. It's my first camping experience, and yes I'm a little nervous but I'm sure I will have memories to last a lifetime.

I promised myself I would right my(OUR) story down. I need to start doing better job!

3rd grade flowers Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh

In 3rd Grade we carefully examined Van Gogh's Sun Flower series of paintings. We talked about his FAMOUS brushstrokes and the style of IMPRESSIONISM. We began creating impressionistic drawings of Van Gogh's sunflowers. We defined impressionism as painting our 'first impression' and not painting ever single detail that we see. It was super fun and every students art work looked different. The medium we used was OIL PASTLE, the kids were amazed by the ability to mix colors and color in layers. I encouraged them to "color the paper away" so that their was color on the entire page.

Here are Van Gogh painting that we examined:

I covered the desk with newspaper so the students could color all the way to the edge. I also told them to choose their own colors,  they are the artists so they can make their own artistic decisions :-)

I showed them how to add a white highlight so the vase would look "3D"

Here are some finished product:

Glass Mosaics with 4th Grade

Hopefully this is my first post of many elementary art projects!!! For the past few months I have been teaching ART to 3rd through 6th grade at Yuba Feather Elementary School. It has been an awesome experience and my creative juices are flowing.  One of the first projects I decided to do was making glass mosaics. I have a ton of glass left over from a stained glass course I took in college. I chose to do this project with the smallest class, which happened to be 4th grade with only 19 students. Here are some pictures I took along the way...

Cutting glass took FOREVER! All you need is a glass cutter, running pliers, and a willing husband. Glass cutting took way longer then I expected so Mikie and I took shifts (I probably shouldn't have left cutting for the last minute :-/). I think all of the blisters, cuts, and glass shards were totally worth it :-)

Time to glue glass to pieces of cut wood. I learned that wood glue works the best, we applied glue with a small paint brush. The theme we decided to go with was "under the sea", we made some sketches, talked about creating an image with small squares, and discussed the importance of creating contrast between image and background.

When they finished I took them home to grout them. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into here! I learned it would have been way easier to grout one large mosaic then 19 small ones, needless to say after a few hours I did it! If anyone has grouting advice I am open to any suggestions!!!

Here is a before and after of an awesome crab, made by Kylie:

Take a look at a few finished products!

Starfish

Sea Turtle

Clam with a Pearl

Shark

Their talents are impressive!

Extreme Home Makeover!

Welcome to the house we moved into directly out after our 

honey moon!  I promised pictures so here they are... Check out the sink/stove combo and notice there is no oven. Is this even safe?

So we tried to cook, the stove was super finicky it sometimes would work but sometimes we were not so lucky. I became a a huge fan of crock pot cooking!

Here was our Thanksgiving turkey! I have learned you can cook absolutely everything in a crock pot!



RENOVATION TIME!!!!

Here is a before and after of the kitchen it was finished right before Christmas, what a wonderful christmas present! Everyday this kitchen reminds me I do not have to worry about anything but by prayer and petition present my requests to the LORD! I have never felt more provided for then I do right now in this little house on a mountain a world away from my family. I am reminded daily how good and big God is.

We ended up painting every room in our house and the floors were replaced in the kitchen living and dining room.

Hope you enjoyed our 'extreme home makeover' I know this is old news but I wanted to share it with you all.

Life Update!

We finally got our wedding pictures!!! Of course I had to share a few of my favorites! We are so thankful for a extremely talented photographer Meaghan Elliott. 

So many more wedding pictures, I need some good ideas of what to do with them all! In other news in the Kane Household I have become employed (woohooo!!) I am teaching 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade art at out local elementary school; I will be sure to show you some pictures of my kiddos and their awesome art work!  Also, we have been very busy with house guests and Nor Cal traveling!!!

We are starting to have a routine when our east coasters come to visit! This usually includes wine tasting in SONOMA or NAPA, lunch or dinner in CHICO CA, and you can not forget a quick day trip to LAKE TAHOE. 

Lake Tohoe

Napa/Sonoma

I have to add this last picture of my Handsome Husband sneaking a kiss on top of Table Mountain! 

Mikie and I are feeling extremely blessed that so many of our friends and family are willing to fly all the way across the country to visit us! We love having them here, and they remind us of the wonderful adventure that we are living over here in California! 

Our next visitor will be my Mom, Dad and of course Josh! They arrive May 31!

ASC 2012

We are back from Florida and sadly I barely took any pictures! I really need to get better at taking pictures, because pictures are one of my favorite ways to tell our story.  Although, this time I don't think pictures or words can encompass what I learned in the last week. At Young Life's All Staff Conference I was able to be in a room with 4000 people who share in the same mission that Mikie and I do! That mission is simply to love God and love others. We were able to hear from some of the people who God has touched through the ministry of Young Life. My favorite of course, was a boy named Michael. Michael and his mom gracefully helped us understand what his life looks like with Downs Syndrome. Michael beautifully articulated to us the impact Young Life’s ministry for special needs called Capernaum has had on his life. The thing that I remember so vividly is the simplicity of the message Michael shared with us. Michael told us that at young life he feels welcome, I thought to myself ‘ I wonder how many times Michael has not felt welcome in places’. It saddens me to think and know that Michael probably does not feel welcome in the majority of the places he has been, and the places he will go.  I thought to myself how wonderful that in our ability to love others we can provide a place that makes a person that is culturally marginalized, feel so welcome and worthy of acceptance. The ability to love others is an amazing gift and I am learning we cannot let it go to waste. This is one of the many lessons I learned as I listened to others speak about being loved apart from condition, and being loved so deeply that their  hearts have been transformed. Aside from my brain wanting to explode from so much new knowledge and realizations we had a blast. The first night of the conference we were surprised by a trip to SeaWorld. Sea world was opend only for Young Life staff! This was super awesome and it meant no lines! Almost unbelievable right?! We took full advantage of this gift, and rode roller coasters over and over and over again! So here are some pictures, hope you enjoy!

  

DIY Curtains

My love for curtain and my love for aprons have collided into a diy project! These curtains are actually aprons I bought from Pier One, they only needed a little bit of altering to become curtains. Ok, I'm feeling a little bit guilty, I can't take complete credit for this project it was inspired by Erika Jones who did this same thing in her kitchen (soo creative)!

Also, to all my followers, well that is if I even have any I am so sorry for the gap in blog posts I promise to be better! The holidays were super busy for us, we were able to spend some sweet time with our family's back east. O how I miss them, but I know here is where I am suppose to be right now so deeply in my heart. So here it is,  short but sweet DIY curtains!

I needed 2 curtains to cover the width of my window they are only $15 at Pier One! Thank you wedding gift cards!!!

There was no sewing involved, I had to do was rip the stitch, cut the ends of and slide the curtain rod through the waist band!!

Hope you enjoyed it! We leave for sunny florida in the morning for Young Life's all staff conference, so back to the east coast for a week!

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