Kubbs for Monica

Yesterday was a lot of fun.  After officially becoming a dance mom, I took my daughter out to Mama's Coffee House to celebrate her performance.  We met up with the other dancers and their moms.

This gave me a chance to finally give my friend Monica her birthday present.

Even thought it was hard to come up with a theme for this kubb set it is definitely my favorite one so far and was tons of fun to paint.

What I value most about Monica is she cannot be summed up by a favorite team, color or animal.  There is just too much going on in her mind.  But she does love color, so that's where I started.

I chose ten fun recycled/rescued paints from the shelves for the base colors and only let them repeat four times throughout the set in the decorations.

This gift is green. Everything but the glue is recycled or rescued.

Paint and Valspar varnish from the paint shed at the recycling center.

Scraps of dowels and a slice of bamboo for stamping the circles.

Wood from the cull bin at Home Depot, a construction dumpster or two and the scraps bin from Black Hawk Hardware in Charlotte.

If you are interested in Kubb, here is a quick easy to follow video explanation of the rules:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgei5ImLXKo

This is not the Kubb you are looking for. . .

Yet another custom kubb set.  A good friend of ours with tendencies towards the Dark Side requested R2DKubbs so that the Force may knock them down.  

I promise to post the finished product, complete with Death Star King.  This set offered some new challenges and lead to some neat discoveries about Valspar cabinet gloss varnish, Killz primer and sharpie markers.  

More Custom Kubbs: Purple!

This set of kubbs went to my sister Catherine.  An artist friend of ours made a king for her so she requested some purple kubbs to match.  

My daughter was not satisfied with plain purple kubbs.  Too boring for her Auntie.  So I let her work in our artist friend's folk art pointilism style using different sized dowels dipped in paint.  This technique let a 7 year old turn out a pretty good looking end product.  

Once again, all the fun paint colors and clear top coat came from the recycling center.  If you live in the Fort Mill area, holler before you project.  I love finding the right home for stuff.  

Vi the supervisor. 

Custom Kubb Sets

This is the first in a series of custom kubb sets.  Catherine was going to visit a good friend of ours and requested a cow spot set.  

Here is where I get to brag a bit.  The clear coat varnish, primer and all the paints for this set were snatched from the jaws of the landfill at my local recycling center.   The king came from the cull bin at Home Depot.  So this set is tons of fun with a bit of good karma mixed in.  

My mistake or learning point in this project was using high gloss enamel latex paint for the base coat.  This meant that it took four coats of black high gloss to fill in the spots.  

Happy New Year!

Finally!  Christmas is packed away, the kids are back in school, the coffee mug is full and I can settle down to write with a clear conscience.

The best part about taking a vacation is being eager to get back to work.  I was itching to write that I actually broke vacation a bit early and started the next Titus and Annie, C is for Centurion, on the way down to the beach.

But more on that in the next post.  First you must endure a quick December recap.

My "vacation" started with some storytelling at Mama's Coffee House.

I've never officially done storytelling before.  Sure, I tell tons of stories and act plenty entertaining during Science Time with the preschoolers.  But their parents aren't there.

I was a little nervous about acting like a goof in front of grown ups.  Turns out, it was tons of fun.  Not only were the kids laughing at Annie's holiday antics, the mom's were too!

Then Eli figured out it was my birthday.  She brought out a delicious tres leches cupcake with a candle.  I felt pretty lucky having so many old and new friends singing to me.  Eli is wonderful and I can't rave enough about Mama's Coffee House.

This was also the Christmas of Kubb.  We played for hours with neighbors in the backyard and made a few sets for gifts.  The fun part was painting the kings.  All the paint and polyurethane came from the recycling center.  We had to make too many sets in too short a time to use recycled wood.  All 2012 Kubb sets will be as recycled as possible.  Honest.

Christmas with the kids was fun.  I'm grateful that my son slept in until six this year.  There were other surprises too:  Santa didn't realize he bought whistling darts for the nerf gun and who knew my daughter would spend three days with a doll strapped to her chest with her new doll snugli.

The year ended with the most wonderful wedding I have ever seen.  There was a neat old house to explore in down town Charleston, lots of interesting people to talk to, perfect weather, awesome music and the union of two really warm friends who were meant for each other.  Just look at the get away car.  Need I say more?

Thanks for enduring the recap.  Now its off to work.  C is for Centurion must be written.  What's the rush? Feedback!  I have received professional and insightful feedback on the Titus and Annie series.