Paper Rose

From , the How To manual you can edit!
How to Fold a Paper Rose (click this link to see the original article, complete with pictures to help explain in more thorough detail)

The simple art of origami may be regarded as pure personal enjoyment, but some may say there are deeper meanings to the art. Since the paper rose signifies everlasting beauty, it can be given to a significant other to impress them or win them over. The following instructions are for an origami rose designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki.

Steps

1. Obtain some colorful, square paper (see "Things You'll Need").
   
2. Face the colorful side of the paper up towards you.
   
3. Fold the square in half so that the decorated side of the paper is folded inside. Open up the paper, turn it over, and draw a black line along the crease of the back side. (The colorful side will be the color of your rose, and that is why lines are drawn on the back (plain) side, so that they will not be seen).
   
4. Fold the lower and upper half in half again, so that the square is equally divided into four parts. Color these creases.
   
5. Rotate the paper and repeat the last two steps, so that now you have 16 little squares.
   
6. Fold the paper diagonally both ways. You should have two lines dividing the paper diagonally, giving you four triangles. This is shown with red lines.
   
7. Fold the paper in half.
   
8. Fold the lower half up one third.
   
9. Open up the paper and rotate it 90 degrees. Repeat the last two steps. This is shown with green lines.
   
10. With each corner, fold black and red lines upwards (valley folds) and green lines inwards (mountain folds).
    
11. Press down on the horizontal and vertical parts counter-clockwise gently, leaving the middle standing out.
    
12. Press down on the four corners of the center part and it should turn into a tiny flat square.
    
13. Turn the paper around so that the colorful side faces up.
    
14. Use labels. To make it easier to understand, label the four parts, then lift up the fourth (lower right) square and rotate it 90 degrees, counterclockwise, to the left vertical border of square two.
    
15. Make sure the two borders align exactly.
    
16. Rotate around to each square and repeat the last two steps with all four squares.
    
17. Round up all four sides, and now you have the basic shape of the rose in your hand.
    
18. Flip the rose upside down. Now you are looking into the inside of the rose.
    
19. Fold down the petals one by one.
    
20. Once you reach the last petal, tuck it under the gap beneath the previous petal.
    
21. Turn it over. Now you have a pretty rose. You can add a stem for it, using wire and a few pieces of leaves with green paper. Now you are done!
    

Tips

• To make it look more realistic, use a thin round pen as a curling tool to curl up the four petals. alternatively you could use a chopstick or if you have one you could use a knitting needle for a tighter curl.
  
• Consider using recycled paper; it's better for the environment.
  

Things You'll Need

• You can use any square piece of paper to fold this rose, although it will be easier if you use one that you can distinguish the front and back side of the paper clearly.
  
• The type of paper used in this demonstration has two sides. The colorful side is the front side of the paper.
  
• The side with only one color is the back side of the paper.
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Fold a Paper Rose. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Easter Part 1

We had a very fun, impromptu Easter celebration at my hubby's Mom and Dad's house last Saturday - we drove down to pick up MY Mom to bring her up to our house to spend a week with us before Easter, and we spent part of the day having supper and playing around before coming back up.

The kids each got an Easter bag filled with all kinds of fun goodies - each received Crayola Color Wonder Soft Sticks and some coloring pages to go with them, a book with a sweet and simple discussion about what Easter is really about, some jellybeans (each color with a Christian meaning), a pen with a plush lamb topper and a cute spiral notebook to go with it.

We spent the next week talking about what Easter means and watched the Veggie Tales Easter Carol a few times, it's pretty sill but does such a great job at sharing the real message with little kids.


There are more pictures to follow from Easter Sunday, and as always - you can click the little pictures to make them larger.

Easter Part 2

We felt very blessed to have family come visit us for Easter this year! This was the first holiday that my hubby and I have entertained guests, and it was so much fun to be able to prepare a meal for our loved ones.



We attended church at Faith Reformed Church and it was a really nice service, presented in a unique way that was refreshing and interesting. This church is set up differently than any other place we've been, there's a main sanctuary (the one we went on Sunday) where the Pastor preaches in person, and there are also satellite churches where his message is broadcast onto a large screen via projector, but each satellite has it's own unique worship service (one is traditional, another is contemporary, etc). This next week we plan to check out the contemporary service.

Our supper was awesome - we had a relish tray (prepared by my cousin Nat - olives, two kinds of pickles, crackers, cheese and later refilled with strawberries and powdered sugar and sliced green pepper) Virginia Smoked Ham (which my Mom glazed with Coke, honey dijon mustard, and brown sugar - YUM), my own secret versions of green bean casserole and cheesy potatoes (or wedding potatoes, depending on who you're talking to), crescent rolls, and Heath Trifle (my Grandma's recipe, made by my Aunt G) for dessert. I think we all ate too much, and I still have left overs in the fridge!

The kids had fun coloring eggs with food coloring markers, and then got to open their Easter Baskets. They each got a cute coin bank, J got a frog that ribbets when you drop in a coin and S got an elephant that trumpets when you feed it coins. They each got a candy item, too - and some coins for their banks.

God Bless!

Links We Like

I added a few links to my sidebar today to share with all of you - Sing, Spell, Read & Write (SSRW), Mark Kistler's Draw 3-D and Math Mammoth. I've been using SSRW for a little while now with J and he's been really taking off with reading - at the same time, S has been picking up a lot of I'm teaching and the other day I heard the two of them singing the alphabet together! She also is familiar with a lot of the letter sounds, and when we go through the chart of letters together she echoes the sounds (think "a, a, apple... b, b, ball..."). She surprised me the other day by counting to ten, and again tonight while playing hide & seek she did it with Daddy but instead of echoing the numbers he was saying it was Daddy who was echoing S! I'm pretty impressed with her lately - she's a bright one!

We've been using Mark Kistler's book, Imagination Station (which we loaned from the library and will most likely be purchasing at least one copy of) as part of our art lessons lately and it has really been a HUGE hit in our house. Not only are they learning how to draw, they are learning to be positive and self confident! We also watch Mark on PBS when we get the chance, but we often aren't home when he's on the air so we use his YouTube channel a lot - can't recommend it enough, especially for those of you who are convinced you can't draw (I know you're out there!)

I'm planning on purchasing the 1st Grade math from Math Mammoth for J soon, and I'm going to use it with a couple of books I just ordered from amazon.com: Family Math for Young Children, Comparisons and Family Math, Equals Series because I'm hoping to keep it interesting, both for his sake AND mine! :)

I ordered two other books with those Math books, Games for Writing and The Beginner's Bible, which J insists on carting around everywhere and "reads" CONSTANTLY: he love love loves the pictures and the stories are brief enough that he keeps asking me to keep reading and reading, this is such an awesome thing to hear, "Mommy, can we read my Bible now?" I plan to choose a story or two a week and really focus on it, maybe finding coloring pages or other crafts or some other information like maps or anything I can find... I'm excited to have a good jumping off point for our Bible lesson part of school. Even S will sit and listen to the stories, they're well written and are quite engaging. I can't wait until J can read through one on his own, it will be great to have him "teach" some of school to his Sis.

I know I generally don't get too wordy, but I guess I'm making up for it today! :D

Theatre Performance

Well, the kiddos had their last day of theatre for Winter Session on Tuesday, and the performance was so adorable. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy - Enjoy! :)

They did all their warm up exercises like pretending to be happy or sad, then they pretended to be having a picnic and they unpacked all the things from their 'heavy' baskets and tasted their PB&J and pretended it was sour (imagine all the cute "sour" faces!). Then they acted out "I'm Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor" by Shel Silverstein using the parachute, when they say "Oh dread, it's eaten my head!" they all get under the parachute and giggle about the 'stinky snake belly' then "tickle" him to escape (which consists of pushing all over on the parachute so that it flutters all over the place, always a kid pleaser!).

Then they learned a new little thing on the spot (a little song that goes "I know a chicken/and she laid an egg/oh my goodness!/it was a shaky egg!" and then they drop a plastic Easter Egg with beans or something inside to 'lay' an egg, then pick it up and shake it fast or slow, depending on what the song said) so here's a video of that:


After that, we went up onto the "big stage" where Ms. Kat showed them all about the stage, the different parts, explained how the set was designed and how it was made... then they did a cute little play called The Big Bad Pig and the Little Wolves which Ms. Kat pretty much made up... basically, one little girl played the Pig and everyone else was a Wolf. The Set was a cardboard box, with each side representing a different kind of house: 1. Mac & Cheese, 2. Grass, 3. Rocks, 4. Flowers, which make the Pig become nice when she smells them and then they're all friends.

Cooking!

Here's a quick little video I put together when the kidlets were helping me fix supper one night. I think J has a knack for being cute, er... acting ;)

Cooking, Unmixed

Just a warning, this one is kind of long but too cute not to share!

TKD - Movie Too!

J's first attempt at breaking a board:


Master Pline working with the Tiny Tiger class on their one step, J is on the far right.


J "leading" the class:


Practicing Songahm II for the first time:

Taekwondo Day 1

Click for a larger image, J is third in from the left.

Practicing self control by "freezing". He received a small plastic chain link at the end of class as a reward for doing so well - these are worn on the belt, and I believe they accrue until a certain point at which they get a patch of some sort.

Pictures taken with and posted from my phone, sorry for the poor quality - I'll try to remember my camera for the next class (which is Wednesday).

School Day Cuteness

S is really starting to get a great attention span, and often sits and colors quietly while I am assisting J with work that requires my attention:


Here's J working on a page from SSRW. He loves it so far, it combines music, games, workbook stuff... it's great for him because he's so wiggly. I already know I'll be ordering Pre-K for S, I think she's ready for it now and may get it in the next month or so.


Aren't they adorable?!

Taekwondo Uniform Trial Run

Chah Reot! (attention) She Jahk. (at ease)


Tough guy, then posing as a Sweetie:


The last thing he told me when tucking me in was, "Mommy, I'm a Taekwondo Student now!"

Haircut Time

Well, it's been erm... MONTHS since I've cut the little man's hair, and here it is for all to see: Daddy wore me out. I finally cut it, first time ever using scissors to cut his hair! It turned out really nice though!

Before and midway:


Profile of the mid-way-ness:


After, my handsome little guy emerges:

SSRW is Here! Movies Too!

Yeah, he's definitely ready, he read the word "amazon" on the shipping box. This kid amazes me daily.


Packaging material was quite the excitement!


But the actual contents were of much interest as well:

At the end, you'll hear J asking Daddy if his belly feels better - this, unfortunately, is the day that was the worst and he ended up spending the rest of the day and evening in bed. He's doing great now though!

Working on Lowercase Letters

I've ordered some new curriculum for teaching J how to read, he's displaying very strong signs of readiness (he's trying to sound out every word he sees, and can spell some simple words on his own such as cat, car, mommy, frog tree...) so I took the plunge and ordered Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. Here he is working on what we have until we get our new box (which is always exciting - boxes in the mail are generally cause for much celebration in our house, haha)

Madam Destruction

I heard a loud crash, and when I ran upstairs this is what I found:


Have a great day :)

Theatre, First Class - and a Movie

We enrolled J in theatre, and he LOVES it!!! It's all ice-breaker kind of activities, and dramatic play. The teacher is just a riot, her name is Ms. Cat and at the end of class she uses a cute little kitty stamp on the kids' hands as a reward for good behavior. I can see how this class is going to be a great foundation and can't wait to get S involved when she turns 3!


Movie :D

Learning To Read!

We play a game called Starfall - it's all phonics and it's AWESOMELY fun! The greatest part is: you can play it through the internet browser on the Wii! I recently discovered (okay, I'm sure tons of people are totally aware of this but whatev) that you can play any flash game that is playable with a mouse using the wiimote. J is able to play the game almost entirely alone which is great. It's fun, and playing the Wii is not something he is regularly allowed to do so he gets really excited to do it:


Here's a pic of the screen from one of the end-unit stories:


The website is http://www.starfall.com if anyone is interested in checking it out.

Mommy's Birthday

We went the the Outback and spent my Target gift cards (thanks, Mom and Sis! - well, spent Mom's but saving Sis' for a bit, not sure what I want yet). Then we went grocery shopping and J said, "you HAVE TO HAVE A BIRTHDAY CAKE!!! IT'S NOT YOUR SPECIAL DAY WITHOUT A SPECIAL CAKE!!! and I don't really know what kind of cake I like, so we bought individually decorated slices, hehe! The kids stuck in all the candles and then we all sampled some of each.



As always, you can click for a bigger view.
Love!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!