Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toys. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Poke-a-what?

I thought I'd finally post something! I started school with the boys two weeks ago, we are following a pretty structured schedule now and so far so good. Last week's impromptu art lesson, jumping off from something the boys were already "into," was to create their own Pokemon character in a crayon/watercolor resist. They had already been busy making (rather crudely) some of their very own Pokemon cards drawn out in colored pencil on index cards and then roughly cut to size. My idea was to make a larger painting of one of their favorites. It took very little to motivate them, in fact they were busy before I finished giving them some basic instructions. Today, after fiddling around with the scanner and changing some preexisting cards, at K's request, I thought, we should actually make their paintings into cards. This became an all day project of figuring out the software and remembering once learned, and soon forgotten, computer graphics skills I picked up in high school.

The paintings:



As you can see, K already added some of the card info to his painting.








OK, now their cards. I had to squish D's "Spiraly" to get him to fit our format, and they aren't perfect, but certainly satisfactory for a first time effort, I think.



Twice this week I received emails from different friends with a link to this ebay item. There's a very funny story that goes along with the Pokemon theme here, about shopping with lots of children, and how sometimes we buy things we never even meant to. She is a kindred "mommy blogger" check out her other funny writings here.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Ebay bug


My sister likes shopping on ebay. I have on occasion tracked items and looked at prices and then become overwhelmed and just went to the store to find what I needed. But today I made my first ebay purchase. The boys and I have been watching some lego star wars minifigures and sets that they would like to add to their growing collection. I've lost several bids so far, and last night I thought I had lost, but today I was given a "second chance offer". Apparently the seller actually had two of the same set and offered it to me also as the second highest bidder. So I bought it, and K still thinks I lost so he will be pleasantly surprised when he opens the Emperor Palpatine and throne seat. The set we are most anxious about "winning" is the new and hard to get X-wing fighter with six minifigures: Leia, Chewy, Han, Luke, Antilles, and R2. I tried to order it from Lego.com and it is backordered until April. Which means it wouldn't even be on time for K's birthday.

This whole concept of "winning" (buying) and "losing" (not buying) is an interesting twist to shopping. It makes a game of shopping, and I can see how it becomes highly addictive and expensive. It's amazing what some people will pay for a 2 inch high piece of plastic, and by "some people" I mean myself.