The girls did a few fall crafts this year in a failed attempt to keep them busy and out of trouble. It was a nice thought. ;) So, in an effort to keep it real around here, I thought we would do a little exhibit of "Craft & Consequence"

Craft: First up, the girls made this lovely glittered fall leaf garland decorating their playhouse. All I did was hot glue the ribbons to the backs of the leaves to hold them in place better. The rest was all them. It was a lovely decoration for the "Fall Ball" they planned to host for their cousins. They didn't like the purple leaf the 4yo made all by herself when no one was looking with all of the purple glitter, but I think it is a nice contrast.

Consequence:Glitter. Enough said. It is EVERYWHERE!!!! They kept getting into the glitter for the next week because they thought the usual "off-limits" status had been changed. To top it off, my 7yo thought it would be fun to transform the 4yo into the "Glitter Queen" by dumping glitter on her head. Yeah, it went right down to the scalp and settled in nicely.

This was after her bath. My tub was sparkling, and not because it was clean.

From experience, smaller amounts of glitter will eventually wash out. This was too extreme and after her bath glitter had spread to her face and eyes. What I have learned is that glitter removal involves many steps.

Around the eyes, I carefully used tape to get it off of her skin and out of her eyelashes.
I read on a forum that olive oil helps with the scalp glitter removal. It loosened about 50% of it and spread it to her hair.
So, we washed again with shampoo. That helped get the loosened glitter out. It was late so I sent her to bed at this point.
Her hair was left looking VERY greasy the next morning and we had an early dentist appointment. It was raining, so I hope everyone thought she was just wet. My cousin suggested corn starch, so I actually used baby powder and that worked very well.
Eventually, the remaining glitter washed out.

Craft: The girls also gathered leaves and made leaf pictures. There is a bunny, a "wild" bunny with 6 legs, a turkey, a hedgehog, and some sparkly leaves.

Consequence: Obviously there was glitter involved, so there is that.

However, the real "fun" was when they girls went out to gather leaves. I let them have some ice cream while I cleaned the kitchen. Then I went to clean the yard while they looked for leaves. Well, the 7yo wasn't done with her ice cream when I went out. She put her empty ice cream container on the stove and accidentally bumped the knob to turn the burner on. I had moved my still-drying mini chopper to the stove while I wiped the counter down. I came back in to the horrid smell of melting plastic and the house filled with smoke. So, we opened all of the doors and windows and got fans out. (FYI: a plastic scraper, and then a razor blade removed the melted plastic from my ceramic cooktop.) When enough of the smoke and smell dissipated they came back inside and made the pictures.

Craft: I was busy with something so I let the girls get my fall decorations out to arrange by themselves while I supervised. My 7yo especially loves this!

Consequence:

FIGHTING!!! The screaming and dramatics were pretty intense. At one point, someone moved something or added some flowers and my 7yo took everything down and put it back in the box while her sisters tried to wrestle it away from her. I have a corner cupboard where they could each have a shelf to be in charge of, so eventually they compromised.

So, even though these pictures may look pretty, the behind the scenes is not always so. It would have been a lot easier, with less typing, to just post the resulting pictures. There is more to the story, though. Don't think I am some "supermom" with perfectly behaved children who sit still and do cute craft projects while they work together. It isn't all sunshine around here, but that is life.

Sometimes you just have to deal with the consequences, shake it off, and keep going.

Pressing through all of the ridiculousness is what resulted in these pretty craft pictures.

Here is some more fall goodness…