Beads before Breakfast.

Last week we had my brother and sister in law come for a weekend visit and they took the opportunity to sleep in on Friday morning while they were here.

I say" more power to ya",... cause when their baby comes at the first of June, we all know they will never really sleep again....

Anyway, the point is, I had to keep my very excited children occupied and somewhat quiet until their Auntie and Uncle emerged from the guest room.


I was almost completely successful. After an hour of keeping them entertained, Ave wandered off upstairs and I got to do some chores. I thought, "oh great, she's gone to find something to do with herself FINALLY!" but later Auntie M. laughed, telling me that she had been sitting by their room sticking and wiggling her little fingers under their door to help wake them up! I guess she scampered off when Auntie tiptoed over to the door and stuck her fingers back under too! 

Before all of this, I had them set up for over an hour making all sorts of creations with colored beads and pipe cleaners.

Bracelets, keychains, necklaces, and interpretive sculpture, we had it all goin on.

We didn't really have that many beads to work with... truth be told our little stash is made up mostly of extra beads I snagged while doing art projects at free community events with the kids in our small town.

In the past year, we've made Christmas decorations and paper plate tambourines at local family craft days and every time I grabbed an extra handful of beads than was totally necessary.

Perhaps I should be a little ashamed... I'm like one of those people who lines their purse with napkins at a buffet....only with craft supplies... oh my gosh... this is actually pretty pathetic now that I think of it...

 Even Jackson sat mesmerized trying to put those little beads onto the pipe cleaners... I never noticed him putting any beads into his mouth while we were crafting and none have shown up in his diapers, so I think that's a giant step up the "big kid" scale.

Ave designed all her jewelry for Auntie M of course.

And for some reason it was the trend of the day to sit ON the craft table, not on the cute chairs their dad made for them....

Since these pictures were taken, Auntie, Mommy and even Uncle J. all received some lovely key chains, I have found several small beads with my vacuum cleaner and we've run out of pipe cleaners along with our meager bead stash.... I think this time I'll just go to the store and buy a bag for ourselves, seeing as they were such a hit, no?


What's keeping you occupied these days?