Reflections 2009

For Reflections this year, the theme was "Beauty is..." and so the girls set off to make stuff.

Today was the award ceremony.

This is Lily waiting for the assembly to start. (love the boy in the far left??LOL)

Here is Rebekah also waiting for the assembly to start. She is wearing her Indian feathers for today since the 5th graders did Colonial Day and could dress up if they wanted.

Here are my two winners!! In the 3D Art category in the Intermediate Division (3rd-5th grades) Rebekah won honorable mention and Lily won 1st place.
(See the cute, little 1st grader holding the "applause" sign? Well the poor dear had to pee and was too shy to say anything and within like 3 minutes of me taking this picture, the poor thing peed her pants, in front of the whole school.)

Here is Lily with her project. Her project is titled, "Beauty is recycling." I saw this project on Family Fun.com and knew she would LOVE doing it. She had a blast putting it together. I did have to help her with the glue gun though. Now her project goes on to District. I don't know if you can see it, but the little person has a halo. :-)

Here is Rebekah and her awesome rag quilt. Her project is titled, "Beauty is creating comfort." When she set to work on this blanket, she had her own pattern in mind. I will have to take another picture of it to show you. It is 6 feet tall and almost 4 feet wide. She was excited to win an honorable mention and now gets to sleep with it. She can't wait for me to wash it so the fringes will fray more.


I am so proud of my girls desire to enter into Reflections every year. Their confidence skyrockets when they get to create. Good thing they create all year round.

Green and It's Clean, by Quickie

Whilst shopping at Wal-Mart today, I was perusing the cleaning aisle for more scrubby brushes. I used my kitchen one to scrub the grout on my bathroom floor tile. I tell you, grout is a pain in the rear to clean and I was desperate so I used whatever would work. I was not about to put the scrubby back into the kitchen, so I needed a new one. I grabbed one I thought would work and as I did so, I saw there was a cheaper one a couple racks over. Hmmm, cheaper by a few pennies doesn't always mean better but when I saw it was a GREEN product by a company called Quickie, I thought I would give it a try. After all, saving me a few pennies to help the environment doesn't sound too bad. I can look past the fact that it looks brown, I don't care as long as it gets the job done. I saw there was a pot scrubby too so I snatched that and felt really good about doing my part.

I got home, unload the groceries, and tossed the Wal-Mart bags into the trash - yes, I know, I can recycle those, but it is just too much effort to store the bags until my next trip to place into the recycle boxes in the entrances. Besides that, I did my part by purchasing two GREEN products, so it all evens out. Right? Some might argue that I can save the bags and reuse them for things around the house such as: packing material for when I mail packages, padding for storing Christmas decorations, taking up knitting and make a wedding dress out of them for when my girls get older, carrying wet clothes home from the pool, crochet some sandals, liners for bathroom trash cans, or even knitting purses with the many, many bags I go through. And while I am all for being more environmentally conscience, some of them just aren't feasible for me or are just too close to flashbacks of the macrame projects of the past. While macrame has its place in the plant holder arena, I don't feel the look of crocheted clothing from plastic bags - too close to macrame.

"Am I just being too pessimistic or just not ready to go GREEN?" I wondered to myself as I snipped off the hemp twine to release the tags from the scrubbies. Before chucking those into the trash too, I took a closer look at the tag. The tag boasted of "working together to save the earth(tm)" but my keen eye picked out something that just tossed all this "Earth Friendly" GREEN attitude into the garbage with my other never-going-to-be-recycled-and-sent-to-a-landfill-to-rot items.

Three simple words: Made in China.